Free Travels in Nihilon by Alan Sillitoe Page A

Drive on, or I’ll pulverize your headlamps. It’s also forbidden to import headlamps. It’s forbidden to bring anything in at all. I’ll tax your toenails if you insult me personally like that.’
    The man quickly handed over a bundle of money, and after a big red paint mark had been splashed down the side of his car by a second customs officer, he was allowed to enter the country.
    â€˜Good afternoon, sir,’ said the customs officer obsequiously when Benjamin drove forward, putting his hammer away into a briefcase. Benjamin was resigned to losing his windscreen, because he had a spare plastic one in his repair kit, but the customs officer asked: ‘How much blood do you have in your body, sir?’
    Puzzled, he made a wild guess: ‘Sixteen litres.’
    The customs officer opened the door: ‘You’re only allowed fifteen. Will you step this way, sir?’
    He swore, but inaudibly, deciding to be more patient than he’d been at the first obstacle, and followed the customs man inside.
    â€˜May I see your passport?’
    Benjamin gave it to him: ‘Certainly.’
    â€˜It’s forged,’ the man said with a smile, and Benjamin marvelled at how uncannily quick they were in detecting this fact, which was indeed true, though the falsification was so perfect that he didn’t see how they could tell. ‘However,’ the passport general said from behind the desk, ‘we don’t worry about such details in Nihilon. Kindly sit in that chair so that we can confiscate your litre of surplus blood, then we’ll let you go.’
    Benjamin put his passport away, and began to roll up his shirt sleeve. ‘What would happen if I had a litre of blood less than the normal amount?’
    â€˜You’d have a transfusion of the difference. That would be inconvenient, because you’d have to wait a few days until they could do it at the local clinic. And you’d have a big medical bill to pay. But there’d be no trouble. No trouble at all. As a Nihilist I have an answer to every question. There are advantages to this system, as you’ll no doubt find before you leave.’
    Benjamin flinched and grunted as the needle went in, and turned pale when he saw such a huge flow of his life’s blood going out. However, the nurse who extracted it was pretty, so he didn’t object, but stood up as soon as it was finished and walked unsteadily back to his car.
    â€˜The fact is,’ said the young customs official with the hammer in his briefcase, ‘no matter how much blood a person says he has we always take a litre out, on this route. We sell it to the Nihilon Blood Bank for use in our war against Cronacia. It not only makes us money, but it’s patriotic as well.’
    â€˜A charming idea,’ said Benjamin, glad to be back in his car, though feeling that he’d need a week to recover from this day’s blows.
    â€˜Another thing,’ said the customs officer, ‘do you have a repair kit in your car?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜Kindly get it out for me.’
    Like a man under interrogation, he had admitted something he thought to be totally innocent, if not irrelevant, only to find it of vital consequence to his exhausted body and irascible mind. ‘What the hell for?’
    â€˜All repair kits have to be inspected.’
    â€˜Is there duty to pay on them?’
    The customs man shook his head. With a sigh, Benjamin went to the back of the car, lifted the tailgate, and pulled boxes about till he came to the repair kit.
    â€˜Open it,’ said the customs officer.
    He regarded it as the pride of his travelling equipment, a collection of spare parts and tools which he had chosen with care so as to make sure he could deal with any minor breakdown, having heard of Nihilon’s bad and brutal service stations. The customs officer picked over the tools disdainfully: ‘Do you think our garages are badly