The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

by Angela Carter

Nao-Kurai occupied an important position in the tribe and I was very lucky to have fallen under his protection. Their business consisted of the marine transportation of goods from one part of the central plain to another via the waterways and, since Dr Hoffman had put the railways out of action, business was enjoying a boom. We drew behind us a whole string of barges which carried imported timber up to a city in the north where work still went on as usual. The entire country was poorly afforested and we were forced to import timber for building or even for the manufacture of furniture from other sources along the sea-board. Nao-Kurai owned the longest string of barges among all the river people and his skill at the standard speech and a remarkable flair for mental arithmetic had made him the spokesman and administrator for the whole community. To a considerable extent the tribe held all its goods in common and tended to think of itself as a scattered but unified family. When I lived among them, there were some five or six hundred river people who travelled mostly in convoys of five or six chains of barges