Travels in Nihilon

by Alan Sillitoe

  The banks on either side were steep, so he decided to call the river a gorge at this point, thinking that even the dullest country had to appear interesting in a guidebook, if you expected people to buy it. Whether they went there or not was another matter, though it was certain that few of them ever would.

  He was disturbed from his stupor by the sight of a man running from the eastern end of the bridge, as if anxious to get across it and help the insurrection in Nihilon – though there was little enough firing at the moment to attract anyone. The runner had apparently passed a policeman, who now woke up and shouted: ‘Come back. Stop!’

  The man was wild-haired, big-eyed, his coat flying open. Another policeman at the western end of the bridge stood in the middle of the road with his revolver pointed, so that it seemed as if the fugitive’s fate was already sealed.

  Richard looked on in amusement, as if the inhabitants of Nihilon only existed to provide him with continuous diversion. However, he stopped smiling when a bullet, meant for the fleeing man, shaved its way so close that it singed the hair by his temples. With the policemen closing in, the man, only a few metres away, jumped on to the parapet, then fell laughing into the river below. Sluggish circles eddied towards the concrete supports, and Richard tried to see under the surface of the water. ‘Let me see your documents,’ said one of the policemen, putting away his gun.

  ‘Why did he jump into the river?’ asked Richard, showing his passport.

  ‘Suicide,’ said the policeman. ‘This is known as the Bridge of Suicides. I have orders to shoot anyone on sight trying to commit suicide. It’s a difficult job. The government doesn’t like people to kill themselves, because it gives it a bad name. There’s only one thing better than a dead Nihilist, and that is a live Nihilist. Also, there’s a saying in Nihilon: “Stop a suicide, commit a murder”. That always means better business for the police, anyway. Only last week a man was saved in the nick of time by a friend from killing himself, and next day he killed his wife. So we’re trying to stamp suicide out. I shot three of them last week as they were climbing on to the parapet. It certainly slowed them down a bit. This one just now was the first this week.’

  ‘What’s the point of killing them?’

  ‘Only way to stop them. “Died resisting arrest” looks much better than “Committed suicide”. We’ve got our statistics to think of.’ He walked away, whistling some popular Nihilonian folk-song.

  Beyond the bridge was a squalid café whose exterior looked much like that of an old warehouse. A few wickerwork chairs and tables were set on the dry mud pavement outside. There was little traffic however, and, for the moment, no shooting. Richard hoped that here at least he wouldn’t be recognized for the general he was, ordering a cold orange drink which, when it came, he sat back to enjoy. After writing some high-flown notes on the Bridge of Suicides, he lazily opened his magazine and read an article describing how the Future was supposed to Work for the inhabitants of Nihilon from a domestic point of view. ‘Homemaking’ was its title:

  ‘After a meal, all dishes and cutlery will be thrown away, and within a few minutes new ones, of the finest porcelain and stainless steel, will come up the chute to your flat and be mechanically placed on your sideboard. There is an end to the drudgery of washing-up for Nihilists, both men and women. On taking off your clothes at night, they are to be thrown with nonchalant nihilism out of the window. These will be collected by the garbage man and, in the morning, complete new sets of identical garments will be found by the door, together with milk and newspapers. In fact,’ the article concluded, ‘the future has already arrived in Nihilon, because this is exactly what takes place in one of our recently constructed towns called Paradise City, whose inhabitants will be able to avail themselves of these delectable services.’

  A young blond man with a beard sat nearby, and he must have seen the article that Richard was reading, for he called out: ‘They never tell the real truth about Paradise City. I escaped from it a month ago, climbed over a wall and ran a machine-gun gauntlet to get free. The dishes aren’t porcelain at all. They are crude earthenware. In the morning they come back broken and dirty. Everyone suspects they are the same ones they threw out, but badly patched up and stuck together. So the wily housewives clean their own dishes, and put them away carefully so that they don’t break. Some housewives didn’t even put them in the chute at the beginning, preferring to save the time and the risk, but they were arrested for a breach of the peace and as enemies of national endeavour.

  ‘As for the clothes that we were told to throw out of the window, they were returned even more torn and dirty after being kicked up the stairs again by the street cleaners. In fact this experiment isn’t working very well, and people in Paradise City are always trying to exchange their flats for more humble dwellings in other towns, even in the slums where life might be harder. Somehow they would feel safer there!’

  ‘What are you doing now that you no longer live in Paradise City?’

  ‘I’m a disgruntled young intellectual, so the government gave me a particularly difficult and thankless task. I’ve been assigned to find and kill the leading generals of the insurrectionary forces. I spent last week combing the surrounding area of the city, posing as a revolutionary, but it’s impossible to find out who their leader is. I suspect it’s because they change him so often. You’re a foreigner, so you can have no idea how difficult it is for us Nihilists. I don’t suppose you’re even interested. But my whole future is at stake, because I’ve been promised a full pension for the rest of my life if I find one, and I’m only twenty-four so you can see how much it means to me. I shall just have to go on looking, because if I find him, and kill him, the whole insurrectionary movement will collapse.’

  His breath stank of drink, hunger, exhaustion, and avarice. Richard had an impulse to promote him on the spot to General of the Insurrection by handing over the briefcase, simply to see the effect it would have, but he didn’t do so because the position that had been so haphazardly given to him had already grown attractive by the very weight of its power. So he preferred to keep his rank for the moment, in spite of possible danger from this assassin.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said the young man, offering his hand to be shaken. ‘I must hunt my enemy.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Richard, taking it, but glad to see him walk quickly towards the Bridge of Suicides, talking to himself.

  Chapter 27

  The progress wound its way from town to town, and on the wooden throne at its head sat Mella who, after the incredible hardships of her young life, was now wheeled high on a seat of honour by the soldiers of the new revolution. At first she had insisted that Edgar sit on her knee as she went along, though after argument and tears she had finally agreed that he should take his place by her side on a separate and more ordinary chair, but certainly close enough for her to reach out and take his hand whenever the motherly impulse came upon her.

  Far from feeling annoyed at her milder attentions, Edgar now began to enjoy them, for having separated from his wife some years ago it was comforting once more to be the only person a woman doted on. And it was obvious to anyone that Mella cared for him alone, except during those moments when she was sadly reflecting on the fate of her father.

  During their triumphant way towards Orcam, when Edgar was out of his chair and walking by Mella’s mobile platform, he saw in the distance a figure pushing a wheelbarrow. Whoever it was moved slowly, for the wheelbarrow was laden with suitcases, but he eventually drew level, a man with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, a jacket draped over his suitcases, and a white handkerchief on his bald head as protection from the sun.

  At the sight of armed men, and the medieval contraption on which Mella was seated, he moved well into the side to let them pass. Edgar noticed, by the large labels on his luggage, that they were compatriots. In other circumstances he would have taken this as a warning to keep clear, but now that Nihilon was boiling with insurrection and trouble he called out a friendly greeting. �
��Where are you from?’ he asked, when the man came over to him.

  ‘I set out from Nihilon City yesterday, on a motor bike,’ he was told. ‘But then it broke down, so I managed to buy this wheelbarrow.’ The convoy stopped to rest and eat, and while food was prepared, Edgar told the man how he had recently landed at Shelp and was on his way to Nihilon City to write a guidebook.

  ‘I wouldn’t go if I were you,’ the man said. ‘There’s trouble there by anybody’s standards. I was on holiday, but I’ve given it up. When I got back to the apartment I’d rented, after a stroll, I found that an artillery shell had blown half of it to pieces. So I came away, because if I’d stayed till the end of the month there’d be trouble over the inventory. They’d want to know where the wall went. You know what these Nihilists are – they’re just a pack of vicious misers.’

  Edgar gave him some of the convoy’s food. ‘Isn’t it difficult to rent a flat in Nihilon City?’

  He talked with his mouth full: ‘I thought it would be cheaper than a hotel, you see. I tried to be cunning, by taking a furnished flat in the capital. I came by train, and got the address and key from the tourist office at the station. I can laugh about the experience now, but it wasn’t funny at the time, though I suppose I was ready for a bit of an adventure.

  ‘It was a dull day,’ he went on, ‘so as soon as I went into the flat, I switched on the light – and a radio started blaring. There were small loudspeakers in every room, I found. The only way to switch them off was to put the lights out. Not to be defeated, I took out my electrician’s kit even before opening my luggage and adjusted the lights, so that they stayed on and the radio went off. I grinned to myself, and started to unpack. When that was finished I wanted a cup of coffee, so went into the kitchen. I filled the kettle, and when I turned on the gas-taps, music again blared through every loudspeaker. When the music stopped, they started to read the Lies.

  ‘Well, a chap can’t live that way, can he? By sheer hard labour, and a damned lot of ingenuity, I worked on that problem half the afternoon till I got some peace into the flat at last. Then I went for a walk and to buy some cigarettes. When I came back and opened the door, music came on again. It made me sweat with rage, I can tell you, but after an hour’s work I found out how to stop it. Silence once more. I went into the lounge to relax, but opening the door brought the Lies on again, a long account of that dirty space-rocket due to go up soon. Every door of the flat, I discovered, switched on news or music when it was opened, and didn’t turn it off when it was shut. I slaved all day and half the night to fix every door so that it could open peacefully. I breathed a sigh of relief and went into the lavatory for a few minutes. When I pulled the chain, it brought the martial music back – all over the damned place. I tell you, I wasn’t all that sorry when that howitzer-shell shattered it. You could hear the music cracking all along the street then, but I’d given up already. I’m on my way to Shelp to get a boat home. If there aren’t any ships I’ll trudge to the frontier. It’s not far from there. I wanted to get a plane back but the airport’s closed. I’m all of a sweat when I take the handle of this barrow, in case the music should start when I push it, or bring on the Lies, which is worse. Never again.’

  ‘Why leave Nihilon now?’ Edgar wanted to know. ‘It’s getting interesting at last.’

  ‘You won’t say that when you see Nihilon City,’ the man said with a sneer, getting into the shafts of his wheelbarrow, ‘that’s all I can say.’

  Edgar was sorry to see him go, though he couldn’t have said why. During the next day’s progress the column grew to more than two thousand soldiers, a disciplined and dedicated force which wheeled north across the fertile central plain of Nihilon with its network of railways, roads and canals, its numerous towns and villages.

  Wherever they stayed the night, whether at some humble village house, or on rocky ground in the open air, an almost royal bed was laid for them, with four guards posted a little way out from each corner. Edgar considered them to be still too close, for Mella, even though he was exhausted by the changing scenery of the day’s trek, uninhibitedly threw off the bedclothes and coaxed him into making love, behaving as if there were no other being within sight.

  After one such connubial encounter she fell to kissing his hand tenderly, and said: ‘When the war is over, my love, we shall live together, not in the presidential palace, of which I have too many unhappy memories, but in a new one that my grateful people will build for us.’

  Edgar shuddered at this news, for though he was fond of his passionate protectress he could hardly envisage them settling down as man and wife. Still less could he see himself as the husband of the President of the Republic – or whatever else she would be called after the change of power. All these events would be no more than memorable material for the book he intended to write on his personal experiences during the Nihilon insurrection, an account which would mark him out for fame in his own country.

  ‘I had never dreamed of becoming the President of the Republic, my dear,’ she went on, ‘but now that these honest soldiers want me to, I can’t refuse. I have my dead father’s memory to consider. But after five or ten years, when the country is honest, peaceful, and prosperous, I shall hand over my office to some other worthy person, so that my husband and I can then give ourselves up to eternal happiness, and to the education of our children.’

  She shed tears at her speech, wetting the back of his hand with them. All he could hope for, in his fear of such a future, was that the war would go on for a long time. ‘Are you fond of children?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said sadly, doing her best to stop weeping. ‘I’ve hardly ever known any. But I’m sure I am, and that I shall adore our own.’

  Orcam was a locality of low square houses and unpaved streets extending some way into the plain. Most of the built-up area lay at the confluence of two rivers, which made the town easy to defend. Mella’s column marched into the squalid suburb on the south side of the river. An advance party had already tried to rush the bridge, but all thirty had been shot down, and their dead bodies lay scattered along the straight street. This rebuff put Mella and her soldiers into a very gloomy mood, though Edgar felt selfishly hopeful on realizing that the war might not be over as quickly as everybody in the column had thought during the euphoria of the last few days.

  A deserted house was found for them, out of the line of fire, and they occupied a low-ceilinged empty room on the ground floor whose only door led into a back-yard. The wide bed was covered by a hot, lumpy mattress. In spite of the depressing fact that they had at last met real military opposition, Mella kissed him in an excess of cheerful passion when she got into the bed, her naked body hot and soft against him. He could not but respond, and they were soon locked in a slow-moving but feverish bout of copulation.

  When she was peacefully sleeping, one of her arms possessively across his chest, he felt utterly unable to close his eyes. Far from soothing him, the lovemaking had exhausted him to the marrow, so that in their insomnia his thoughts turned towards escape.

  He eased himself up and stood by the bed. If he walked rapidly he could be back at Shelp in two or three days, where he would no doubt find the man with the wheelbarrow also waiting for a boat.

  If he begged a lift on some vehicle he might even get there in a few hours, in which case he’d be there before him. Certainly it would be safer and more convivial sitting at a bar by the harbour, drinking the local brew, than pushing on into the savage interior of Nihilon with Mella and her column of incompetent freedom fighters.

  He hurriedly dressed, holding his breath while she turned over. The inevitable shots were heard from the centre of Orcam, and he hoped these would now increase to divert attention from his escape. Outside in the small high-walled courtyard he peered hard through the darkness, glad that there was no guard nearby.

  It wasn’t easy to undo the bolt of the gate in the far corner which was caked in dry rust, and squeaked noisily when he forced it. He expected
to hear Mella’s loving voice call him back, but she seemed even more exhausted than he was for once. He walked along an alleyway formed by two walls, blessing his luck that it was deserted. Even the dogs seemed to have gone from Orcam. But breath scraped in his lungs, as if he were out of condition after being so long carried on wheels. He’d hardly used his feet in the last few days, and now paused to rest, looking up at the clearly defined stars, where all seemed really peaceful – though he knew it was not so.

  He discovered an outlet between two houses, leading into the main street. A cool breeze came from the river, and he found himself a few hundred metres from the heavily guarded bridge which led to the centre of Orcam. But the taste of freedom was sweet, even though he was still too close to Mella.

  He must have taken the wrong turning from the courtyard, though he gradually increased his distance from the bridge by keeping well into the sides of the houses. He began to breathe freely for the first time since leaving Mella’s bed, and decided to turn right at the next intersection, so as to get on to the Shelp road. The street was empty, and he wondered where the two thousand soldiers of Mella’s brigade had gone. A feeling that they had deserted her cause made him sweat, and pause in his slow painstaking footsteps.

  A green signal-light wriggled like a tadpole into the air. The silence haunted him. He fancied a faint hissing sound as a small rocket went up, which meant that it had been fired from close by. Left and right along the intersection, both streets were crammed with soldiers – standing, sitting, smoking, looking at nothing, waiting perhaps for another signal-light. A bayonet was thrust against his chest: ‘Where are you going?’

  The slight irritant of the point made it difficult to speak. The man glared, and repeated his question, this time in a rasping whisper that terrified Edgar far more than a bawling voice.