In That Place

AI VEND had been sold. Not that there was any public announcement about it, nor any leaked information or suspicion as to who the buyer might have been. Only on the streets was there a kind of easily intoxicating uncertainty, coupled with the temptation to sin. Church bells tolled more muffled, women forgot to return home for dinner, men didn't take off their ties when they went to bed. Place sold. The floors of new buildings shrank, car parks multiplied, flower shops and cinemas closed, cemeteries were expropriated. Place sold. Weather forecasts failed, guitarists moved elsewhere, the price of marble fell, the price of plaster rose. The farmer's plough turned up dead worms from the soil.