The City That Sleeps in the Afternoon

Daniel had planned his month in the south down to the minute: language classes in the mornings, museums and long walks in the afternoons. On his first day, he reached his rented room just after two, dropped his suitcase and went straight out to buy a phone charger and something for lunch.

The city seemed to have disappeared. Every shop had pulled down its metal shutters, the café on the corner had stacked its chairs on the tables, and the streets were completely silent. The only sign of life was a gray cat lying in the shade of a doorway, and it looked at Daniel as if he had done something rude. He walked around for twenty minutes and ended up eating crackers from his suitcase. That evening, he sent his sister a message: "I'm staying in a city that sleeps in the afternoon."

His landlady, Marta, who ran a small hardware shop on the ground floor, laughed when he asked whether it was a public holiday. "It's Tuesday," she said. Between two and five, she explained, most shops closed and people went home to eat with their families. Then they rested until the worst of the heat had passed. "Not everybody sleeps," she added, as if she had read his mind. "The baker starts work at four in the morning, so he sleeps. I read the newspaper. My neighbor calls her mother. At five, we open again and stay open until nine."

Daniel decided to change nothing. He was not on vacation, after all; he had homework, emails and a plan. So for a week, he worked through the afternoons in his room, where a small fan moved the hot air around without making it any cooler. He ate dinner at seven, as he did at home, and was always the only customer. The waiters, who were still setting the tables, served him with the kind of patience that people usually save for small children. By nine, when the streets were filling up again, he was fast asleep.

Things changed in his second week, when a heat wave arrived. On Sunday, Marta announced that her son's family was coming for lunch, and that a guest who ate crackers alone in his room was bad for the reputation of the house. The meal lasted two hours and included grilled fish, a great deal of bread and a loud argument about soccer that Daniel did not understand but enjoyed anyway. Afterward, he lay down "just for ten minutes" and woke up at a quarter to five with the pattern of the pillow printed on his cheek.

He felt better than he had in days. Late that evening, he walked to the main square and hardly recognized it. Children were playing soccer between the benches, older couples were walking arm in arm, and the cafés were bright and busy. The gray cat was sitting outside the hardware shop as if it had been expecting him. Daniel realized that the city had never really been asleep. It had simply organized its day around the sun, instead of pretending that the sun was not there.

After that, he stopped fighting the afternoons. He studied in the cool mornings and late evenings, and between two and five he ate, read and, more often than he liked to admit, slept. On his last afternoon, he sent his sister one more message: "I was wrong. This isn't a city that sleeps in the afternoon. It's a city that knows when to rest." Then he closed the shutters and lay down. It was ten past two, and for the first time in his life, Daniel had no plans until five.