our land for the general good, but get nothing in return. They won’t even send ground troops to help to protect the position. It’s their unsympathetic attitude that creates bad feeling.’ He spoke bitterly. I could feel his grudge against the big powers. ‘You’re a stranger … I shouldn’t be saying such things to you.’ He looked at me with anxiety: I assured him I was not an informer.
Now that he had begun, he wanted to go on talking. I encouraged him to tell me about himself; it was the way to get him to speak of the things I was interested in. When the project first started, he had driven parties of workers along this road; they used to sing on the way. ‘You remember the old formula—'all men of goodwill to unite in the task of world recovery and against the forces of destruction.' They made the words into a sort of part song, men and women singing them together. It was inspiring to listen. We were all full of enthusiasm in those days. Now everything’s different.’ I asked what had gone wrong. ‘Too many setbacks, delays, disappointments. The work would have been finished long ago if we’d had the materials. But everything had to come from abroad; from countries with different standards of measurement. Sometimes parts did not fit together; whole consignments had to go back. You can imagine the effect of such incidents on young enthusiasts, eager to get the job done.’ It was the usual story of mistakes and muddles due to different ideologies, lack of direct contact. I thanked him for speaking frankly about these matters. A ball neatly volleyed, back bounced the cliche: ‘Contact between individuals is the first step towards a better understanding between peoples.’
I seemed to have won his confidence. He became quite friendly, told me about his girl, showed snapshots of her playing with a dog. I considered it unwise to let people know that I carried a sum of money, so drew his attention to something at the roadside while I quickly took out of my wallet the photograph I still kept there of the girl standing beside a lake. I showed it to him, saying that she had disappeared and that I was looking for her. Without any special feeling, he commented: ‘Wonderful hair. You’re in luck.’ I asked rather sharply whether he would think himself lucky if his girl had vanished off the face of the earth, and he had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. I put the photo away, asked if he’d ever seen hair like that. ‘No, never.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘Most of our women are dark.’ It was no use talking to him about her.
We changed places. I was tired after my stint of driving and shut my eyes. When I opened them again he had a gun lying across his knees. I asked what he expected to shoot. ‘We’re getting near the frontier. It’s dangerous here. Enemies everywhere.’ ‘But this country is neutral.’ ‘What’s neutral? It’s just a word.’ He added mysteriously: ‘Besides, there are various kinds of enemies.’ ‘Such as?’ ‘Saboteurs. Spies. Gangsters. All sorts of scoundrels who flourish in times of disorder.’ I asked if he thought the lorry would be attacked. ‘It has happened. The stuff we’ve got on board is urgently needed. If they’ve got to hear about it they may try to stop us.’
I brought out my automatic, saw him glancing at it with interest, evidently impressed by the foreign weapon. We had just entered the forest. He seemed nervous. ‘This is where the danger begins.’ The tall trees had long grey beards of moss hanging down from their branches, forming opaque screens. It looked a good place to hide. The light was starting to fade, and what was left of it fell on the road, so that it was easy to imagine invisible eyes watching us. I kept a lookout for gunmen, but had other things on my mind.
I spoke to the driver about the warden. He knew only what he had read in the newspapers. The distance to his headquarters from the transmitter was about twenty miles. ‘Can one go there?’ ‘Go there?’ He stared at me blankly. ‘Of course not. It’s enemy country. And they’ve destroyed the road, blocked the pass. There can’t be much of the town left, anyhow. We hear the guns pounding it at night.’ He was more interested in reaching our destination in daylight. ‘We must get out of the forest before dark. We’ll just make it, with any luck.’ He drove furiously, the lorry bounced and skidded over loose stones.
I was too depressed to go on talking. The situation was hopeless. I needed the girl, could not live without her. But I should never be able to find her. There was no road to the town, I should never get there, it was impossible. In any case, the place was under constant bombardment and must have been destroyed. There was no object in going there. She had either left or been killed long ago. I felt in despair. I seemed to have come all this way for nothing.
The site for the transmitter had been carefully chosen, high up, surrounded by forest, backed by mountains, an easy place to defend against ground attack. They had cleared the area immediately around the installation, but the trees were not far away. We lived in prefabricated buildings that let in the rain. Everything felt damp to the touch. The floors were concrete, always covered in mud. Everywhere we walked became a morass. Everyone grumbled about the discomfort and the poor quality of the food.
Something had gone wrong with the weather. It should have been hot, dry, sunny; instead it rained all the time, there was a dank chill in the air. Thick white mists lay entangled in the tops of the forest trees; the sky was a perpetually steaming cauldron of cloud. The forest creatures were disturbed, and departed from their usual habits. The big cats lost their fear of man, came up to the buildings, prowled round the transmitter; strange unwieldy birds flopped overhead. I got the impression that birds and animals were seeking us out for protection against the unknown danger we had unloosed. The abnormalities in their behaviour seemed ominous.
To pass the time and for want of something better to do, I organized the work on the transmitter. It was not far from completion, but the workers had grown discouraged and apathetic. I assembled them and spoke of the future. The belligerents would listen and be impressed by the impartial accuracy of our reports. The soundness of our arguments would convince them. Peace would be restored. Danger of universal conflict averted. This was to be the final reward of their labours. In the meantime, I divided them into teams, arranged competitions, awarded prizes to those who worked best. Soon we were ready to start broadcasting. I recorded events on both sides with equal respect for truth, put out programmes on world peace, urged an immediate cease fire. The minister wrote, congratulating me on my work.
I could not make up my mind whether to cross the frontier or to stay where I was. I did not think the girl could be alive in the demolished town. If she had been killed there it was pointless to go. If she was safe somewhere else there was no point in going either. Considerable personal risk was involved. Although a non- combatant, I was liable to be shot as a spy, or imprisoned indefinitely.
But I was becoming tired of the work here now that everything was running smoothly. I was tired of trying to keep dry in the perpetual rain, tired of waiting to be overtaken by ice. Day by day the ice was creeping over the curve of the earth, unimpeded by seas or mountains. Without haste or pause, it was steadily moving nearer, entering and flattening cities, filling craters from which boiling lava had poured. There was no way of stopping the icy giant battalions, marching in relentless order across the world, crushing, obliterating, destroying everything in their path.
I made up my mind to go. Without telling anyone, in the drenching rain, I drove to the blocked pass, and from there found my way over the tree covered mountains on foot. I had only a pocket compass to guide me. It took me several hours of climbing and struggling through wet vegetation to reach the frontier station, where I was detained by the guard.
NINE
I asked to be taken to the warden. He had lately moved his headquarters to a different town. An armoured car drove me there; two soldiers with submachine guns came too, ‘for my protection’. It was still raining. We crashed through the downpour under heavy black clouds which shut out the last of the day. Darkness was falling as we entered the town. The headlights showed the familiar scene of havoc, rubble, ruins, blank spaces, all glistening in rain. The streets were full of troops. The least damaged buildings were used as barracks.
I was taken into a heavily-guarded place and left in a small room where two men were waiting. The three of us were alone: they stared at me, but said nothing. We waited in silence. There was only the sound of the rain beating down outside. They sat together on one bench; I, wrapped in my coat, on another. That was all the furniture in the room, which had not been cleaned. Thick dust lay over everything.
After a while they began to converse in whispers. I gathered that they had come about some post that was vacant. I stood up, started pacing backwards and forwards. I was restless, but knew I should have to wait. I was not listening to what the others were saying, but one raised his voice so that I had to hear. He was certain that he would get the job. He boasted: ‘I’ve been trained to kill with my hands. I can kill the strongest man with three fingers. I’ve learnt the points in the body where you can kill easily. I can break a block of wood with the side of my hand.’ His words depressed me. This was the kind of man who was wanted now. The two were presently called to
