.Eight Light-bulbs.
He sat in
his rickety two-story house and he was happy. Planks of wood were nailed over
the windows; the chimney bricks fell every few days, either through the roof or
down into a pile near the front door, and everything smelled of age. The house
was very old but he was very young.
I’m not that young, he scowls over my
shoulder, and I tell him to quieten because this is my story.
So he was
young. He sat in a room upstairs that was absolutely empty apart from eight
light-bulbs attached to string and tied to the ceiling.
He was
young, alone, sitting in an empty room and he was squinting. He’s the forgetful
type (you are); he’d rather play with paper dolls than turn up at an eye
appointment.
But he was
not alone. No, someone found his weary house that smelled old and decided to let
herself in. She was brave, or foolish. Sometimes bravery can seem like
foolishness until victory, but whether she was brave and foolish or one or the
other is beside the point. She opened that squeaky door and walked through the
narrow, dark, eerie hallway, and she was quite ignorant of the faceless
portraits hanging on the walls and the broken lamps scattered about.
She was
brave but she was also impatient.
She was not impatient, he scowls again.
I remind him what I once said about scowling and I tell him that he is quite
right, of course. One cannot assume impatience isn’t fear. And fear can make
you fast.
I watch as
he reads and assesses, and then I ask him if I can continue. He nods
noncommittally.
So she was
fearfully impatient, glancing around and not seeing, wondering who could live
in a place that echoes loudly and sighs despondently. She took the stairs
quietly and crept past locked doors until she came to the room with the light.
The room she had seen from outside in the darkness. She had counted the windows
and now she was here, she was standing at the closed door but was not ready to
open it.
He didn’t
see the way her hands shook or hear her breath hitch in her throat. He was too
busy sitting in his empty room staring at the light in his hands.
Light is power, he says from behind me.
I smile because I know he wants my opinion so he can argue his point, and I
continue.
So. She
stood in the faded hallway with peeling flowered wallpaper and she took a deep
breath to calm herself. Then she opened the door.
He turned
around slowly, surprised at the spontaneous intrusion and stared at the girl
who had just walked into the room with eight light bulbs.
“Oh,” she
said when her eyes fell upon the lights hanging from the ceiling.
“Who are
you?” he asked.
She looked
down at him, crunched up on the floor in summer clothes while the snow fell
outside. “You’re the boy with too many light bulbs.”
He watched
her as she stood silent and still. He liked her sandals but couldn’t imagine
her wearing anything else. “You’re the girl who lost her way.”
I could, he says, I imagined her wearing those lace-up shoes with flowers on the toes.
“You’ve got
so many,” she remarked. Now that she had entered the room and found the light,
she wasn’t afraid. She walked over to the nearest one and reached up, as high
as she could, and because the ceiling was low she was able to touch it with her
fingertips.
It went
out.
“Oh!” she
cried and jerked her hand away.
He leapt
up, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to touch things that aren’t yours?!”
“I’m
sorry!”
He stared
at the dark globe and the shadows it cast and he felt something go out inside
himself. He felt empty and he had never felt empty before.
“Get out!
Go on! Who told you to come in anyway?”
She looked
down at the worn floorboards and said, “It’s cold out there.”
“Yeah? Well
you’re not welcome in here!”
She felt a
sudden rise of anger at this stranger for telling her where could find welcome.
Certainly, if the boy didn’t want her company then the walls and doorknobs
would?
“Why
shouldn’t I be allowed in here?” she retorted angrily and waved her hands
about.
I found her hand gestures tiresome, he
says and I tell him that the small, irksome habits of others are the things we
miss the most.
Her hand
grazed another light-bulb, as she had moved a few paces while talking, and it,
too, went out.
“Stop!” he
called, his eyes wide and frantic. “Don’t move!”
She stopped
moving and caught sight of his left hand clutching something so hard that his
knuckles were turning white. “You have a light yourself. Why are you so worried
about these ones?”
He glared
at the clumsy, impulsive girl who took up too much space. “There’s no room for
you in here. Go!”
She laughed
at his words, a giddy feeling bubbling up inside her as if she were a can of
freshly opened soda, and she said, “There’s nothing but room in here.”
“It’s
full!” he yelled. The emptiness he had felt before seemed to double as another
set of shadows settled into the room. “Go away!”
“Stop
telling me what to do! Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share?”
And this
foolishly brave girl reached up to the third light, she pushed up on her toes
as far as she could and stretched her arm as high as it would go, and she
snatched it free from the string.
“STOP IT!”
Nearly half
of the room was now bathed in blankets of black and he felt as though he had
suddenly started falling.
I thought I would never breathe again,
he says quietly. I tell him I remember and continue.
She looked
down at her own dark light bulb, shook it carefully at first, glancing up at
his as she did so, and when that didn’t bring it to life she brandished it so
hard he thought it would break.
“Why did
mine go out when yours is still alight?” she demanded.
He took a
deep, trembling breath and said, “Leave n-” but he didn’t finish.
She had
reached up once more while he had been steading his nerves and thinking up
reasonable requests. This impatient yet courageous girl had reached up, as high
as she could just like the last time, and yanked down the fourth light.
“NO!”
He lunged
at her as the fourth bulb went out in her hands.
“Why does
it keep doing that?!” she cried in frustration, oblivious, yet again, to her
surroundings.
It is hard
to see in a room that is only half lit up and even harder for someone who
spends all of his time never seeing anything for how it really is. But fear
made him strong.
She looked
up to see his furious, blurry figure and she, too, felt fear. Fear pushed all
the sensible thoughts out of her head like a dripping tap until the only thing
that made sense for her to do was the one thing she shouldn’t.
She threw
the two broken light-bulbs up into the air.
I pause and
wait for him to comment. Surely there is something important to add at this crucial
part of the story?
There is nothing, he says. I recognise
the undertone in his voice and continue without a word.
So she had
flung the two bulbs away in regrettable haste and they had sailed up into the
light. He crashed into her as the two dark bulbs hit two light bulbs and there
was a monstrous smashing noise that had never been heard before in such a dispirited
and sensitive house.
They fell
and glass rained down around them like the falling snow.
“WHY ARE
YOU TOUCHING EVERYTHING!?” he shouted.
“Get off!”
she screamed.
His free
hand grabbed at her cardigan in rage and she, in turn, tried desperately to
push him off with both of hers. Anger, like fear, enhances strength and he was
overflowing. His lonely, sad, bright world had been safe without rash irresponsibility,
her rash irresponsibility.
“WHY?!” he
yelled with so much force that his throat ached, “WHY?!”
He glared,
wide-eyed, down at her scrunched-up face streaming with tears, and he quite
forgot himself. She stared transfixed up at all his fury and she watched as his
left hand suddenly moved. His arm rose up, seemingly without instruction, while
his right clenched and clawed, and the brightest light she had ever seen flew
out of his grasp.
Shadows
descended around them. She felt his other hand join its brother around her neck
but she was waiting. Her eyes followed the glowing trail as it flew up to meet
the others.
I would have killed her, he tells me.
And so he
would have, had the last two light-bulbs not shattered upon impact and plunged
them into darkness.
