At noon everything has a shadow. That was how you found his stall — you walked the market with your eyes down and looked for the patch of ground where there wasn't one.
He bought shadows. Three silver coins each, and he did not ask where they came from. A poor man crouched at the cloth and asked what happened afterwards, and the buyer said, in a completely level voice: don't go out at noon, don't light a lamp at night. And nothing else.
The poor man took the three coins. The shadow he had been standing in went pale and then was not there.
He built a house with the money. He married. He had a son. For twenty years he stayed indoors at midday with the shutters papered over, and for twenty years there was no lamp in that house — a socket on the beam and nothing in it, and everyone in the family used to it.
The boy was seven when he brought the bulb home and held it up in both hands and said he wanted to see his father.
His father stood on a stool and screwed it in and the room came up white.
On the wall there was his wife's shadow, and his son's, and where his own should have been there was nothing at all. The boy went over and put his hand flat on the plaster and said: father, where's yours?
He opened his mouth and nothing came out of it.
On the wall, the boy's shadow raised one hand.
The boy's own hands were at his sides.