MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
"End of the Evening"
____________________

At the end of the evening, the rise of despair is an inevitable phenomenon. There is a kind of timetable of horror. Well, I don’t know; I think so.

The expansion of the internal void. That’s what it is. A taking-flight of every possible event. As if you were suspended in the void, equidistant from every real action, by monstrously powerful magnetic forces.

Thus suspended, incapable of any concrete grip on the world, the night can seem so long to you. And, indeed, it will be.

It will be, however, a protected night; but you will not appreciate this protection. You will only appreciate it later, once you return to the city, once you return to the day, once you return to the world.

Around nine o’clock, the world will already have attained its full level of activity. It will turn smoothly, with a gentle whirring. You will have to take part in it, to jump in – a little as if one jumped onto the footplate of a shuddering train ready to leave the station.

You don’t make it. Once more, you await the night – which, however, once more, will bring you exhaustion, uncertainty and horror.

And this will happen again, every day, until the end of the world.