At the age of twenty-eight she had met Edgar, and fallen in love for the first time in her life. All that remained for her to do was, with the help of her lover, solve the mystery of her father’s death. She saw no hope of finding him alive, but felt that her sufferings would be more than justified if she could at least discover his grave.
Although Edgar was fond of this strange and passionate woman, he did not honestly think he was in love with her. ‘I love you,’ he said to her. ‘I really love you.’
She stood up and undressed, her eyes glowing at him, so that he was obliged to do the same. ‘We’ll stay here all day and all night,’ she said. ‘Perhaps trains will be running again to Nihilon City in the morning.’
‘Aren’t there any buses?’ he asked, a forlorn hope as a hardening handsome nipple tipped at his cheek.
She pushed him on to the bed. ‘None at all. But don’t worry. We’ll go tomorrow.’ His spine trembled with renewed life, and he was soon in no condition to argue. Another explosion seemed to rend the town apart, and he felt her pulling the blankets up and over them.
Chapter 20
The ticket collector apologized, and said that there had been a mistake. Instead of having the compartment to herself, she was to share it with another woman. He then demanded a supplement of fifty kricks because, he explained kindly, she would have company all the way to Nihilon City instead of travelling alone as heretofore, and all such extra comforts were provided at nominal cost. Jaquiline said that she hadn’t asked for the extra passenger to be put with her, but on seeing the miserable face of the forty-year-old woman who was to travel with her, she decided not to embarrass her any further. In any case she might be turned into a source of information, and so increase the pages of Jaquiline’s guidebook contribution, and therefore her payment for it. So she gave fifty kricks to the ticket collector, who departed grumbling and swearing because she hadn’t given him anything extra.
‘I’m going to Aspron,’ the woman said, as if she had been weeping, ‘which is the hospital city, in case you don’t know, being a foreigner.’
‘I hope it’s nothing serious,’ said Jaquiline, offering her a cigarette, which was accepted readily. She was fascinated by this woman, but found the landscape also interesting, and looked out of the window at mountains going up steeply to the south, craggy inhospitable peaks and valleys forming a frontier zone in which lived some of the more primitive peoples of Nihilon.
‘Quite serious,’ said the woman, standing up to take off the jacket of her suit, then opening a locker to find a hanger for it. The train moved slowly but comfortably along its wide rails. ‘You see, my fifteen-year-old son has had a nervous breakdown.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Jaquiline, noticing her trim figure, and indeed how pretty she appeared with her short dark hair and small mouth. Only the faintly worn quality of skin told her age. ‘But why must he be put in a hospital so far away?’
‘He’s not in a hospital. He’s at home, staying with my sister. I’m the one who’s going to the hospital. My husband set out a few days ago, but then I had a telegram to say that I must go as well. In Nihilon, whenever a young person has a nervous breakdown, or anything more serious, it’s the parents who have the treatment. I suppose we’ll be in for shock therapy, drugs, and psychoanalysis — in that order. It really is difficult for me to leave my job for three months, because I’m a school teacher, and I shall certainly be missed.’
‘Does this sort of treatment work?’ Jaquiline asked.
She pulled down the basin to wash her face. ‘My name is Cola. Normally it does, certainly as much as if the young person got the treatment. When the parents go back home again they are so changed, and in a sense relaxed, that all seems to be well. Of course, if things go wrong and the son or daughter has another breakdown, then the parents come up for trial, and their psycho-reports and treatment-processes are taken into consideration. One mother and father I know were sent to prison for five years because their daughter was on her third nervous breakdown. But because of good conduct they were released four months later.’
Not satisfied with a clean face, Cola unbuttoned her blouse and took it off, then removed her underwear so that she was bare above the waist. Her breasts were plump though rather low, and she washed them vigorously while talking. Jaquiline wrote rapidly in her notebook, glancing now and then at her companion’s ablutions, enthralled by her lack of embarrassment at showing her body before a stranger.
‘The law is quite lenient in Nihilon,’ Cola chattered. ‘Once can come out of prison after three months even if you are sentenced to twenty years, if you show willing. It depends on how many coarse epithets you manage to shout at the judge during the trial. The secret is, of course, not to get a lawyer to help you if you are arrested on a really criminal charge, because he defends you with reasonable talk, during which time you should be cursing the judges. In every court (I took my school-children to visit one last week) there is a notice above the judges’ heads which says ‘Nihilism is next to Godlessness’ — as if to encourage one to make a stand for innocence or leniency by shouting obscene language in rich and rhythmical patterns. I’ve heard that the police never arrest poets, because even if they commit the most despicable crimes they are bound to be free in a few days, and on the lookout for revenge, such are their powers of vindictive and picturesque cursing. Naturally the peasants don’t come off too well in this respect, being tongue-tied and awkward, but some of our rich peasants of the northern mountains, when they’ve killed a neighbour to get his land and feel themselves liable to be arrested, hire a poet to coach them in expletives to hurl at the judges. Some poets earn a good living at this, and the most famous ones are looked out for by the newspapers, who hire them as liars and special writers for notable occasions. In fact the newspapers might even compete to get a really good poet and liar, providing there’s a chance of him becoming less of a poet and more of a liar as time goes on, which there usually is. That’s why our newspapers have such a vast circulation. The laws of Nihilon say that the first duty of a newspaper is to be read, not looked at, which is why there are few pictures. Truth is secondary as far as the editors are concerned.’
She took off everything below the waist as well — so that Jaquiline wanted to turn away from the spectacle of her most intimate cleansing. She was not quite able at this stage to go on writing in her notebook, for Cola attended to herself with such loving care that she felt soiled from her experiences of the day, and wanted her to finish so that she could do the same, though she didn’t see herself as capable of accomplishing it under the scrutiny to which she had unwittingly subjected Cola. But when Cola was finished and dressed, Jaquiline forgot her embarrassment and gave herself up to the luxury of a similar and thorough wash.
The train was climbing into the well-wooded foothills, and was by no means so steady on the rails as it had been while travelling along the coastal plain. But they found a vacant table in the restaurant car, and smoked a cigarette while waiting for the first course. ‘This may be the last meal I shall enjoy for a long time,’ said Cola. ‘Conditions at Aspron are not good for those who get sent there for their children’s breakdowns. Apart from bad food, one doesn’t feel much like eating after so many shocks and interrogations.’
Jaquiline held Cola’s hand to comfort her. ‘I thought it was only psychoanalysis.’
‘Not exactly. You are made to talk. As long as you keep talking you are all right, but as soon as you stop it’s the eléctric shocks again. They say you are uncooperative and sullen, psychotic or schizophrenic. Sometimes they try drugs to make you talk, and that’s bad enough. But usually it’s the shock treatment. As long as you can keep talking, though, it’s not too bad.’