A passage from Downtown, chapter 17

The air grew spindly with the whir of spoked wheels, that sort of hissing, whizzing sound for which a hundred onomatopoeic words are coined, as though someone were knitting together the salubrious thickness of nothingness, clacking and creating with such speed that each stitch became indistinguishable beyond the blur of sound. The spitting murmur grew, flexing against the abraded buildings that hugged the morning glory-strewn flagstones comprising the road and pedestrian path. Light glinted off the tram tracks snaking oily and hot between the brick joints crocheted together so that they exhibited an awkward oneness from which grew a syncopated pattern of geological insouciance. The whir grew clearer, dividing now into a series of various noises that had come together as one, rather than an indivisibly homogeneous sound. A neat staccato pattern could be gleaned from it, a version in miniature of that which is made by a tram ka-lunking over minor gaps in the rails along which it runs.

Vitti was able to, finally, discern this sound as being that of a collection of bicycles, herding together wildly, fleeing or perhaps migrating, as, for all Vitti’s knowledge of the migration patterns of bicycles allowed, perhaps they were wont to do. The air was suddenly pungently pregnant with the smell of overripe mangoes and starfruit; a momentary breeze–although perhaps instead merely a slight shift in the breathing patterns of the air and its related functions–had insinuated the stench towards her. The odour, sweet to the point of being foul, giddily heady with the reminder of death, cloyed at her, softly clothing her, gaily flirting with her, lay at her feet, leaping up every now and then in the manner of a puppy, or, she mused sardonically, rather like Feliks in the company of his novel beau, Oscar.

The whirring grew fatly, but then ebbed once more, waving like seaweed, stirring like a bowing couple enraptured by and ensconced in a traditional dance. It rang against the brightly-patterned side-by-side buildings standing regimentedly in the patriotic valour of times past, against the tormented, limping trees that hobbled like old men against the mouths of alleyways; it whined eerily as it resonated against the sand-flecked signposts and the wrought iron fences that carved the road into its various component parts. It butted bullishly against Vitti herself, serpentinely clambering beneath her skin and into her awareness, so that she found herself in paranoia glancing over her shoulder into the empty streets, which until this point had rung with only the heaviness of silence.