"The noise of the city was dying down. The city resembled a battlefield that broke out at dawn with the roar of the first truck, flared up by noon and died down by evening, when the coppersmiths removed their copper, blacksmiths lowered their hammers, the machines fell silent.

In the evening, warm rain washed the flowering trees and cobblestones on the sidewalks and filled the ground with lakes of cool, muddy water and viscous mud. White clouds slid from the mountains towards the city and slowly, silently, like caravans without a leader, circled, touching the roofs".