Travels in Nihilon

Chapter 7

As Adam went down the steps of the Paradise Bar an irascible Geriatric in short trousers put out a spindly leg and tried to send him head first. With his younger agility he dodged it, but cried indignantly: ‘What did you do that for?’

‘That’s the fate of all Cronacian spies, and so on,’ snapped the patriotic oldster, turning back to his beer.

‘We’ll give ’em hell,’ laughed his toothless companion.

A wavering bugle note sounded from the road, and the warriors began knocking out pipes, finishing dregs of beer or coffee. Certain men were designated as markers, bearing lightweight banners of the proud Nihilon blot, now standing ready so that others could form up on them. They were one company of two hundred all told, and soon arranged themselves in four stalwart platoons.

Adam watched the parade. They sprang to attention at the raucous command of a spruce middle-aged officer. A man in front of the leading platoon pushed a low trolley along the road, on which was a powerful portable radio tuned to Nihilon Channel Three, which played a nondescript composition called ‘The Land of Hopeless Gore’, so that with rifles at the slope and baskets in the other hand, the old men stepped out to as quick a march as their valetudinary legs would allow. Judging by the occasional heavily made-up face Adam suspected there was a sprinkling of young men in their ranks disguised as oldsters who would, no doubt, lead them in the attack and cure any hanging back when enemy machine guns started spitting.

Waiters and barmen who stood on the steps to see them go, and who were sobbing heavily, began jeering at Adam when he mounted his bicycle and rode towards Nihilon City. But the sun shone, and the sky was blue, and he felt full of momentary energy after his snack. A few miles later he passed a house, one of many on the outskirts of a large village.

A ten-year-old boy dressed in a long-trousered suit, wearing a bow tie, and with his hair slicked flat by grease, lounged under a sign saying WELCOME TO NIHILON, but as Adam rode by a stone caught him painfully on the shoulder. He stopped and shouted: ‘You vicious little bastard!’

The child burst into tears, and hearing the disturbance, a man in a customs officer’s cap ran from the house, calling:

‘Anything to declare?’

Adam got back on his seat and rode straight at him, speeding over the rivulet that ran across the road, so that he splashed the man’s overalls and sandals as he began to repeat: ‘Anything to declare?’

He went swiftly along the village street towards the main square, his lungs almost bursting in getting clear of this bogus customs man who seemed nothing more than another Nihilon peasant out on the make. If, however, he was genuine, then he could only congratulate himself on having passed through the second and final obstacle into Nihilon so painlessly.

Along one side of the large square was a line of six sky-blue tourist buses. The rest of the space was tightly occupied by a vast crowd of people. Though it was the hottest part of the day, they seemed by and large happy, as if everyone had just eaten an ample and satisfying meal. In the middle of the square, on a raised platform, a young man with long blond hair was about to make a speech. An older man, wearing a dark suit, dark spectacles, and carrying a black briefcase, mounted the platform and began talking to him, as if prompting him on what to say, for the young man listened respectfully.

Adam pushed towards the middle, but couldn’t get far among so many people. A young man with a child on his shoulder stood next to him, and Adam asked what was happening.

‘You won’t travel far on that bicycle,’ the man said. ‘Why don’t you get on one of those buses?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘They’re going to the front.’

‘He’s a foreigner,’ said the child from on high.

‘Shut up,’ his father snapped. He gave Adam a friendly smile. ‘They belong to War Tours, a very popular holiday organization here that does great business whenever there’s an outbreak at the frontier. Of course, they can be expensive, though they cater for all purses. War Tours are cheapest. You just camp on a hill or spur, and are given a bit of a map and binoculars so that you can see what goes on. That’s the seven-day tour, and costs a thousand kricks, inclusive. If you take a fourteen-day holiday they drive you close enough to be bombed and shelled, and that’s more exciting, but also more expensive. Better still, you can stand in a muddy trench with a rifle and bayonet to beat off an attack. That’s an even higher price. But a three-week five-star holiday is best, at ten thousand kricks. You get all the other things plus, at the end of it, the glory of a mass attack over the wire, with the optional extra of an artificial limb after your spell in a tent hospital. Mind you, there’s a long waiting-list for all categories, but I’m in the know with the organizers, and I happen to have a few application forms.’ He drew a bundle of papers from his back pocket and waved them under Adam’s nose. ‘So tell me which tour you want, then I’ll fill in one of these and get you on a bus tomorrow morning. You’ll have the time of your life, believe me.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Adam, ‘but no thank you.’

The man’s face turned ugly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I told you he was a foreigner,’ said his son.

‘Curse it,’ the man said, ‘I haven’t sold any this week.’ He threw the papers in the air, and they blew in all directions, so that people began scrabbling for them, though on learning what they were they dropped them quickly.

The crowd became silent, sensing that the speech was about to begin. ‘Gentlemen and Ladies,’ shouted the young man, bent and twisted, swaying like a crippled sapling. ‘Nihilists! Listen to me. Listen to the greatest news of all time.’ For several minutes he mumbled and spluttered, nodding his head and waving his arms, making a few vague references to the goodness of President Nil, and the value of living pure upright nihilistic lives; but finally, ringing clear above all heads, was made a most astonishing claim, directly affecting everyone present:

‘We have abolished …’ Even before the last word, cheering and shouts of glee broke from many parts of the square, as if some of the people’s secret hopes had been unwittingly leaked out during sweaty and endless days of discussion:

‘We have abolished … death!’ he shouted.

Wild cheering caught up those thousands in the sunlight as the speech went on, though it was impossible that everyone heard the final words of his dramatic and historical pronouncement. No one had ever said it before, it seemed, and now, for the first time, such a promise had been made! The whole population was caught up in hysterical and genuine happiness, and even Adam was affected by it, as the marvellous words screamed out clear and plain once more: ‘We have abolished death!’ — a message stroking his fundamental nerves as if heaven, or at least a form of it, were really here at last.

A man nearby, with tears of joy in his eyes, took Adam’s lapels and held him fast: ‘Oh, my dear friend, it’s not the first time. Oh no. It has happened before. We were happy once for three days. A voice of intellect, authority, and youth said that death has been abolished! The whole town went wild with happiness, so that people heard of it in neighbouring villages and came to join in. So much happiness! It went on and on, and the three days seemed an eternity.’

His voice became sad, though his eyes couldn’t relinquish their glazed hilarious expectation: ‘But then troops were called to restore order, and drive us back to our jobs. It was all right to abolish death, but we still had to work. In the fighting several people had no way of proving whether that young man up there was right or wrong in saying that death had been abolished because we never saw them again. But the temporary joy of the town at his news was certainly genuine, as it is now.’ He walked away, weeping and tearing at his shirt.

The whole mass surged against the platform, though Adam made his way to the edge of the crowd, then to quieter streets on the other side of the square, so that he could continue his journey. The monumental insanity of the young man’s pronouncement had for a few moments lifted him into the same wild unseeing happiness as the crowd, his eyes brimming with tears, his head spinning, hands at his temples as if ready for some final ecstatic take-off. But, pedalling through emptier streets, the normal bleak expectant sadness of a poet’s life returned.