Vengeance

It is the end of May and the newly green trees blaze like torches in the morning sun.  He has looked on this view for...he doesn't know how many years.  It could be ten, or a hundred, or three years.  He has really been here, up in this room and only in this third story attic room for just less than six months.  When they first brought him here the street trees were a visual cacophony of naked branches, a confusion of skeletal hands and bone fingers clawing up at him as though to grasp and seize him and drag him down into the street.  Perhaps to rescue him from this place.  After that he remembers very little as though having been asleep throughout, simply waking from time to time for the tiny meals, the sponge baths, the pills, to be walked to the lavatory...

Today is the first day he has been really awake.  He stretches his numb arm as far as it will extend.  This is the first day he has had feeling in his fingers.  Did he have a stroke?  Maybe he just lay on this side too long.  The window is open and the cool breeze has chased out the stench of illness and sad decay.  Birds are singing and the muffled roar of distant traffic rouses his ears.  He still cannot remember what happened or how he got here.

He only remembers his age: ninety-one, a veteran of the Second World War, a prisoner of war in a German camp for the last six months.  Age twenty-one.  It is all clear to him now, he remembers the stench, just as a few minutes ago it has blown out the window.  Who opened it?

He needs to pee.  Badly.  There is no bottle handy.  He could wait for the girl to come in, or let go, or...

He is up and standing, leaning against the headboard of the bed for support.  His legs are weak but he can stand.  He reaches for the aluminum hospital cane leaning by his left just under the window.  He can stand leaning on it, though his knees feel like water.

He is out in the hall, groping for support the sloping garret wall while advancing forward with shuffling steps with the cane. Here is the bathroom.  The door is open.  He just makes it and sits down on the toilet.

He remembers to flush, and to wash his hands while leaning against the sink.  On his way back she appears, her round face glowering like an avenging angel.  "Mr. Douglas", she says, "What are you doing out of bed?"

to be continued