up and play them. I can play them, if I draw any damn thing at all, he told portrait; who was unimpressed.
“Portrait,” he said. “You better look the other way so that you will not be unmaidenly. I am going to take a shower now and shave, something you will never have to do, and put on my soldier-suit and go and walk around this town even though it is too early.”
So, he got out of bed, favoring his bad leg, which hurt him always. He pulled the reading light with his bad hand. There was sufficient light, and he had been wasting electricity for nearly an hour.
He regretted this as he regretted all his errors. He walked past portrait, only looking casually, and looked at himself in the mirror. He had dropped both parts of his pajamas and he looked at himself critically and truly.
“You beat-up old bastard,” he said to the mirror. Portrait was a thing of the past. Mirror was actuality and of this day.
The gut is flat, he said without uttering it. The chest is all right except where it contains the defective muscle. We are hung as we are hung, for better or worse, or something, or something awful.
You are one half a hundred years old, you bastard you. Now go in and take a shower, and scrub good, and afterwards put on your soldier suit. Today is another day.
