EXTRACTED FROM The Rainbird © Jan Brokken Madame David from Port-Gentil THE first man I ever knew from Libreville never existed. His name was Joseph Timar. He was young and respectable. Too respectable for a town at the edge of the jungle. Timar arrived in Africa in the early years of the Depression. The ship that had taken three weeks to bring him to within half a degree of the Equator anchored miles off the coast; a motor launch brought him ashore. From the sea, Libreville in the early 1930s was little more than a smudge amid steaming greenery. A few houses, a couple of government buildings, a seaside promenade of red cinder lined with palms, a trading post every few hundred meters and, exposed to the wind, a native marketplace. Directly behind this tuft of civilization towered the dull green wall, the visitor's first glimpse of the impregnable jungle.