The Erasers

CHAPTER FOUR
1

Down below, directly beneath his eyes, a cable runs along the surface of the water.

Leaning over the parapet, he sees it rising from under the arch, straight and taut, apparently no thicker than his thumb; but distance is deceptive when there is no object of comparison. The coiled strands follow each other smoothly, giving the impression of great speed. A hundred spirals a second, perhaps?…Actually, that would still be no great rate of speed, that of a man walking briskly-that of the tug pulling a train of barges along a canal.

Beneath the metal cable is the water, greenish, opaque, chopping slightly in the wake of the already distant tug.

The first barge has not yet appeared under the bridge; the cable still runs along the water, without anything to suggest that it must soon be interrupted. Yet the tug is now reaching the next footbridge and, in order to pass under it, begins lowering its smokestack.