‘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.
Chapter 8
It was difficult not to despair when the train pulled out of the station with all her luggage on it. But she bravely fought away the tears, and asked the woman at the ticket booth to direct her to the local police office.
‘You wouldn’t buy a return ticket,’ said the woman spitefully, ‘so I’m not going to tell you where the police chief lives.’
Jaquiline opened her purse and passed her a two-klipp coin. ‘Three,’ the woman said. When Jaquiline gave in wearily, the woman held her hand and commiserated as if they were old friends: ‘What a shock for you. I saw it all. He’s done that twice this week already. But don’t you worry. He’s always brought back. Now, if you go right to the end of this platform you’ll see a hut, by the siding. Outside it there’ll be a man watering his flowers. That’s the chief of police. He’s the one to tell your troubles to.’
Jaquiline hurried off without thanking her. Like other frontier stations, it was only busy at certain times, and because the main train for Nihilon City had left, it was almost deserted, though she was annoyed to see several porters standing idly around now that they were no longer needed.
The platform was long, and it took some time to get to the end of it and down to the level of the line. She then walked on the small broken stones, a difficult and painful process in high-heeled shoes, and she was more than pleased when she saw the chief of police’s hut a few hundred metres away.
His humble dwelling was surrounded by a flower garden, a square of lavish and brilliant colours, through which a neat path led to the door. A porcine yet kindly-looking man wearing riding boots walked slowly up and down with a watering can. A short way beyond this delightful oasis was the dividing line between Nihilon and Cronacia, bristling with enormous coils of rusty barbed wire.
When Jaquiline waved, the chief of police looked up, put down his watering can, and came towards her. ‘Hello, my dear! I hope you’ve had a pleasant trip, so far?’
He took his tunic from the fence, threw himself clumsily into it, and buttoned it tight like a corset. ‘Yes,’ he nodded hearing her story while they stood on the path, ‘that’s an extremely serious complaint. You’d better come inside so that I can make my notes. It’s too hot out here.’
It was an amiable and pleasant reception, and so she followed him in without hesitation. Nihilon was at last showing humane tendencies, she thought, if it set the chief of police’s office among a grove of such beautiful flowers. The hut was sparsely furnished, with a desk down one side, and a bench opposite on which new books were displayed. She went over to look at their covers and titles: ‘I’m glad to see you’re so interested in the printed word,’ she said with a smile.
‘The printed word,’ he said, looking closely into her eyes, ‘is the basis of Nihilon’s civilization. I don’t know where any of us nihilists would be without the printed word. The printed word is all-powerful if you are striving for absolute nihilism. It was our first ally, the printed word. As soon as we original Nihilists realized the force of the printed word, we knew that sooner or later we must triumph. The printed word is wonderful in that you can do anything with it. Not only can it be read in secret but it can be shouted into a microphone, or splashed on to every wall. They say that President Nil has a printed word illuminated in a niche in the wall of his bedroom, but nobody knows what it is, and no one dares try to guess. But we all adore him even more for this worship of the printed word.’
During what she considered this pernicious drivel she took out her notebook and examined the display of volumes more closely. They were mostly novels with nonsensical titles, though one book, which she picked up to examine, had blank pages inside. Another was no more than a box with an artificial flower in it. One contained printed pages that resembled a railway timetable, while the most interesting novelty had a gun attached to the stiff cover when she lifted it up, as if showing the author’s absolute contempt for the printed word, of which there was not a sign.