The Generals (9 page)

But we made those remarks as if they were tag-ends in some way, as if we’d said them out of shame. We both felt this, so after a while we went on with the argument and agreed on the following: today the island is the haunt of a small number of people who live a joyless and stupidly enough even an economically rather meagre life there. Lots of people who really belong there and who would like to be there are forced to move because of unemployment, lack of development, all that sort of thing. Fifty times that number of individuals could live really happily on that island, fifty times as many as those who live there now and are unhappy.

Do you remember that conversation? Yes, of course you remember everything of importance we’ve done and said together, just as well as I do. I’ve forgotten almost everything else. But as far as that argument is concerned, it seems to me now infinitely more important than what I thought then. I think that in that conversation lie the keys to both the past and the future, that on that occasion, we’d once and for all formulated both what is right and what is wrong in
our thinking and our ideas. Or, anyhow, seen the truth without understanding it.

It’s an unpleasant thought.

Anyhow, what will Oswald use three hundred jeeps for? It sounds crazy. But I suppose he can be crazy in his way if he wants to be. All that business about immigration he arranged perfectly. I’ve had compliments from international quarters about it as recently as today.

I love you so. Thanks for the fine pen you gave me on the airport. I’m writing this letter with it.

Please forgive this long and childish and disjointed letter, but I’m sitting here in the middle of the night in my hotel room. I’m feeling very randy, which respectable ladies shouldn’t, I suppose, and so I’m homesick. I long for you. I don’t want to go to bed alone among all those bolsters in that large elegant bed, but now I’m going to all the same. I love you, your Aranca.

Colonel Orbal
: How old was this woman?

Captain Schmidt
: Thirty-two. She had at the time an eight-month-old child by Janos Edner, but funnily enough, she does not mention it.

Colonel Orbal
: What’s funny about that?

Captain Schmidt
: I didn’t mean that literally.

Colonel Orbal
: Seems to have been ardent sort of woman. What did she look like?

Captain Schmidt
: Small, fair, lively. Blue eyes. Well developed, they say. There’s a description here, four foot seven, eight stone three …

Major von Peters
: You know perfectly well what Aranca Peterson looked like, Mateo. You’ve seen thousands of pictures of her.

Captain Schmidt
: Aranca Peterson did not send that letter off the next day. She obviously left it and then added something the next evening. That too, is of a certain interest. Continue, Lieutenant Brown.

Lieutenant Brown
: My appearance this evening, as usual, was an extraordinary business. They asked questions until I nearly died. Unfortunately, I probably looked rather dreadful on television because the heat from the lights was terrible and my face was sweating as usual. I’ll give you the main points; in comparison with all that rubbish I wrote yesterday, perhaps they’ll be of some interest.

I warmed them up with the usual statement. Then the great bombardment began:

If your country considers that it follows a pacifist line, why do you refuse to ally yourselves to the block of states which has been formed along peaceful lines?

Because all power blocks at all times have believed or maintained that they were working for peace. The results speak for themselves.

So you dissociate yourself from the third world as an idea?

Yes. From the four and the fifth, too. For us, pacifism is a type of politics without any personal conception of life.

Do you consider it compatible with the idea of pacifism that your own party as long as two years ago started an armed revolution and took power by force?

The force that was used was extremely limited. The whole of the revolution cost fewer than ten lives. However, even that was deplorable, and I would be the first to admit it.

But if the attempts to suppress the liberation movement had been more forceful, the number of victims would naturally have been much greater?

Hardly. If anyone had attacked us with arms, we wouldn’t have been so foolish as to have tried to use the same primitive means.

Do you mean that you wouldn’t have wanted to defend yourselves, or that you wouldn’t have been able to?

We neither wanted to nor were able to. In our case, the latter is dependent on the former and vice versa.

If you were attached from outside today, would you also refuse to defend yourselves?

Who would want to attack us?

(After that there was a brief silence. Finally someone said):

That’s no answer to the question. Would you offer military resistance?

Naturally not.

I think I know that your army today has put in discreet but relatively large orders for arms and other equipment?

What you think you know does not interest me very much, apart from the fact that it absolutely incorrect. First of all, we have no army. Secondly, we have neither bought nor ordered any military equipment.

Do you deny that less than a month ago your gendarmerie, or militia as you call it, ordered a very large number of military vehicles from a certain place abroad?

(Those damned jeeps!)

There’s no reason to deny that. We have no car-factories and consequently have to import transport vehicles. Naturally we choose the type of vehicle that suits our terrain.

(End of the pacifist section. A madwoman from Ireland began to talk about God.)

I have, thank the Lord, never visited your country and neither shall I ever do so, but I have read and heard that you have no official religion
.

Yes, that is correct.

They say that on the whole island there is not a single church. Why?

Presumably because there is no need for churches.

Then your people are completely secularised?

I don’t know. I can’t answer personally for every single individual.

Can you truly demand that the poor souls you’ve forced to live in spiritual darkness can exist under your anti-religious tyranny?

The question appears to me academic. If there are people who need a church, they will certainly build one themselves.

Would you then maintain that there is freedom of religious belief in your country?

Naturally.

I have brought with me a novel written by one of your authors and printed in Oswaldsburg. A dreadful book, but nevertheless I wish to quote a piece from it. This is word for word
:

They find a guy called God, then, and in his honour they build a special building, which they go into at definite times and kneel and mumble incantations. This may seem somewhat strange at a time when we’ve learnt to control and make use of all known forces of nature, when vehicles made by human hands land on the moon and when … I need read no further, I hope. Now I’m asking you: Does this author represent your country’s official standpoint?

Our country has no official standpoints, either in matters of belief or any other matters.

(End of discussion, thank goodness.)

It seems to me that there are more interesting points in your speech than those concerning religion. Your country is, as jar as I know, the only one in the world that lacks a constitution?

Yes. Neither are there any other laws or regulations.

So you make no claim to being regarded as a judicial state?

Yes, but not in that expression’s conventional sense.

And despite this, you have a gendarmerie. Why?

The militia has two tasks. One is to see to passport and visa control, the other to function as a rescue service for accidents or in cases or illness or in other emergencies which lie outside the control of the individual. It’s task vis-à-vis the ordinary citizen is to help, not to guard.

All this sounds very good, of course, but how does it junction in practice? Is it not so that despite the absence of laws and regulations you have jurisdiction, a penal code, and some kind of courts
.

It is incorrect to talk about a penal code. There is only one punishment for us—deportation. If you are deported, you may never return.

On what principle is this highly remarkable jurisdiction based?

The principle of good sense. It lies in the individual’s own hands to determine what he or she can allow him or herself to do in relation to his or her fellow-human beings.

How often has this punishment had to be resorted to?

Hitherto, in ten or so cases.

And who decides when it shall be enforced?

We do. The people who live in the country.

Is it not so that an authority called the Council—of which you yourself are a member—decides such matters and other essential ones?

In principle, every citizen is a member of that Council.

I have heard that. But I’ve also heard that in practice the Council consists of a junta of five people and that only in exceptional cases has it happened that outsiders, so to speak, may take part in decisions, Is that so?

Of course.

Isn’t that Fascism?

(I’ve heard that question several times before and I like it less each time.)

No, not in any respect whatsoever.

Anyhow, it’s not democracy, is it?

Not if by democracy you mean a system committed to parties and politicians, which suffocates the individual’s sense of responsibility, and thus also his initiative, with a flood of laws and hardened doctrines, with regulations which are meaningless from the beginning because they are not really self-evident, and the effect of which is that they make the individual feel incapacitated and gradually make him doubt his own mind. Democracy in the form you mean breeds nothing but a boundless, constantly-growing bureaucracy and a mind-paralysing bickering about trifles, so-called problems, which any normal ten-year-old could solve at the flick of a hand. Nor if you mean guidance of the people, the tea-party game for the chosen, in which outworn and old-fashioned concepts such as liberalism, reaction, social-democracy and radicalism are bounced back and forth as in a ping-pong match with neither a beginning nor an end.

This philosophy, so remarkably alien to reality, is, as you know, not new, but it would be highly interesting to see it working in practice
.

(Sufficient sacrifices laid at the altar of demagogy. Then there was a short cross-examination.)

Official information on your country’s financial status and the people’s standard of living is indeed diffuse, but despite the artificial population explosion you have achieved through immigration, it seems as if you have succeeded in creating a certain economic balance. This appears remarkable, as the country in which you and your compeers caused a revolution was still a fairly backward agricultural province. On what factors is this relative well-being based?

On the fact that we created circumstances in which work was no longer regarded as a necessary evil but as a meaningful occupation.

Do you mean by that that you have no leisure-time problems?

Yes, amongst other things.

What is your largest source of income?

The tourist industry. To put it succinctly, you might say we undertake to solve other people’s leisure-time problems. Thanks to good geographical and climatic conditions, in combination with the factors I named earlier, we seem to have succeeded in this to everyone’s satisfaction.

(I’d taken the words out of her mouth there, and she didn’t say anything else.)

You said just now that there are no churches or religious comunities in your country. Nor any authorities. Have you also got rid of other cornerstones of society, marriage, for instance?

No, people who live together can naturally get married if they want to.

So they can enter into wedlock? In what way?

In any way they like. That’s up to each person.

What proportion of those people who live together and create a family get married?

I don’t think anyone has taken the trouble to compile such extremely pointless statistics. But among people who live together or move in together in order to create a family, I think I have noticed a general tendency to manifest their cohabitation in various ways.

How can they do that?

Through private agreement, for instance, verbal or written. They can also add their names to a list which is available to all.

Is it true that you do not tax individual citizens?

Yes, by the end of our second year, communally owned sources of income paid such good dividends that it was considered possible to make a distribution, instead of collecting taxes.

What are these communally owned sources of income?

The tourist trade and overseas communications. As I said in my preliminary statement, the aim is that only the south-western area round the town of Marbella is to be exploited for tourism. Otherwise all new building, as I mentioned, has been concentrated in the two other larger towns. The aim is partly to avoid unnecessary interference with the countryside, and partly to protect our agricultural areas. Thanks to intensified exploitation and specialisation, we have in fact, in spite of the increase in population, managed to maintain overproduction of foodstuffs. Quality products from agriculture are at present our main exports. In addition, we have had to—in consideration of the huge demand—limit the touristified area. Otherwise the whole country would gradually be flooded with foreigners, to no one’s advantage.

When I visited your country, I had the impression that most things were very expensive, at least in Marbella
.

Presumably you also had the opportunity to observe that our service is first-class.