The night wore on, blanketed by a peaceful silence that only felt
malicious to Roy. They had all been damned. Every one of them. And
it was he that had led them to that damnation. Not just the friends
Colin had mentioned. Also Bidden and Ellie. And his father. He
thought of the woman on her way to Kemukus. Death was following
her too. After the collision it seemed she had transferred the curse to
him. Yes, that all made sense. Everything was okay before the car and
the carnal collided. Before they ran over one of Helios’ bulls. In Java.
The Island of the Sun. Where it all started. Where, according to Yak’s
guru humanity was born. After Java, there had been a brief moment
of calm. And then everyone drowned.
He would never get out. He would never find an earthly paradise.
He would never escape this prison.
Oh, but he would.
This was the last in a long line of forced moves on an all-black
chessboard: Checkmate. Shah mat.The king is dead. He began
pulling the sheet from his bed. One last thread to weave into the
mottled tapestry of his life. Spots of black, all close together.
Ethiopian fingerprints. Moor, Merchant, and now Deathin Venice.
What use, literature, poetry, when it conspired against you?
Tying one end of the sheet around the bars on his small window,
he slipped the other end noose-like around his neck. Lights out had
been called hours ago and everyone was surely asleep. A chorus of
snores assured him of this. Sleep, the one great mercy afforded to
even God’s lowliest creatures. His greatest gift to mankind. Not
coffee, surely. The opposite of coffee.
Roy knelt down and leaned forward until he could feel the
tension cutting off the blood to his brain. Everything began to grow
softer, kinder, more comfortable. He nestled into this quiet
borderland and waited for his plane to depart. Already the cabin was
filling with sweet, pressurized air. The giant Garuda taxied down the
runway. He was going back to Java. To the ends of the earth, to the
beginning of another.
Soon he saw the white light. His jail cell had become that place
one always sees at the brink of eternity. Paradisio. Alpine abyss.
Glaringly, blindingly white.
He felt himself being helped up and led away through a maze of
grey corridors and finally into a dark limousine.
“The angel of death drives a limo?” Roy wondered. It made
sense: probably eased the transition. All alone in the back seat, he
ABYSSINIA
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