Travels in Nihilon

by Alan Sillitoe

  They followed the coffee-distiller back into his bar, where he poured out two large cups. ‘You were saying,’ said Benjamin, ‘that another army passed this way.’

  ‘Was I? Well, it was twenty-five years ago. You can’t expect me to remember every detail. It was President Took’s rearguard, a few stragglers really, heading up into the Athelstans.’

  ‘Why would they come through here?’ Benjamin asked, touched with curiosity now that the shack-keeper was veering on to his pet obsession of Nihilon’s recent history. ‘The main road goes through Nilbud.’

  ‘It does,’ the man smiled, ‘but it was blocked by the Nihilists. So Took and his hundred got on a train as far as Agbat. They were heading for sanctuary in Cronacia, but the bridge beyond Agbat was strongly held by the Nihilists, and Amrel had already been abandoned. There was nobody poor Took could trust. Anyhow, he comes in here, still wearing his top-hat and chains of office, and asks for coffee. I gave him some. What else could I do? But when the time came to pay and he walked out without doing so I reached for my revolver and shot him in the back. If he can’t pay for his coffee, I thought, I’ll kill the swine, just as if he’s a peasant who can’t afford to. Equality’s my game, and I never lost by it yet.’

  Sweat drops were falling into Benjamin’s cup. The cat leapt to the floor and sauntered outside under the sack. ‘You killed President Took?’

  ‘He only had ten soldiers by that time,’ said the man. ‘The rest died on the way up from Agbat. He was a fine man, President Took. He spoke calmly, and walked in here with great dignity.’

  Benjamin’s hands shook. He put the cup down, and loosened his revolver, feeling in the grip of his worst moment since entering Nihilon. ‘So this is where he died? What was the date?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ said the man. ‘The soldiers burned down my shack, that’s all I know. But I built another. In any case President Took didn’t die. I was so wild with rage that my shot-went wide. His hat fell off, and he asked why I’d done it. When I told him, he said he’d only forgotten to pay for his coffee because he was so preoccupied with defeat. He gave me a golden coin, and then left, but some of his men stayed and set fire to my hut. Then they shot at me and my wife, but we were already running down the valley.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘He went on towards Tungsten. Or maybe up behind the peaks somewhere. I don’t know. I heard from a peasant that he died in a cave after a dinner of boiled roots. But who can be sure?’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What’s the difference? He dies in a cave, I die of boredom. Nihilism knows no frontiers. It loves everyone, and is no respecter of persons.’

  ‘So that’s how it happened,’ Benjamin said, walking with Jaquiline towards the sackcloth.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted the shackman.

  They turned to see a heavy revolver pointed at them. ‘If I call my soldiers in,’ said Benjamin, ‘you won’t escape this time. I don’t like people who dodge their fate. They’re the worst people in the world, a scourge to everyone. Put that gun down.’

  ‘Pay for coffee, then!’

  Benjamin longed to shoot it out, knowing he would kill him. He was totally unconcerned for his own safety, but dared not do it with Jaquiline by his side.

  The café-owner smiled. ‘If it’s true you’re leading the forces of law and honesty to final victory, you can’t refuse to pay for your coffee, though you may be greatly tempted. Nor can you order your soldiers to obliterate all sign of this shack and its too scrupulous occupant.’

  ‘How much?’ Benjamin asked.

  ‘A hundred klipps.’

  He walked back and placed a bank note for that amount on the counter. ‘Where’s the tip?’ the man demanded, his revolver still pointing.

  ‘I’ve paid the price. No tip.’

  ‘A hundred and twenty,’ the man insisted.

  ‘I’ll have my soldiers burn you out, you robber.’

  ‘That would cost you twenty million klipps in compensation.’

  ‘For this shack?’ Benjamin shouted.

  The man leered at him. ‘My soul is invested in it. A twenty-klipp tip on two cups of coffee is very reasonable.’

  ‘Tips and bribes are immediately abolished in territory I pass through.’

  The man saw his dilemma, and lowered his revolver. ‘The price for the coffee was a hundred and twenty. I put the rates up this morning, but forgot to tell you. No tips from now on.’

  Benjamin threw him a coin for the extra amount, and on his way to the car fought down a wild and reasonable urge to give the correct Nihilist order for the burning of the hut. But instead he decided to wait for the main body of his brigade, and give them a rousing speech about honesty and dignity, before leading the final advance towards that obscene rocket pointing into the sky above Tungsten.

  Chapter 29

  Adam became disgruntled, at the double load of another person placidly fixed on the seat behind, and decided to rest.

  ‘Why have you stopped?’ asked Firebrand.

  ‘My legs ache,’ Adam told him.

  ‘But mine don’t.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not doing the work.’

  Firebrand got off the bike and sat down: ‘If you accuse me of not being an idealist, I’ll kill you. I’m on my way to take part in the Great Patriotic March of Honesty on Tungsten, and I invited you to join me out of the goodness of my heart, so that you can prove yourself as a bona fide traveller to Nihilon, a country which expects all good foreigners to come to the aid of the insurrection. Anyway, you don’t expect us to do it by ourselves, do you?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Adam, stunned by such international reasoning. ‘But I can’t pedal any more. My lungs are giving way.’

  Firebrand was galvanized at the sound of a lorry coming up the hill, and stood in the road to wait for it. He held two hand-grenades, so that the driver was forced to stop and ask: ‘Where to?’

  ‘Orcam,’ said Firebrand, slipping the spare grenade into his pocket.

  ‘I’m going through Shelp to Nihilon,’ the driver told him, hopefully.

  ‘You were,’ said Firebrand, his free hand at the pin of a grenade. ‘Now you’re going to Orcam.’

  The driver shrugged: ‘Get up then.’

  ‘And no tricks,’ said Firebrand. ‘One wrong turning, and this drops into your cab, while we jump off.’ Adam admired his talent for action, as he lifted his bicycle on to the lorry. ‘Nobody has to pedal any more,’ said Firebrand. ‘It struck me as a very primitive method of locomotion when you were gasping up that hill.’

  The lorry was wrapped in its own breeze as it sped along, pleasurably cooling them, and Adam felt that he was really travelling, wondered in fact why he had used a bicycle in order to achieve something which could be done with much greater comfort over a good engine. A road branched to the left, and Firebrand told him it led to Troser, the chief coastal resort of Nihilon, famous as an intolerable place of residence due to dust, wind, heat, rain, snow, and high seas that forever batter the place. ‘But people love it precisely because of these unfortunate characteristics,’ he continued, ‘since it gives them a great deal to talk about when they get home, and you can’t ask for more than that.’

  At the next road-fork, twenty kilometres further on, he banged on the door of the cab with his insurrectionary fist to indicate that the driver should take the right one, an extremely rocky switchback road which led between two high mountains. Firebrand then filched a blanket from Adam’s pannier, and spread it out so that he could lie on it. He also extracted his reserve rations of black bread and compact sausage, biscuit and a small flask of brandy, and shared it according to his egalitarian principles.

  ‘We’ll have to replenish our stocks soon,’ said Adam, alarmed at his friend’s improvidence, though enjoying the meal.

  ‘That will be easy,’ said Firebrand. ‘We’ll reach Orcam in the morning, by which time it will have been captured, so there’ll be plenty of food in the empty ho
uses.’

  ‘That’s looting,’ said Adam, a piece of bread leaping down his gullet as the lorry hit a particularly forceful slab of rock.

  ‘The duty of a revolutionary,’ Firebrand answered, ‘is to keep alive, so that his ideals don’t perish with his body. He gets his food where he can, how he can, and when he can.’

  ‘Yes,’ Adam agreed.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Firebrand, ‘I’ll make a bargain by giving you my valuable ideals of honesty and cooperation, while you provide me with food till the revolution is over in two or three days.’

  Adam saw that he had a lot to learn from his newfound friend. In any case, the food that they might consume couldn’t possibly be very much, so he agreed to his suggestion. At every village Firebrand assiduously searched out whatever shops there were, and returned laden with succulent provisions, but lacking most of the money that Adam had allotted him for foraging. After the first ample feed the driver no longer needed watching with a grenade at the ready, but was quite willing to cooperate with two such provident travellers.

  The lorry bucked along at twenty kilometres an hour, and late that night they were within a few kilometres of Orcam. Firebrand decided to postpone their entry into the town because heavy firing could distinctly be heard coming from that direction. Signal-lights spat into the air, spelling danger, so he told them that they would park by the road and sleep on the lorry.

  He sent the driver to look for wood, and soon a bright fire pulled them into its glare and smoke. They sat by it to eat, and the lorry-driver, a bull-headed man who seemed to have few cares simply because he was incapable of showing them, gave his views on the coming change of power.

  ‘I live in Nihilon City,’ he said, ‘and I hope to be back there tomorrow with my wife and children. I was delivering food to the soldiers at the frontier and just got through Fludd before the dam broke. I’ll be thirty-five next year, so I’ll register at the Halfway Department. Not that I mind getting a new job. I wouldn’t like to be an intellectual or a professional, because they are expected to stick at the same work all their lives, while people like me, well, we have to register with the Halfway Department!’

  ‘I suppose that’ll be altered by the new régime,’ said Adam, smiling mischievously.

  ‘Yes,’ Firebrand responded. ‘It will be a matter of “one life, one job”, meaning more efficiency in the industry of human relations.’

  ‘I like things to stay as they are,’ said the driver, ‘all mixed up and dangerous. That’s normal now, isn’t it? I’ll always vote for normal, no matter what it is. Otherwise I get upset.’

  ‘After the fighting,’ said Firebrand, ‘things will soon be normal again – only different.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said the driver. ‘But you haven’t won, yet, have you?’

  ‘Nearly,’ Firebrand went on. ‘Our luckiest event was that fighting broke out on the Cronacian border. All the Gerries – the old ones, that is – flocked there to take part in the fighting, which left us almost a free hand in the rest of the country. If they’d been in Shelp and Nihilon, the fighting would have been twice as bitter. You can imagine how the oldsters would resist any idea of change. Of course, we haven’t had things all our own way, because by the time most of them got to the frontier zone the Nihilists had blown up the dam at Fludd, making such a long, wide lake that the road to the southern frontier was effectively blocked for a week. So a good many of them couldn’t get there, and were forced to stay in the towns or rest-homes. Still, the road-block at Fludd also prevented the government from calling its crack frontier regiments back to defend the capital. The timing of what happened was so split-second in its complexity that nobody had time to do anything, which suggests that though the situation was out of control, as befits Nihilists, it was by no means adverse to us who are trying to bring order and honesty into the world.’

  Firebrand asked the driver to look around in the darkness for more wood to keep them warm, but he refused, and even the threat of a hand-grenade wouldn’t change his mind, so they clambered on to the lorry and went to sleep.

  Adam was awakened in the morning by a rough shaking from an obviously alien hand. He saw the jaundiced face of the lorry-driver, who seemed about to stuff a grenade, that he had filched from Firebrand’s pocket, into Adam’s mouth. His other hand held the pin: ‘Get down,’ he snapped, ‘off the lorry. And take your bicycle. I’ve had enough of you two.’

  It was dawn, anyway, and Adam wasn’t too upset at the way things were turning out. He only hoped that the driver would now get into his cab and drive away with Firebrand still on board. But while waiting for this to happen he heard a kick and a cry, and saw his revolutionary friend come flying over the side. Holding the bomb to his chest, the driver sidled round to his cab, and before getting in he shouted: ‘Long live nihilism!’

  ‘That happened too quickly,’ Firebrand grumbled, as they plodded towards Orcam, feeling hungry because their food had gone with the lorry. ‘Which is why we have to eliminate nihilism. How can society advance when there’s no one you can trust? I’m dying of hunger. If I don’t get to the town soon, I shall faint. Get on your bicycle and drive me there.’

  ‘I believe I’m too weak,’ Adam said.

  ‘Never mind,’ Firebrand laughed, finding the other hand-grenade, throwing it into the air and catching it neatly, ‘I’ll inspire you to heroic deeds. I’ll instill into you such a spirit of self-sacrifice that you’ll be forever grateful to me. It’s part of the bargain, anyway, and don’t think I have the easiest side of it, either, because I haven’t. I’m so hungry I can hardly talk, but I’m prepared to do so because it’s in your best interest. You’ll always remember what I’ve done for you. There’s no greater honour than to save the life of a dedicated revolutionary like myself.’

  He talked till Adam could stand it no more and offered him the seat of his bicycle. In any case, they were in sight of the southern suburb of Orcam, which meant little more than a kilometre to the town centre. And though the effort was great so early in the morning, it became easier the longer it lasted, until, entering the straight main street of the suburb that led towards the strategic bridge, Adam was travelling at a speed not at all safe in a battle area.

  The street was quiet, after the unsuccessful night attacks by the insurrectionary forces. Adam found it difficult, riding so quickly, to steer between the bodies of what he took to be sleeping soldiers, imagining that the insurrectionary troops were so numerous that the only billet for many of them was the open street.

  Close to the bridge, as if having tried to crawl up the side of a house and failed, was the wreckage of the lorry they had commandeered the day before. There was no sign of the driver, and Adam hoped he hadn’t been injured, though Firebrand laughed gloatingly at the sight.

  Men were sleeping on the bridge, or resting over their rifles. At the town-end was a barricade of barbed wire with a narrow opening to one side. Adam did not see a party of armed men running after his bicycle. He tried to stop when a sentry roared at him, but on pulling the brakes there was a snapping of wires, and he realized it was impossible to do so. He thought that the lorry-driver might have cut at them somewhere along the cable, either by way of a joke, or in the worst form of vengeful treachery.

  The front wheel hit a paving stone, spinning Adam into and beyond the gap in the barricade. There was a scream from Firebrand which sounded like ‘Traitor!’ as he flew over Adam’s head, and across the barbed wire, landing among a machine-gun crew, who because of this were unable to fire during the next vital half-minute.

  The grenade leapt from the flying revolutionary’s pocket, and its pin must have been pulled out by the buttons of his jacket, for it made a lethal landing some way off, exploding into the second heavy machine gun, set to enfilade the approaches to the bridge.

  The score of insurrectionists on the other side, having seen their chance, overran these defences, and began firing directly into the town itself. Some were able to reverse the machine g
un and train it at the main square. Two more platoons came over the bridge and fanned out into the streets.

  Adam and Firebrand, scraped, bruised and battered, but not otherwise impaired, were lifted from the ground by the grateful soldiers. After being fed on the tastiest nutriment that could be found (Firebrand insisted on this, as a hero of the insurrection), they were presented to the lady in charge of the column who was to become, they were told on their way to headquarters, the next President of the Republic, for she was none other than President Took’s daughter.

  Mella sat in the courtyard, weeping over Edgar. Pale and tired, he lay on a couch, his wounded arm held in a sling made from one of her coloured scarves. He had been brought back to Mella after the attack had failed, for one of the officers had recognized him.

  She had been touched to endless tears at the sight of his blood, and the bravery that he was said to have shown. To creep off at night without telling her, in order to take a common soldier’s part in the recovery of her country for the forces of decency and order, meant that she had found a great and noble man indeed! With such a lover, what fine children she would have! She wept over him, kissed him, extolled his courage as she nursed his wound, and Edgar, now that the pain of his grazed arm was no more than a mere throb, decided to give up his plan of escape, and to accept the role she had forced on him – or which he now appeared to have forced on himself.

  Adam immediately recognized him as one of his colleagues working on the Nihilon Guidebook project, and when Mella saw that they were old friends, she kissed Adam with almost the same fervour that she continued to show her wounded hero. A second breakfast was prepared, during which news was brought that the town of Orcam had surrendered to Mella’s invincible brigade, and Mella promised medals for all three men. ‘And you,’ she told Adam, ‘will be our official poet at the palace. You will write an epic on the glorious insurrection in Nihilon.’