‘Not good, not bad.’ Sometimes it’s ‘Not too bad’ or ‘Could be better’ or ‘Not bad, not good’ or, on really bad days, ‘Don’t ask!’

My immediate impulse is, as always, to embark on clearing everything up, to get one gargantuan black dustbin bag and chuck the whole bloody room in it – including him. There’s that old globe of his, for a start, sitting on the mantelpiece, all smoke-stained and sun-bleached from the days when he let daylight into the room. The countries and borders are about thirty years out of date. He made me memorize every country in the world when I was a boy and whacked me if I got one wrong. The bloody noses, the split lips, the purple eyes, the zipped-up lips, the chill in his voice, my head down. Thank you, for your words in my useless mouth, for your early-morning rises, your sacrifices. Yes, I promise to obey you unto kingdom come and I will never, ever let you down after all you’ve done, for thou art righteous and I am, well, I am only ca-ca. your son. Amen.

He resists every time I pick something up to be thrown away. Empty envelopes, cans, bottles, remnants of orange juice, cartons of meals, old newspapers. ‘Stop rushin’ me,’ he’ll say, because in the silent-movie space of this room, the energy of someone from the outside world of technicolour is overwhelming. After half an hour or so, I will attempt to empty the commode, then slowly drop detritus into a bag, shaking cans and bottles with great exaggeration first, right in front of him, to prove that there’s not a wasteful drop left, prompting him to say, ‘Doan be so blasted facetious.’

He’ll insist the bag should be used again, once the rubbish has been emptied into the bin outside.

He hasn’t washed in years; he won’t let me or anyone else touch him. His nails grow and grow and grow, until they break off into jagged edges. His hair and beard, no longer dyed black, grow and grow and grow, into tangled scouring brushes. His trousers are stained with urine, his mouth dehydrated, with the dead skin on his loose lips forming little molluscs. He doesn’t smell as much as the room, though, because, like the stew outside, the germs die after a while. They say that after the first few years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.

Should I wash him? Maybe I should force him. It is obscene, washing my father.

How can I, his son, wash his balls?

Reaching out to my father, but with each lunge his body drifts off out of my grip, floating upwards; his big bones have lost their fleshy padding.