BLACK  MONTPARNASSE	193
one possesses a friend or a lover, but this forest had
never belonged in that way to anyone. Perhaps it was
even wrong to think of it as dead, for it had never
been alive.
But it was only fair, I suppose, that the moments
of extraordinary happiness, the sense that one was
nearer than one had ever been to the racial source,
to satisfying the desire for an instinctive way of life,
the sense of release, as when in the course of psycho-
analysis one uncovers by one's own effort a root, a
primal memory, should have been counterbalanced
by the boredom of childhood too, that agonising
boredom of 'apartness' which came before one had
learnt the fatal trick of transferring emotion, of flash-
ing back enchantingly all day long one's own image,
a period when other people were as distinct from one-
self as this Liberian forest. I sometimes wonder
whether, if one had stayed longer, if one had not been
driven out again by tiredness and fear, one might
have relearned the way to live without transference,
with a lost objectivity.
Rain in the Air
The chief from Galaye acted as our guide back
from the plateau into the forest, wearing for the occa-
sion a black tail coat and a green beret, with one of
his men to follow him and carry his sword. At a
large village, Pala, they told us that the next town
was Bamou, a long way off; we should certainly not
reach it until six, and we had started the march at
seven. There was nowhere in between where we
could sleep. The men were grumbling already^as