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I felt compelled to go back out into the streets, where a viscous tide of humanity flowed towards me. It was carnival time, and evening, and everyone was at leisure, out and about, rubbing up against each other. And their faces were filled with the light that fell from the stands, and the laughter oozed from their mouths like pus from open wounds. The more impatiently I tried to make my way through, the more they laughed and thronged closer together. Somehow a woman's shawl got caught on me; I dragged her behind me, and people stopped me and laughed, and I felt I ought to laugh as well but I couldn't. Someone threw a handful of confetti in my eyes, and it stung like a whip. The people were wedged together at the street corners, jammed tight, with no way of moving on, merely swaying gently to and fro as if they were coupling as they stood. But although they were standing still while I raced about like a lunatic at the roadside, wherever there were gaps in the crowd, the truth of it was that they were moving and I never budged an inch. For nothing changed; whenever I looked up, I saw the selfsame buildings on the one side and the carnival stands on the other. Perhaps everyone really was stuck in one place, and it was only because I and they were giddy that everything seemed to be in a whirl. I had no time to think about it, I was heavy with perspiration, and a numbing pain was coursing through me, as if something too large were being borne upon my blood, distending the veins wherever it went. And all the while, I felt that the air had long since been exhausted and I was merely breathing in exhalations, which my lungs refused.
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigg
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