The whole mass surged against the platform, though Adam made his way to the edge of the crowd, then to quieter streets on the other side of the square, so that he could continue his journey. The monumental insanity of the young man’s pronouncement had for a few moments lifted him into the same wild unseeing happiness as the crowd, his eyes brimming with tears, his head spinning, hands at his temples as if ready for some final ecstatic take-off. But, pedalling through emptier streets, the normal bleak expectant sadness of a poet’s life returned.
Chapter 8
It was difficult not to despair when the train pulled out of the station with all her luggage on it. But she bravely fought away the tears, and asked the woman at the ticket booth to direct her to the local police office.
‘You wouldn’t buy a return ticket,’ said the woman spitefully, ‘so I’m not going to tell you where the police chief lives.’
Jaquiline opened her purse and passed her a two-klipp coin. ‘Three,’ the woman said. When Jaquiline gave in wearily, the woman held her hand and commiserated as if they were old friends: ‘What a shock for you. I saw it all. He’s done that twice this week already. But don’t you worry. He’s always brought back. Now, if you go right to the end of this platform you’ll see a hut, by the siding. Outside it there’ll be a man watering his flowers. That’s the chief of police. He’s the one to tell your troubles to.’
Jaquiline hurried off without thanking her. Like other frontier stations, it was only busy at certain times, and because the main train for Nihilon City had left, it was almost deserted, though she was annoyed to see several porters standing idly around now that they were no longer needed.
The platform was long, and it took some time to get to the end of it and down to the level of the line. She then walked on the small broken stones, a difficult and painful process in high-heeled shoes, and she was more than pleased when she saw the chief of police’s hut a few hundred metres away.
His humble dwelling was surrounded by a flower garden, a square of lavish and brilliant colours, through which a neat path led to the door. A porcine yet kindly-looking man wearing riding boots walked slowly up and down with a watering can. A short way beyond this delightful oasis was the dividing line between Nihilon and Cronacia, bristling with enormous coils of rusty barbed wire.
When Jaquiline waved, the chief of police looked up, put down his watering can, and came towards her. ‘Hello, my dear! I hope you’ve had a pleasant trip, so far?’
He took his tunic from the fence, threw himself clumsily into it, and buttoned it tight like a corset. ‘Yes,’ he nodded hearing her story while they stood on the path, ‘that’s an extremely serious complaint. You’d better come inside so that I can make my notes. It’s too hot out here.’
It was an amiable and pleasant reception, and so she followed him in without hesitation. Nihilon was at last showing humane tendencies, she thought, if it set the chief of police’s office among a grove of such beautiful flowers. The hut was sparsely furnished, with a desk down one side, and a bench opposite on which new books were displayed. She went over to look at their covers and titles: ‘I’m glad to see you’re so interested in the printed word,’ she said with a smile.
‘The printed word,’ he said, looking closely into her eyes, ‘is the basis of Nihilon’s civilization. I don’t know where any of us nihilists would be without the printed word. The printed word is all-powerful if you are striving for absolute nihilism. It was our first ally, the printed word. As soon as we original Nihilists realized the force of the printed word, we knew that sooner or later we must triumph. The printed word is wonderful in that you can do anything with it. Not only can it be read in secret but it can be shouted into a microphone, or splashed on to every wall. They say that President Nil has a printed word illuminated in a niche in the wall of his bedroom, but nobody knows what it is, and no one dares try to guess. But we all adore him even more for this worship of the printed word.’
During what she considered this pernicious drivel she took out her notebook and examined the display of volumes more closely. They were mostly novels with nonsensical titles, though one book, which she picked up to examine, had blank pages inside. Another was no more than a box with an artificial flower in it. One contained printed pages that resembled a railway timetable, while the most interesting novelty had a gun attached to the stiff cover when she lifted it up, as if showing the author’s absolute contempt for the printed word, of which there was not a sign.
‘I have a shop, you see,’ said the chief of police. ‘And I sell mainly books and flowers.’
‘Your writers are ingenious,’ she smiled.
‘These books are all collector’s pieces,’ he sighed. ‘I only retail the best. Our writers of Nihilon have no problems. How can they, being Nihilists? There are no rules. They write, and so they are understood. It is automatic, no matter what they write, whether it’s history, geography, psychology, pornography, botany, monotony, devilism, syphilism, bigamy, polygamy, or sodomy. You name it, they write it. Half our authors are thin and phthisical, and languish for death; the other half are monstrously fat and slothful, and so are prone to heart attack, high blood pressure, gout and palsy, but with a fantastic built-in drive for life. So if you’d be generous enough, dear lady, to buy one of their books I’d be extremely grateful. And so would they, as you can imagine. Not many cultured foreigners come this way to purchase my wares.’
A large transfer of money would be waiting for her in Nihilon City, so she could afford to be extravagant in face of such extortion which, at this point of her adventures, seemed quite skilful and amusing. ‘I’ll buy this one,’ she said, appearing to choose at random the volume with the gun inside and paying his price of two hundred klipps.
The back of the hut had an embrasure built into it, out of which pointed a heavy machine gun, mounted on a tripod and pre-aimed at the frontier wire. ‘In Nihilon everyone has several jobs,’ he told her, putting the money under a blotter on his desk. ‘Besides being chief of police of this town, I am a bookseller and a gardener. I’m also employed as a frontier guard, so that for every Cronacian spy I kill as he tries to cross into Nihilon, I’m paid three hundred klipps. It’s not much, but if I shoot two a week it helps to keep my wife and nine children, as well as my mistress and twelve children.’
‘Twelve?’ she exclaimed.
‘Soon to be fourteen, alas,’ he said. ‘But never mind. We don’t despair in Nihilon. There can’t be too many of us, menaced as we are by the barbarian predators of Cronacia.’ He went close and looked into her eyes: ‘I love you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, stepping back, and realizing that he was short-sighted, ‘I only came here to make a complaint.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘I arranged it. I have all these different occupations, but in my spare time I play God. Perhaps I’ll get that job as well, one day, though President Nil has it at the moment.’ He put his arms around her and pulled her close to his large chest.
She struggled. ‘Let me go. You must be mad.’
‘Do you think so?’ he sighed, kissing her lips. ‘All my life I’ve wanted to go mad, and I keep trying very hard, as I suppose everyone does in good old glorious Nihilon, but I can’t do it. Not yet. I keep trying though, because I hope to. What bliss it would be to go mad. I can’t tell you how much I long for it.’ He kissed her again, and she slapped his fat unshaven cheek, momentarily checking him.
‘Come away with me,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll give up everything for you. Let’s go to Perver City. Or if you don’t like that idea, I’ll even go into Cronacia with you. We can step through the wire.’ He ran to the desk and held up a gigantic pair of wire-cutters. ‘The fellow on the other side, who also has a machine gun, won’t shoot me, because we have a secret arrangement to let each other cross if things get too difficult. So if you won’t come to Perver City, let’s run off to Cronacia. I’ve heard there are wonderful beaches over there. We can sprawl on the sand all day, drinking and making love.’
For a moment the idea appealed to her as a means of getting to know more about the inside workings of Nihilon than by the tortuous expedient of travelling around the country itself, but she remembered that a meeting had been arranged with her four colleagues in Nihilon City, and so opened her notebook to write: ‘Passions run high in Nihilon. It is a country with few moral standards, and ladies travelling alone would do well to remember this.’
‘No,’ she said to the chief of police. ‘In any case, wouldn’t you rather go on playing God, in the hope that one day you’ll go mad?’
‘Don’t mock me,’ he said, making another half-hearted attempt to embrace her. ‘I only played God to lure you here. I saw you get off the train, so I persuaded the stationmaster to help you, which was the first part of my uncannily successful plan. He didn’t want to, but I said I’d kill his wife and have him arrested for murder if he didn’t. So he helped you through the customs, got you to the Nihilon train, and went off with your luggage. I knew that you would then have to complain to me, and I simply waited for you here. You see, it’s not playing God. It’s only thinking for oneself in a high and mighty manner!’
‘Your plan has failed,’ she said sternly. ‘If you don’t recover my luggage I’ll make a strong complaint when I reach Nihilon City. And then we shall see what will happen.’
‘You’re most uncooperative,’ he said, sulking, ‘I only wanted to make love to you among the flowers.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Will you sign a confession, then?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘That’s the least you can do after all the trouble I’ve taken.’
‘Never.’
‘You don’t even ask what for,’ he said bitterly. ‘A confession would bring me five hundred klipps, which would fill my Zap sports car with top-star petrol for a week. If only I could rely on the goodness of people to give me a little spiritual assistance from time to time. Life can be very hard for someone like me.’
She smiled at his childishness, but which she didn’t like because she detected the ruthlessness lying underneath it. ‘How can you hope for people to be good in Nihilon?’ she asked.
‘You can hope for anything in this country. The reason it is great is that we’re not afraid of hope. What’s more, our hopes often come true. When I saw you getting off the train, and fell in love with you, I hoped we’d be able to meet, and here you are.’
She lit a cigarette. ‘But you arranged all that. You just said so.’
‘You can’t hope without giving it some help,’ he said, laughing for the first time. He attacked her so suddenly that she dropped her cigarette. A trick of his foot shut the door hard, while the other foot clipped itself between her ankles and forced her into his arms, so that, with great strength he lowered her quickly to the floor. Such was the shock of it that she didn’t struggle at first. Then she bit, scratched, and spat. She ripped the red tab from the lapel of his tunic, and this sound of tearing cloth saved her. The price seemed too high for him, water over his passion, and he jumped away before she could do any more damage to his uniform.
Jaquiline thought he had only leapt clear so as to spring down again from a better vantage point. She reached the table and opened the book for which she had already paid two hundred klipps. He put up his hands. ‘I love you,’ he said with trembling lips, eyes fixed on the revolver and cursing the versatility of Nihilon’s writers.
She held it steadily and was ready to fire: ‘I want my luggage. I have to be in Nihilon City tomorrow.’
‘We’ll go and get it,’ he smiled, taking a paperclip from his desk and fastening the red tab back in place on his tunic.
‘I’ll go alone,’ she told him, putting the gun in its box.
He opened the door, and gallantly pointed the way into sunlight. ‘My Zap sports car is at your disposal, madam. Twenty kilometres beyond this station the Nihilon City Express waits for two hours to take on food, fuel, arms, and spare wheels; if I drive fast we can get there in time to apprehend our criminal stationmaster. I’ll have him tried and sent to a special school where he’ll be taught a lower-grade job.’
‘That’s unjust,’ she protested, ‘since it was all your plan.’
He took her hand. ‘He was unjust in agreeing to it. It’s brought ashes and ruin on my head. He deserves to be punished. However, since it’s your wish, I won’t have him arrested, on condition that you come back here with me afterwards so that we can be together tonight.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘And while we stand talking we’re wasting time.’
They walked along the platform, the police chief swaggering as became his rank, and went out through the booking hall, to where his Zap sports car was waiting by the roadside.
Chapter 9
Benjamin sat in his silent car, wondering whether or not it had broken its back in tumbling down the bank. He was also curious as to why the powers of Nihilon were on to him so soon, for the driver in that red Zap was certainly no playboy out for a casual accident before breakfast. He’d tried to kill him, and that was a plain Nihilonian fact. Benjamin brooded that he’d probably betrayed himself by hitting the policeman at the frontier, an act he’d taken gluttonous pride in at the time, but which in the glare of midday he saw as his first and perhaps fatal mistake.
He’d always assumed that people over forty didn’t make such blunders, but in Nihilon he was learning certain things all over again. This fractured start threatened the fibres of his normally cool nerve, and as he turned the ignition key, he wondered whether his colleagues were faring any better in their allotted zones.
The ground was firmer under the trees, and he hoped to get back on the road, despite the many boulders scattered around. The engine sounded good, so he let off the brake, slipped into first gear, and went forward. Most of Benjamin’s life had been devoted to the study of history, and he had been chosen by the Editor of the proposed guidebook to concentrate, as far as possible, on recent events in Nihilon. This was easier said than done, for Benjamin knew that the history books of Nihilon’s more recent past were nothing more than gossip columns. In the country’s schools history was scandal. Nothing else was allowed. Dates and facts were hard to come by. Political reality was out. There were only false accounts of drunkenness, greed, bribe-taking, murder, orgy, perversion, incompetence, blackmail and corruption. The children and students loved it.
History, as it is ordinarily known, stopped at the beginning of the present regime which, during its twenty-five years of power, had closed the country off from the world, at least as regards any serious study of it. Tourists had been allowed to sample the nefarious delights of its nihilistic principles, but they had for the most part returned in a state of dumb shock.
Inwardly terrified of being disillusioned, they had praised the country out of all proportion to its negative achievements. In this way they kept faith in themselves, and by encouraging others to go in their tracks, enabled them to do the same. Some tourists had come back with no impressions at all, being none the wiser for their visits.
He cruised through the grove of trees, over ploughed earth and between stones, until an incline towards the road was gentle enough to ascend. Even so, it was steep, and called for the full power of the Thundercloud’s robust engine to get him to the top. Just in time, he noticed that a deep drainage ditch bordered the road, blocking him off from it. He cursed, stopped, pulled hard on the handbrake, and wondered how he could get over.
Some months ago a letter had reached him from an aged and venerable philosopher of Nihilon who had written a true and complete history of the last Nihilonian civil war, and of all that had happened since, which he was about to offer to a publisher in the capital. He said he would hide a carbon copy of the book in case the first one not only failed to be published, but was also not sent back to him. Another correspondent later informed Benjamin that the philosopher-historian had been arrested by his publisher and never seen again, adding that the spare copy of the manuscript was h
idden somewhere in Nihilon. Benjamin, in his travels, hoped to find this document, but his return to Nihilon put him in great danger, because he had been there as a young man, and certain crimes were lyingly attributed to him. His life wouldn’t be worth a bent Nihilonian klipp if he were caught, which was why his encounter with the Zap was so worrying.
He got out of the car, hoping to stop a passing motorist and ask for help. But the road was empty, the sky was clear, the sun just past its zenith. At this rate it would take a week instead of a day to reach Nihilon City, so he decided to collect enough large stones to fill the ditch and then cross over it. Unfortunately, the most suitable stones lay at the bottom of the slope, which would mean great labour in bringing them up, but since it seemed the only solution he took off his shirt and walked down for the first consignment.
Twenty-five years ago there had been a civil war in Nihilon, between the ruling Rationalists, and the usurping Nihilists. Benjamin Smith, as an idealistic young man whose girlfriend had recently agreed to marry someone else, went off to fight, with other outsiders, for the cause of the Rationalists. His disappointment in love made him both cunning and reckless – cunning in military logic, and reckless for his personal safety – so that within a year he had reached the rank of company commander.
A drop of sweat from his forehead glistened momentarily on a large stone, that plunged to the bottom of the trench and gave back a sound of splintering fragments. During this lengthy transporting of boulders, perspiring freely, he recalled those days of battle for the Republic of Damascony – now Nihilon – when he had received the Damson Leaf Award for high and useful services from President Took, the last great Liberal president of the country, who was said to have died after the final collapse of the battlefronts. Benjamin wanted to find out what had really happened to him, and what had become of Took’s infant daughter, who would by now be a grown woman – if she had survived. It seemed to him, as he lugged a particularly heavy burden up the hill, that history was a dustbin to root around in occasionally for something spiritually satisfying to ponder on, especially when at the ripe age of fifty he was suffering the desolation of a broken marriage, and had accepted a job as historical adviser to an unnecessary guidebook merely to get away from it.