In a Strange Room (18 page)

 

 

E
ven then his journey isn't over, though in another sense it ended long ago. He considers returning to South Africa, but in truth he doesn't want to, and what would be the point. So he continues travelling, or running away, up into the high mountains, to Ladakh. He only does return home, in fact, a month or two later, when there is a genuine threat of nuclear war between Pakistan and India, and his fumbling, half-hearted exit feels like a fitting conclusion to the story.

 

So he is not in Cape Town to see her body laid out for viewing in an open casket, or the huge service that overflows from St. George's cathedral, all the spectacle and public grief that she so ardently wanted, and that she seemed to think she'd be around to witness. He hears about these things, of course, and they evoke a sad, angry dread in him, like the news of an earthquake on the other side of the world. But the closest he comes to her again is a silent confrontation with a bag of ash and bones, all that's left of her after the cremation. This is at her girlfriend's house, the first time he goes to visit. He stares at the bag and pokes it with his finger. Shakes his head in amazement. It seems bizarre, to the point of bitter laughter, that a human being can be reduced to this.

 

 

 

 

 

A
couple of years later, when he's travelling in Morocco, he spends a night in Agadir and takes a taxi the next morning to a dusty hillside outside town. He has intended to buy flowers but hasn't managed to find any, so he arrives empty-handed. The day is burning hot, he hasn't slept properly the night before, he has a bad headache. You want me to wait, the taxi driver asks him. No, come back in half an hour. Is it enough time, half an hour. Yes, it should be enough.

 

He imagines he will easily find the spot and pay his respects and leave, but it doesn't happen as he imagines. The taxi driver has dropped him in the wrong place, so he has to walk part-way down the hill. When he finds the European cemetery the gate is locked and he has to shout for somebody to let him in, and once inside he's lost. The graves spread chaotically in all directions, with no clear logic, no plan. He stumbles up and down rows of headstones, names swimming past, and more than forty-five minutes have gone by when he arrives by chance at the one he's looking for. It's all exactly as Caroline told him, the cracked slab with its inscription, its final enclosing dates. Next to it, on the left, is a nameless brown hump of earth, the grave of a woman, a friend who was killed in the same accident. Her family didn't have the means to bring her body home or to memorialize her properly.

 

Maybe it's only the heat, or his headache, or the tiredness, but he finds himself suddenly, unexpectedly, sobbing. He tries to stop the tears, but they keep on coming. A huge emotion is welling up in him, unattached to the scene, he doesn't know either of these people, after all, and they died a long time ago. But it seems unbearably sad that a life should come to rest here, on a sun-blasted hill above a foreign city, with the sea in the distance.

 

Caroline's story from the beach is with him again, memory and words inseparable from each other. But it takes him a while to realize who he's really weeping for. Lives leak into each other, the past lays claim to the present. And he feels it now, maybe for the first time, everything that went wrong, all the mess and anguish and disaster. Forgive me, my friend, I tried to hold on, but you fell, you fell.

 

The moment seems to drag out for hours, but it's probably only a minute or two before he pulls himself together. He feels awful, but also relieved somehow, emptied out. By now the taxi driver is hooting impatiently outside. The day is wearing on and he has a bus to catch, a journey to complete. It's time to go. He dries his eyes and picks up a tiny stone from the ground, one like millions of others all around, and slips it into his pocket as he walks towards the gate.

 
 

 

 

 

Thanks to Stephen Watson, Tony Peake, Nigel Maister, Ben Williams, and Marion Hänsel. My especial gratitude to Philip Gourevitch and his fine team at the
Paris Review
, where these pieces first appeared.

The quote on page 62 comes from William Faulkner.

 

 

 

Damon Galgut was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1963. A previous novel,
The Good Doctor
, was a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. He lives in Cape Town.