Travels in Nihilon Read Online Free PDF Page B

case, clip it shut, and walk away sweating and muttering towards the door leading to the train.
    A blue-uniformed customs officer, holding a clipboard which stated in bold black words, as far as Jaquiline could see, that you were forbidden to bring anything at all into the country, leaned across the table and pulled the half-smoked cigarette from her mouth. ‘You’ll have to pay duty on that,’ he said, stubbing it out, and throwing it on to a pair of scales. ‘How do you expect our nation of honest shopkeepers to live if we let you bring cigarettes into our Nihilon?’
    â€˜They’re very strict here,’ said the stationmaster. ‘This is one of the worst frontier posts as far as the customs people are concerned. Others are quite easy.’
    She took up her pad and wrote: ‘At the frontier, scenes of great confusion prevail, especially during the so-called customs-house examination. Every case and packet is opened, so that it is inadvisable for ladies to travel alone. She who has no option but to do so will see the most intimate articles of her wardrobe pawed by brutish fingers, and held up to the gaze of other travellers in order that they may leer at them. This they are too ready to do, in the hope that, having fallen in with the customs officer’s perverted sense of humour, they may be spared having to pay duty on their own goods. But one is indeed made to pay, for one is literally robbed of one’s luggage and then made to buy it back again.’ ‘It is a most degrading experience,’ she wrote later, ‘and the female tourist is advised to maintain dignity and patience through her ordeal. This, it must be said, is something of a feat, under the circumstances, for the victim is taken to a room in which her actual person is searched by two poker-faced dragons of Nihilon officialdom. At this stage one may well begin to wonder whether the country is worth visiting at all, but your correspondent had no option except to persevere in her intention to obtain information for the benefit of future travellers. The least that can be said about this infamous procedure is that a cup of coffee was provided after the experience was over, though at a very inflated price.’
    Having parted with another five hundred klipps, whereupon everything was put back into her cases, she followed the broad back of the stationmaster to the waiting train. There was a booth open on the platform at which one could buy tickets to Nihilon City, but she got into a long and acrimonious argument with the woman behind the glass, who tried to insist that she pay for a return instead of a single journey. Jaquiline refused to give in on this point, and after snatching the correct ticket, and throwing down the money, she watched her cases taken towards a suitable compartment. The hooter of the train blew a prolonged and urgent note, unpleasant, she thought, if heard in the distance from some comfortable bed at night, but now giving a feeling of actual relief, because in a short time she would be taken out of these bleak and extortionate frontier sheds.
    The stationmaster climbed over her cases to reach the door of the high carriage, before pulling each one in after him. He told her to wait on the platform while he took them to her compartment. Through the window, a few yards along the train, she saw his rather long limbs placing her cases respectfully on the racks. It would be difficult to climb those steel steps unaided, so she waited for him to come back and assist her. He had shown such magnificent kindness in this barbaric country that she wondered how to reward him. It would be embarrassing and wrong to tip such an impressive stationmaster, who looked so sincere and dignified in his immaculate uniform, almost like some elderly general about to review his equally smart and elderly soldiers. If she were a man she could offer him a cigar, but then, he wouldn’t help a man in this way, so the situation