(published 'Vollmond' 1990)
He ached all over, whined a good part of the night and then decided he was not at all committed to life. and he might as well fling it off like a stripper on the stage.
But he wanted the biggest audience. More than just himself, anyway. So he rose from his sick bed, wandered over to the devil-top chest of drawers and pulled out suitable apparel for his grand exit.
He poised a needle upon the inlet groove of an operatic record he'd liked since childhood - one with grand chords and buxom sopranos - and its heroic tale wove the bed-sit into something akin to wondrous myth and legend.
Pulling on long, striped socks to above his knees, he suddenly knew that he would find it difficult to carry out that to which he'd so far dedicated his life: death. And he decided he didn't much care for an audience, anyway.
He shivered in the morning air that was given off by the frozen butter of the sun decking the street in premature wakefulness. The other early-goers were evidently firing on all cylinders from some internal white heat engendered by the promise of this particular day.
And now he did not know exactly what he wanted to do and why he wanted to do it. But if he did it. he knew there would be no going back.
To one looking at him (and I was), he did not act confused. He did not see me lurking behind the unemptied dustbins outside the tower flats and, God forbid that I will ever need to use that as my reconaissance spot again, even in my dreams, the smells come on me.
I lost track of him down by the Fast Canal, where the Bell-House sits like an abandoned primadonna (which has always given me the impression that some architect or other once played a blinder, for it makes the surrounding urban sprawl seem even more sprawling).
Whether he I followed dropped his nose into the scummy waters of the. Fast Canal (which at that time of the morning, believe it or not, still bore a veneer of ice) or he just gave his amnesia more rein and wandered off to lose himself in the outer inner city where nobody went if they could help it - no man's land for the rich and poor alike.
But, as he would have been the first to admit, he was indeed a no-man and that's perhaps why he decided to live up to such a label.
I've returned to his bed-sit where ghosts of his aches still linger. I've decided to take on the role that showed so much promise. And I dedicate the rest of my life to his memory.
Even in here you can smell the dustbins outside.
The opera record is still turning - it has been scratching for a living all day.
Within the Bell-House, the bloated hammer-rats do skimp and scamper. But when a new corpse drops in, it becomes their lucky day.
They crack its nut and suck the software out.
