Travels in Nihilon

Chapter 4

Jaquiline Sulfer, the only female member of our guidebook staff, knew that the first-class luxury express trains of Nihilon travelled at twenty kilometres per hour. Popular trains, on the other hand, went at eighty kilometres an hour, since if one wanted speed, one was expected to pay for it by discomfort, because popular trains had hard seats and no sides, and the railway line after the passage of such a train was littered with people and their belongings that had fallen off. Popular trains were frequently ambushed and de-railed either by political dissidents, or by railway employees who did not like their work. Only the poor, or the jaded rich in search of thrills, travelled by popular trains because they were cheaper and got them there sooner. Popular trains (known as ‘fast trains’) went on a narrower gauge of rail than slow express trains, and were sent on more circuitous routes through topographically difficult country — though those passengers who survived made the journey from the northern frontier to Nihilon City in less than half the time of those who travelled by the Grand Nihilon First Class Slow Luxury Wide-Gauge Bed-and-Board Express.

Jaquiline had gathered this elaborate matter on the division of trains from someone who had taken a holiday to Nihilon a few years ago. She worked at that time for an eminent psychiatrist, and had transcribed tape-recordings which he had made at the bedside of a so-called psychotic patient, whose pathetic condition was ascribed to his Nihilon vacation. She now remembered his information word for word, without knowing why, and so was determined to make sure, after crossing the frontier, to get a ticket for the correct train.

Station platforms, even at home, made her feel that she could not altogether rely on knowing who she was if anything unusual happened to her. They were such long, impersonal, dirty, ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears stamped into the concrete paving. The sight of a long empty unfeeling railway platform made her want to throw up her hands and wail. But on this occasion she overcame her urge so successfully, due to her strong character, that she appeared extremely brisk and self-possessed. She was a tall, slim young woman whose chestnut-coloured hair had managed to retain its grooming on the boats and trains she had so far travelled on.

She looked for the way to the Nihilon customs and passport control, making sure that the indispensable Tonguemaster was clipped unobtrusively on to her handbag. Having carried her three suitcases out of the compartment, she now hoped they would be taken by a porter through to the Grand Express on which she wanted to get a sleeping compartment to Nihilon city.

A few people made their way along the platform to the passport control office, though none used a porter. She wrote in her notebook: ‘To obtain a porter at the frontier is a near impossibility, and travellers are advised to bring as little luggage as possible.’ She crossed out ‘a near impossibility’ and wrote ‘extremely difficult’, for she saw a tall well-built man wearing a dark uniform coming towards her. ‘Excuse me, madame,’ he said, touching his gold-braided cap, ‘I’m the stationmaster. May I help you?’

‘I would like a porter,’ she smiled.

There are no porters today,’ he said. ‘They’re all across at the hotel waiting to see the Geriatrics charge into action on television. It’s a great day for Nihilon. The old folks are rearing to go at Cronacia, because of the treacherous attack. Unfortunately I have to stay here and keep essential services going.’

‘I’ve just come from Cronacia,’ Jaquiline told him, ‘and it’s peaceful there. People are very happy and amiable.’

The stationmaster looked at her sardonically: ‘You should try telling that to President Nil. It’s difficult for you to understand our situation. Anyway, the incident was in the south, not up here. That’s why it’s peaceful. Otherwise there’d be war here as well, believe me.’ He took a suitcase under his arm, and one in each hand.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said, following him.

‘You’d better get some of our money,’ he told her, a piece of advice he obviously believed in, for he set her cases down before a money-changer’s window. ‘This is a branch of the Nihilon Bank. They don’t change money on the train, except at two hundred to the unit.’

‘That’s double the rate,’ she said, opening her handbag. ‘I’ll wait till I get on, then.’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t. It’s illegal. The currency they give you on the train is forged. You get real ones here.’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said and, not to be hurried, wrote in her notebook: ‘Travellers are strongly advised to change money on arrival at the Nihilon frontier post, and should on no account attempt to do so on the trains, as such currency as is then given, though twice that of the official rate, is frequently forged.’ She then changed twenty units, for which she unknowingly received two thousand forged klipps, and followed him to the passport and visa control office.

No one had ever settled the question as to whether a visa was necessary for a visit to Nihilon. At home, Jaquiline had applied for information to the nearest Nihilonian consulate which, by a happy coincidence, was situated in the same building as the offices of the proposed Guide to Nihilon. The following advice-note was returned to her:

‘To enter Nihilon a passport provided with a permanent or transitory visa obtainable from any Nihilon consulate is essential. The former is valid for a stay of one year, while the latter does not permit a sojourn at all.’

In the same envelope was a printed form entitled: ‘Visa Application for Sojourn in Nihilon.’ The first questions were harmless enough, but they later became more personal, posing such queries as to how many children her four grandparents had had, whether they drank or not, and if so, what diseases and divorces there had been for as far back as she could remember. Then the questions ceased to be merely personal. They became shockingly intimate. Jaquiline, almost thirty, but looking younger, had had a good share of experience, but her upbringing had been strict and proper, so that she had controlled her life with such skilful discretion that hardly anyone suspected her of so many adventures. These questions, therefore, prying into the most intimate secrets of her sex life, made her indignant. Forgetting that she had already filled in the harmless part of the form, she tore it into four pieces, put it into an envelope, and posted it back to the Nihilonian consulate. Two days later, an impressive, gold-lettered, fully signed, and exquisitely stamped visa, reeking of perfume, was sent to her free of charge. This she now took from her handbag, and passed, together with her passport, through the small window of the control post, while the stationmaster waited nearby with her luggage. A loudspeaker, halfway down the wall by which she stood, and level with her knees, demanded:

‘Why are you coming into Nihilon?’

‘To write a guidebook.’

‘Do you have any money?’

‘Two thousand travellers units.’

‘How long do you expect to stay?’

‘A month.’

‘What about your accommodation?’

‘I shall be staying at hotels.’

‘Do you have any letters from your prospective employer?’

‘I’m not going to work in Nihilon,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’m only visiting the country.’

‘Oh,’ the loudspeaker sneered. ‘Don’t you like our country? Does nihilism frighten you?’

‘Not at all,’ she answered. ‘Perhaps I would even like to live here, but I can’t tell yet.’

‘Well, you can’t anyway,’ the man’s voice said superciliously. ‘You’d never get permission. Only Nihilon citizens can live in this country. Unless you have a bank account in Nihilon.’

‘I don’t,’ she snapped, tired of this interrogation.

‘Then how much money do you have with you?’

‘I’ve told you. Two thousand travellers units.’

‘You’re lying!’ he cried. ‘Show them to me.’ She took the notes from her wallet, and a hand snatched them away. The stationmaster’s eyes grew large at the sight of such money. She could hear a rustle beyond the window as it was avidly counted. ‘We don’t have to let you in,’ the voice said smugly, pushing her money back with two notes short, which she was unaware of because she didn’t think to check it.

His words alarmed her, for she had work to do on the guidebook. ‘I have a proper visa. And please hurry or I shall miss my train to Nihilon City.’

The stationmaster shuffled his feet. ‘I have to go now, miss.’ But she knew that as long as the stationmaster stayed with her the train wouldn’t be able to leave.

‘Your visa is no concern of ours,’ said the passport official. ‘None whatsoever.’

‘Your consulate abroad gave it to me.’

He gave a small dry laugh: ‘I’m afraid you were the victim of a hoax. However, if you do want to get into Nihilon I can sell you another visa here.’

‘How much?’

‘Three hundred klipps might help.’

She stamped her foot: ‘That’s robbery.’

‘Robbery does not exist in Nihiloh,’ a louder voice said from the speaker. ‘We are all well paid, happy, prosperous, patriotic, sober, and hardworking British — I mean Nihilonian — officials, while you are a foreign whore who has come to disturb the equanimity of our perfect lives. Four hundred klipps, or get back to those Cronacian bastards and see how they rob you.’

She pushed two hundred across the counter, and her correctly stamped passport was returned to her, though with some grumbling. ‘Come on,’ she said to the station-master ‘or I’ll have to bribe them some more.’

Just as they were entering the customs hall a strangled croak came from the passport booth behind, and a scarcely human voice was shouting and whining about her money being forged, which it was, though Jaquiline had no idea they were referring to her, being preoccupied at taking her place in a short queue at the customs desks.

It looked like a fairly busy market, with travellers and uniformed officials handling goods they had shaken on to the tables, and shouting prices at each other. Now and again someone would hand over money, scoop his things into a case, clip it shut, and walk away sweating and muttering towards the door leading to the train.

A blue-uniformed customs officer, holding a clipboard which stated in bold black words, as far as Jaquiline could see, that you were forbidden to bring anything at all into the country, leaned across the table and pulled the half-smoked cigarette from her mouth. ‘You’ll have to pay duty on that,’ he said, stubbing it out, and throwing it on to a pair of scales. ‘How do you expect our nation of honest shopkeepers to live if we let you bring cigarettes into our Nihilon?’

‘They’re very strict here,’ said the stationmaster. ‘This is one of the worst frontier posts as far as the customs people are concerned. Others are quite easy.’

She took up her pad and wrote: ‘At the frontier, scenes of great confusion prevail, especially during the so-called customs-house examination. Every case and packet is opened, so that it is inadvisable for ladies to travel alone. She who has no option but to do so will see the most intimate articles of her wardrobe pawed by brutish fingers, and held up to the gaze of other travellers in order that they may leer at them. This they are too ready to do, in the hope that, having fallen in with the customs officer’s perverted sense of humour, they may be spared having to pay duty on their own goods. But one is indeed made to pay, for one is literally robbed of one’s luggage and then made to buy it back again.’ ‘It is a most degrading experience,’ she wrote later, ‘and the female tourist is advised to maintain dignity and patience through her ordeal. This, it must be said, is something of a feat, under the circumstances, for the victim is taken to a room in which her actual person is searched by two poker-faced dragons of Nihilon officialdom. At this stage one may well begin to wonder whether the country is worth visiting at all, but your correspondent had no option except to persevere in her intention to obtain information for the benefit of future travellers. The least that can be said about this infamous procedure is that a cup of coffee was provided after the experience was over, though at a very inflated price.’

Having parted with another five hundred klipps, whereupon everything was put back into her cases, she followed the broad back of the stationmaster to the waiting train. There was a booth open on the platform at which one could buy tickets to Nihilon City, but she got into a long and acrimonious argument with the woman behind the glass, who tried to insist that she pay for a return instead of a single journey. Jaquiline refused to give in on this point, and after snatching the correct ticket, and throwing down the money, she watched her cases taken towards a suitable compartment. The hooter of the train blew a prolonged and urgent note, unpleasant, she thought, if heard in the distance from some comfortable bed at night, but now giving a feeling of actual relief, because in a short time she would be taken out of these bleak and extortionate frontier sheds.

The stationmaster climbed over her cases to reach the door of the high carriage, before pulling each one in after him. He told her to wait on the platform while he took them to her compartment. Through the window, a few yards along the train, she saw his rather long limbs placing her cases respectfully on the racks. It would be difficult to climb those steel steps unaided, so she waited for him to come back and assist her. He had shown such magnificent kindness in this barbaric country that she wondered how to reward him. It would be embarrassing and wrong to tip such an impressive stationmaster, who looked so sincere and dignified in his immaculate uniform, almost like some elderly general about to review his equally smart and elderly soldiers. If she were a man she could offer him a cigar, but then, he wouldn’t help a man in this way, so the situation would not arise. It was a quandary that stayed with her till the train began to move during the blast of the final whistle blown by the stationmaster as he leaned far out of the window.

She ran along the platform, unable to mount the steps and get on the train. Drawing level with her compartment, she saw the stationmaster smile ecstatically as he threw his gold-braided cap over her head and as far as he could across the platform. He then unbuttoned his tunic, all set to relax on the long and easy ride to Nihilon City.