Summary

This section begins with Ben at work on a London bus. Through the chapter, he struggles with a voice in his head that threatens to spring one of “the bad times” on him. The narrator explains, “gradually is how the bad times always come on. A thought he can push away, more or less. Then a pause. An ordinary hour, maybe two ordinary hours, in which he seems to be able to forget without effort that there is anything to worry about” (86). The bulk of the chapter depicts Ben’s interior struggle during one of “the bad times,” and introduces the reader to Ben’s particular fear of cannibalism. Ben remembers a moment in his childhood when a friend showed him a comic depiction of cannibalism; Ben “couldn’t stop seeing how close flesh was to meat, he couldn’t stop thinking of the...