The customs officer thought for a moment. ‘How about two thousand klipps?’
This was the cost of several nights at a luxury hotel, as far as he understood the crazy scale of values in Nihilon. ‘I imagined that a thousand would cover everything.’
The customs officer clapped a hand to his brow. ‘Is that all?’ he wailed. ‘That’s no use to me. I can’t live like this I’ll lose my reason. It’s impossible.’
The boatwoman took a small bulging purse from the locker of the trolley, shouting: ‘Here’s five hundred,’ and threw a screwed-up note across the table so that it rolled on to the floor. ‘Now let him go. Can’t you see he’s tired?’ She turned to Edgar: ‘Come on, my dear,’ and under the sullen eyes of the customs officer loaded his goods back on to her trolley.
‘But I haven’t had my passport stamped,’ Edgar said, holding it up.
She thrust it out to the customs officer: ‘Stamp it!’
‘No,’ he sulked.
‘I’ll do it then.’
He went back a pace: ‘No, you won’t.’
She ran around the table, grasped him by the hand, and twisted his arm halfway up his back: ‘Tell me where the stamp is.’
‘In the box under the table!’
‘If it isn’t,’ she said, ‘I’ll screw your arm off.’
He turned pale, as she increased the pressure: ‘All right. It’s in the bottom left pocket of my tunic. Now-let-me-go!’ She pulled out the rubber stamp with her free hand, then released him, a smile on her face as she admired Edgar’s passport photograph, before pressing the official entry sign on to a clean and empty page.
‘You’ll lose your licence for this,’ the customs officer shouted vindictively.
‘I never had one,’ she answered, as they went out of the tent.
It was dark. ‘Where can I get a taxi?’
‘There aren’t any,’ she told him. ‘They’ve gone to see the fighting. But I’ll take you to a hotel. There’s a good one on the edge of the city, where we won’t be disturbed by the insurrection.’
The sharp crack of small-arms fire came through the night, interspersed by the crump of bombs and shells. He wondered how she had the strength to drag such a massive load over wet and sandy earth, amazed that she even asked him to ride on top instead of walking. They came to a paved road, with lights in the distance. An ambulance drove by from the town: ‘There’s certainly a battle going on,’ he observed, walking by her side while she strained at the load.
‘It’s supposed to be trouble with Cronacia,’ she said, ‘but I’m not so sure. I can’t believe everything that’s said about them. Our countries are such enemies that I sometimes suspect we’re friends.’ She had paused under a blue street-lamp. The one beyond was orange, and the one after that was green, and she told him that all street-lamps in Nihilon were of different colours. He thought this must make it rather perilous for night drivers, though startlingly attractive to pedestrians, as it now was to him.
They came to an enormous hotel. It had only been open a fortnight, she said, which was why the surrounding area was not yet paved. To reach the front entrance they had to cross a hundred metres of thick mud, and though she had great difficulty in hauling his luggage through it, she still would not let him help. He tried to insist, and take the rope from her by force, but she pushed him away haughtily, saying she could manage quite well on her own.
Weary and mudstained, they walked at last between the opened glass doors and across the immaculate grey carpet. The manager was fixing a light bulb into a socket above the reception counter, and Edgar’s companion pulled at his coat-tails to let him know that he had customers.
He got down. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like a single room, with bath,’ said Edgar, ‘in a quiet situation and facing south.’
‘We’d like a double room, with bath, on as high a floor as possible,’ said his female porter, ‘so that we can have a good view of the fighting in the morning.’
‘We’re hoping it will be over by then,’ the manager smiled.
‘I’d like a single room,’ Edgar insisted. ‘I’m very tired.’
‘Sign here,’ said the manager.
His companion wrote her name in the book, and the manager told two young men to bring their luggage in. Another young man motioned them into a lift, and pressed a button: ‘We’re going to room 404. It’s a suite really, but we don’t have such distinguished guests as you every day.’
Edgar, trying to avoid the open and all-devouring gaze of his companion, wanted to know the price of it, having forgotten to ask the manager.
‘404,’ said the young man, grinning at the amorous boat-lady as she fondled her lover.
‘Not the number of the room,’ he said irritably, trying to push her away. ‘The price.’
‘404,’ the young man repeated. ‘In this hotel the number of the room is also the price. The higher you go, the better the room, the bigger the price. It avoids misunderstanding. How many weeks will you be staying?’
‘Overnight,’ he said, ‘or perhaps two’ — feeling his hand squeezed, and appalled at the expense of the accommodation.
‘Is that all?’ said the youth in a hostile manner. He thrust the key into Edgar’s hand when the lift stopped, and pointed up the corridor: ‘You can find your own room, if that’s the case.’
Chapter 16
Adam, unsteady though unshaken, stood on a table reciting his ‘Ode to Nihilon’ (composed an hour before) to a silent admiring audience, more numerous than had ever crowded around him so far in his life. The policeman had commanded everyone in the café to be silent, and the proprietor, fully aware of the honour that was being done to his establishment, dimmed all lights except the bright one placed by the poet’s elbow, under which isolating glare Adam had penned his immortal lines.
The policeman stood with cap in hand and lowered head, and the proprietor refused to serve any drinks while the writing or reciting was taking place. A young drunken peasant who began to laugh and shout had to be thrown out by the more understanding and cultured customers. For some minutes afterwards he rampaged around the building, banging on doors and windows, and demanding to be let back in, though he eventually got tired, and either fell asleep or went away. The disturbance hardly penetrated Adam’s inspired state, and a hundred lines of verse came out of him almost as quickly as the Nihilitz had been previously poured in.
The floor shook at the end of each short section, his audience shouting approval at every noisy word, and when he stopped, having come to an abrupt end, he leapt from the table and buckled both legs under him, without, however, being hurt, for he sprang to his feet and held on to the bar-rail behind.
‘That was magnificent,’ said the proprietor, drying tears on his white apron. ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am that someone of your talent should bless my humble place with such a performance. Please recite some more. We’d like a few hundred lines about the greatness of Nihilon, and the savage barbarity of those Cronacian wolf-bandits.’
‘We’d all like to hear that,’ said the policeman.
‘Yes,’ the customers cried. ‘A poem about lousy Cronacia!’