Damon Galgut - In a Strange Room

W hen he wakes up the next day the other bed is empty and the hissing of water comes from the shower next door. He gets up and goes outside, onto the roof. The air is freezing and brilliant and clear. He crosses to the edge and sits down on the parapet, with all the other roofs in the town below him, the main street running from west to east, the tiny shapes of horses in a field. He is very far away from home.

Reiner comes out onto the roof, drying his long hair with a towel. He is wearing the same black pants from yesterday, but no shirt, his body is brown and hard, perfectly proportioned. He knows that he is beautiful and somehow this makes him ugly. He stands in the sun, drying himself, and then also crosses over to sit on the parapet. The towel is slung around his neck, his skin is full of goose-bumps from the cold, beads of water shine like metal in the coarse hair on his chest.

What do you want to do today.

What about these ruins.

They go to the ruins. He has already seen them, he spent several hours there yesterday, but now he looks at the thick walls and foundations and fortifications and tall tombs through the eyes of Reiner, whose expression doesnt change as he walks around from one level to the next at the same unvarying pace, his long body perfectly upright. He sits on a rock to wait and Reiner comes to crouch down nearby. Tell me about this place, he says.

I dont know much about the facts, Im mostly interested in the mythology.

Tell me that then.

He tells what he remembers, how the lonely woman waited for her husband to return from the long war at Troy, incubating revenge out of grief over her murdered daughter, nothing fuels revenge as grief does, a lesson history teaches over and over, joining her rage with that of her lover who has his own griefs to avenge, till the day that Agamemnon comes back, bringing with him his captive concubine, the prophetess, who sees what the future holds but can do nothing to prevent it. He walks in over the bright tapestries that his wife has spread before him, dragging ten years of siege behind him in his wake, Cassandra follows, both of them are slaughtered inside. He is struck down in his bath, for some reason this single image is the one that stays most vivid and real, the huge man felled by axes, spouting blood, collapsing naked into the scarlet water, why is violence always so easy to imagine but tenderness stays locked in words for me. Already in the ending of this story the next cycle of grief and revenge is inevitable, that is to say the following story must begin. And is this true, Reiner says. What do you mean by that. I mean did it happen. No, no, this is the myth, but myth always has some fact in it. And what is the fact here. I dont know, this place exists, for a long time people thought it didnt, thats a fact to start with. Im not much interested in myths, Reiner says, lets climb up there.

He means the mountain behind the ruins.

Up there.

Yes.

Why.

Because, he says. He is smiling again, there is a peculiar glint in his eye, some kind of challenge has been issued that it would be failure to refuse.

They start to climb. On the lower slope there is a ploughed field they walk carefully around, then the mountain goes up steeply, they pick their way through undergrowth and pull themselves through branches. The higher they go the more jumbled and dangerous the rocks become. After an hour or so they have come out on a lower shoulder of the mountain with its tall peak looming overhead, but he doesnt want to go further than this. Here, he says. Here, Reiner says, looking up, have you had enough. Yes. There is a moment before the answer comes, okay, and when they settle themselves on a rock the German has a strange sardonic look on his face.

Now the ruins are far below and the two or three other people in them are as tiny as toys. The sun is already high and despite the time of year the day is warm. Reiner takes his shirt off and bares again that flat belly with its gun-powder trail of dark hair leading down, down. What are you doing in Greece, he says.

Me. Just travelling around. Just looking.

Looking at what.

I dont know.

How long have you been travelling for.

A few months.

Where have you been.

I started in England. France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, now Im back in Greece. I dont know where Im going from here.

There is a silence while the German studies him and he looks away, down into the valley, out across the plain to the distant blue mountains, there is a question behind these questions that he doesnt want to answer.

And you.

I have come here to think.

To think.

Yes, I have a problem at home. I wanted to come and walk for a few weeks and think.

Reiner says this and then closes his eyes. He will not speak either, but in him silence is power. Unlike me, unlike me. I also take my shirt off, to bask in the warm sun. Then, he doesnt know why, he doesnt stop, he takes his shoes and socks off, his pants, he is in his underpants on the rock, the air is not warm any more. Both of them understand that he is in some way offering himself, thin and pale and edible on the grey stone. He also closes his eyes.

When he opens them again Reiner is busy putting on his shirt. His expression remains unchanged, he gives nothing away. Its lunchtime, he says, I want to go down.

T he next memory that comes is of evening and somehow its 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 dont want to get married, but she wont see me any more if I dont marry her.

This is your problem.

Yes.

And have you decided.

Not yet. But I dont 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. Im also here because of someone else, he says. But Im 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 isnt 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, its cold in here, he goes back to his own bed.