Last night, when I was getting ready to sleep, but before I in fact was sleeping, though I’d positioned myself in such a way that I might have appeared to be asleep, had anyone been in the room to see me, though no one was, I heard the sound of voices and footsteps in the stairwell of the building where I live, as a person who dwells on one of the floors above me, and who was returning from somewhere, in a cheerful mood, with a handful of friends or acquaintances, proceeded to the landing on which the door to my apartment is, and then continued on up, so that the noise they were making, as they talked and laughed and made jokes that belonged to them alone, or to the experience they were having, as a group, grew fainter, until I couldn’t hear them anymore, at which point I think I did fall asleep, for I don’t remember anything after that.