Journey through an African night

Graham Greene

This is a new introduction to Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps, an account of Mr Greene's first visit to Africa. It was originally published in 7936, and is to be reissued by Bodley Head on 16 November.

The further back we go in time, the more the 'documents in the case' accumulate and the more reluctant we feel to open their Pages, to disturb the dust. To the stranger they would appear innocuous enough — a diary in pencil, an African's letter scribbled Probably by a public letter-writer according !,0 a recognised formula, a scrap of Indecipherable writing found in a Vai hut, but one is never cenain what vivid memorY may not revive, and the longer life goes on the more surely one finds that old memories Will be painful, and hung around with associations, like cobwebs in a room whose occupant left many years ago 'under a cloud'. And yet I rashly proposed to make memory the very subject of this book, for forty years ago I could play happily enough even with the darkest and furthest memories of childhood — they were not so dark or so distant as they seem to me today. It was a period when 'young authors Were inclined to make uncomfortable Journeys in search of bizarre material, Peter Fleming to Brazil and Manchuria, Evelyn Waugh to British Guiana and Ethiopia. Europe seemed to have the whole future; Europe could wait. In 1940 it was a shock to realise that the door to Europe had been dosed — perhaps for ever, and that one had more memories of Mexico and Liberia than of France. As for Italy, one night in Naples had been for me the sum.

We were a generation brought up on adventure stories who had missed the enonnous disillusionment of the First War; we went looking for adventure, much as in the summer of 1940 I used to spend Saturday nights in Southend, looking for an air-raid, with little realisation that withina i few months I should have my fill of them n London day and night. I had never been out of Europe; I had not Often been outside England, and to choose Liberia and to involve my cousin Barbara, a twenty-three-year-old girl, in the adventure, was, to say the least, rash. My invitation to her can only be excused because I had drunk too much champagne at my brother Hugh's wedding, and I never expected her to accept. I did my best afterwards to discourage her. I sent her a League. of Nations report on conditions in the interior, on the unchecked diseases, on Colonel Davis's savage campaign against the .Kru tribes and on President King's private export of slaves to Fernando Po. The report had rendered me nervous, and Sir Harry Johnston's account of his travels in the interior, his endless difficulties with car riers, whom he could only take from village to village, had made me realise that perhaps Liberia was a tough venture for a young man who had never been further than Athens. I felt the need of a companion, but I panicked, when the champagne had worn off, at my choice. Luckily for me my cousin appeared unmoved by the reading material I sent her, for she proved as good a companion as the circumstances allowed, and I shudder to think of the quarrels I would have had with a companion of the same sex after exhaustion had set in, all the arguments, the indecisions. My cousin left all decisiOns to me and never criticised me when I made the wrong one, and because of the difference of sex we were both forced to control our irritated nerves. Towards the end we would lapse into long silences, but they were infinitely preferable to raised voiceS, Only in one thing did she disappoint me — she wrote a book. However, her generosity was apparent even there, for she waited several years, until after my own book had appeared (and disappeared, for it was suppressed almost immediately by the threat of a libel action from a man of whose very existence I had been unaware) before she published her Land Benighted. I hadn't even realised that she was making notes, I was so busy on my own.

It had seemed simple, before I set out, to write a travel book, but when I returned and was faced with my material, a diary written in pencil with increasing fatigue and running to less than eighty quarto pages of a loose-leaf notebook, the piece of paper on which I kept the accounts of my carriers' advances (the headman had usually drawn nincpence, most of the others threepence at a time only), a few illiterate notes from Mr Wordsworth the District Commissioner of Tapee-Ta, and from Colonel Elwood Davis, the Commander of the Liberian Frontier Force, some political literature from Monrovia, a selection of Liberian newspapers, a few Buzie swords and musical instruments long lost (they seemed so valuable then), a number of photographs taken with an old vest-pocket Kodak, and memories — memories chiefly of rats, of frustration, and of a deeper boredom on the long forest trek than I had ever experienced before. How was I, out of all this, to make a book? I had a moment of despair and wished to abandon it. But I had already spent on the journey the three hundred and fifty pounds which my publishers had advanced to me, and I could earn no more until the book was written, The problem to be solved was mainly a problem of form. I was haunted by the awful tedium of A to Z. This book could not be written in the manner of a European tour; there was no architecture to describe, no famous statuary; nor was it a political book in the sense that Gide's Voyage au Congo was political, nor a book of adventure like those of Mr Peter Fleming — if this was an adventure it was only a subjective adventure, three months of virtual silence, of 'being out of touch'. This thought gave me a clue to the form I needed. The account of a journey — a slow foot-sore journey into an interior literally unknown — was only of interest if it paralleled another journey. It would lose the triviality of a personal travel diary only if it became more completely personal. It is a disadvantage to have an 'I' who is not a fictional figure, and the only way to deal with 'I' was to make him an abstraction. To all intents I eliminated my companion of the journey and supported the uneventful record with memories, dreams, word-associations: if the book in one sense became more personal, the journey became more general — if Jung is to be believed we share our dreams. (It was not when I come to think of it a very new form for me. Even in my entertainments the idea of A toZ had always scared me, like the thought in childhood of the longer summer term, and I have always broken the continuity of a story with the memories of my chief character, just as I was now to break the continuity of the journey with the memories of T.) More than forty years have passed since I wrote the book and I cannot bring myself to reread it as a whole (the last time I read it through was in 1945 after I had returned from my wartime sojourn in shabby Freetown, when I wrote a preface for a new edition to mark a change of attitude). It has occurred to me now to make a small psychological experiment and to see how one particular experience, recorded in my diary, was changed when I came to write the book, and how it appeared to a third party, my cousin — three parties because surely 'I' the diarist and 'I' the writer were distinct persons.

Towards the end of the journey, between Ganta and the sea, I became ill. I had seldom walked for less than fifteen miles in a day, and I was unused to the climate — stiflingly hot during the hours of sun and sometimes at night cold enough for two blankets. I was forced to press on because the rains were threatening and if they broke central Liberia would become impassable. My cousin did not realise the need of haste and thought these forced marches were a form of nerves connected with my sickness. One night on arriving at a village I collapsed.

This is what I find in my diary: 'A long tiring day to Zigi's Town. Started at 6.45. Took eight and a half hours solid trek. Ducks on a pond. My temperature up and went to bed. It went up a bit more at bed time and I sweated all night naked between the blankets. Took violent dose for my stomach. A thunderstorm. Shadow on the mosquito-net, the dim hurrican lamp, the empty whisky bottle on the chop box.' (Not much there, • less really than in the briefer record next day: 'Last tin of biscuits, last tin of milk, last piece of bread.'

With Barbara's permission I print now what my cousin made of that unpleasant night: 'Graham was tottering as we got to Zigi's Town; he was staggering as though he was a little drunk. He could get no rest from the carriers while he was up, for they came to him as usual with all their troubles, but I managed to persuade him to go to bed. I took his temperature and it was very high. I gave him plenty of whisky and Epsom salts, and covered him with blankets, hoping that I was doing the right thing.

'I had supper by myself while the thunder roared; and the boys served me with grave faces. The same thought was in all our minds. Graham would die. I never doubted it for a minute. He looked like a dead man already. The stormy atmosphere made my head ache and the men quarrelsome. I could hear them snapping at each other, but I left them alone.

'I took Graham's temperature again, and it had gone, up. I felt quite calm at the thought of Graham's death. To my own horror I felt unemotional about it. My mind kept telling me that I was really very upset, but actually I was so tired that though I could concentrate easily on the practical side of it all, I was incapable of feeling anything. I worked out quietly how I would have my cousin buried. how I would go down to the coast, to whom I would send telegrams. I had no fear of going on alone, for I realised by this time that with the help of Amedoo I would be perfectly safe. Only one thing worried me in the most extraordinary way. Graham was a Catholic, and into my muddled, weary brain came the thought that I ought to burn candles for him if he died. I was horribly upset, for we had no candles. I could not remember why I should burn candles, but I felt vaguely that his soul would find no peace if I could not do that for him. All night I was troubled by this thought. It seemed to me desperately important.

'It was a pleasant little village. I walked through it, enjoying, as I always did, the friendliness of the natives. Laminah and Mark came with me, but I told them I was not in the mood to talk, and with graceful understanding they immediately dropped ten yards behind me, giving me the feeling that I was alone and yet showing me that they were there to protect me.

Amedoo stayed within hearing distance of Graham. They were doing their best to try to make me understand that whatever happened, they would never forget that they had given their word in Freetown that they would protect us to the end of the journey. It was only that evening in Zigi's Town that I realised how much I cared for our boys, and what valuable and loyal friends they were.

'The storm broke and I hurried back to my hut as the rains came down. It was a big hut with two rooms, and before I went to bed I went and had another look at Graham. He was in a restless doze, muttering to himself, and soaked in perspiration.

'I went to my room, but did not dare to sleep very much in case my cousin should call out. Outside the rains descended, but I had a well-built hut this time and none of the water splashed through the roof. I felt rather cosy as I lay snugly in bed while the thunder roared outside.

To my great surprise Graham was not dead in the morning. I was quite amazed, and gazed at him for some moments without speaking. I went into his room expecting to see him either delirious or gasping out his last few breaths, and I found him up and dressed. He looked terrible. A kind of horrid death's head grinned at me. His cheeks had sunk in, there were black smudges under his eyes, and his scrubby beard added nothing of beauty to the general rather seedy effect. His expression, however, was more normal, for the uncanny harsh light that had glowed in his eyes the day before, had disappeared. I took his temperature and it was very subnormal.

"We must go on quickly," he said. “I'm all right again."

u,Nstog ,, u,Nstog ,, ' t "e down to the coast." said Graham impatiently. "We 'The coast. My cousin was craving to get down to the coast as a pilgrim might crave to get to a holy city. 'I went out and got hold of the boys and told them to find out how far it was to Grand Bassa. Tommy, I thought, might know, wo or ped aryhsap, ss at ihde hai re. kf.

"Two weeks," said Laminah.

'"Oh, my God," I said.

'I asked the headman, "How far Grand BasO? Ask chief."

`He gave his lovely vague smile, and said softly, "Too far." And all round me like an angry chorus carriers echoed, "Too far, too far."

I must admit that my cousin's account is more in keeping with an adventure story than my few lines in pencil, for the absurd journey, which seemed so boring at the time, was in retrospect an adventure for a man of thirty-one who had never been in Africa before and a girl of twenty-three. And how did the second reflective `I' recount this crisis of the journey? I find to my surprise, for now I have few memories Of that night, that 'I' shared his cousin's fear. Here is the passage: `I remember nothing of the trek to Zigi's Town and very little of the succeeding days. I was so exhausted that I couldn't write more than a few lines in my diary: I hope never to be so tired again. I retain an impression of continuous forest, occasional hills emerging above the bush so that we would catch a glimpse on either side of the great whalebacked forests driving to the sea. Outside Zigi's Town there was a stream trickling down the slope and a few ducks with a curiously English air about them. I remember trying to sit down, but immediately having to deal with the town chief aver food for the carriers, trying to sit down again and rising to look for threepenny bits the cook needed for buying a chicken, trying to sit down and being forced up again to dress a carrier's sores. couldn't stand any more of it; I swallowed two tablespoonfuls of Epsom in a cup of strong tea (we had finished our tinned milk long ago) and left my cousin to deal With anything else that turned up. My temperature was high. I swallowed twenty grains of quinine with a glass of Whisky, took off my clothes, wrapped myself in blankets under the mosquito net and tried to sleep. 'A thunderstorm came up. It was the third storm we'd had in a few days; there wasn't any time to lose if we were to reach the Coast, and I lay in the dark as scared as I have ever been. There were no rats, at any rate, but I caught a jigger under my toe when I crawled out to dry myself. I was sweating as if I had influenza; I couldn't keep dry for more than fifteen seconds. The hurricane lamp I left burning low on an up-ended chop box and beside it an old whisky bottle full of warm filtered water. I kept remembering Van Gogh at Bolahun burnt out with fever. He said you had to lie up for at least a week; there wasn't any danger in malaria if you lay up long enough; but I couldn't bear the thought of staying a week here, another seven days away from Grand Bassa. Malaria or not. I'd got to go on next day and I was afraid. The fever would not let me sleep at all, but by the early morning it was sweated out of me. My temperature was a long way below normal, but the worst boredom of the trek for the time being was over I had made a discovery during the night which interested me. I had discovered in myself a passionate interest in living. I had always assumed before, as a matter of course, that death was desirable.

'It seemed that night an important discovery. It was like a conversion, and I had never experienced a conversion before. (I had not been converted to a religious faith. I had been convinced by specific arguments in the probability of its creed.) If the experience had not been so new to me, it would have seemed less important, I should have known that conversions don't last, or if they last at all it is only as a little sediment at the bottom of the brain. Perhaps the sediment has value, the memory of a conversion may have some force in an emergency; I may be able to strengthen myself with the intellectual idea that once in Zigi's Town I had been completely convinced of the beauty and desirability of the mere act of living.'

Did I learn the lesson of Zigi's Town? I doubt it.

It used to be a habit with Victorian novel ists to give brief résumés of the future fate of their minor characters % I can do little in that way and the little I can do is not very cheerlag no happy marriages oraccouchernents. Six years later, back in Freetown, I one day encountered Laminah — he was no longer 'a sinall boy' in shorts wearing a woollen cap With a scarlet bobble on top. War had brought him prosperity and dignity. I had already searched in vain for traces of Amedoo, my impeccable head-boy, who had made the journey possible, but it was about the old cook I enquired first, whose name I could never remember, whom I saw only as a figure in a long white robe, slowly disintegrating as he strode through the bush, kitchen knife in hand. He must be very old indeed, I thought, by now, if still alive. 'Old cook,' Laminah replied, rocking with laughter at the irony of life, 'old cook, he fine, but Amedoo he dead.'

Another character is dead too: the mysterious German whom the District Commissioner of Kailahun on the Sierra Leone border mistook for a messenger from Liberia come to guide us to Bolahun.

'It was a long while before anyone thought of asking whether he was the Liberian messenger. He wasn't, the messenger had disappeared from Kailahun, the stranger was a German. He wanted a bed; he had dropped in to Kailahun as casually as if it were a German village where he would be sure to find an inn. He had a bland secretive innocence; he had come from the Republic and he was going back to the Republic; he gave no indication of why he had come or why he was going or what he was doing in Africa at all. 'I took him for a prospector, 'but it turned out later that he was concerned with nothing so material as gold or diamonds. He was just learning. He sat back in his chair, seeming to pay no attention to anyone; when he was asked a question, he gave a tiny laugh (you thought: I have asked something very foolish, very superficial), and gave no answer until later, when you had forgotten the question. He was young in spite of his beard; he had an aristocratic air in spite of his beachcomber's dress, and he was wiser than any of us. He was the only one who knew exactly what it was he wished to learn, who knew the exact extent of his ignorance. He could speak Mende; he was picking up Buzie; and he had a few words of Pelle: it took time.'

Years were to pass before I learned his fate and the news arrived as ambiguously as he had done. It was 1955 and I was sitting up late in a hotel room in Cracow drinking with a Polish novelist and talking with caution. Gomulka had not yet come to power—it was still a Stalinist Poland. I knew nobody in Cracow except the novelist. We were both taken aback by a rap on the door and the same notion of the secret police came to our minds. The man who came in was an obvious German. He looked from one to another of us and asked, 'Mr Greene?'

'Yes?'

'You knew my brother,' he said, 'in Liberia.'

I searched my memory in vain. 'He walked with you to Bolahun.' Then I remembered and asked his the Russian was killed in 1943 on h Politeness forced me, unwilling though I was, to ask the stranger to join us over my flask of whisky; since I had visited Auschwitz and seen those long hills filled with women's hair and children's toys and old suitcases marked with the names and addresses of the dead, all the economy of a German murder camp, I had no desire to sit at table with one of his countrymen in Poland. My companion, who had been a Polish cavalry officer and afterwards a ' member of the underground army, cared for the German's company even less than I. And he proved as ambiguous as his brother. We had been that day to Zakopane, we told him, and he remarked on the beauty of the place, 'where I stayed for two or three years during the war', as casually as an Englishman might speak of residence in Switzerland. My companion and I were both aware that it was not often that a German soldier stationed in Poland stayed so long in openreiopdlac. but there were other employments than the Army for Germans at that I asked, 'Why have you come back?' 'I am painting pictures,' he said.

© Graham Greene