‘Oh yes, sir, it is. The law of the jungle, and the order of the slaugher-house. Nihilon is the greatest country in the world. Two hundred klipps, sir.’
‘That’s rather expensive,’ Richard said, drinking half the Nihilitz. ‘In fact it’s extortionate.’
‘Bullet-proof glass costs a great deal,’ the waiter informed him politely. ‘We had to replace it twice last week, so you’re lucky to find it here at all.’
Richard passed him two hundred and fifty klipps. ‘What happens to it?’
‘It gets shot away. Or a bomb hits it. But we do our best for our customers.’ He was called to another table, so left Richard to continue scribbling his notes. He was observed by an ageing man with short grey hair, an impeccably dressed, manicured man who was well-groomed and dignified, smooth in all his gestures, neither preoccupied with what might have been going on within himself, nor obsessed with the carnage in the square outside, from where in fact he had recently walked.
The man glanced disdainfully at a newspaper, then folded it and laid it by his Nihilitz. He gazed at a framed portrait on the wall of the café, a gold-framed picture of a bosomly woman dressed in black, with a boy of twelve by her side wearing an admiral’s uniform. Richard had already seen either that same picture or a variation of it placed in the corridor of his hotel. When the bellboy had shown him to his room he had stood looking at one above his bed. ‘Doesn’t it make you wonder where the father is?’ the bellboy had asked.
‘Not really,’ Richard said.
‘He’s been shot,’ the bellboy ventured. ‘That’s what we always say.’ And now in the café Richard suspected that, because of the unnatural glitter in the eyes of the child, there was an observer behind the picture, if not a microphone as well. He recalled that a printed notice on the back of the door at his hotel room exhorted guests to respect these portraits and pictures, because the management and staff, not to mention the Nihilonian public at large, held them in high repute.
The man’s uneasy glances were divided between this typical portrait of Nihilon, and the pigeons flying outside the glassed-in front of the café. ‘They’re waiting to take over our jobs,’ he called.
‘Who?’ Richard smiled, glad to make another contact with someone in Nihilon.
‘The pigeons,’ said the man. ‘The black pigeons from the mountains and the white pigeons from the sea. They’re all over the place. Will you join me in a Nihilitz?’ He came over to Richard’s table. ‘My name’s Telmah, Orcam Telmah.’
‘Yes, I’ll have another,’ said Richard, shaking his hand.
‘A large Nihilitz,’ said Orcam, in so soft a voice that Richard didn’t see how he could be heard, but the waiter came along with two formidable tumblers and set them down. ‘They’ll take our houses and jobs,’ said Orcam, with a new eagerness in his eye, nodding across at the portrait of the boy and his mother — ‘and they won’t stop them doing it. They won’t even try. After suitable training and deployment the pigeons will sweep in on us and help themselves to all we’ve built up over thousands of years. So let’s drink to our defeat, my friend.’
Richard lifted his glass. ‘I don’t really think they’ll do such a thing,’ he said, sipping the fiery liquid.
Orcam drained his, and pulled his bow-tie undone. ‘They will. I know they will. We have to protect ourselves against the birds. They fly around all day and every day, observing our organization, or lack of it, and discovering the dispositions of our weaknesses. They watch us through windows, follow us in trains and motorcars, exchanging secret warbling signals between themselves. We can’t understand a word of it, but nothing we do is not watched by those cool intelligent eyes. They’re cruel, too. They’ll blind us at first, before helping themselves to our accomplishments. It’s all so easy and obvious, but nobody ever reads my letters. I spend hours every afternoon writing letters to President Nil and newspapers, but they’re always ignored.’ His hair was ruffled, and he became distraught, knocking over both glasses, and staring at the picture on the wall. ‘It’s their fault. They connive with the birds. They use the birds to keep us subdued. And how can you be subdued if you’re supposed to be a Nihilist? Ah! They never explain that. Crafty! Very crafty!’
Richard watched his hypnotizing balletic motions as he took a hammer and knife from his pocket and waved them at the portrait: ‘There’s a man behind those eyes recording every word I say. But I don’t care, I tell you. I’ll be crafty too, by doing what I like!’
With vindictive strength and impetuosity, and before anyone could stop him, for all were equally entranced, he charged screaming across the room. Reaching the portrait, he ripped and hammered at it with the weapons in his hands.
There were howls of rage and pain from behind the panel, and tables were knocked over as people rushed forward at last to try and reason with him, though not before he had acted out their deepest wish and mutilated the picture.
When the door opened, three policemen came in and grabbed him firmly. He was wild-eyed, foam boiling from his mouth as they walked him to a car waiting by the kerb outside, in which they drove off slowly under a hail of machine-gun fire. Exploding grenades seemed to be smothering the whole square with the noise and smoke of serious combat.
Two waiters went to the assistance of the police agent behind the picture. When they brought him out of the movable, panel he was bleeding from one eye and had several bruises and cuts about the face. ‘I’m giving up my job,’ he cried to everyone, as they led him into the manager’s office for first-aid and Nihilitz.
Richard, though he had sat by and done nothing because he had considered it to be no concern of his, was so shaken by the incident that he called for more coffee, as well as another bottle. ‘That was very unfortunate,’ said the waiter when he set it down, holding his hand out for the money. ‘We’ve had our eyes on that old man for some time. In fact he’s been coming here for years. He used to work for the government radio, reading the Lies — before he went mad. He broadcast a speech about the birds wanting to take over everything. In our country lie-readers are very famous and popular, even more than filmstars. When one of them died a few years ago, many people committed suicide at his funeral. The whole nation was grief-stricken. You can’t imagine how famous they are. The worse the lies are the more people adore them, because then the lie-announcers can really use their acting talent.’
Richard didn’t feel like going beyond the bullet-proof glass while the gunfight was still on. In any case, he was gathering material faster than he could write it down, so there was a good excuse for staying where he was. A fieldpiece must have been wheeled from one of the side streets, because the head of Anarchy on the great statue was suddenly blown off, and the arm of the hunted and despised Progress was shattered from the elbow down.
A few minutes later the secret-police agent, his face lapped in bandages, stood by Richard’s table, ruefully observing the scene in the square, as if wondering whether it would be worthwhile venturing into it at such a time. ‘I’m broken-hearted,’ he said to Richard. ‘Absolutely dispirited. If you buy me a Nihilitz I’ll sit down and tell you why.’
‘You’re the first person I’ve met in such a frame of mind,’ said Richard, calling the order.
‘I know, but I’ve given the best years of my life to that portrait, sitting behind it and looking at all sorts of people from every walk of life, and not harming anyone. I just recorded what they said so as to keep myself amused and happy, and then along comes this old lunatic who spoils my reason for being on earth. It’s absolutely disgusting, such a mean trick. Can you imagine that anyone could be so thoughtless and spiteful as to throw me out of a job like that?’