雙㮇燈 A Double Wick For Him
只有一個拿火叉的睡不穩，揉頭搓臉，把鼻子左捏右捏，不住的打噴嚏。行者道：「這廝曉得勾當了，我再與他個雙㮇燈。」又將一個蟲兒拋在他臉上。只有一个拿火叉的睡不稳，揉头搓脸，把鼻子左捏右捏，不住的打喷嚏。行者道：「这厮晓得勾当了，我再与他个双㮇灯。」又将一个虫儿抛在他脸上。
逐句解 Line by line
Only one, the man with the fire-fork, could not settle. He rubbed his head and scrubbed his face, pinched his nose left and right, and went on and on sneezing.
Twenty-eight characters of a man fighting sleep, and every action in it is one anybody has done at a desk at four in the morning. 火叉, the fire-fork, is the tool for shifting burning wood; he is the one with the job that keeps him awake.
Pilgrim said, "This fellow has caught on. I shall give him a double wick."
Two things here. 勾當, a piece of business or what is going on, takes dàng on its second character. And 㮇, read tiàn, is a rare character outside the everyday range: no entry under the wood radical in the great Kangxi dictionary, but a Ming rhyme book lists it in the 天 rhyme glossed as a fire-poker, and its rhyme-partner 掭 means to poke up a lamp wick. So 雙㮇燈 is a lamp trimmed at both wicks — twice the dose.
And he threw one more insect onto the man's face.
Eleven characters. The escalation is one bug.
The sneezing guard is the best small piece of observation in the chapter. Nine others went down like felled trees and this one fights it, and the way he fights it is by rubbing his face and pinching his nose, which is what everybody does.
Wukong's diagnosis is characteristically wrong in a flattering direction. He assumes the man has worked out that something is happening. The man has not worked out anything; he is simply harder to put under than his colleagues.
The phrase he reaches for is worth keeping. A lamp with both wicks trimmed up burns twice as bright, so a double wick means a double dose — and the character behind it is so rare that it took a Ming rhyme book to pin down. The joke is ordinary; the word for it is not.