Free In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut Page B

thinks that he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much.
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    In this state travel isn’t celebration but a kind of mourning, a way of dissipating yourself. He moves around from one place to another, not driven by curiosity but by the bored anguish of staying still. He spends a few days in Harare, then goes down to Bulawayo. He does the obligatory things required of visitors, he goes to the Matopos and sees the grave of Cecil John Rhodes, but he can’t produce the necessary awe or ideological disdain, he would rather be somewhere else. If I was with somebody, he thinks, with somebody I loved, then I could love the place and even the grave too, I would be happy to be here.
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    He takes the overnight train to Victoria Falls. He lies in his bunk, hearing the breathing of strangers stacked above and below him, and through the window sees villages and sidings flow in out of the dark, the outlines of people and cattle and leaves stamped out in silhouette against the lonely light, then flowing backward again, out of sight into the past. Why is he happiest in moments like these, the watcher hiding in the dark. He doesn’t want the sun to rise or this particular journey to end.
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    In the morning they come to the end of the line. He gets out with his single bag and walks to the campsite. Even early in the day the air is heavy and humid, green leaves burn with a brilliant glow. There are other travellers all around, most are younger than himself. He pitches his tent in the middle of the camp and goes down to look at the falls.
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    It is incredible to see the volume and power of so much water endlessly dropping into the abyss, but part of him is elsewhere, somewhere higher up and to the right, looking down at an angle not only on the falls but on himself there, among the crowds. This part of him, the part that watches, has been here for a while now, and it never quite goes away, over the next few days it looks at him keeping busy, strolling through the streets from one curio-shop to another, going for long walks in the surrounding bush, it observes with amazement when he goes white-water rafting on the river, it sees him lying in the open next to his tent to keep cool at night, staring up into the shattered windscreen of the sky. And though he seems content, though he talks to people and smiles, the part that watches isn’t fooled, it knows he wants to move on.
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    On the third or fourth day he goes for a swim at one of the hotel pools. Afterwards he sits at a table near the bar to have a drink and his attention is slowly drawn to a group of young people nearby. They all have their rucksacks with them, they are about to depart. They’re a strange mixture, a bit uneasy with each other, a plump Englishman with his girlfriend, a blond Danish man, two younger dark girls who sit close together, not speaking. He recognizes a burly Irish woman who went rafting with him two days ago, and goes over to speak to her. Where are you all off to.
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    Malawi. We’re going through Zambia. Maybe she sees something in my face, because after a moment she asks, do you want to come along.
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    He sits thinking for a few moments, then says, I’ll be right back.
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    He runs madly from the hotel to the campsite and takes down his tent. When he gets back he sits among his new companions, panting, feeling edgy with doubt. Soon afterwards the man they’re waiting for, an Australian called Richard, arrives, and they all stir themselves to leave. He has gathered already that these people don’t know each other well, they have banded together by chance to make this journey safely. Hence the unease. He doesn’t mind, in fact the general mood suits him, he doesn’t feel a pressure to fit in. With the others he loads his bag onto the back of an open van and climbs