Chapter Six — The Entity of Night

I woke at three in the morning.

I was in a hotel room in a foreign city, in a place where even the sounds of the street were not yet familiar to me.

There was no noise that woke me, at least no noise I could identify.

I simply opened my eyes.

The room was almost completely dark. Only a thin strip of light came through the curtains, and now and then I heard a car passing in the street.

I looked at the clock.

03:07.

There is something about that hour that always makes me feel as though I have woken in the middle of a time that belongs to no one.

Too early for morning, too late for evening.

The world is still asleep, but my thoughts are already awake.

I tried to go back to sleep.

I turned onto my other side, arranged the pillow, closed my eyes.

And then, without meaning to, I began to think about something that had occupied me a few days earlier.

A relatively small matter, which I had already thought I was done with.

But at night it looked different.

Suddenly I found in it questions I had not asked, possibilities I had not considered, things I perhaps should have said or done.

I wondered why this happens.

Why can a thought that seems relatively simple during the day become, in the middle of the night, something that fills the whole mind?

⸻

I lay in the darkness and tried to imagine the night itself.

After the imagined conversations with Time, Memory, Fear, and Words, I had already grown used to the idea that one can address even things that have no face.

But I did not want to give the Night a figure.

It was present enough without one.

In the darkness that filled the room, in the quiet between the passing cars, in the feeling that the world goes on existing outside but does not demand that I take part in it right now.

"Why do my thoughts change when you arrive?" I asked in my imagination.

"Do they really change?" a quiet voice replied.

"Sometimes it seems to me they do. Things that did not worry me during the day begin to trouble me precisely now."

"And what do you do during the day?"

"Lots of things. I work, talk with people, make decisions, deal with what needs dealing with."

"And how much time is left for you to think about the things that trouble you?"

"Not always much."

"So perhaps some of the thoughts are not new. Perhaps only now do you notice them."

I thought about that.

During the day we move from one thing to another almost without noticing.

A conversation, a message, a task, a drive.

Sometimes a thought rises for a moment and disappears because something else demands our attention.

But at night there is almost nothing to distract us.

"So you simply make room for them?" I asked.

"Sometimes. But that is not the only explanation. Fatigue can also affect the way you think and feel."

"Meaning, not everything I think at night is necessarily deeper or truer?"

"Certainly not."

I smiled in the darkness.

"Good to know. Sometimes at three in the morning I am convinced I have discovered something very important, and in the morning I no longer understand why I was so excited."

"And sometimes you still think it is important?"

"Yes. Sometimes it is precisely then that I manage to understand something I could not understand during the day."

"So perhaps one should treat night thoughts with curiosity, but not always accept them as conclusions."

⸻

I stayed lying on my back and looked at the dark ceiling.

"There is something that interests me," I said. "Why is it that at night we return again and again to the same worries?"

"What do you feel when that happens?"

"That I must find a solution. As if, if I keep thinking a little longer, I will finally manage to understand what to do."

"And do you manage?"

"Sometimes. But mostly I just repeat the same thoughts."

"And what are you missing at that moment?"

I thought about the question.

"Perhaps the possibility to act. If I am worried about something connected to work, for example, there is nothing I can do with it at three in the morning. I cannot call, check, or change the situation."

"So you are left with the question, without the possibility to test the answer."

"Exactly."

I suddenly understood how true that was.

During the day we can sometimes turn a worry into an action.

To clarify, to ask, to consult, to decide.

But at night, when we have no possibility to do anything, the thought can keep going around in circles.

"Perhaps that is why I sometimes feel helpless precisely at night," I said.

"Possibly. But does every thought require immediate action?"

"No."

"And must every question receive an answer at that very moment?"

"Also no."

"So why do you keep searching for it?"

I smiled.

"That is exactly the question I am trying to understand."

⸻

A car passed in the street.

I heard its wheels on the road, and then quiet settled again.

"But you do not bring only worries with you," I said.

"What else?"

"Sometimes I love being awake at night. There is something in those hours that lets me be entirely with myself."

"And what is different about them from the hours when you are alone during the day?"

"In the day, even when I am alone, I know there are things waiting for me. Messages, people, obligations. At night I feel as though everything can wait."

"And that pleases you?"

"Sometimes very much."

I thought of the nights when I stayed awake by choice.

Nights when I read, wrote, or simply sat by a window and looked outside.

I did not feel lonely in them.

On the contrary.

There was a feeling of privacy in them that I did not always find at other hours.

"Interesting," I said. "The same quiet that can make me feel helpless can also give me a feeling of freedom."

"Perhaps because the quiet does not determine what you will feel within it."

"But it certainly changes what I hear."

"What do you mean?"

"When there is no noise around, I hear myself more. Both the things I want to hear and those I would prefer to postpone."

⸻

"There is something else that happens to me at night," I said after a while.

"What is it?"

"Sometimes it is precisely then that I remember people who are no longer in my life."

The room was quiet.

"I can go through a whole day without thinking of them in any particular way," I went on, "and then in the middle of the night a memory suddenly rises in me. A face. A voice. A small moment I had not thought of for years."

"And what do you feel when that happens?"

"It depends on the memory. Sometimes longing. Sometimes joy. Sometimes both together."

"And do you think these memories come only at night?"

"No. But at night I linger over them more."

I remembered the conversation I imagined with Memory in the antique shop.

We spoke then about the way moments from the past can return to us without our searching for them.

And now I wondered whether the night does not create these memories, but only allows me to dwell in them without hurrying to the next thing.

"There are memories I do not want to disappear," I said.

"And you fear they will?"

"Sometimes. I fear forgetting the voice of a loved person. The way he laughed. The small things that were once so familiar to me."

"And can you keep everything?"

"No."

"So what do you do?"

"Sometimes I tell. Sometimes I write. And sometimes I simply remember."

I had no better answer.

And I did not feel I needed one.

⸻

"I want to ask you about dreams," I said.

"What makes you curious about them?"

"Why do our thoughts continue even when we sleep? And why, in a dream, do impossible things seem completely logical to us?"

"During sleep the brain does not stop working," the voice replied. "It moves between different states, and in some of them dreams are formed, containing memories, emotions, and images."

"But sometimes I dream of places I have never been, or of people I have never met."

"The brain can create new combinations out of things you know, and also out of details you do not consciously remember."

"So even when I sleep, my imagination keeps working."

"It seems so."

I thought of dreams I woke from with the feeling that I had experienced something real.

There were dreams that stayed with me for whole days, and others that vanished within minutes.

"There are dreams I try to recall the moment I wake," I said. "But the harder I try, the further away they move."

"Not every experience created in sleep is stored in memory the way a waking experience is."

"It is almost frustrating. Sometimes I am sure there was a whole story there, and the moment I open my eyes only a feeling remains of it."

"And perhaps the feeling is the only thing you can take with you."

I did not know whether I liked the answer.

I would have preferred to remember more.

⸻

I looked at the clock again.

03:46.

Less than forty minutes had passed since I woke.

In my feeling, much more time had passed.

"Why does time feel different at night?" I asked.

"Do you remember your conversation with Time?"

"Of course."

"Then perhaps this question should be addressed to him."

I smiled.

"That could be. But I am asking you because at night the minutes are sometimes especially long."

"What do you do while you are awake?"

"Right now? I think."

"And do you check the time often?"

"Sometimes yes. Especially when I want to fall asleep."

"So you are aware of every minute that passes."

"True."

"And during the day, when you are busy with something that interests you, do you always notice time to the same degree?"

"No. Sometimes hours pass without my noticing."

I thought about that.

How many times during a trip or a pleasant conversation was I surprised to discover that hours had already passed?

And at night, when I am waiting for sleep, every quarter of an hour can feel long.

"Perhaps when I try to fall asleep, I am too busy with the question of why I am still awake," I said.

"And how does that affect you?"

"It certainly does not help me fall asleep."

I laughed quietly.

⸻

"I have another question," I said. "Are there things that can be understood only at night?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Sometimes an idea comes to me precisely when I stop straining to find it. During the day I try to solve a problem, and in the middle of the night an possibility suddenly rises in me that I had not thought of."

"And perhaps the idea was not created at the moment you noticed it."

"What do you mean?"

"It may be that the thinking about it began earlier, and that precisely the pause from direct engagement allowed you to see a connection you had not noticed."

"So the quiet helps me think?"

"Sometimes. But rest and sleep are also important for thinking. Not every idea justifies a sleepless night."

"I agree with you. And yet, there is something special about ideas that arrive at those hours."

"What is special about them?"

"Perhaps the feeling that they arrived without my meaning it. As if the thought kept working quietly, and only waited for me to listen."

I remembered the times I woke with a sentence I wanted to write.

Sometimes I wrote it down at once, and sometimes I was sure I would remember it in the morning.

Of course, I did not always remember.

"Perhaps I should keep a notebook by the bed," I said.

"Perhaps."

⸻

After a while I got up and went to the window.

I moved the curtain a little.

The street was almost empty, but not entirely.

A taxi stopped by the building across the way. A man got out, took a suitcase from the trunk, and went inside.

In one window on a high floor a light was still on.

I wondered who was awake there.

Perhaps someone who works at night. Perhaps a person who had come back from an evening out. Perhaps a woman who had woken, like me, and could not fall asleep.

"We are used to thinking the world sleeps at night," I said, "but it never sleeps entirely."

"True."

"There are people for whom these hours are working hours. Others are coming home. There are those who celebrate, those who wait, those who worry."

"And for each of them the night looks different."

"Yes."

I stood there a few more minutes.

I thought about how, while I was watching the street, in other places in the world it was already morning.

People going out to work, children going to school, cafés opening.

My night is someone else's day.

"So even you are not everywhere at the same time," I said.

"Not in the same way."

"And yet, we all meet you."

"Yes."

⸻

Toward morning I returned to bed.

I did not know whether I would manage to fall asleep again, but I no longer tried to force myself.

"I think I understood something about you," I said to the imagined voice.

"What did you understand?"

"That I do not need to treat every thought that rises in me at night as though it demands an immediate answer from me."

"And what about the important thoughts?"

"They can sometimes wait until morning. And if I fear forgetting them, I can write them down."

"And what will you do with a thought that does not want to wait?"

"I will probably keep thinking about it a little longer. I know myself."

There was silence.

And then I added:

"But I also do not want to dismiss everything that rises in me at these hours. Sometimes there are things here that I should listen to."

"So perhaps you do not need to decide now what they mean."

"Perhaps."

⸻

I do not remember when I fell asleep again.

When I woke, daylight already filled the room.

I heard voices in the corridor, a door closing, the steps of people who had gone out to begin their day.

I looked at the clock and remembered the conversation I had imagined during the night.

Some of the thoughts that had troubled me now seemed smaller.

Others still occupied me.

And there were also ideas I wanted to keep.

I got up, opened the notebook, and wrote down a few sentences before I forgot them.

Through the window I saw the city already in motion.

People walked in the streets, cars stopped at traffic lights, and the café across the way was already open.

None of them knew about the long conversation I had held with the Night.

I thought about everything that passes over people in the hours when the world around them is quiet.

Thoughts, longings, worries, dreams.

Whole lives that are not seen in daylight.

I closed the notebook and got ready to go out.

I did not know whether the next night I would sleep through or wake again at an unexpected hour.

But I knew that even if I met the thoughts of three in the morning again, I would not have to understand all of them before sunrise.

I opened the door of the room and went out into the day.

Continue to Chapter Seven: The Entity of Love

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.