The Last Angry Man [antikvár]

oneHours before the night bell had commenced its furious buzzing he had been awake, neither mildly awake nor half asleep, but wide-eyed and alert, his mind crammed with the photographic clarity of insomnia. It was an unbearably hot night, hot as only a square of attached slum houses can get, the heat stewing and intensifying in the crib of ramshackle backyards on which his bedroom window looked out. The oversize window fan (he had installed it himself) was no help either. In the early morning stillness it clattered like a jackhammer.The buzzing had caused him to start, jerking him to a sitting position in the old double bed and triggering an arthritic spark in his lower spine. The luminous face of the dresser clock read three-thirty, and he cursed softly and considerately, although he was the only one in the house."Aaah, the bastard. The bastards won't let you live."Sighing, he plopped back on the moist pillow, hoping that the bell ringer would grow discouraged and return to his tenement warren. Normally it was his wife's function to trudge to the front window and advise the caller, The doctor is not in, he had gone for the evening. It was a small lie, and few of them ever believed it, but it worked most of the time. But his wife was at the beach for the summer; if the visitor persisted, he would have no choice but to undertake the distasteful journey himself. He was too old and too tired for nightwork. Why couldn't they get that into their thick skulls?"My dear lousy patients," he said half aloud. "Why don't they bother some young shtunk of a specialist? Why always me at three-thirty?"