Silk (Vintage International)

What is this world, exactly? Thoma wonders. A man slaps a girl’s arse, she walks on as if nothing has happened. Then the man gets hit by a coconut thrown by a weird woman, and he walks away without even turning back.

It’s an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself. Why? We’re blind moles. Creeping through the soil, feeling with our snouts. We know nothing. I perceived this … now I don’t know where to go. Screech with fear, only. Run away.

then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, n

It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, and the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the win