Travels in Nihilon

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Don’t make me,’ he pleaded. But he caught the fanatical shine in her eyes, and when she lifted the gun to fire he pushed between the two policemen and went along the corridor.

  She smiled, watching him go, and Cola’s hand reached slyly down, snatching her gun away, while one of the policemen knocked her back against the window. It took time to recover from his blow, and to realize what had happened. Now regarding her as a totally unscrupulous person, he pointed a gun at her, while the other man searched her luggage. ‘Not only does she hide a dangerous political prisoner,’ he said, ‘and help him to escape, but she also carries wood in her luggage, which points to the fact that she’s an arsonist and a foreign spy. There’ll be a big trial in Nihilon City for this.’

  Her face had gone pale at such blatant betrayal by Cola, now jostling her as she hurriedly dressed. ‘I had to do it,’ she said, ‘for the sake of my son and husband. They won’t send me to Aspron now. All those sessions of analysis would have broken my spirit, really they would. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

  From the pain in her voice Jaquiline knew that she’d had no alternative, though she was by no means reconciled at being the one to suffer because of Cola’s distress. In any case, all she wanted her to do right now was stop whining – which she did. The train travelled more freely, and Jaquiline saw faint edges of moonlight above the black mark of the mountain crest.

  Carrying their luggage, they were forced along the corridor towards the door. The train stopped again, by a hut which served as an isolated wayside-station, and Jaquiline went first, then helped Cola down, already forgetting the bad turn she had done her, since they both seemed to be equal now that they were still prisoners.

  The policemen shot the locks away, and inside the hut was a long table, two chairs, and a leather-upholstered seat along one wall under the small window. Jaquiline was glad to get out of the chill wind, and looked gladly towards the fireplace.

  The bald policeman, revealed as such when he removed his hat, pulled a handful of old timetable leaflets from a hook on the wall and crumpled them into the fireplace, while his friend, who had thick black hair, took the bundles of wood from Jaquiline’s suitcase and laid them on top. A blaze was soon kindled, and both policemen put their hats into the flames. Underneath their tunics, which they removed, were civilian jackets, and they now looked more like ordinary people. Both the police jackets were silently folded and placed on the fire. ‘Go outside,’ the bald one said to Jaquiline, ‘and get some coal. There’s a heap of it by the side of the hut.’

  ‘So you’re not policemen?’ she said.

  The one with black hair laughed. ‘We never were. My friend here is a shopkeeper called Peter. I’m a master carpenter, and my name is Paul. We both won an Adventure Permit from the government, so we’re allowed to do all this. When we get to Agbat we’ll have to go to the mayor’s office to get the section torn from our certificates which says “Abduct Two Women”. We’ve already qualified for the clause which says “Take Policemen’s Clothes”. When we’ve finished with you we go on to the next panel, which tells us to “Steal a Car”. The adventure’s only just begun, and we’re enjoying it very much, aren’t we, Peter?’

  Peter laughed, and tried to kiss Cola, who pushed him away.

  ‘Let’s get the coal,’ said Jaquiline.

  ‘If you try to escape when you’re outside,’ Peter said, ‘we’ll come and hunt you. We get extra marks on our score for “Hunt Two Women”, so nothing would please us better. Those awarded the highest score at the end of the year get another ticket the year after, and we’re doing very well so far.’

  ‘There won’t be any next year,’ Jaquiline told them. ‘Your country is about to have a revolution.’ They sat on the floor by the fire, Peter taking his boots off, and laughed loudly at her threat, which seemed irrelevant in such an enjoyable situation.

  Jaquiline and Cola brought several large lumps of coal into the hut, and they were considerably blackened by such work. Their two captors then decided to lock the door for the night, and were soon fast asleep from the heat of the fire, and also no doubt from their adventures of the last few days. Jaquiline only half slept.

  Eager for more thrills, Peter and Paul prodded them awake with their toecaps so that they could set out for Agbat, where they intended to register the exploits so far achieved. A faint streak in the east gradually made the stars go paler. While the two men slaked themselves on Cola inside the hut, Jaquiline watched the birth of a new day. The first light changed to a band of gold on the mountainous horizon. Each lofty peak in succession was tinged with a roseate blush. Shadows gradually melted away, revealing forests, spurs, fields, and villages, in emerald green and patches of dull brown. From grey cold night the sun suddenly burst from behind the mountains and flooded the whole landscape with light and warmth, as Cola came out of the hut smiling shyly, followed by her two licensed adventurers.

  Thus the orange sun from Cronacia warmed them as they walked along. Cola and Jaquiline went hand in hand, dazed by exhaustion, bedraggled, without luggage, their clothes and faces black with coal. Jaquiline reflected that nothing had gone right since crossing that seemingly harmless frontier. It was almost as if she had come to this country in an unwitting act of self-destruction, having placed herself in a situation where, threatened and helpless, there was no one to whose good nature she could appeal, not even a consulate she could run to and find refuge in.

  They went along a path by the single-track railway, no houses in sight, though here and there were areas bearing clear plough marks, and groves of scarecrow trees that passed for orchards. When she stopped to take a stone out of her shoe, Peter pushed her on. ‘We’re late already,’ he snapped. ‘The office will be closed if we don’t hurry.’

  ‘It can’t even be opened yet,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t argue. We want to register, then we’ll be awarded tickets for a hotel.’

  ‘What fun we’ll have!’ Paul laughed. While they were discussing who would rape Jaquiline first, Cola explained to her that the office would indeed be closed if they didn’t get there soon, because it stayed open all night, and shut early in the morning. Jaquiline reproached her with wanting to hurry, in that case, pulling her arm so that they would go more slowly.

  ‘Why?’ asked Cola, her mouth round and hungry for some great experience that certainly would never satisfy her. ‘I want us to get there so that we can claim a hotel ticket for seventy-two hours. It isn’t often an ordinary patriotic Nihilonian woman like me gets such a chance. It certainly will be better than Aspron. And I’ll at least have a romantic memory when I’m thrown into the despair of a cure. It’s awful to be cured, I hear. That’s the worst part of Aspron. It brings on an awful feeling of melancholia. People have been known to kill themselves after a cure, but I won’t, I know I won’t, because at least I shall have this brief encounter to look back on.’

  The idea of being passed like a parcel from one brutish Nihilist to another appalled. Jaquiline, and an urgent feeling of sickness rose in her throat. Where at first there had been laughter and good fellowship between Peter and Paul, they now stood bellowing into each other’s faces. ‘I demand the tall, fair one,’ said Peter. But Paul wanted her too, and Jaquiline felt anything but flattered by their urgent desires. Cola turned pale and vampiric, as if about to rend her with jealousy. They stopped and looked back. Peter suggested tossing a coin, and when Paul won he was accused of cheating.

  ‘Let the clerk who fills out our hotel voucher decide,’ Peter said, standing glumly by, hat in hand.

  ‘You’ll bribe him. I know your sort,’ Paul scoffed.

  Peter looked at his watch. ‘It’s too late. It’s eight o’clock. They’ve closed.’

  Paul was almost in tears. ‘Now what do we do?’ Jaquiline was too tired to feel joy at the good news. ‘We’ll have to wait until ten o’clock tonight,’ he cried.

  The path turned into a lane, with the imprints of carts and motorcars on it. Houses were scattered ove
r the hills. A young man walked by, his face pale and sweating. He had a short dark beard, and his eyes were turned from them, as if he were embarrassed. Behind came two young boys, possibly his sons, one of ten years old who carried a bundle of brushwood on his head, another of about six who had a filthy half-filled sack on his shoulder. It was a depressing sight, but at least they were people. She was choking from thirst, feeble with hunger and lack of sleep, and was almost ready to welcome a bed under any conditions.

  She felt more than ever menaced on hearing the two men whisper. Both heads were close, and she saw the sweat on their skin, and the half-hidden workings of their lips. Peter laughed softly, and spoke such unmistakable evil that she began to run.

  ‘Come back!’ Cola shouted treacherously, before either of the men saw her escape. The lane went downhill, more of a road now, and a few hundred metres away lay the first houses of Agbat. There was a sharp explosion like a firework. A chip of stone flew off a boulder by the roadside and struck her forehead. The pain was icy, but she couldn’t stop, with the footsteps of either Peter or Paul drumming after her.

  A train whistle sounded, a sharp comforting civilized note cutting the warm morning air. Blood ran down her face, and she tasted it on her lips. If only she could reach the houses. She saw it was impossible. Who would help her, anyway? She might even be worse off. A shoe left her foot, and she kicked the other free, to run in her stockings. Cola and the men behind shouted again for her to stop. They didn’t mean it: they were her friends, they said. No harm would come to her. Another bullet hit the trunk of a tree, but she ran, hair flying loose, filled with dread but not caring if they killed her, yet too frightened to consider whether or not it was worth dying for.

  For some reason she wanted it to rain. She stumbled, feet cut, and her stockings in rags. Houses slid out of sight. A weight suddenly fell on her, and it felt as if her back were broken when she tried to rise. Her face was pressed into the dust, her flowing tears changing it to mud.

  Magically, the pressure was off. Whoever had sought to crush her bones rolled to one side, and someone else was running. There were further shots, and a scream of shock. She was afraid to get up and see the cause of these mysterious noises, unable to believe the danger was over. But the man at her side lay still, his face turned. She kept her head down in the silence, as if more danger might be coming.

  A hard blunt object pressed itself in her side. When she looked, the man took his boot away and bent down. He held a rifle, and wore a sort of blue overall. ‘Get up and follow me,’ he said. His head was shaved, and his face was hollow of cheek. She stumbled, unable to stand properly, and though his eyes were expressionless and staring, as if they had not yet fully comprehended the last sight they had seen, he held a hand out to help her.

  Chapter 26

  Enjoying the civil war from behind the bullet-proof glass of the café by the main square of Nihilon City, Richard decided not to open the large briefcase which the professor had left with him. At least, not before he had called for another bottle of Nihilitz.

  ‘Yes, general,’ the waiter said, reminding him too abruptly of the new post that had been thrust upon him by the insurrectionary forces. He had no intention of becoming a soldier in this squalid power-switch, though he felt sure that if he were to step outside, the dissidents would certainly recognize him, and confirm him in his new post with such celebration that he might not survive it. ‘I hope you have a good campaign, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘The weather is perfect for it. It rained last time, and the revolution fizzled out. Those taking part put down their guns and went home.’

  ‘When was that?’ Richard asked, alarmed by this sudden revelation of volatility in the Nihilonian populace.

  ‘Two years ago, sir. But it wasn’t really serious. Those who ran took their guns home with them, and it was said later that the Rain Revolution – we have a great sense of humour here, sir – was only a dress rehearsal for the real one that was to come, which is now. Things seem to be much better organized this time, I’m glad to say.’ He looked through the glass and rubbed his hands gleefully at flames jerking out of a building across the square.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be taking part,’ Richard said, with a little irony, ‘when you’ve finished work?’

  ‘No, general,’ the waiter smiled. ‘I’ll go home and watch it on television. I expect the programmes will run all night if the firing goes on. I’ll go out into the street with my flag though, when it’s all over, you may be sure of that. My wife’s at home stitching it together now.’ From the door that led to the main hall of the café, he turned and added: ‘She’s the creative one of the family, sir!’

  People went in and out as if it were a normal day of the week. He watched them coming across the square, calmly picking their way over débris, and the occasional corpse that the well-trained men of the ambulance service had not yet been able to move.

  After a fiery and comforting drink of Nihilitz, he delved into the briefcase. By weight it contained more than papers, and he took out a revolver and a box of ammunition, as well as a belt and holster, and a sort of collapsible tram-conductor’s hat with a red band between the peak and the crown, which he assumed was for his own general’s head.

  The largest map, when he unfolded it, was an official publication for Nihilon Army Command, a coloured representation of the country on the one-million scale, but stated at the top left-hand corner to be a provisional edition which was only to be used with extreme caution, as all detail on it was totally unreliable. Thinking of his previous experience in Ekeret Square, when his precious town-plan had been torn to pieces, he hurriedly fastened on the revolver holster, and loaded the gun, in case some fanatical map-deprived horde should try the same trick again.

  He examined the map which, for a place like Nihilon, was as pretty a piece of cartography as you could ever wish to see. The system of relief, by contours, brought the whole land into instant perspective. It was mountainous, except for the great central plain on which most of the large towns were situated. Nihilon was bordered on three sides by rugged coast, except for a wide isthmus which joined it to Cronacia, and which was crossed by a belt of high mountains. The country was nearly five hundred kilometres from west to east, and four hundred from north to south, giving it an area of approximately 200,000 square kilometres. With such a preponderance of precipitous mountain it was easy to see why, throughout its history, Nihilon had been plagued by terrible floods. In fact, it was difficult to see why the central plain wasn’t permanently inundated.

  If the map was accurate, communications seemed to be in a very rudimentary state – especially the roads. One highway (on paper at any rate) appeared to run from the southern frontier to Shelp, and then up the Nihil Valley to Nihilon City. He was happy not to have been chosen for the land approach, like Benjamin in his Thundercloud, and Adam the poet on his bicycle. He wondered also how Edgar had fared after disembarking at Shelp, and Jaquiline Sulfer who was supposed to reach Nihilon City this afternoon by train.

  To the north of the town were the Athelstan Alps, whose highest peak, of over four thousand metres, was Mount Nihilon. On a large plateau to the south of this range was a place called Tungsten, joined by the only other modern highway leading up to it from Nihilon City. On the margin of the map was a note to say that at Tungsten there was a rocket base, and that the first Nihilon spaceship was to be launched from it in two days.

  After a further and necessary swig of Nihilitz, Richard saw from the typewritten sheets that he was in charge of a column that, the day after tomorrow (by which time all fighting in Nihilon City should be over), would form the left wing of a general advance on Tungsten. The centre was already on its way there from Shelp, and the right wing would move up from Agbat. His orders demanded that the launching of the rocket into space must be prevented at all costs – in the name of Honour and Decency. Nihilism must not be allowed this great triumph, for what the Nihilists had been striving for in over twenty years of work and research was none other
than the first procreative hook-up in space. In the rocket would be an athletic young man and a nubile girl who were to leave the capsule at a time specified by computer (full television coverage was to be arranged for the whole country) and copulate in space. The technical details of this were on the secret list, but the Nihilists expected a birth from this brief encounter, a child which would, on its thirteenth birthday, be crowned king or queen of the First Universal Nihilist Kingdom. It was because the revolutionaries were determined to forestall such a monstrously indecent plan that Richard had been given a key part in the advance towards Tungsten. If his column did not get there before blast-off, the propaganda effect of this victory for Nihilism would never be lived down, even if the new forces did succeed in eventually taking hold of the country.

  In any case he saw that such an expedition against Tungsten would be a favourable opportunity to explore the Athelstan Alps, and so fill in more pages of his guidebook, which was why he had come to the country in the first place. With this also in mind he decided to look at those parts of the city so far untouched by the insurrection. It was midday, and the firing had lost its intensity, so he walked, somewhat giddily due to all he had drunk, along the western side of the square and into one of the avenues leading to the river.

  The way there was quiet, a few people busily going home to lunch. Shop-fronts were boarded up and the burning sun gave everything a dreamy unreal touch. He brought a magazine from a kiosk, served by a woman with a bottle of Nihilitz beside her who was doing some crazy sort of four-peg knitting.

  He leaned against the parapet of the long, ornate bridge, and watched the swirling oily water of the River Nihil, polluted beyond measure after flowing through the industrial complex of Nilbud. A smell of old stone and vinegar came up from it. He wrote in his guidebook-notes that the bridge was of a particularly fine construction, adding as an afterthought, and no doubt under the influence of nihilism, that the engineer who built it had thrown his wife from the middle span after its completion.