His clothes are neither cheap nor expensive. His chest is covered by a mail coat or maybe by a leather apron. The glowing twig washes the two empty button holes on one shirt cuff with a reddish light, like two windows in a darkened building where the fire has gone out. The exertion of blowing on the twig shapes his face, as if it were made of wet clay or molten glass, and causes it to bulge out beneath his snub nose, not just in the cheeks, but also between his underlip and chin, and to a greater degree between his overlip and nose, giving his face an apelike appearance. When he blows upon the twig, that is, he bears a striking resemblance to an ape, or to a chimp rather, as if the physical exertion of blowing air out breathes life into a phrenologically demonstrable atavism, so to speak; just as anybody, you realize, when they’re not (or think they’re not) being observed (or else have an intimate relationship with the observer), or when they’ve just forgotten themselves — can unconsciously contort their faces into the oddest, most zoological expressions imaginable; for example, when they’re picking their nose or concentrating on a highly detailed task (and when the perpetrator is a loved one, particularly during the honeymoon stage, it can make the observer nervous, disappointed, embarrassed: because no one wants to believe that such faces, which at best resemble tasteless, offensive rubber masks, are contained, so to speak, in their beloved).
The little oil lamp, which isn’t lit (and which will never be lit), and his face, which forms an apelike mask and acts as a reminder of the close evolutionary relationship between man and ape (a horse or a bird, for example, doesn’t have the chubby cheeks it takes to pull off a convincing simian expression), of whose common origin you’re well aware, but not him, and not the people you imagine to be around him. If someone from the same time period were to see that fleeting apelike expression by the light of the burning twig, they’d never recognize the deeper genetic truth it contains; it’d just be an apelike mask, nothing more and nothing less, just a comical happenstance, but to you it seems like all the world’s apes, whether living or extinct, Dryopithecus, Ramapithecus, Loris, Colobus, gibbons, baboons, macaques, gorillas, chimpanzees, all the half-apes, ape-men, Australopithecus, and what have you, have formed an impatient, jostling line behind his face, behind the delicate mouth, hands, and eyes, which together control the flame (something no ape has ever done) by blowing on it, holding and examining it (consciously, not instinctively), demonstrating the highly complex relationship between the ability to hold things, the process of exhalation, and the thoughtful gaze, or the reflective gaze (eyes, that is, that can look in the mirror and can recognize themselves looking back), leading to the mastery of fire and thereby altering the relationship between light and dark, so that an individual no longer requires natural light to see, or, in other words, no longer needs hundreds of thousands or millions of years to perfect his night vision, but can simply drive darkness away by holding a burning twig up to an iron oil lamp, which will tranquilly burn through many nights to come. Unfortunately, fear of darkness follows close behind.
The oil lamp will stay unlit. All you can see is the endless, suspended second before the oil catches, while the twig still burns. As a result, you’ll never see the lamp come alive, you’ll never know where it’ll be carried, where it will get placed, what objects it’ll show (a book, piece of paper, handwork, coins, food, a clock, a harness, a deck of cards, some notes? or maybe just steps, the steps leading up to a bedroom?), you’ll never know who will use the light (the boy’s father, mother, siblings, grandparents, other relatives, friends, step-parents, another kind of guardian, a craftsman, priest, civil servant, orphanage director, or someone else entirely?); the next seconds or minutes, which could’ve resolved the question, are shrouded in darkness, just like the seconds or minutes before this one (apparent) moment, and if the twig weren’t lit, you’d see nothing, nothing at all. In the meantime, the first thing that meets your eyes is the light from the keyhole (though it isn’t the stereotypical shape of circle meeting trapezoid, but rather a single point of yellow light, like someone went and drilled a hole in the darkness) in a long line extending straight to your head, a keyhole in the door you can’t use, because you can’t get your wheelchair through it.
Noise, that’s what’s missing now. What noise in particular? The sound of her breathing, or rather the snorting, gasping wheeze of her breath (and you think how utterly ridiculous it is for someone to go on and on about the comforting sound of someone sleeping beside you), which by some miracle you’ve learned to ignore, or rather, the mere necessity of falling asleep out of pure exhaustion has taught you to ignore the deafening biological racket coming from the next pillow over — that’s what’s missing. (You’ve been planning a treatise on feminine snoring for quite some time.) Your arm extends like an antenna toward the other side of the bed, proceeding slowly and cautiously at first (as if your arm, like a snail’s slimy eye stalk, could suddenly retract at will), then in ever widening circles within your limited range of motion, with greater firmness and impatience.
A crumpled sheet, but no warm body. Your hand learns nothing more, aside from the fact that the other half of the bed is uncharacteristically unmade. You turn on the reading light, and instinctively squint your eyes again, although a quick, painful glance confirms what your hands have already “seen”: an empty, unmade bed half. Is the closet door open? Are there clothes on the floor? Where’s the telephone? Is it within reach? Is it beneath the bed? Is the wheelchair next to the bed or at least close to the bed? Or is it far away from the bed? It’s hard to tell in the dim light. The overhead light. If only you could switch on the overhead light. The white, rectangular plastic switch is a weak gleam on the far wall, that damned switch, for four or five years now you’ve been meaning to have an electrician come and move it within reach of the bed, and now it’s too late (what do you mean it’s too late? do you think the ceiling light will never be switched on again?), but you’ve got something else to think about, don’t you? Indeed you do.
A blowgun. With a blowgun, you could practice shooting dried peas (or better yet, steel ball bearings) from the bed until you were a perfect shot, until you could always hit, or, more realistically, bump the switch every time; oh well, and anyway, who’d gather up all the peas (or steel balls) afterward? assuming one hundred percent accuracy, that’d mean twenty-eight, that’s right, twenty-eight peas (or steel balls) a week, you think, that is, one every evening for lights on, one every evening for lights off, one every morning for lights on (during the winter), one every morning for lights off (during the winter) = 4 x 7 = twenty-eight, twenty-eight peas (or steel balls) a week, assuming, that is, one hundred percent accuracy, which isn’t guaranteed; with seventy-five percent accuracy, 3/4, add another fourth to the total, which makes thirty-five, five and thirty, that’s right, thirty-five ball bearings, and that’s just for one week, it’d take thirty-five balls a week to turn the ceiling light off and on, but then who would pick all those balls back up again? you, of course, while you’re sitting in your wheelchair, something to do while you’re sitting at home, slowly rotting in place, you’d do it with a broom and a dustpan, no, a sawed-off broom handle topped with chewing gum, that’d be more elegant, you could even invent a new handicapped sport, in time you’d no doubt hold the Olympic record for the hundred-pea (or steel-ball) dash, men’s division.