28 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

happiness that tingles behind the eyes, beautiful and
insecure, a wish fulfilment.

Do not expect again a phoenix hour,

The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining,

Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease. . . .

Undoubtedly the other Dakar (the Dakar of the
four hundred and sixteen dead, of the despair
and injustice) was there, but something else was
momentarily shining through, something which was
always stubbornly existing. So in an early Rene Glair
film one could believe that this was the life one was
born to live, breaking through life as one had been
made to live it, breaking through anxiety and irrita-
tion and financial depression and a lust which had
gone on too long, these voices in the air, this chase
of a lottery ticket among the flying opera-hats, this
tuneful miniature love behind cardboard scenery^
nothing was really serious, nothing lasted, you didn't
have to think about to-morrow's food or to-morrow's
girl; you stuck up your leg in derision sewing pants
on the pavement, you fell asleep among the flowers
with your black kettle, you touched hands and felt
good and didn't care a damn.

One soon enough discovered, of course, that this
impression was not the Coast. The hawks flapping
heavily over Bathurst, a long low backcloth of houses
and trees along a sandy beach; a swarm of figures in
the native quarter like flies on a piece of meat; the
not being allowed to land because of yellow fever;
the sense of isolation that the woman had as she went
off to join her husband in the quarantined town; this