She called goodbye to the rueful police chief, and went to look for her compartment. It was an immensely long train, and multitudes seemed to have got on at this station, for it took several minutes to reach the head of it and find the carriage in which she had left her luggage. When she pulled open the door, the stationmaster was lying along the seat sleeping.
He opened his eyes, and smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d come back. Now we can go to Nihilon City together.’
‘Get out of my compartment,’ she said, noting that all her pieces of luggage were on the racks above.
‘I’m tired of being a stationmaster. I want to travel,’ he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
‘Not with me,’ she told him, lighting a cigarette.
‘Please,’ he asked.
She went back to the door of the train for help. A bell rang, and people along the whole length of it were saying their last goodbyes, pushing bundles into and out of the windows. There was a commotion by the waiting room, where someone was struggling to get through the window and on to the platform. It was the chief of police, and he began running towards her with a gun in his hand, shouting as he got closer: ‘Is he there? Is the pig there?’
He clambered up the steps, and when he reached the compartment, the stationmaster turned pale. ‘I’ll come,’ he said in a tearful voice. ‘It’s the end of a beautiful dream, one that’s haunted me ever since I was a child. I had a vision of travelling on the Trans-Nihilon Express in a sleeping compartment with a beautiful woman.’
‘You’re a disgrace to Nihilon!’ shouted the police chief.
‘I know. But why can’t it happen? What’s wrong with it? If you both agreed, I could still have my dream.’
‘It would ruin your life,’ said the police chief.
‘I want to be ruined,’ pleaded the despondent stationmaster. ‘It would clear the air. It would make my life simpler, to have just one dream come true, and to be ruined as well. I’ve got the moral fibre for it, I swear I have.’
‘Stop it,’ pleaded Jaquiline, bursting into tears.
‘You see what you cause by your dreams?’ said the police chief. ‘Making someone shed tears is a capital offence in Nihilon.’
Her eyes dried immediately. ‘Is it?’
‘Give me a handkerchief, miss,’ pleaded the stationmaster, thumping on to his knees so that she felt the train floor shake under her, ‘to remember you by.’
‘I’d like one, too,’ said the police chief, taken by the idea. She had the intolerable thought that if she didn’t get rid of them soon, they would both be with her as far as Nihilon City.
When she gave her handkerchief to the police chief he tore it in half, and shared it with the stationmaster. ‘Come on, friend,’ he said to him. ‘Let’s leave the lady to get some rest.’
She locked the door after them, and the train, with a final campanological peal of bells, jolted and began to move. From the window she saw the stationmaster walking along the platform towards the station exit, pointing a gun at the police chief’s back.
The train increased speed, and the last buildings of the small town were left behind. She could hardly believe that the journey to Nihilon City had begun. Dazed with the relief of it, she sat down and smoked another cigarette. Tomorrow she would reach the expansion and comfort of the Grand Nihilon Hotel, and would begin her real work of exploring the capital city. She had promised to meet and share her room with Adam, the poet, in order to continue a love-affair only fitfully begun before setting out for Nihilon. Thinking of it, she recovered her usually alert composure, and decided to change her clothes before going to find the restaurant car.
She lifted a case down and opened it, and for a moment, in the middle of the shock, it seemed that it was not her case, but then she clearly saw her nameplate fastened on the inside of the lid. It was filled with small bundles of kindling wood. She pulled down each case in a frenzy of diminishing hope, but they also were filled with wood.
Her hand sped towards the communication cord, and stopped when she realized that the train might be delayed for hours while the mystery was cleared up, possibly involving her in days of futile investigation. In any case, how could she do anything to stop the train now that it was well and truly on its way? One always feels superior, she thought, passing through stations at which your train does not stop, especially when there are people standing on the platforms to watch you go by.
She sat down again, clutching her handbag containing money and documents, as well as the gun-in-book purchased from the police chief’s stall by the barbed wire. Her train tickets were safe, and so were her travellers units, so nothing could prevent her reaching Nihilon City in safety and a certain amount of comfort.
Chapter 15
With his heavy trunks at last on deck, he leaned over the rail to catch the attention of a boatwoman below, so that the stack of impedimenta could be rowed ashore. He waved, and called, and from between the wharf and the ship a woman suddenly skiffed towards the lowered gangplank. She was young and buxom, wearing slacks and sweater, with attractive arms and long black hair falling in a loose rope behind. ‘Will you be able to handle it all?’ he asked, feeling guilty at its bulk and weight when she looked at it from the top of the steps.
Her eyes turned from it and took in his own person, as if she would sling him over her shoulder and take him down to the boat as well. ‘I can handle any weight,’ she smiled. ‘I’m a woman.’
Though he was ready to assist her by taking the other end of each trunk, she picked the first one up, slung it on her shoulder, and walked nimbly down the gangplank to her boat. So he stayed on deck smoking a cigar, then took a sheet of cartridge paper from his briefcase and made a quick panorama of the buildings and dock facilities along the waterfront. He thought of sketching the shape of the mountain range behind as well, but the afternoon air was so beautiful and soft, and the sight of an attractive woman humping his trunks and boxes down into a boat so conducive to his momentary indolence that he was unable to do anything more than enjoy the scenery.
She beckoned him, and he descended the ladder, stepping over his luggage to the middle of the boat. Facing her while she rowed, he watched her broad shoulders bend at the oars, and her full breasts dip towards him at each strong stroke. Her coal-black eyes beamed into him, and he tried to avoid their stare by aiming his own blank gaze over her shoulder or to the side of the boat, glad at last to be going ashore, and through such calm and iridescent water, the bows cutting away to the muffled sound of the city that stretched around the horse-shoe bay.
‘Do you work long hours at your job?’ he asked, thinking to deflect her stare that, in a more democratic and orderly country, would have been called brazen. She leaned forward, took the cigar from his mouth, and threw it into the water. Its hot end sizzled and floated away, and she stopped rowing — to kiss him on the lips. Her action astounded him, and without exactly wanting to, in some way fearful of offending her, he drew back slightly, though she seemed not to notice this, but resumed her rowing as vigorously as before. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said, in a light and musical voice, ‘I want you, that’s all.’
‘How friendly of you,’ he responded. ‘But I’m a busy man, and I’m not really available.’
She laughed again, and he was struck by the tenderness in her voice: ‘I know. But it doesn’t stop me telling you what I feel, does it?’ He wondered if she made such speeches to all her customers, in order to ply a little trade out of hours, as it were, but this thought was crushed when she added: ‘I’ll pay for it. Perhaps we can have dinner at your hotel tonight. I earn a lot of money at this work.’