midnight
The plates rattled around us , the curaçoa in my tiny glass smelled sweet and strong , everything was natural , easy , well fed and well groomed -LRB- as the phrase goes now -RRB- about me , the day and hour were like any other ; and yet from that moment on my life was never to be quite the same , for surprise and change were hurrying toward me , and the man opposite -- how curiously ! -- was to be drawn into the wide net that fate had sunk for me and must have even then been preparing to draw smoothly and effectively to the surface . We think , when we are young , that we live alone . I recall , as a boy of twenty , certain hot-headed , despairing midnight walks when the horror of my hopeless , unapproachable , unreachable identity surged over me in melancholy waves . Heavens ! I would have plunged into a monastery if I had believed that any sort of prayer and fasting could bring me close -- really close -- to God ; for to any human creature , I had learned , I could never be close . After that , we grow into that curious stage of irresponsibility which we deduce from this loneliness , and distress our patient relatives with windy explanations of `` matters that concern ourselves alone . ''