Against the Day

by Thomas Pynchon

It was to gather into an upswelling of the heart she must struggle to contain, and might have begun to regret when a nearby tourist, in a vilely mucous specimen of British Accent, smirked to an effusive companion, “Oh, everyone says that, give it a day or two and you’ll be screaming to get away,” causing Dally to think about finding a gondola oar and hitting him with it, maybe more than once. But the evening itself, spreading mercifully its deep cloak, would see to this pest and his replicas in their thousands, they were like the gnats who rose in clouds here at nightfall, their purpose to infest the Venetian summer, to enhance its splendor with earthly annoyance, to pass quickly as they must, driven off, forgotten.

Here in this ancient town progressively settling into a mask of itself, she began to look for episodes of counter-light, canalside gates into dank gloom, sotopòrteghi whose exits could not be seen, absent faces, missing lamps at the ends of calli.