Read In a Strange Room for Free Online Page B

shyly, they also try out their litany of English phrases, hello hello what is your name, then one blurts out I love you and both of them collapse in giggles.
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    Reiner finds the schoolgirls amusing, I could have a fat wife in Lesotho, I would like that ho ho ho, but to most of these friendly overtures he responds with irritation. He doesn’t want to be bothered with smiling and talking, he sees no need for interaction of this kind. He puts in his earplugs when he sets out in the morning, he keeps his eyes fixed ahead of him on the road. He is happy to be offered a room, but he doesn’t want to pay for it, and he doesn’t want to ask permission to camp. Why should we. It’s the custom. Their custom, not mine. This is their country we’re in. Their country, I don’t believe in countries, that’s just lines on a map. Sometimes I don’t know what you do believe in, Reiner. To this the sulky face only smiles.
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    Most of the time they follow the road, but sometimes they go across country. This happens when Reiner sees a place on his map where they can cut across, look here, from this point to there. But there are mountains in between. Yes, I see them. Often it seems he chooses these routes precisely because of the obstacles, mountains, rivers, escarpments, they present an interesting challenge, we must overcome nature with the same dispassion it shows us, so they walk out into the wilderness.
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    I don’t like leaving the road, my sense of vulnerability deepens, a sort of primal nervousness descends. But this is also one of the most compelling elements in travel, the feeling of dread underneath everything, it makes sensations heightened and acute, the world is charged with a power it doesn’t have in ordinary life.

 
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    A fter about a week they complete the first loop of their journey. In the little town of Roma they camp in the grounds of a deserted seminary, the long sandstone building with its pillars and arches, a dark row of poplar trees behind it, like something out of Italy.
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    In Roma too there is the very old man in the pavement restaurant at lunchtime, where are you from, smiling toothlessly all the time, ah South Africa you people think we are monkeys you keep Nelson Mandela in prison. When he tells him that Nelson Mandela is out of jail, three years ago already, the old man laughs uproariously, throwing his head back, you think we are monkeys, Nelson Mandela is locked up. But he isn’t, he isn’t, I promise you, somehow he almost wants to cry. The old man laughs at him, hating him, leave it, Reiner says, looking panicked, he doesn’t know, nobody’s told him, leave it.
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    The next day they walk out of Roma and follow roads that take them into high mountains. Till then they have been in the foothills of the Drakensberg, now the peaks climb around them in weird fantastic lines against the sky. The road rises and falls like a boat on rough seas, it pinches into hairpin bends and goes into elaborate loops to cover short distances. In the afternoon there is a bad storm. The sky above the long valley closes over, the lightning is spectacular. They shelter outside a house and afterwards push on, looking for a flat place to pitch the tent, but there is none, the road is halfway up the side of the valley with steep walls above and below. As darkness falls they come to a mission station, it turns out that the priests are German, Reiner has a long and amiable conversation, smiling and nodding, he is like another person completely. The priests say they have no space but send them to the chief of the local village, they sleep that night on the mud floor of a hut, mysterious rustlings from the thatch overhead.
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    Reiner says that the priests have told him the road they are on comes to an end not far ahead. From there they will have to walk across rough country to the next road. Reiner has a plan, look, he says, we can do it, he wants to try a long