Lying in bed, still wide-awake after a short, empty day, I drink a glass of warm milk that had been on the night table, and replace it empty. Nerves must be soothed, so I open an anonymous book with a pale yellow cover, faded. I open the book only to find that it is upside-down. Old books often lack writing on the cover, and I often find it difficult to achieve the correct orientation on the first try. In this instance I fail, and turn the book over to its proper side. I’ve occasionally succeeded in the past.
The anonymous book’s subject matter is of the same variety as the book itself, namely, unspecified. By the first paragraph I feel the weight of sleep on my fingers holding the book, my arms my fingers. It isn’t that the book is boring or tedious. Actually, it might be a fascinating account of any number of wonderful subjects. Often, however, I find that unless I know the subject of a reading before I begin to read, I don’t progress very far before giving up. That is the problem with an anonymous book, I suppose. Lacking a brief summary or synopsis, I have no motivation. Is this affliction common to wide-awake sleepers everywhere? Perhaps it is more cultural.
The book slips from my fingers. Had it been a heavier tome, it would have knocked away my breath. The quilt protects my gut, however, and with effort, I lift the book from my body to its resting place beside the bed. A brief feeling of regret strikes now. I did know about the book, to a limited extent. Judging by its weight, it could not have been very long. Judging by its color – no, that’s absurd. I am wracked with indecision, wondering whether the book is worth starting after all, and if so, whether it is worth also expending the energy to pick up again.
My uncertainty rejuvenates my tired arms and body, to my dismay. After all, the purpose of reading in the first place was to fall asleep. I think back, and reflect that I have never once fallen asleep with a book in my hands. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps my desire to read at night is only my mind crying out for more stimulation, like a child in a candy store who knows he must leave for a time. The betrayal of the book alarms me, but I soon take control of my senses. I must fall asleep, I realize, and realize too that my lamp’s light is in direct opposition to this notion. I switch it off.
My lamp has never worked with just one turn of the circular dial that controls it. For as long as I can remember, it was two on, two off. Sometimes I would turn it once, while the lamp was off, in order to later facilitate a quick turning-on. I would never turn it once while it was on, for I was never eager to turn it out at all. I realize, suddenly, that I have been meditating on tangents for some time, and am not much more tired than I had been. My brain signals to my head to lift up and look around the room, but the effects of my meditations are such that my muscles react slowly to their merciless commander.
As in a stupor, I raise my head up, but the room is utterly and completely dark. Of course, my eyes have not yet adjusted to the absence of the light. As a substitution for the lack of visual input, I try to imagine the room according to what it was like with the light on. Of course I wasn’t looking then, but I reason that my eyes, that some part of me, must have been paying attention.
I am surprised when my efforts are rewarded with a muddy image of the room in my mind’s eye. I am surprised further by every detail, large and small, that I make out. It seems that I have been so captivated by my efforts to recall what I’d seen that I have not recalled at all what I already know. It would be nice to be able to control this temporary erasure of memory. Across from my bed lies a dresser; its presence also temporarily shocks me. Soon, though, the retrieval of large items of furniture is complete. With a stable foundation of my room constructed in my mind, I turn to smaller details. By and by, a certain detail hits me with terrifying force.
I imagine (can it be real?) a drawstring hanging from the second-to-top drawer of the dresser. It hangs down, long, longer than I would have thought. It reaches past the end of its drawer and midway through the next. Why does it terrify me so? Perhaps it is the first detail that my subconscious eye retrieves which is not backed up by my lagging, definite memory of the items in the room. Would I leave a drawstring hanging out of the dresser, constantly choked by the drawer? Is it moving, swinging from side to side? I tremble, and abandon my game of visual reconstruction.
Now I will not sleep, cannot, without resolving the silent questions. But to move, to exert energy! I feel guilty considering that, after abandoning my book as I did. If I were to discard a book because of a lack of energy and then turn on the light again, upset everything, for some whim! – But it is no whim. The drawstring is real, realer than in my worst dreams. I resolve finally to wait. Eventually my eyes will adjust to the dark, and the answer will appear.
The waiting takes longer than I’d estimated, for the room is utterly dark. It seems as if I have time to think these thoughts forever, that my eyes will never grow accustomed to the dark. How fast do I think these thoughts? Is it my perception of time that is skewed? I decide to go over in my head a story, a parable that I’d heard on the subway earlier in the month. I’d overheard one man tell it to a child, and it had seemed interesting at the time. I play back the voices in my head, the one an elder man, and the other a young boy.
“Son, have I ever told you about the mouse and the cat?”
“Perhaps,” said the boy.
“They started out as very good friends, you know. Now we think of them as mortal enemies, but this wasn’t always so. They once lived in harmony, helping each other to feed their young and themselves. You could say it was a mutually dependant relationship: the cat fending off predators of the mouse, and the mouse getting at food in small places and getting through to hard to reach places. What happened was that the cat found better work in the house of man, and left the mouse. Man didn’t like the mouse, and it turned out that the cat’s work was to catch the mouse and keep it out of man’s house. The cat was hesitant, but the food was good, so he took the job. The mouse was left without his protection, and he took the only option he had: to sneak into man’s house and steal small bits of food every now and then. The cat soon forgot their friendship, and the mouse soon grew to loathe the cat, who had betrayed him. So now you see the real story behind this ancient feud.”
Still waiting, I think more about the parable. I decide maybe that it isn’t as good a story as I’d originally thought. For one thing, it’s awkward as a parable because of the dialogue in the beginning. Still surrounded by a sea of black, I play back the parable in my head, without the child’s one line, his one word. Before I get to the end, and especially when I do, I realize that without that word, that supreme word, the parable is worthless. Too bad, then, that the word lies outside the story. I am forced to abandon the story as I did the book, another casualty in my quest for sleep. I start to lay back, eyes heavy, almost forgetting my reason for prolonging my consciousness to begin with. I am instantly alert. Is the room getting imperceptibly brighter? Is that the faint outline of the door to the left?
I strain my eyes at the wall across the room, at the object of my exertions – that swinging, sinewy, hideous piece of string. What right does it have to hang from my dresser? As my eyes continue to adjust, I think I see it, still moving, gently. The room brightens further, and my mouth involuntarily drops open before I realize that no, there is no drawstring. There is simply a shadow, a shadow of the string that raises the shade on the window across the room. Further, I realize first with relief, and then with annoyance, there is no dresser. The dresser has always resided on the other wall.
Still, perhaps in some other room in some other house there is a drawstring hanging from the second-to-top drawer of a dresser. I take this sentiment with me as I retreat into the unconscious realms of sleep. Perhaps when I wake up the dresser will be back in front of me. In the light of the morning, I would likely be unafraid of that swaying string. I think I could handle it then.