In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,58
racket as she tries to open the door, and he loses his cool with her. For God’s sake, why don’t you take your sleeping pills at night. Because I don’t need them. But obviously you do.
The train is a slow one, stopping at every station, and the long, hot hours pass mostly in silence, not the silence of companionship any more but of exhaustion, of some deep reserve that’s been used up. There are two weeks left of this trip and he’s resolved that they’ll spend all of it in one spot, close to the beach, where she seems to feel more calm than elsewhere. After that he’ll be free again, pursuing his own travels for another four months.
They arrive in the village after dark. The mood in the downstairs restaurant at the hotel is festive and the merriment infects them. They have dinner with some of the other guests and it’s as if they never left. That night they sleep in the same room upstairs, in the same bed, and the big looping journey they’ve made is just one more completed circle, bringing them back to exactly the same point.
The next morning she wakes him before dawn again, banging around in the dark. It’s a repeat of the previous day, though only he remembers it. What do you want me to do, she cries, if I’m awake I’m awake. I want you to take your sleeping pills, he says, that’s why you’ve got them, isn’t it. He’s too cross to sleep again, so he gets up, scratchy with tiredness, and goes for a long walk on the beach. When he gets back she’s sitting downstairs having breakfast, but he doesn’t join her, why exactly I can’t say. Would it make any difference to what follows, perhaps it would, perhaps everything comes down to one silence too many. He sits at a table by himself, like a stranger, and when he’s done he comes over. I’m going to Margao, I tell her. To do some shopping.
She nods, I still recall the blue stare of her eyes.
He catches a bus into Margao and spends an hour at the shops. When he gets back to the room at mid-morning the door is locked from the inside. She opens when he knocks and then retreats to the bed. He notices that she’s wearing her nightdress over her bikini and next to her is a half-finished bottle of beer, as well as a small teddy bear she’s carried everywhere with her for comfort.
Were you sleeping.
I had a swim earlier, I feel tired.
There’s a curious feeling in the room, the spiky angles of confrontation that filled their earlier exchange have gone, she seems soft and somehow younger, as if she’s retreated into childhood. The curtains have been drawn and there’s a stillness over everything, completely at odds with the time of day. In retrospect these signs are obvious, so obvious that they constitute a signal, and it’s an indication of how worn out he is, how lost in the endless repetitions of the scenario, that he doesn’t understand. Afterwards he will blame himself, he blames himself even now, for his failure to see what is plainly in front of him.
I got an e-mail from home, she says drowsily.
About what.
She thinks the medicine isn’t working. She thinks I should go back early.
And you don’t want to.
No, I know what that means. They’ll put me in the clinic again.
We can talk about it, Anna, I say, but not when you’re half asleep. Come and speak to me outside.
I get a book and go and sit on the balcony in the sun. My anger towards her has dissipated, I feel the weary resumption of duty. But she doesn’t come out to join me. I hear furtive activity inside, the noise of crinkling papers, maybe only a plastic bag being disturbed by the leisurely rotation of the fan, and the sound of her lighting a cigarette. Later her breathing slows and deepens. I read for a while, then get up and stretch, thinking about heading to the beach, but when I step into the room I see a pile of dirty clothes in need of washing and take it to the bathroom. Once the clothes are rinsed and wrung out and spread on the railing to dry, perhaps an hour has gone by.
It’s a chance conjunction of images that finally draws the picture together. As I bend down to put away the washing powder, I happen to glance sideways