are no concern of his.
So he waits for the next bus to come. It’s as if he’s arrived at a place outside time, in which only he feels its lack. He paces up and down, he throws pebbles at a tree, he watches a file of ants going into a hole in the ground, all in a bid to summon time again. When the interval is over perhaps an hour and a half has passed. By then a small crowd is swelling next to the road and everybody clambers on board the bus at once. He ends up without a seat and has to hang on to roof racks in the aisle. Outside there is a mountainous green countryside quilted with tea plantations. Banana trees clap their broad leaves in applause.
It’s a full three hours or more before the road begins to descend from this high hilly country and the edges of Mbeya accrete around him. By now the sun is setting and in the dwindling light all he can see are low, sinister buildings, made mostly of mud, crouching close to the ground. He climbs down at the edge of a crowded street swirling with fumes. He asks a woman nearby, do you know where the station is. Somebody else overhears him and repeats it to somebody else, and he finds himself escorted by a stranger to a group of men loitering nearby. He saw them when he got off the bus, an expressionless and hard-looking bunch wearing caps and dark glasses, exuding menace. One of them says that he will take him to the station for five dollars. He hesitates for a few seconds in renewed panic, he’s afraid of this man in dark glasses whose car, he sees, has dark windows too, is he really going to drive off into these anonymous streets walled in by so much dark glass. But he’s come this far and he doesn’t know what else to do.
The man drives very fast in complete silence and then pulls up in front of a long building that is completely in darkness. By now it’s night. There is a chain on the front door and not a living soul in sight. Five dollars, the man says.
I want you to wait for me. I might need a lift somewhere else.
The man waits, brooding and watchful, while he fumbles his way up and down the length of the building, calling and knocking. Eventually he finds a window behind which a light is burning. He raps and raps on the glass until somebody comes, peering out suspiciously at him.
Yes.
Excuse me. Is there a train to Dar es Salaam tonight.
Not tonight. In the morning. It’s dangerous around here. You should go back into town. Come in the morning.
He returns to the car and his surly driver, could you drive me into town. I’ll give you another five dollars.
The man takes him to a hotel close to the point at which he got off the bus. You’re lucky, the woman at the desk tells him, you’ve got the last room. But he doesn’t feel lucky at all as he sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the various shades of brown and beige that surround him. He can’t remember when he last felt so alone. He decides that he will return to the station in the morning. If he doesn’t find them there he will go back home. With this much resolved he tries to sleep, but he tosses and turns, he wakes continually into his strange surroundings to stare at a weird patch of light on the wall. At dawn he dresses and leaves the key in the door.
Opposite the hotel is an open patch of ground where the taxi-rank is. As he comes to the bottom of the driveway he sees Jerome and Christian getting into a taxi. He stops dead still and then he starts to run.
The reunion is delighted all round, lots of clamour and slapping of shoulders. In the space of five minutes the whole world has changed shape, this town that looked mean and threatening to him is suddenly full of vibrancy and life.
They go by taxi to the station. This building too is no longer the empty darkened mausoleum of last night, it’s been transformed into a crowded public space filled with noise and commotion. Their train has been delayed and while they wait he goes for a long walk with Roderigo into the surrounding streets to find something to