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I have forgotten the Italian's name and do not wish to be rude by asking for it again, especially since he pronounces my own with a full-throated ring. We two sit on the hostel's couches, old, plush, inviting sleep, and are the only ones still awake. It is late, there is no watch between us, no clock, but the Italian tells me that the race from Australia will start soon.

On the Italian's left is a pretty German girl. Though most of the couch is unoccupied, she sleeps sitting up. Hours ago, she was laughing and loud, drunk on the local beer, but when sleep came she could not make it to her bunk.

As the Italian chatters on about his team's prospects in the race, the German girl releases a sigh. The Italian stops. There is another sigh, then a whimper, now a slow moan: it is as though her dream has turned erotic. The Italian and I exchange a look, a letching smile - perhaps she will wake wanting more.

It is the first time I have seen the Italian lighthearted, but once the German girl shifts her body and falls silent, it does not last. Again his eyebrows lower, his mouth turns down, and the Italian, thick yet underweight, bristles at me as if I owe him and it is time to settle the debt. He looks like a boxer, I think, like a boxer who is no longer in fighting shape. I cannot decide his age, he is at least in his late thirties, and he does not look especially Italian, at least not anymore. The sun has shaded him an everyman equatorine, his skin the colour of saharan sand. He could tell me that he is from Brazil or Morocco or Indonesia and I would believe him. He is unwashed and wearing a plaid shirt torn at the elbows.

Reaching for a packet of cigarettes that is not his own, the Italian tells me that he will be going home soon. "It is two and a half years."

"Two and a half years," I repeat. We are drinking the lager I purchased before the hostel's bar closed. The Italian shakes out a cigarette, lights it with a match, and now extends the packet to me.

"Two and a half years, this is a long time to be out of home, I think. A long time to be in these places. When my wire comes," he says, "I will go home and pick fruit. I am decided. Yes, in the south, do you know summer in the Italian south? You have fruit picked, Rrroberto? Oh, it is beautiful. So very beautiful." He breathes smoke luxuriously: the cigarette suits him. "When my wire comes, I will spend the summer outside, with the sun, picking this fruit. Oranges and lemons. These fruits."

The German girl moans again and the Italian lets his hand approach her cheek, as if he will caress her.

He says, "There is danger in this dream, I think."

Above the Italian is a wooden mask and a photographic collage of past lodgers. Among the photos a white man in a rasta cap dances wildly, a corn-cob pipe smoking in his hand. From a kneel a blonde woman tosses bones into a circled crowd, perhaps like a sangoma she can read their fortune.

The Italian says, "When will this race start?"

Soon a small black man enters the room. He is young and lanky, he has the physique of a distance runner. At his side is a broom and in the manner of a waiter a white rag is draped over his forearm. This is the night watchman, the janitor, the jack of the hostel, and he is not at all pleased to see us in the common room, at this hour.

"Please," he says. He is Ephraim: his name I remember. "Clean. I must clean."

The Italian claps: "Then clean, man! Clean! We are not stopping you. Here, there is something spilled by my feet. And these ashes."

The hostel is a popular one, inexpensive, the type of old house that cannot be convincingly cleaned. Dirt has been worn into the floors, the walls are brittle and nicotine-stained. What is broken has not been fixed.

Its location is its charm. A ten-minute walk in one direction takes you to the buildings and clubs of a capital city; ten minutes in the other takes you to the township that staffs them. Late at night you can hear men passing by with dark shouts and a smashed bottle, cars thumping tribal music. There are burglar bars on the windows and a front door of vault-iron, a surrounding fence of razor-wire. It is an impressive show of metal.

"Please," Ephraim says. "Please, you will empty. I clean this room."

"But, sir." There is mockery in the Italian's voice. "We are not ready to leave. We will watch the motor race, it is starting soon. We will not be in your way."

Ephraim leans on his broom. "Please," he says. "You will empty."

"You will not worry, my friend. We will empty this room." The Italian pulls on his cigarette. "When the race is done."

Ephraim turns from us and pushes his broom in a sulk, head down, his breathing loud and discontent. He stacks the chairs upon the dining table, sweeps up the scraps beneath, and now leaves the room at a shuffle.

"Roberto, I am offending him." The Italian, with one last gush of smoke, crushes out his cigarette. "I have been here two weeks now, I am on good terms with this man. I am a night person like you see. But now he hates me, you can be sure. We are enemies now. Even if I buy him a beer to excuse me, he will accept it, he will drink it, he will be smiling, but inside he will feel his hate. He will taste his hate, not this beer that I will never buy him. And the next chance he has, you can be sure of this, the next chance he has he will slit my throat. Slit my throat!"

"But you've done nothing wrong."

"We are in Africa, Roberto. You are not being here long? You do not know how this countries works? An African man, are you not knowing this? An African man, he will slit your throat for less than this. It is how they think. How they work."

The Italian considers this a moment. Then in a low voice he adds, "An African man will rape his own mother, do you know. Rape his own mother. So of course he will slit your throat."

The German girl moans.

"I will not sleep tonight," the Italian tells the German girl. "No, my beauty, there is no sleep tonight for me."

The next night, just past midnight, seven of us go to a downtown club. The Italian, a Dane, a Swede, three girls from New Zealand, and myself. We are informed in advance of the club's strict dresscode but nevertheless the Italian must return to the hostel to change out of his sandals and shorts. "But it is thirty degrees outside!" he protests. "In trousers I will bake!"

The club's façade is crumbling and around its door are children playing a game with rocks. We pass through a metal detector and then beyond a flex of guards and walk down a dank tunnel, soon emerging into a cavernous space throbbing with familiar music. We mill through the crowd like robots, the strobelights freezing our movement into a series of photographic stills.

It is a black club, a tony spot, on the far wall is an immense mural of fluorescent paints, a cityscape of skyscrapers twinkling. The club is strangely chilly, almost wintercool, there is no trace of the sticky night in here. Men are dressed in expensive suits and shoes, in leather pants and down jackets. A dark woman wears a mottled fur coat and clutches a cellphone she cannot possibly hear ring.

The women among us dance, like celebrities on the floor, mobbed, while the Swede and I buy expensive Belgian beer and from a balcony stand and watch. Our view of the dancefloor is perfect, we do not miss a thing, we see its throb, the limbs flitting - yet somehow something feels wrong, mimetic, as if they have been told that this is how success shakes. A black woman in knee-high boots passes by, leaving us in her knocked-off scent.

After some time, the Italian finally returns to the club. Now in black jeans and ratty boots, he produces a fold of colourful dollars and buys me a drink. He points out the Dane, in an almost-darkness necking with a black girl quite openly, his hand on her breast and travelling down.

The Italian buys another round and grumbles about the club's chilly temperature. He should have changed into an alpsuit, he says. And mittens. Our conversation turns to the political, a boozy philosophic: how completely, we say, how deftly this club has banished humidity and poverty to the streets!

"It is an illusion," the Italian says. "Much creative. These blacks, you will see them, they are dreaming. Dreaming they are in Milan. In Manhattan. It is wintertime in Canada." He nudges me. "They are dreaming they are white."

The Italian seems angry, even upset, he looks at the square of dancefloor below us with something more than his usual scowl.

"Look at that black down there. In the leopard pants. How he moves his hips at that girl, this Kiwi. All this thrusting. This whispering. This squeezing. So easy to read his thoughts, yes? So easy." He takes a swill of his beer. "But let me say something Roberto. Let me say something because I am angry. Yes, to see this I am angry. Because do you know, this man, this man in the leopard pants, he is not dancing with a white woman right now. No he is not. He is not even dancing with a woman. He is dancing - believe me! - he is dancing with a phial. A dancing phial! Oh yes, to lie on a white woman, this is how you cure diseases! They believe this, you will trust me. White women, they are phials for the black man's AIDS, his syphilitis. He puts in his needle, but the white woman, she cures him." The Italian drains his bottle and, as if it is a molotov cocktail, pretends to light it and lob it onto the dancefloor. "And look at that one, Roberto! In the leather! This one even dances like he is white!"

I drink my beer and say with earnest, "And how many times I've wished I was black."

The Italian crumbles in laughter. "Rrroberto the black man!"

"This blond hair," I say, "this pale skin - in this continent, do you know what I smell like?"

The music intensifies, reverberating in our lungs.

"Like money," I shout. "I smell like -"

"Rrroberto wants to be a black man!" The Italian claps my shoulder. "And these people in here want to be white. How perverting this is!"

I drink my beer. If only I had the Italian's skin, I think, that equatorine tone. Finally blending into a crowd, no longer a lodestone for the touts and the whores and the beggars, just another, just another: it is anonymity I crave. A colourless peace.

"Every race in the world wants to lose its colour- and here is Roberto hoping for more!"

At about four in the morning we seven leave the club, walking along streets that are dark and empty but alive with sound. A woman's pleas, the shrills of a car alarm, the echo of children laughing. We take a bridge over an abandoned parkway, a long and empty line of concrete, and just below, on the tarmac's edge, is a shack pulsing with music. In its yard people dance and sing and drink. The Swede says to me, "I think I would have a much better time at such a club."

Moments later, we return to the hostel drunk and in a cheer. I fumble with the key to the gate. Singlefile we walk up the cobblestone path and through the vault-iron door.

And the shock is immediate. For a long moment we do not know what has happened. Or even where we are. We stand in the common room motionless, silent, numb. The couches have been slashed. The television ripped out of the wall, the photographic collage of past lodgers at a tilt.

The hostel is silent.

A crowd gathers on the back patio. An Englishwoman tells us, "It was a pair of men. In masks. With pistols." People are crying, comforting each other. A woman pours cups of tea. Lists are made and losses counted. Moneybelts, backpacks, cameras, a laptop computer, they are all gone. Gone! And even more, there are whispers, a round of dark whispers. That the German girl was raped. That an American was pistolwhipped. At the bar, the hostelier is frantic on the telephone, twirling the cord around her finger and now sinking her teeth into it.

The Italian says, "But where was Ephraim?"

An hour later, we cannot sleep, the Italian and I are sitting on a countertop in the kitchen, backs leaning against the wall, talking as we smoke another joint. He has rolled it expertly, with rastafarian ease: larger than my middle finger and twice as fat. "This," the Italian says, addressing the joint, "this is the only way to kill the white in the white man. The only way! You must take notes, Rrroberto! Because I have thought about this very much times and I know you are interested. This thing, dagga, it makes you black, you can believe it. Look at this, don't you feel it? How long are we sitting here? Do you remember? It is like we are in the shadow of a tree on a hot day. Everything passes by. And we do not worry. No, we do not worry about anything. We are having fun."

The Italian throws his head back in sudden laughter, almost striking the wall. "You forget. You forget Italy. Forget the old ways. A schedule, feeling urgent, the clock. Those old slaveries. They are gone. And you - you are just a man now. No white man anymore, you are just a man. An African. You smoke this and you are a man with no - no - what is the? - for a dog-leash. A man with no leash."

He passes me the joint and when I draw a seed bursts inside. From the common room we can hear someone say, "No. I need some gauze."

"The African, he is the easiest of mens. I am thinking about this. He does what he likes, there is nothing tugging him back. He can be lazy or drinking or take things, it is no matter, he can be - there is an English word I like - randy! He can be randy all day! His girlfriend is not home? His wife is not liking him? His daughter is at school? Well, this is not a problem because there is always his mother! His own mother! I am seen these things, you can trust me, I am seen them."

In the common room someone says, "Shouldn't the police be here by now?"

"Yes, yes, his wife works, his cup is always filled, his plate is good, his friends are always close, his penis is a happy sausage" - he laughs - "what man can unagree with this? What man can say this is not paradise? We, Roberto, we are told from our birthing that we must work and work and wealthy ourselves, this is paradise, they say, bring rich, this is paradise. But this is not so. I am here two and a half years, I know this now. Our way does not lead to paradise. It only takes us from it."

The Swede comes into the kitchen, his face is rashy, he has been crying. "You two are just sitting here," he says, filling a mug with water. "All of this is happening and you two are just sitting here."

The Italian laughs and the Swede leaves the kitchen, shaking his head, the mug trembling in his hand. The Italian says, "We will smoke another," and passes me his bankie. It is my turn to roll.

"Do you know, Roberto," he says, "I am remembering now what an old man tells me once. You have not rolled before? You cannot start like that. But this old man, Roberto, this was in a country much north of here. On the equator. This old man, Roberto, he tells me about the chameleons we have deep inside us. Little chameleons and oh they want to get out. Because sometimes, I think very much about this - we both do, yes. We both do. Because sometimes, I know you will agree, sometimes it seems not fair that for all this years we have, there is only one life. Only one body. One skin. How much we pay to change that, eh Roberto? How much we pay."

I roll clumsily, spillingly, eventually producing a joint like an old woman's finger. I baptize it, spark it, and draw on it sweetly.

"And this is why we travel, yes Roberto? To give our chameleons some air."

With a snig at its construction, I pass the joint to the Italian and as he draws Ephraim comes into the kitchen, again walking at a shuffle-step. He has no broom this time, no white rag draped over his forearm. Feet scuffling he reaches the refrigerator and opens it, browsing through its shelves.

"It's Ephraim," the Italian says, giddily.

From the refrigerator, Ephraim removes a carton of whole milk and now turns to the cupboard on his right. A hand fetches my box of muesli and now one of my bananas. He pours himself a bowl, drenches it in milk, and now dices the banana, letting the bits splash inside. I do nothing.

"Ephraim, you are a lazy bastard." The Italian does not move, he is as relaxed as before. There is no malice in his voice, if anything he sounds playful. "Where were you this night, Ephraim? Where were you? This is a matter for the police, I think. You were sleeping while they were robbering, weren't you. You should be sacked."

Ephraim crunches my muesli with an open mouth.

"You were involved, yes Ephraim?"

"I very hungry."

"But of course. You are busy."

"I very, very hungry." Milk drips to the floor.

The Italian produces a silver lighter and relights the joint. "Ephraim," he says, "come and smoke with us." The Italian is playing with him. "You are a rapist and a thief but you can still smoke with us."

"I no smoke."

"He no smoke! He no smoke! He rape, he steal, but he no smoke!"

The Italian bursts into laughter once more and it is infectious. Ephraim himself erupts with mirth, the muesli a dungcoloured bolus on his tongue, he almost drops the cereal bowl. And they laugh, these two laugh and laugh, I cannot tell their laughter apart, it is one now, musicians hitting the same chord, skirling dark and cunning, horrisonous.