Travels in Nihilon (2 page)

Adam slithered backwards, still gripping the guilty gun, filled with vain and bitter regret that he had mindlessly taken the rifle when the soldier had pedalled away on his bicycle. But such thoughts were drowned in the clatter of small-arms fire which at first hindered his progress to a position of safety. Chips of wood fell against his back, and stony earth spat around him. As minutes passed and the furore increased he felt less in danger of death, and moved with more skill.

A mortar began thumping up bombs to his left. He had both expected and dreaded this. Down and across the valley in Cronacia smoke puffs lifted along the hillside like large birds taking off in alarm. His belly detected a violent upheaval of the earth not far away, as the veteran Cronacian defenders of their soil commenced an artillery fireplan against this barefaced provocation of territorial integrity, unwittingly set in motion by Adam. Heavier guns from Nihilon phlegmed out smoke and fire from the heights behind, and during the momentary peace of his own mind he counted the explosions and noted their patterns of white and dark-green gradually spreading in a single pall over the whole hillside.

Retaliation couldn't be long in coming. Adam, with an exceptionally refined sense of self-preservation which, though it acted for him at moments of extreme physical danger, rarely warned him of the more devastating psychic upsets, ran on hands and feet between tree boles pitted with bullet marks. He reached the lea-side of a concrete lean-to, choking with fear and excitement, wondering how he could get free of the battle and find his bicycle, still clutching the rifle that might lead him to it.

Petrol fumes reeked in the air. The frontier post was burning, and all he had to show for his entry into Nihilon was an unstamped passport, and a rifle. The fact that he had so far escaped injury did not weigh much with him, for he was beginning to feel, as he sat on a fallen tree trunk some way back from the worst of the shelling, that without his bicycle he would soon cease to exist. In it was all his money, as well as pens, ink-bottle, maps, paper, and change of shirt. The best plan, he decided, was to follow the main road away from the frontier, and look for his bicycle as he went along. At least he had got into the country. Having been told to expect a savage and rigorous customs check, it now seemed as if no such establishment existed at this entry point. Or if it did it had probably been concussed into a smoking ruin. That was one thing to be thankful for, at least.

Chapter 2

Benjamin Smith, who had stayed late in his hotel bed, and did not approach the frontier till almost midday, specialized in politics and military history. Being fat and bald, and confident with his senior age of fifty, he had been nominated chief field-worker on the collection of data for the guidebook to Nihilon. He did not know why this was so, yet realized that it was just, and therefore saw no reason why he should hurry on what promised to be nothing more than a month's exploring holiday in Nihilon. He drove a black Thundercloud Estate car along a well-made road that curved up to the highest pass, and in spite of the gradients, and the great weight of his equipment, he did over eighty kilometres an hour. The sun's heat beamed on him, but he wore a dark-green eye-shield fixed across his forehead, happy and free in such heat, though not especially grateful in case it should put him off a lunch of local delicacies once he had broached the border.

He had been warned of difficulties that might tax his skill getting into Nihilon, but no border had ever fazed such a master of extensive travels around the world as Benjamin Smith. He stopped by the roadside and lit a cigar, then continued the winding ascent. At the next sharp bend a pair of sentry huts signalled the last outpost of Cronacia, and the guards there did not stop him to look in his passport, but indicated that he should go on. As if in acknowledgement of his comradely wave, they pointed at his car and laughed so hilariously that, catching a last view in his rear mirror, he saw them actually rolling on the asphalt surface at some joke that he was now too far off to share. A brief question as to what could be so amusing at that particular time of day flashed through his mind, but was soon pushed out by a bout of speculation on what different fundamentals of life he would find once he had passed into Nihilon.

There was little time to think, for the glittering white-and-olive line of one-storied police posts stretched before him like a clean new town, a sight which reminded him to switch on his Tonguemaster for the inevitable parleying to come. On a high pole waved the flag of the People's Capitalist Republic of Nihilon. Its emblem was a large nihilistic black ink-blot, splayed on an immense white sheet of cloth. When he paused to make sure his papers were ready, an old white-overalled road-cleaner with a square grey moustache leaned on his window:

‘It's a beautiful pattern, sir,' he said, ‘and a lucky man who had the genius to think it up. It's copyright, sir, you know.'

‘Spectacular,' said Benjamin nonchalantly, though it looked almost truly so against the pale blue of the Nihilon sky. The road-duster went on to say that the author of this design had made a fortune in royalties, since every postcard or lapel button, car window or steamer funnel that displayed it contributed to his unparalleled riches.

‘Some people are born lucky,' the old man muttered as he went away, shaking his head at the cruelty of such injustice.

When Benjamin drove forward and stopped at the kiosk, a policeman strolled over to him, smiling pleasantly. Across the road, painted along one of the white buildings, and intended mainly for tourists leaving the country, was the cryptic but worrying legend:

SELF-EXPRESSION PLUS SELF-INDULGENCE EQUALS

NIHILISM
.

SIGNED
:
PRESIDENT NIL
.

‘No one is allowed into our wonderful country today,' said the policeman.

‘On whose authority?' Benjamin demanded, turning his window lower.

‘Mine, and the rest of us,' the policeman grinned. ‘We just feel like being awkward. It's part of our self-expression. Sometimes we let them in, sometimes we don't. Today we don't.'

Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred fire engines, a thousand blacksmiths' hammers, and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind. The policeman looked towards the flagpole with rapture, hands pressed together. Seeing the alarmed and puzzled look on Benjamin's face, he took out a tiny square notebook, for it was impossible to be heard, and passed a scribbled message through the car window, which said: ‘It's our National Hymn to Nihilism. Don't you think it's beautiful?'

Benjamin tried to smile, while gritting his false teeth to stop them rattling. ‘What's it called?' he wrote facetiously on his own square of paper, imagining that such monstrous noise could not possibly have a title.

The policeman grimaced, as if maliciously imitating him: ‘I'm glad you asked that. It's called “The Hammer and Chisel Forever!”'

Benjamin sweated for almost half an hour, and though both hands were clamped on his ears, the vibration of the symphony for loudspeakers shattered every vein. The policeman stayed close, and occasionally broke out of his rapture to scribble further little notes: ‘It's our Geriatrics Symphony Orchestra playing,' ‘That's my favourite part,' ‘I hope they play it again tomorrow,' or ‘I could listen to it forever, couldn't you, dear traveller?', at which Benjamin Smith could only nod and grin, and observe other Nihilonians gently gazing at the loudspeakers, as if by looking they'd be able to hear better.

He opened his briefcase and found the official letter for the Nihilonian Ambassador which said that Mr Benjamin Smith, as a bona fide traveller to Nihilon, was to be admitted to the country and allowed to wander at will without let or hindrance. It was covered with stamps, seals, photographs, fingerprints, dates, and obscene marks of every colour and description. In tiny smudged print at the bottom was a statement saying that anyone disobeying these commands or rendering them null in any way would be shot by order of President Nil. This was a document that Benjamin had thought to use only in absolute necessity, but now that the music had stopped he pushed it towards the frontier guard, disturbing him in the act of filing his nails, for he considered it of vital importance that he should cross the frontier on the same date as Adam the poet, who had no doubt already done so near the coast, a hundred and sixty kilometres to the south.

The policeman looked at the paper closely, to show this supercilious traveller that he could read, and Benjamin got out of his car in case he should need help in its interpretation. Several minutes passed while the reading took place. Then the policemen's face became blotched with rage, as he ripped the paper into small pieces, and threw them in the air so that they were scattered by the wind back towards Cronacia. ‘Why did you do that?' Benjamin demanded.

The policeman drew himself to his full height, and stuck out his chest proudly. ‘Because I'm a Nihilist, you Red Fascist Pirate, that's why.'

‘Oh, are you?' Benjamin cried, and gave him a great blow in the stomach, then punched him so violently in the jaw that the policeman went sprawling across the pavement. Panting with rage, he stood ready to hit him again should he try to get up, or to fight anyone else who might attempt to arrest him. But the few onlookers smiled, fellow policemen and local cleaners, who obviously thought he had acted properly. The policeman, with a look of tearful despair as he lay on the ground, wearily waved him on.

This is obviously the thing to do, thought Benjamin, as he hurriedly started his car and moved forward. I'm learning once again how to behave in this cesspool of President Nil.

Chapter 3

Adam remembered that ice-maps of the Alpine regions had been prepared by the cartographic staff of the guidebook, but he had not been allowed by the General Editor to bring them with him. This was just as well, for they were no doubt totally inaccurate, and in any case he had no intention of cycling through mountain country if he could help it, much less on ice and snow. His only desire at the moment was to get clear of the too sensitive frontier and find the soldier who had unwittingly taken his one means of sustenance and locomotion.

A short distance from the border, when the sun was drawing sweat through his vest and into his jacket, and his feet were beginning to ache, and also his arms from the effort of carrying the rifle, he entered an area where the road and its confines were an overlapping spread of craters. Between the trees he saw a solitary soldier lying on the lip of one, a stream of ochred blood colouring the soil by his left boot. The face was turned sideways, and going close, Adam recognized it as that of the soldier who had taken his bicycle – which he now saw lying under a tree, unharmed, both panniers intact.

The soldier was still alive, and looked at him: ‘Help me,' he said, trying to smile from behind his shield of pain. Adam opened the panniers to make doubly sure that everything was still there. Then he went back to the soldier, who by this time had crawled from the shell hole and lay on the flat earth under a tree. He was trying to speak, so Adam gave him a drink of water, hoping he might say something that would be useful for his guidebook. When he put his ear close, the soldier whispered into it: ‘Long live nihilism,' then fell back dead.

On examining the rifle more closely Adam noticed that the butt was hollow, and, pressing part of it, the steel cap fell on to his hand. He took out a tightly folded map, and put it into his pocket without opening it, then threw the rifle into one of the shell holes.

Trudging along the road with his bicycle, he did not consider what had so far happened to be the best introduction to Nihilon. Of course, frontier skirmishes took place every day, for what border could be more nervous than that of a nihilistic country? And also, no doubt, soldiers died in them, but he felt it would have been better if he could have made his entrance without this onus on his soul. It's all part of life, he mused, and there's not much anybody can do about it, above all in a Nihilon.

Birds sang from the trees, which was an improvement, especially when he reached level ground and was able to ride his bicycle. The road went down into a wooded valley, and a fine cantilever bridge at the bottom crossed the spinning roar of the river. He leaned over the parapet to get some of the cool air sprayed from below, then took the fieldbook from his jacket pocket and noted that the road so far had been well paved, though he made no reference to the unfortunate incident at the frontier, sounds of which rolled like thunder behind him. It was once more necessary to push the laden bicycle, for the road went uphill.

He had not eaten since breakfast, and thought that any wayside shack selling bread and drink would be useful to him at this moment, in spite of the clear and beautiful landscape that was beginning to inspire his soul. An old woman blocked his way and asked for money, but when he said that he hadn't any Nihilon cash, she retorted that a cigarette would do, since he was so destitute. He was happy to meet someone as human as a beggar, and in spite of her insults he gave her two. But when he wanted to go on she stood stolidly blowing smoke from her toothless mouth, and would not let him pass.

‘What do you want?' he asked.

‘Nothing,' she said.

‘Who are you, then?'

‘I'm a scout,' she answered, ‘from a battalion of old-age pensioners being sent to fight in the war. We're glad to die for our country, you know.' She gripped the lapel of his jacket, as if wanting to take that too, but he pushed his bicycle around her, thinking she was far gone in senility, and pedalled away.

After another three kilometres he saw a building by the roadside displaying the notice
PARADISE BAR
above the doors. A further advertisement regarding its functions was painted on a nearby billboard: ‘Last chance to eat before the front.' The final word had at one time been ‘frontier' but the ultimate three letters had recently been erased, probably in the last hour. It was a clean-looking, respectable, two-storied dwelling, with a lower floor made of overlapping planks of wood, and an upper portion of solid concrete.