Siesta’s Silence 2

I recently stumbled upon an essay by the writer Italo Calvino, who described beautifully the Italian siesta; the hushed hours of the afternoon. So perfect is the essay, entitled “The Silence of the City,” that I feel as if I’ve been illustrating it unknowingly, for the past five summers. Here, following my first entry, is a second snippet from the essay accompanied by a second drawing.

“The silence entered the city in the early afternoon. It slipped through the turreted, battlemented gates, occupied the loggias arch by arch, flowed along the streets grazing the walls, huddled against the embankments, filled the ramparts.

Whether silence descended from above or rose from below, no one can say: it clung to the walls, coating them like a diaphanous, impalpable sheath, a cover that gradually thickened and occupied all space.”

It must be said that there was no wind, the air was dry, the dust lay where it had drifted, around the trunks of the acacias.

The streets were conquered by the silence a bit at a time: as it turned a corner, every noise was spent while, a few blocks further on, cries could still be heard, hammering, honking. All of a sudden, the silence loomed at the intersection, and the sounds were absorbed, even the slightest vibration. An opaque stillness had now invaded the whole street, from the pavement whose bricks no longer resounded to the shuffling soles or the scream of wheels up to the windows of the top floors, like ears uselessly alert.”