“Impossible,” Roy said, “The effect it had on people.”
“You told them it was something special, and they believed it,”
Spada laughed, “Happens all the time. You’re a pusher just the
same.”
“It was magic,” Roy said, disbelieving. “Pure chemical poetry.”
“Or chimerical. Look, if one could just make a drink out of it, why
would Ethiopians waste their time chewing it? I hear it tastes like
shit.”
Roy fell silent.
The ark was empty. Pandora’s box was empty. The nucleus of the
atom was empty. All of it, empty. They were only Russian dolls all the
way down, with nothing inside them but hope. That is, until you
opened the last one.
As the curtain fell on the day and also on the last of Undergrounds, a
series of distant explosions punctuated the sun’s departure. The
atmosphere dismantled the low angled rays, painting the white walls
of Undergrounds a red wine. A powerful scent of charred coffee
wafted through the city and many were forced awake. It drew them
outside and into the streets where they could now hear the
caterwauling armies of angry sirens. The sound and the smell would
continue on throughout the night and the city, rising from the spot of
each former Biddenbrooks franchise, now crippled and gasping the
thick black torrents of lonely carbon atoms.
ABYSSINIA
344
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