He now sang a familiar but meaningless, tuneless song as he dressed. Then he dressed quickly and rushed to go to work. He got up singing and shadow-boxing every morning and kept it up until he remembered that he hated his job. He was medium tall, a lean and energetic young man. No matter how late he slept, Gonzaga’s roommate woke up with a charged, ready-to-go attitude that infuriated him. Toto whistled into the room from the cold shower outside and slammed the door shut. Dusman Gonzaga suspected the Bathroom Man’s child howled to keep up with the tradition of Dacca House by raising hell like everybody else. But, like her husband, she was shy and withdrawn and did not talk to the neighbours any more.
Whether the child screamed from hunger, a malignant illness or just a painful stirring in his dead brains in an effort to communicate, only the despairing mother could tell. It was a sound from out of this earth, a dusty, strangled screech from Hades.
And when the Bathroom Man’s freak exercised his lungs, everything stopped to listen. Apart from swallowing and voiding, the only other bodily function it was capable was crying. The child could not talk, walk or play, and, even though the eyes were always open and moving in an apparent determined attempt to under stand, it was doubtful if anything ever registered in its soft brain. In a malicious conspiracy with the world, the gods had burdened the impoverished mechanic with a mentally-handicapped offspring. The Bathroom Man’s child was wailing his lungs sick when Dusman Gonzaga woke up.
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