In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut Page A

doesn’t show it, in fact it’s Christian who suggests, sometime in that day or in the one following, that he come along with them to Tanzania. If you feel like it, why not, it will be fun. All of them seem pleased at the thought, there is no resentment or reluctance. Well, he says, I might, let me think about that.
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    He does have to think about it, the answer isn’t simple. Apart from the complications of the situation, which will only thicken and grow, there are practical questions to be considered, he meant only to visit Zimbabwe, now he’s in Malawi, does he want to go on to Tanzania. While he tries to make up his mind, he continues to pass the days with the three of them at the lake edge. It is a restful time, the substance of it made of warmth and moving liquid and grains of sand, everything standing still and at the same time pouring and flowing. At the centre of it, the only solid object, is Jerome, lying on his side in his shorts, skin beaded with water, or throwing his hair back out of his eyes, or diving into the waves. He has become relaxed with me now, the questions he sometimes flings out at me through Christian have become more personal in nature. What do you do. Where do you live. But even here he is outside the group, looking in. In the way the three of them talk and joke and gesture there is also the weight of a private history that will always be impervious to him. Things have happened between them that he can never be party to, so that their lives have become subtly joined. Even if he could speak French he could never close up the gap. This sets him apart, making his loneliness resound in him with a high thin note, like the lingering sound of a bell.
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    In the evenings they eat their meals together in the restaurant at the top of the hill, after which they say goodnight and go their separate ways. Then he sits alone on the top step outside the hut and watches the lights of canoes in a long row far out. Lightning flares above the lake, like the signature of God.
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    On the evening of the second day, or is it the third, when they say goodnight on the beach Christian mentions in an off-hand way that they will be leaving in the morning. They are taking a bus up to Karonga in the north, and going to Tanzania the next day. Almost as an afterthought he adds, have you decided, are you interested in coming.
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    He finds himself taking the same tone, his voice surprises him by its flatness. Hmm, he says, yes, I think I will come with you. I’ll go as far as the border and see if they’ll let me in.

 
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    I n the crowd waiting for the bus the next morning is another white traveller, a thin man with black hair and an unconvincing moustache, wearing jeans and a loud purple shirt. After a while he comes sauntering over.
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    Where are you going.
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    To Tanzania.
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    Ah. Me too. He smiles toothily under his moustache. Me, I am from Santiago. In Chile.
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    They shake hands. The newcomer’s name is Roderigo, he’s been working in Mozambique but now he’s on his way up to Kenya, somebody has told him that there are cheap flights from Nairobi to India, where for some reason he wants to go before he returns home. He volunteers all this information in the forthright way some people have on the road, he has the melancholy of certain travellers who want to cling, and though nobody feels especially drawn to him they allow him to drift into the group.
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    By the time they get to Karonga, far to the north, they are all quiet and withdrawn, the air is smoky with twilight. The bus-station is at the edge of town and they have to walk in with their packs along the drab main road. They take a while to find a place to stay. Karonga is nothing like the villages down south, it’s big and unappealing with that quality of border towns, of transitoriness and traffic and a slightly scuffed danger, even though the border is still sixty kilometres away. In the end they