In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,38
drink. A rusted Coca-Cola sign takes them into the dusty inner courtyard of a house, where they are served under a faded beach umbrella at a plastic table while chickens peck around their feet. Roderigo is still wearing his purple shirt, with a gaudy scarf tied around his neck. While we sip our drinks he tells me a story about my country. Before he went to work in Mozambique, he says, he stayed in South Africa for a few weeks, living in a hostel in Johannesburg. One day a young American traveller arrived and was put into the same room with him and they became friendly. On the second or third night Roderigo and this American went out drinking and landed up much later in a bar in Yeoville, very drunk. Roderigo wanted to go home to bed, but the American had started speaking to a black man he’d just met, who invited him to go somewhere else for another drink. The American was full of sentiment and goodwill about the country, talking to Roderigo about racial harmony and the healing of the past. He went away with his new friend and he never came back.
Roderigo went to the police to report him missing and a week later he was called to say that they’d found a body and would he come to identify it. The last time he saw his friend was through a window at the morgue. He’d been found stabbed in the back outside a big block of flats in the city, lying in the gutter. A day or two later a man in the building was arrested, who confessed to killing him for his watch and forty rand. Soon afterwards Roderigo left for Mozambique.
Why he tells this story I don’t know, but there seems to be some kind of accusation in it. They finish their drinks in silence and go slowly back to the station. By now it’s almost midday and the train is due to leave.
An hour or two into the journey they hear for the first time that Tanzania is about to hold its first multi-party elections in two days’ time. The newspapers are full of stories of possible violence and upheaval, the rumours on the train are edged with nervousness. But none of this touches them, there is a new festive feeling amongst them all, as if they’re going to a party.
But he lies awake that night for a long time after the others have drifted off, listening to the slow sound of breathing all around, the throbbing of the tracks. He worries about what he is going to do with himself when they leave in a few days, he will be alone in Tanzania in a politically unstable time, without a visa, with the prospect of retracing his route, step by step. Returning along the same path in any journey is depressing, but he especially fears how he might feel on this occasion.
The part of him that watches himself is still here too, not ecstatic or afraid. This part hovers in its usual detachment, looking down with wry amusement at the sleepless figure in the bunk. It sees all the complexities of the situation he’s in and murmurs sardonically into his ear, you see where you have landed yourself. You intended to visit Zimbabwe for a few days and now you find yourself weeks later on a train to Dar es Salaam. Happy and unhappy, he falls asleep in the end and dreams about, no, I don’t remember his dreams.
In the morning they are in a different landscape, out of the soft green hills and moving across a flat plain of bushveld. As they get closer to the coast they leave behind the yellow grass and thorn trees, now there is greenery outside again, the lush and verdant green of the tropics. The air is humid and hot, smelling of salt.
They arrive close to midday. There is no warning or announcement, the train simply comes to a stop at a siding and people get off. They can see the city a little distance away, clustered against the sky. They wonder where they might find a taxi, but a passing couple offers them a lift. The man is driving a new Range Rover and, while he negotiates the traffic, he tells them that he and his wife are both diplomats. He points to the little groups of people that are everywhere visible on the pavements, crouched down around radios on the ground, they