the faceless masked column

The A.F.R. arrives as pure masked surveillance turning into assault. First the watchers accumulate outside Lucien's door — one wheelchaired figure, then "a different figure in a different wheelchair," its "face also downcasted and queerly masked," then "a whole long single-file column," the sidewalks "flanked... by defiles of wheelchaired, blanket-lapped persons whose faces are obscured by what look like large and snow-dotted leaves." Then, via the shop's own angled mirrors, they are suddenly inside, "moving calmly into position behind waist-high glass counters." The masks make the operatives faceless and interchangeable — a squeaking, uniform mass with "slits for eyes and round utter holes for mouths" — so that the operation presents not as individuals but as a single implacable watching thing that was outside the window and is now in the room.