the five phials of dr poliakov (bit of a dark chapter this one)

phial 4

It is the pressure of a diving bell, the tension an adult feels watching a child make fists from adamant fingers and press them to its ears, the claustrophobia of a railway waiting-room on a rain-lashed warm spring day. It is the desire for air, for life, that grips the drowning man out at sea – or lost in the thick of a nightmare desperately clawing for wakefulness.

And in the grip of this invisible vice, we are of course, quiet, restrained, civilised beyond reason.
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