In a Strange Room: Three Journeys Page 0,8

that can be subjugated to the will. When he talks it’s in terms of distances and altitudes, spatial dimensions that can be collapsed into formulas, there is no mention of people or history, nothing matters except himself and the empty place he’s projecting himself into. What about the politics, I say, we haven’t looked at the human situation, we don’t know what we’re getting into. Reiner stares at him with bemusement, then waves a contemptuous hand. Even here in South Africa, where he has never been, Reiner has no interest in what is happening around him, when he goes on his long walks through the streets he has a pair of earplugs that he pushes into his ears, he doesn’t want external noises to intrude, his dark intense stare goes out ahead of him but is in reality turned inward.

But at this point there are only dim intimations of unease. He is excited about the trip. The little bit of friction between Reiner and himself will go, he is sure, when they are out of the city and alone together on the road. Neither of them was made for sedentary living.

He borrows a tent from a friend. Reiner insists that they put it up in the garden outside the flat. It takes a long time, the poles and pegs are like a strange new alphabet they have to learn. Everything must be borrowed or bought, gas-stove and cylinders water-filter torch knives and forks plastic plates a basic medicine-kit, he has never travelled in this way before, the strangeness of everything scares him, but it thrills him too, the thought of casting away his normal life is like freedom, the way it was when they met each other in Greece. And maybe that is the true reason for this journey, by shedding all the ballast of familiar life they are each trying to recapture a sensation of weightlessness they remember but perhaps never lived, in memory more than anywhere else travelling is like free-fall, or flight.

At some time in those last two weeks the question of money comes up. There are practical questions to be considered, such as how they will pay for themselves along the way. Reiner says that he has Canadian dollars that he wants to use up and so it’s best if he is in charge of money. But what about me, I say.

You can pay me back later.

So I should write down what I spend.

Reiner nods and shrugs, money is trivial, it is not important.

Now everything is prepared. He finds himself saying goodbye to people with an edge of uneasiness, as if he might not be coming back. In every departure, deep down and tiny, like a black seed, there is the fear of death.

They take a train into the city. At the station they get onto a bus and ride through the night. It’s difficult to sleep and they keep jolting awake to see the metallic grey landscape sliding past outside. They arrive in Bloemfontein at first light on a Sunday and walk through the deserted streets till they find a taxi-rank from where they can get a minibus taxi to the Lesotho border. They have to wait for hours until the taxi is full. Reiner sits on the back seat, his rucksack on his knees and his head on his rucksack, earplugs wedged into his ears.

I wander around and come back, then wander again. A large part of travelling consists purely in waiting, with all the attendant ennui and depression. Memories come back of other places he has waited in, departure halls of airports, bus-stations, lonely kerbsides in the heat, and in all of them there is an identical strain of melancholy summed up in a few transitory details. A paper bag blowing in the wind. The mark of a dirty shoe on a tile. The irregular sputter of a fluorescent bulb. From this particular place he will retain the vision of a cracked brick wall growing hotter and hotter in the sun.

When they leave it is already afternoon. The drive isn’t far, a little over an hour, and they pass through a flat country of farmland, dirt roads going off on either side. They are the focus of unspoken curiosity in the crowded vehicle. Reiner is palpably unhappy at this enforced proximity to people, he has the air of someone holding his breath.

At the other end they get out into queues waiting to go through customs, the uniforms and dark glasses and barricades and