Pagina 646 de 1294

He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts,

some images without order or coherence floated before his

mind--faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met

somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of

the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some

officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some

underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite

dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and

the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images

followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he

liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while

there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming,

sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still

persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.