In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,29

The people he came here with can’t believe their luck. This is the real Africa to them, the one they came from Europe to find, not the fake expensive one dished up to them at Victoria Falls, or the dangerous frightening one that tried to hurt them on the train. In this place each of them is at the centre of the universe, and at the same time is nowhere, surely this is what it means to be spiritually fulfilled, they are having a religious experience.

And at first he himself partakes of it, look at him now, lying on the beach and then getting up and stumbling to the water for a swim. Later when he’s too hot he goes back to his room to sleep, or retreats to the bar for a drink. When a joint is passed around he puffs along with everybody else, his face relaxes into the same befuddled grin that makes everyone around him look stupid. He’s as hedonistic as the rest of them. Towards evening he wanders with some of the others in the group, they are all talking and laughing like old friends, to a clearing behind the village where some bearded itinerant hippie is offering sunset flights in a micro-light. Although he won’t go up he watches Richard ascend for a long looping meandering cruise above the lake, and the gentle suspension of the little machine in the last light contains something of the unreal weightlessness of being here.

But the truth is that even in the first sybaritic day or two there is that same blue thread of uneasiness in him, no amount of heat or marijuana will quite sedate the restlessness. He is outside the group, observing. They have been around each other now for long enough for connections and tensions to develop, they all carry on like old companions. Everybody is called by nicknames, there is a lot of laughter and joking. Between Richard and the Irish woman a romance has sprung up, one evening on the beach he notices them shifting closer to each other, smiling coyly and watching one another sidelong, shortly afterwards they retire to Richard’s room nearby and emerge later glowing warmly. It’s all touching and happy, but he’s the odd one out here, he keeps a distance between himself and them, no matter how friendly they are. Once when all of them are walking on the beach he listens to a conversation behind him, one of the Swedish girls is talking to the Danish man, how did you like South Africa when you were there, oh, he says in reply, the country was beautiful, if only all the South Africans weren’t so fucked-up. Then everyone becomes aware of him at once and silence falls, of all of them he is the only one smiling, but inwardly.

Then one day someone in their party has this wonderful idea, let’s hire a boat and go out to that island for the day. One of the local men is conscripted to row them there for a small fee, over which the plump Englishman haggles, he will let them use his goggles and flippers to go snorkelling with. These are among the few things he owns, the boat and oars, the mask and flippers, but while he rows he talks earnestly about how he is saving to go to medical school in South Africa, he would like to be a doctor. He’s a young man of twenty three with a wide gentle face and a body toned and hardened by fishing for a living. Nobody else in the party is interested in speaking to him, but he tells me later, on the island, about how they go night-fishing, rowing for miles and miles into the far deep centre of the lake, each boat with a torch burning in the prow, and how they row back at dawn weighed down by a pyramid of fish. Would you take me with you one night, I would like to see that. Yes, I will take you.

Through glass the bottom of the lake is the surface of an alien planet, huge boulders are piled on each other in the sunlit depths, glowing fish float and dart like birds. The day is long and languid and everybody is happy when at last they climb into the boat to be rowed back again. But their oarsman is looking around, worried. What’s the matter. One of the flippers has gone. The visitors sigh and chatter in the