...of abandonment

It was late when I awoke - judging, at least, by the rays of sunshine which penetrated into the room between the slats of the shutters - and for a moment I lay listening to the profound silence of the place, so different from the silence in a town which, even when it is complete, seems always somehow to retain wounds and aches from sounds already past. Then, as I lay motionless on my back, I listened more carefully to this virgin silence, and suddenly it seemed to me that there was something lacking - not just one of those quiet sounds such as that of the electric pump drawing up water into the cistern in the morning or the servant sweeping the floor, which seems to stress the silence and make it more profound, but rather a presence. It was not a silence that was complete yet full of life, but a silence from which something vital had been withdrawn. A silence, I said to myself, finding the right word at last, a silence of abandonment.

[Contempt, Moravia, A.]