I'm Martin Powers. It's Saturday, May 9th. This is a bonus episode of Post Reports.

In India, the incessant beep beep of cars has disappeared. In New York, Harlem's heart has stopped beating.

In the suburbs of Detroit, the chatter of neighbors is muffled. In Toronto, the trains no longer whistle and in Marseille, every day sounds like a holiday.

All around the world, the silence rolls in and out like fog. It hangs in the air, there, but not there, and penetrable and fragile, weightless and smothering.

Robin Gavan is a fashion critic for the post, and she wrote about what the pandemic sounds like.

We asked her to read it for you here. For most of us, she says, it is a heartbreaking silence.

It's periodically disrupted by the streak of an ambulance siren, the rattle of a construction truck, or the evening applause for first responders.

For those lucky enough to work from their home, FaceTime in Zoom keep the afternoon buzzing with a new familiarity, but eventually the silence comes.

We are deep in the horror and kicking our way to the surface. What does it pandemic sound like? Emptiness.

In March, Faith Hyacin was in the thick of her professional duties, working with fashion designers behind the scenes in their showrooms and on their runway productions.

Hyacin was in her glory, the chaotic, exhausting world of creativity on a global scale. Her work regularly takes her to New York in Paris.

And with the time she returns to Monts-Sopron Le Bosse, the small town in southwestern France where she lives, she usually welcomes the peace and quiet, I greet her.

But now the silence is not so much a well-earned gift as a voracious monster that has snuffed out the reassuring rumble and roar of daily life.

The Bible says, weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

But sometimes, in this age of COVID-19, it seems that the sweet cacophony in our dreams is what suits us, not the silence of our wicking hours.

I live alone, I'm not permitted to visit neighbors or friends, and I'm not permitted to be somewhere other than my primary residence.

I cannot take one of the field available trains to a coastal town. Everything would be close anyway, including hotels.

I cannot escape by means of an airplane to another country has since says in an email.

Even if I could, all I would find would be more silence.

Sleep is actually a welcome respite because in my dreams it's noisy, she says.

I talk to people I know, I talk to people I'd never met. I'm in places I know, I'm in places I'd never been.

Sleep is the easy part. It's waking up, that's harder.

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