So it came at last, the undistinguished thing. R. was certain he'd been warned. The teeming reached its limit, and R. found himself toppled with a mass of others down a smooth bank, into one of the trenches. The only space that remained. R. had had no idea how near to one he'd been, the instant before. It had become impossible to see beyond the heads and shoulders massing so tightly, there was no one to blame but—R. managed to arrest this thought. No one to blame. It was so obvious. None raised any real protest, despite their bodies struggling pointlessly, a residue of instinct. No, the roar of voices seemed mainly to emanate from above, from those just discovering their nearness to the trench, just losing their foothold at the rim. Down here, among the fallen, it was strangely quiet.
The bodies close—he'd grown accustomed to that. R. found it almost consoling. When the water reached him, though, he felt puzzled by the physics: could the weight and the mass have displaced the shallow pool upward through the crevices? Or had more water been piped in now?
Maybe so. Then again, maybe not important to understand.
****
