In a Strange Room (2 page)

 

 

 

 

T
he next memory that comes is of evening and somehow it's an inversion of that morning, he is sitting on the parapet again while the last light is fading from the sky, Reiner is in the shower again, the noise of the water carries. Then it stops. A little later he comes out, shirtless again, the towel around his neck, and crosses to sit beside him on the low wall. There is silence for a while and then, as if answering a question that has just been put to him, Reiner says softly that he has come here to think about a woman.

 

The sun has gone now, the first stars are showing through.

 

A woman.

 

Yes. There is this woman in Berlin. She wants to marry me. I don't want to get married, but she won't see me any more if I don't marry her.

 

This is your problem.

 

Yes.

 

And have you decided.

 

Not yet. But I don't think I will get married.

 

The town is built on a slope that continues gently downward for a kilometre or two and then flattens into the plain that runs on to the sea. Where the plain begins is the railway line that brought him here and that will take him away tomorrow and on which, at this moment, a train is distantly passing, its carriages lit from inside by a yellow glow. He watches the train pass. I'm also here because of someone else, he says. But I'm not trying to decide, just to forget.

 

I thought so.

 

This person is not a woman.

 

Reiner makes a gesture on the air, as if he is throwing something away. A man or a woman, he says, it makes no difference to me.

 

This seems to mean one thing, but may mean another. Later that night in the little room, when they are preparing for bed, he strips down to his underpants, as he did earlier in the day on the rock, then rolls quickly into his sleeping bag. It is very cold tonight. Reiner takes a long time to get ready, folding up his shirt and socks and putting them into his bag. Then he takes off his pants. He does this with a certain sense of ceremony, standing in the centre of the room, folding the pants. Then in his underwear, which isn't black, he crosses to the other bed, the one in which I am lying, and sits down on the edge. Would you like some, he says, holding out an apple, I found this in my bag. The two of them pass it between them, solemnly biting and chewing, the one lying propped up on an elbow, the other sitting with his knees drawn up, all it will take is a tiny movement from one of them, a hand extended, or the edge of the sleeping bag lifted, would you like to get in, but neither makes the move, one is too scared and the other too proud, then the apple is finished, the moment is past, Reiner gets up, rubbing his shoulders, it's cold in here, he goes back to his own bed.

 

The light is still on. After a moment he gets up to put it off. Then he crosses the dark room to the other bed and sits down next to Reiner. He doesn't have an apple to offer and both of them wait in silence, breathing, for the gesture that neither of them will make, then he gets up and goes back to his own bed. He finds that he is trembling.

 

In the morning they are formal and correct with each other again. They pack their bags. Would you like my address, Reiner says, maybe you will come to Germany one day. He writes it into the little book himself, the tight letters precisely inscribed, then asks, could I have your address too. I don't have an address, I don't have a place, but I'll give you the name of a friend, this he writes down for the other man, then the exchange is complete. They walk together along the main street out of town, down the long slope to the railway station. Their trains are leaving minutes apart, going in different directions. The railway station is a single room and a concrete platform at the edge of the endless green plain, they are the only passengers waiting, a single official behind a dirty window sells them tickets and then comes out himself when the first train appears, to blow his whistle. The South African gets on and goes to the window. Goodbye, he says, I'm glad I met you.

 

Me too.

 

Listen.

 

Yes.

 

Why do you always wear black.

 

The German smiles. Because I like it, he says.

 

The train starts to move.

 

I will see you again, Reiner says and raises a hand, and then he is disappearing slowly into distance, the solid landscape turning liquid as it pours.

 

 

 

 

H
e goes to Sparta, he goes to Pylos. A few days after he leaves Mycenae he is passing through a public square in a town when he sees images of bombs and burning on a television in a café. He goes closer. What is this, he asks some of the people sitting watching. One of them who can speak English tells him that it's war in the Gulf. Everybody has been waiting and waiting for it, now it's happening, it's happening in two places, at another point on the planet and at the same time on the television set.

 

He watches, but what he sees isn't real to him. Too much travelling and placelessness have put him outside everything, so that history happens elsewhere, it has nothing to do with him. He is only passing through. Maybe horror is felt more easily from home. This is both a redemption and an affliction, he doesn't carry any abstract moral burdens, but their absence is represented for him by the succession of flyblown and featureless rooms he sleeps in, night after night, always changing but somehow always the same room.

 

The truth is that he is not a traveller by nature, it is a state that has been forced on him by circumstance. He spends most of his time on the move in acute anxiety, which makes everything heightened and vivid. Life becomes a series of tiny threatening details, he feels no connection with anything around him, he's constantly afraid of dying. As a result he is hardly ever happy in the place where he is, something in him is already moving forward to the next place, and yet he is also never going towards something, but always away, away. This is a defect in his nature that travel has turned into a condition.

 

Twenty years before this, for different reasons, something similar had come over his grandfather. Rooted and sedentary for most of his long life, when his wife died something inside the old man broke irrevocably and he took to the road. He travelled all around the world, to the most distant and unlikely places, fuelled not by wonder or curiosity but grief. Postcards and letters with peculiar stamps and markings arrived in the post-box at home. Sometimes he would phone and his voice would come up, it sounded, from the bottom of the sea, hoarse with the longing to be back again. But he didn't come back. Only much later, when he was very old and exhausted, did he finally return for good, living out his last years in a flat in the back garden behind the house. He wandered around between the flowerbeds, wearing pyjamas at midday, his hair wild and unwashed. By then his mind was going. He couldn't remember where he'd been. All the images and impressions and countries and continents he'd visited had been erased. What you don't remember never happened. As far as he was concerned, he had never travelled anywhere beyond the edges of the lawn. Irascible and mean for much of his life, he was mostly docile now, but still capable of irrational rage. What are you talking about, he screamed at me once, I've never been to Peru, I don't know anything about it, don't talk rubbish to me about Peru.

 

He leaves Greece two weeks later. He moves around from place to place for a year and a half and then he goes back to South Africa. Nobody knows that he's arrived. He rides in from the airport on the bus, carrying his bag on his knees, looking through the tinted windows at the city he's come back to live in, and there is no way to say how he feels.

 

Everything has changed while he was away. The white government has capitulated, power has succumbed and altered shape. But at the level on which life is lived nothing looks very different. He gets out at the station and stands in the middle of the moving crowds and tries to think, I am home now, I have come home. But he feels that he is only passing through.

 

He catches a taxi to the house of a friend, who has got married in his absence. She is happy to see him, but even in her first embrace he senses how much of a stranger he's become. To her, and to himself. He's never been to this house before and he wanders through it, looking at furniture and ornaments and pictures that feel intolerably heavy to him. Then he goes out into the garden and stands in the sun.

 

His friend comes out to find him. There you are, she says, it's such a coincidence you arrived today, this was in the post-box for you this morning. She gives him a letter which might have fallen from the sky. It comes from Reiner.

 

 

T
hey start writing to each other. Every two or three weeks the letters go back and forth. The German is dry and factual, he talks about events in his life from the outside. He went back to Berlin. He didn't get married. He started studying at university, but changed his mind and dropped out. Later he went to Canada, which is where his letters are coming from now, he is on some forestry project somewhere, planting trees.

 

He tries to imagine him, the dour figure in black with his long silky hair, putting saplings into the ground and tamping down the soil. He can't remember him very well, not the way he looked, what he retains is the feeling that Reiner stirred in him, a sense of uneasiness and excitement. But he wouldn't dare to express this, he senses a reluctance in the other man to talk openly about emotions, to do so is somehow a weakness. But however forthright Reiner seems to be about facts, there are still many details missing in his account of himself, with whom did he live in Berlin, who pays for him to go travelling everywhere, what brought him to Canada to plant trees. Somehow, even when these questions are put to him directly, Reiner manages not to answer.

 

For his part, he has never withheld emotions, if anything he vents them too freely, at least in letters. Because words are unattached to the world. So it is easy to write to Reiner about how hard he finds it to be back. He can't seem to settle anywhere. He stays with his friend and her husband for a while, but he is an intrusion, an imposition, he knows he has to move on. He takes a room in a house with a student, but he is miserable there, the place is dirty and full of fleas, he doesn't fit in, after a month or two he moves again. He looks after people's houses while they are away, he beds down in spare rooms. Then he moves into a flat owned by an ex- landlady of his, who occupies the three rooms adjacent and below. But this is a mistake. The landlady comes into his flat at all hours, her yapping poodle follows at her heels, she is going through a bad time, she needs to talk, he tries to listen but he is full of unhappiness of his own. He wants to be alone but she won't leave him in peace, the dog sheds hair and hysteria all over his floor. At some point he writes to Reiner, I wish you would come here and take me on a long walk somewhere. A letter comes back, thank you for your invitation, I will be there in December.

 

 

 

 

D
on't meet me at the airport, Reiner tells him, I will find you, there is no need. But he phones the airlines to find out the flight, he borrows a car from friends and is in the arrivals hall an hour before the time. He feels a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. It is two years since they saw each other, he doesn't know how things will be.

When Reiner comes through the door he isn't expecting anybody and so he isn't looking around. I stand a little way back to observe him. His appearance is the same. The glossy brown hair hangs down around his shoulders, he is dressed in black from head to foot, he carries the same black rucksack on his back. With a severe expression he goes over immediately to a row of plastic chairs to rearrange his bag.

 

I watch for a minute or two, then try to look casual as I stroll over and stand beside him.

 

Hello.

 

Reiner looks up. The dark face clears for a moment, then closes over again. Why are you here. I said you should not.

 

I know. But I wanted to come.

 

Well.

 

Hello.

 

They are unsure of how to greet each other. He opens his arms and the other man accepts the embrace. But not entirely.

 

Do you not trust me to find my way.

 

I just wanted to welcome you, that's all. Can I help you with your stuff.

 

I have just the one bag. I prefer to carry it myself.

 

He drives Reiner to his place. As they go up the stairs, the landlady, who is no longer on speaking terms with him, watches through her half-opened door. His flat is almost bare and empty, his few possessions packed into boxes, he will be leaving here at the end of the month. They go out to sit on the balcony, looking down on green trees, the Cape Flats spreading away to the mountains. For the first time he falls silent.

 

So, Reiner says.

 

Yes.

 

I am here.

 

It's strange.

 

They look at each other, both smiling. Till now the fact of Reiner's arrival was unreal, he didn't quite believe it would happen, but now they are both in the same place again. They sit out on the balcony, talking. At first they are nervous and awkward with each other, the words don't come easily and are charged with tension when they do. But after only a short while conversation starts to flow, they relax a little, they discover to their relief that they get on well, that they share a certain humour related to an alienation from things. This helps them to like each other again, even if the liking is based on nothing solid as yet, only a vague sense of affinity. It is almost enough.

 

There is only one bed in his flat, which they have to share. But that night, when the time comes to sleep, Reiner says he doesn't need a mattress.

 

What do you mean.

 

He watches while Reiner goes out onto the balcony and starts unpacking his bag. People need too many things, he explains, taking out a sleeping bag and a thin mat. People want to make themselves comfortable. It is not necessary. He unrolls the mat on the balcony and spreads his sleeping bag on top of it. This is all that is necessary. I prefer it. He takes off his shoes and gets into the sleeping bag and zips it up. He lies there, looking at his companion through the dark.

 

It's impossible to see any expression on his face. Perfect, he says.