The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [67]
Something in Phoebe had turned, she’d lost control, was engulfed now in pure unmitigated terror. It was the fear of before, in Reims, the fear of all her life. Every thought struck her with unbearable force, pushing her to the edge of sickness. This is too extreme, she thought. But you wanted extremes. But not this—I didn’t want this, or maybe I did but I’ve changed my mind. Well, too late. Each time she relaxed, the world promptly collapsed into shaking particles; a herculean effort was required just to assemble it sufficiently to walk through, foot after foot. When she reached the curb, Phoebe had no idea what to do, which signal she was waiting for, everything a gnash of colors and lights and roaring sound. She stood a long time until she sensed a pause around her like held breath and then she was crossing a river, picking her way among bleached stones with the sound of birds and running water, a waterfall—I’m in the country! Phoebe thought—then she stumbled against something hard, a metal garbage can, and she had crossed the street. It was a busy street. She had no idea where she was going.
She was lost in a sea of molecules, atoms, shifting colored patterns. Every instant had the dazzling power of retrospect, those dreams that shiver across your skin the next morning like the stroke of a feather. This will kill me, Phoebe thought, I can’t stand it. I don’t want it. Much of this she was saying aloud, “I can’t stand it. It will kill me. I want to go back,” until a man shook her by the arm and spoke sharply in French and Phoebe jerked open her eyes which she hadn’t realized were shut, and a woman in a yellow floral dress advised her to hail a taxi and return to her hotel. But a split second later that same woman was speaking rapid French to a newspaper vendor and Phoebe realized she hadn’t said a word: it was one of those half-dreams where you think you’ve gone to the bathroom but find when you wake that you’re still desperate to go. Phoebe raised her hand for a taxi—a historic moment—she was standing outside a castle signaling trumpets to hail the approach of a monarch in a jewel-encrusted crown, gleaming white horses, shadowy forests hovering just beyond sight, then a taxi stopped and Phoebe got in and the driver took off, and she opened her eyes to find herself standing in the midst of a crowded sidewalk, one hand thrust in the air as people pushed past her.
I need help, she thought, I need help! Seized by unendurable panic, she burst through the doors to a restaurant filled with lunchtime eaters, but the room was indecipherable to her eyes like photographs where some trick of the lens crystallizes the world into squares. “Help, I need help!” Phoebe bellowed, and the room fell painfully still. She noticed smoke in the air, a smell of clams, and thought, My God, I’m really here, I’m not making this up.
A heavyset man approached, a slim brown cigarette in one hand, mustache resting like a centipede on his upper lip. “I need help,” Phoebe whispered.
“Please, mademoiselle, you are ill?” he asked, guiding her gently by the arm to one side of the restaurant, but no, no, Phoebe thought, what can he possibly do? Just holding still for this long was such agony; a terrible force had gathered behind her like tons of water ready to explode through a narrow pipe—No, she couldn’t stand it; she pulled away from the fat man and bolted from the restaurant back to the street, heart beating wildly, pushing up from her chest so she wanted to spit it out on the pavement and stop its freakish pounding. Behind her the pressure was mounting, pushing against her like a crowd trying to fit through a narrow door and Phoebe walked, walked faster but still it