Benjamin and two of his companions walked up the post-office steps, heavily laden with guns and ammunition, as if intending to pack them up inside and send them registered to friends. The other two had taken a heavy machine gun to the opposite building in order to enfilade the square when they were attacked.
Inside the post-office Benjamin pointed his rifle at the three elderly and sleepy clerks, and his assistants quickly bolted the main heavy door. While waiting for them to search and clear the place he read a notice which said: ‘Foreign visitors are warned by the Nihilon postal authorities not to send any valuables by registered mail. The prominent stamping and labelling of such items serves only to mark them out for theft by our diligent and honest employees. To ensure that a letter will reach its destination, the visitor had better post by ordinary mail, and send two copies in order that one may get there.’
On an upper floor they opened loopholes from the windows. He looked at his watch. The bridge should be crossed by now. As if to confirm it, the first shots were heard. He hurried on to the roof, getting out by ladder and skylight, feeling competent in command, fit again in body and soul.
Though the bridge was captured, the hotel still held out, so that his two companies lost heavily getting over the river, and seemed in danger of being cut off. A battalion of Nihilist soldiers formed up in the square before going off to repel the attack. They did not know that the post-office was occupied, and Benjamin, when the whole force was in range, gave the order to open fire, signalling for the second machine gun to join in.
Few of them escaped. He perceived that their training must have been bloodily unrealistic, for they ran blindly to the attack with no order or system, fired without cover, and stood up to sing the incongruous national anthem that had so grated his nerves at the frontier, and which he was glad to blast out of their throats.
All over the town, a constant dull ripple of noise sounded, as if it were heavily raining in some far-off part of the country. It seemed like a dream, because he was tired. The exhaustion was only beginning, but reality would break through it, even though the tiredness was bound to increase. The bridge, the hotel, and the garage were now captured, and shooting was going on beyond the town as well, where retreating Nihilists were trying to make their way towards Nihilon City, or into the Athelstan Alps.
A way had yet to be made from the river to the main square, and Benjamin began to worry. He noticed a field-gun being hauled up a side street by a tractor. The purr of the engine brought vividly to mind his childhood spent on a farm. He thought this was because of the gun, since he had played with such models in those far-off days, but he knew it was the sound of the tractor, which made him see vividly the one that his own father had driven.
The building shook, as if a giant thump had hit every wall from the inside. He got downstairs to meet a blinding flash that pushed him down to the stone floor and tried to hold him there. The main door had burst from its hinges. Ordering the machine-gunners to cover him, he took a pair of grenades and dashed into the square.
He fell vomiting among the dead and wounded. More shells were exploding at the post-office walls and windows, so that he did not feel any less safe where he was. But he had no desire to go on, and did not know what to do next, though without wanting to, he leapt up and ran zig-zag towards the gun. Rifle bullets cut the air around him, but the dream had taken him over for his own protection, and he worked within its halo of safety and light. He threw his first grenade and fell to the ground.
A machine gun heavily threaded its string of noise from the nearest window, but Benjamin’s alert gunner returned fire from the post-office roof even before the end of its burst. His grenade exploded during it, an increase of pandemonium joined by a final shell as his grenade blew one of the gun-wheels to pieces.
The survivors of the crew ran to him, and instead of the expected revolver-shot in his body he looked up and saw that they wanted to surrender. One of them leapt for freedom in the opposite direction, but fell against the bullets of the insurrectionists advancing along the street.
Helped by his prisoners, Benjamin staggered back to the post-office. His clothes were in tatters. He was covered with blood. At the steps he shook himself, paused for a moment with bent head, and eyes shut tight. The black-dot flag, and the hammer-and-chisel banner, were lowered from the flagpole of the town hall.
He straightened himself, tried to pull in his stomach, drew back his head, and walked into the building.
At the postmaster’s large desk he spread out his map of Nihilon, while teleprinters in the next room sent the news of Amrel’s liberation by the Benjamin Smith Brigade. Information had come in that the port of Shelp was also in insurrectionist hands, while another message claimed that several areas of Nihilon City had been secured. Some mysterious commander-in-chief, signing himself the Professor, had ordered his brigade to advance on Agbat, an important town and road junction on the railway connecting Nihilon to the northern Cronacian frontier. The way to treat the Nihilists, said the professor’s teleprinter message, which struck Benjamin as being somewhat garrulous, was to hit them before they knew what had hit them, so that they wouldn’t get up and argue. No one could win an argument with a Nihilist, so it was best never to let one start. End of text.
The local commander was brought in, a tall, elderly man with grey hair, and a haggard unhappy face. Apart from being in the army, he was also the mayor, the police chief, the hotel owner, and the postmaster, whose desk Benjamin now occupied. His rank was that of colonel, and he laid his black bowler hat by Benjamin’s hand: ‘If you’re going to shoot me, please honour me by doing it now. I couldn’t stand the indignity of a trial.’
‘You forget,’ said Benjamin, ‘that we represent legality and order, progress, and honesty.’
The colonel pressed an anguished hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, my God!’
Benjamin knew him as the man to whom he had delivered the town twenty-five years ago, in return for a bus and the safety of his group. Nevertheless, in spite of his crimes, he tried to calm him down. ‘We couldn’t possibly shoot you, in any case.’
The colonel shuddered, and became even more distressed. ‘So you propose to hand me over to the justice of the people, do you? You progressives are even more diabolically cruel than we are.’
‘I’m not sure what’s going to happen to you yet,’ said Benjamin. ‘I have too much work to do.’
The man had tears in his eyes. ‘I’m tired of life, whatever you decide. For years I’ve been disillusioned with nihilism, at having to get up every morning and invent more novelties of disorder for the pampered populace when President Nil forgets to send his own suggestions through. I’ve known for a long time that it was retrograde and immoral to live under such a system. My wife has often seen me breaking my heart at the waste and burden of it all. I’ve been secretly praying for a safe and orderly existence, but I was so influenced by President Nil and his philosophy, which said that life should be a great lawless adventure, that I never knew how to try and change it. It’s been a thankless task. I’ve frequently prayed for a few hectares of soil in a safe mountain area, where I could live the life of a simple peasant. I admire and envy you insurrectionists trying to change all this. You don’t know how lucky you are, being the saviours of our country, the bringers of honesty and progress. I certainly wish you success in your venture. I know you intend to kill me, whatever you say, but if I were to stay alive, there’s nothing I would want to do more than to help you in your great and honourable task.’
‘We need all the help we can get,’ Benjamin admitted. ‘If you’re serious about it, go to the barber’s and get your head shaved, then buy a pair of workmen’s overalls, and come back to join our ranks – under another name, of course. If you can persuade other Nihilist soldiers to do the same, providing they have a genuine change of heart, we shall welcome them.’
Colonel Amrel reached forward and held Benjamin’s hand. ‘Thank you, dear sir, thank you. I am old now but I’m still a g
ood soldier. Shooting and looting is the life for me!’
‘Any of that,’ said Benjamin, though not too harshly, ‘and you’ll be shot yourself. My column will assemble in the square, so make sure you are there with your men.’
The room was empty. His danger, for the moment, was over. His arms and legs were shaking. He tried to hold them still. Power, to Benjamin, was most satisfying when he returned someone’s life to them, after refusing to take it away when he had the right and sometimes the duty to do so. There was nothing more sublime than this. But the weight in his chest seemed to have become displaced, and he walked to the window in an effort to control himself. He grabbed a high-backed chair so as not to fall. There were tears on his face. The uncanny circle of time had struck him with a hammer, as if to snap his spine at the crucial moment of action. He held on to the window-bars and looked through to the square. Blood patches and pieces of rag remained. Men stood beside the five lorries to talk and smoke. They would head for Agbat in the darkness, taking all night to get there, since the road was bad. With lorries, they would capture the place at dawn. Such thoughts stopped his limbs shaking when he walked back to his desk.
Chapter 25
The long train crawled and switched upon hairpin bends, continuing its night journey into the outlying spurs of the Athelstan Alps. From there, a sinuous pass between the mountains would take it gradually down to the central plain of Nihilon.
When Jaquiline climbed from between Cola’s sheets, the train shook so violently that she almost fell, her breasts flattening on the side of the bunk, while she clung as if a hundred foot drop opened below. But her bare feet touched the floor, and when she bent to get into her own bed, her arm jerked back, for in the dimmest of lights she saw a strange person lying there, presumably as fast asleep as Cola was. Sick with fear, she felt blindly around for her clothes and began to get dressed.
Her impusle was to pull the communication cord, and have him carried off screaming under some accusation or other, for after her unpleasant experience with the police chief at the frontier, she had no wish to confront another Nihilonian male. But she knew that sleep would be impossible whether she stopped the train or not, for to do so in a place like Nihilon was clearly to risk the unexpected, either in reprisals for a semi-criminal act, or in some form of brutal unsuitable assistance that would do her no good at all. And since her life wasn’t in danger, perhaps it was better to do nothing. In any case, he had threatened no harm yet.
He stirred under the blanket when the light went on, showing his grey close-cropped head, and groaned, while she held her breath. Then he grunted, about to wake up. It puzzled her how he had got into her compartment, until the unbearable heat of embarrassment ran down her body at the thought that he must have come in while she had been on the upper bunk with Cola. He had obviously seen only one person in the compartment, and so took the bottom bunk for himself. She shrank against the sink when his grey eyes opened wide from an emaciated face. ‘If you call out,’ he said, though in no way menacing, ‘I’ll kill you.’
Her hand drew away from the communication cord, angry at having decided to use it only now, when it was too late. He meant what he said, so she became less afraid, and stared back at him, openly curious, though her hand kept touch with the false book and its loaded gun. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette.
He sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Give me one, and I’ll tell you. Thank you. This train’s too slow. I’m going to Nihilon City, that’s all.’
‘So am I.’ She held her lighter under his cigarette. ‘Though it’s impossible to say when it will get there.’
When the flame went out he took it from her. ‘Double speed,’ he said, ‘that’s the first thing we’ll do. Double on the railways, and half on the roads. This nightmare’s got to stop. I’m just out of prison. I was awarded twenty-five years because I exposed the manager of the factory I worked at for swindling. The factory was going bankrupt, so I made a formal complaint. I had irrefutable proof that he was ruining the firm, but when I presented it I was arrested, and given twenty-five years as a misguided idealist. Strangely enough, even though the manager kept on with his dishonesty, the firm did not go bankrupt. It even prospered after I was sent to prison, so I hear. People won’t rebel against this government, because they see that God is on the side of the Nihilists. Do you have any food?’
She passed a packet of biscuits from her handbag. ‘How did you get out of prison?’
‘I talked my way out. From the moment I got in I began talking about my idealistic principles. I decided that since I’d been sent away for honesty, I’d continue to be honest, and I’d try to persuade everybody else at the prison to be honest. I calculated that most of them were already honest in any case, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. I didn’t expect this to be acceptable to the authorities though, because they hoped to reform the inmates into becoming swindlers and tricksters. I saw that I had nothing to lose, because it seemed to me that if they didn’t want me to ruin their good work they’d have to throw me out. And if the prison authorities were persuaded by what I was trying to say, they’d have to admit that none of us should be in prison in any case.
‘I talked so much I hardly slept or ate during the whole year I was there. The prisoners were swayed from their newly acquired rules of villainy. The governor and his soldiers saw how right I was, and came over to my side. They all wanted to do some work – to work, understand?’
The word ‘work’ touched some deep emotion in him. The lamps of his half-buried eyes seemed about to burst, but he drew his shaking hands across to dim them. ‘I don’t suppose you know, being a foreigner, that it’s always been hard to get people to work in Nihilon. Naturally, nihilism and work are not compatible, but President Nil, damn him, came up with the following solution – many years ago, now. A man was granted permission to kill somebody if he paid a hundred thousand klipps into the private account of President Nil at the State Bank. On receipt of this payment the man – or woman, though not many women were interested – was given a revolver and a Killing Certificate, with the name of the person inscribed on it whom he wished to put an end to. So everyone has an incentive to work, and save, because there is no one, in this country at any rate, who doesn’t have someone he wants to kill. Many people fervently saved in order to get their hundred thousand, and therefore a Killing Certificate. There was no need to produce houses or cars for them to spend their money on. True, a lot of people die, and sometimes whole families are wiped out, but people are cheap. Even the birthrate seemed to go up when this scheme got going. There was one sad case though of a poor man who worked all his life to save a hundred thousand klipps, and just as he was on his way to the bank with his last thousand he had a heart attack and died. Yet again, another man who had saved his money went to the state bank and duly collected his Killing Certificate and gun. Then, with happiness and murder in his heart, he went outside to lay in wait for his enemy. But the man he wanted to kill had got there half an hour before, and had already collected his Killing Certificate and gun. Lying in wait, he shot our happy saver dead as he came down the steps.
‘This stupid law, in fact, has killed a great many people in our country, even more than if we had been at war. And as you can imagine, it’s the best, go-ahead people who have suffered by it. The knowledge that such things ought to be changed gave me the strength to go on talking so long in prison. When I was successful beyond my wildest dreams we abolished the prison, and formed ourselves into a revolutionary committee. Hearing that fighting has broken out with Cronacia, and that there is trouble in Nihilon City, I’m going to offer my talking experience to the insurrectionary forces, which I’ve no doubt they’ll need when they’ve won. Those at the prison are taking over the surrounding area for the new movement. So if you don’t mind I’d like to get some sleep, because we’ll reach Agbat in the morning and there may be some fighting there. Put out the light, please.’
He fell asleep immediately, worn down by
so much talking, and as Jaquiline stretched herself on the hard and chilly floor she didn’t see much hope that conditions for women would improve when the new régime took over, though her fatigue was so great that she was soon lost in darkening dreams.
The slow-running train jolted her half-awake against the lower bunk, and she heard the banging chains of goods wagons passing in the night. She wondered where they were, when noise as if a bomb had exploded in a drain pipe shook the carriage. The door was pulled open, and lights switched on. Two burly men in police uniforms stood at the doorway with pointed revolvers. Cola, a sheet around her chest, sat up and screamed, more to do what was expected, it seemed to Jaquiline, than get anywhere by her alarm.
‘You’d better dress,’ one of the men said. ‘It’s the Groves of Aspron for you.’
‘We’re going to Nihilon City,’ Jaquiline told them as she stood up.
‘It’s Aspron for you, as well,’ the other man laughed, reaching into the lower bunk, where the escaped prisoner would have slept through the disturbance if he hadn’t now been punched into waking up. ‘As for you, you’ll be shot at the next station.’
He stood by the door, head down as if helplessly ashamed at his recent escape. The train stopped, and Jaquiline felt she had nothing to lose, for while the policemen’s pistols were lowered, she lifted hers from the book-box and aimed it at them both. ‘Now, you go to Nihilon City,’ she said to the escaped prisoner.
‘I couldn’t,’ he said, ‘they’ve caught me. The world’s in ruins at my feet.’
‘If you don’t go,’ she cried, her hand trembling with rage at his sudden collapse, ‘I’ll kill you. Get off while the train’s stopped.’
Travels in Nihilon Page 18
