the last book I ever read (The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, excerpt seven)

from The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint (translated by Nancy Amphoux and Paul De Angelis):

57. We had left the café and were going back to the hotel. Hands in my coat pockets, I walked head down, pressing my feet down hard on the pavement to push the city under water. Every time I came to the bottom of a staircase I jumped unobtrusively to the ground with both feet together and, waiting for Edmondsson at the bottom of the steps, asked her to do the same. With the town sinking at the rate of thirty centimeters a century, I explained, or three millimeters a year, or point zero zero eighty-two millimeters a day, or point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one millimeters= a second, one might reasonably hope, by pressing our feet down hard on the pavement as we walked, to play some part in the drowning of the town.