...of a siesta

In the early afternoon, as I said before, there are dangerous moments. Not for everybody, of course. Most people - and I'm not speaking only of very busy people who are always peculiarly well protected against such dangers as these - most people pass lightly through these moments the way well-trained mountain climbers leap over crevices without looking underfoot.

This is the hour given over to the "siesta," to rest; the moment, after the excitement of the midday meal, when those who stay behind alone in silent rooms, suddenly experience a sensation of cold; their heart in their mouth, they are seized with a dizziness, an impression that the earth has suddenly fallen out from under their feet and that they are slipping, without being able to restrain themselves, into the void.
This is probably a comparable illusion, in reverse, to the one we have when, in a moving train, the telegraph poles seem to be moving too. This impression of falling and dizziness that people have comes perhaps from the fact that they feel, in this silence, before this void, the cold, anonymous touch of time, the ceaseless dropping away of the seconds whose passing they suddenly become aware of, the way, when blood leaves the face, freckles that had passed unnoticed under a rosy complexion becomes visible and stand under pallor.

[Portrait of a Man Unknown, Sarraute, N.]