There Is Nothing In It

There is nothing in it, but whether that means it's a task that is dead easy to do or it's an empty container that sits on my desk, I am not sure. Except it's clear that there is no empty container on my desk, because there is no container at all upon my desk as I sit here looking at its wood-grained expanse with nothing at all upon it, not even a piece of paper or a pen. Just an empty ink-well sunk in one corner, an aperture for when writers used to scratch with a nib that they dipped into it. Ah, that's an empty container, I suppose, of sorts, even though it is not ON the desk but IN it. But usually when you say that something is in a desk, it usually means it is something in one of its drawers. The inkwell as container is part of the desk itself, carved into the wood of its surface, and roughly finished to allow an inner non-wooden container to be inserted that would itself hold the ink. But being an empty part of my desk, it was neither on or in it, but an intrinsic aperture like the slots into which the drawers are inserted and such drawers usually represent a miracle of workmanship whereby nothing gets stuck, but moving as if on smooth or well-oiled runners, even though it is wood moving upon or within wood, without any lubrication between. Not loose, but fitting exactly, and no perceptible gaps, yet avoiding any groans or grindings when pushed in and out, a prime example of the carpenter's art. Even dampness fails to make it work less efficiently. And my study is beset with a decided dampness, ever since my wife died. Why that should be, I have not had long enough since her death to discover. On a sudden impulse, I put my finger into the empty inkwell hole in the corner of the desk, a runnel running off from the side as a method to hold pens and pencils within its groove to stop them rolling down the desk, or, suddenly, I thought, to allow excess ink or any other fluid to be irrigated along as an escape route... But where would it have gone? Only down the slope of the desk-lid toward whoever is sitting at the desk. Ah, that's the first indication you have received that this desk does not have a flat writing surface but a gradient of a desklid that is openable upon a whole cornucopia of contents beneath it. There are after all no smooth running drawers in this desk, as I originally indicated. My thinking has become confused ever since I lost my wife. This desk is an old schoolroom version, with one sloping desklid and metal joints below to cage my bare legs. I look around and see whole rows of such desks around me, each with a bent head above it. I quickly look away as this does not seem to be my study at home at all. And I finally extract my finger from the inkwell and find it dripping blue-back Stephens. Yes, Stephens, not Quink. How can I be so sure? Well, I have touched the tip of my tongue with it and I certainly know the taste of Stephens when compared to that of Quink. "Henderson!" shouted a voice from the front of the room, "what on earth are you doing?" I must have looked confused, and my underpants felt suddenly damp, and while the voice was otherwise abruptly engaged with another child's emergency in the classroom elsewhere, I lifted the desklid slope to hide my blushes. There is nothing in it, I thought, wondering for a moment where all my school books must have gone. My head smoothly running in, with no gaps between, silently pushed shut from behind me towards the final darkness inside, without even a single groan of bone on grinding bone. My wife never liked drawers left open.