Travels in Nihilon

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:

‘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.