In Avignon, the carnival opened in my weary evening. The fire eaters and sword swallowers gathered under the hazy sky—cool for July—and, dressed in tight, brightly-colored clothes, contorted their bodies while swallowing blades and spitting flames. I stood near the back of the encircled crowd, my tourist’s backpack tight around my shoulders. You could see the flames light up the large stones in the wall of the courtyard of the Palace de Papes. I arrived too late to tour the apartments of the French popes and antipopes. The stones soaked up the flames spit from the fire eaters lips, like sponges on the floor of a distant ocean. A sword swallower takes a cigarette from his pocket, and lights it with a match he strikes on the limestone palace. He sucks a drag, his long gray hair tied in a bun above his body as thin as a blade. One of the fire eaters jumps into a deep lunge in front of the sword swallower and holds a burning torch before the sword swallower’s face. They both swallow the fire, spit it into the air, and light up the now-darkening sky. The swallower reaches deep into his throat and pulls out a long sword, glistening in the fire with the sweat of his body, the faces of the crowd upturned towards the faint new stars.