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the definition of the word “chiaroscuro”? If you look in your dictionary, you will find that it means the arrangement of light and dark, darkness and light together. Rats do not care for light. Roscuro’s parents were having a bit of fun when they named their son. Rats have a sense of humor. Rats, in fact, think that life is very funny. And they are right, reader. They are right.
    In the case of Chiaroscuro, however, the joke had a hint of prophecy to it, for it happened that when Roscuro was a very young rat, he came upon a great length of rope on the dungeon floor.
    “Ah, what have we here?” said Roscuro.
    Being a rat, he immediately began to nibble at the rope.
    “Stop that,” boomed a voice, and a great hand came out of the darkness and picked the rat up by his tail and held him suspended upside down.
    “Were you nibbling on Gregory’s rope, rat?”
    “Who wants to know?” said Roscuro, for even upside down he was still a rat.
    “You smart-alecky rat, you smart-alecky rat nib-nib-nibbling on Gregory’s rope. Gregory will teach you to mess with his rope.”
    And keeping Roscuro upside down, Gregory lit a match with the nail of his thumb, ssssssttttttt, and then held the brilliant flame right in Roscuro’s face.
    “Ahhh,” said Roscuro. He pulled his head back, away from the light. But, alas, he did not close his eyes, and the flame exploded around him and danced inside him.
    “Has no one told you the rules?” said Gregory.
    “What rules?”
    “Gregory’s rope, rat, is off-limits.”
    “So?”
    “Apologize for chewing on Gregory’s rope.”
    “I will not,” said Roscuro.
    “Apologize.”
    “No.”
    “Filthy rat,” said Gregory. “You black-souled thing. Gregory has had it with you rats.” He held the match closer to Roscuro’s face, and a terrible smell of burnt whiskers rose up around the jailer and the rat. And then the match went out and Gregory released Roscuro’s tail. He flung him back into the darkness.
    “Do not ever touch Gregory’s rope again, or you will be sorry.”
    Roscuro sat on the dungeon floor. The whiskers on the left side of his face were gone. His heart was beating hard, and though the light from the match had disappeared, it danced, still, before the rat’s eyes, even when he closed them.
    “Light,” he said aloud. And then he whispered the word again. “Light.”
    From that moment forward, Roscuro showed an abnormal, inordinate interest in illumination of all sorts. He was always, in the darkness of the dungeon, on the lookout for light, the smallest glimmer, the tiniest shimmer. His rat soul longed inexplicably for it; he began to think that light was the only thing that gave life meaning, and he despaired that there was so little of it to be had.
    He finally voiced this sentiment to his friend, a very old one-eared rat named Botticelli Remorso.
    “I think,” said Roscuro, “that the meaning of life is light.”
    “Light,” said Botticelli. “Ha-ha-ha — you kill me. Light has nothing to do with it.”
    “What does it all mean then?” asked Roscuro.
    “The meaning of life,” said Botticelli, “is suffering, specifically the suffering of others. Prisoners, for instance. Reducing a prisoner to weeping and wailing and begging is a delightful way to invest your existence with meaning.”
    As he spoke, Botticelli swung, from the one extraordinarily long nail of his right front paw, a heart-shaped locket. He had taken the locket from a prisoner and hung it on a thin braided rope. Whenever Botticelli spoke, the locket moved. Back and forth, back and forth it swung. “Are you listening?” Botticelli said to Roscuro.
    “I am listening.”
    “Good,” said Botticelli. “Do as I say and your life will be full of meaning. This is how to torture a prisoner: first, you must convince him that you are a friend. Listen to him. Encourage him to confess his sins. And when the time is right, talk to him. Tell him what he wants to hear. Tell him, for instance,