White Nights

"It was not a ghost," said de Foxa after a long silence. "We, ourselves, were the ghosts. Did you notice how she looked at us? She was afraid of us."
"It was a modern ghost, [...] a northern ghost."
"Yes, indeed, [...] modern ghosts go up and down in elevators."

Men and women were stretched on the grass under the trees of the Esplanade and were offering their faces to the white, nocturnal light. During "white nights" of summertime the people of the North are prey to a queer restlessness, to a kind of cold fever. [...] they walk home skirting the walls, their faces turned upwards. They sleep only a few hours lying naked on their beds, bathed in the cold glare that penetrates through the wide-open windows. They lie naked in the nocturnal sun as if under a sun lamp. Through their windows they can see moving through the glassy air, the ghosts of houses, of trees and of the sailing boats rocking in the harbor.

We had gathered in the dining room [...] around the massive mahogany table [... in the] white dazzle of the nocturnal light coming through the open window. The men in evening dress and the bejeweled women in low-cut dresses around that massive table [...] in the dull glint of the silver, had a funereal appearance [...] They looked like a painting by Lucas Chranach; the flesh seemed livid and worn, the eyes circled in blue, the brows pale and hot; a greenish, cadaverous hue spread over every face. The guests sat with staring, wide-open eyes. The breath of the nocturnal day dimmed the windowpanes.

--Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt, 1944