The Damp Patch
The house had long outlived its usefulness—just as the old man had outlived the age he once believed he would reach. The following week, he would turn seventy-eight, and though he had been proud and self-sufficient in his wild youth, lately he would unabashedly lift his eyes toward the sky, as though signaling repentance to God. It was hard to believe—him, praying for relief from his lonely existence in that crumbling house, its repair long deemed useless.
Having ended up a widower with no children, he clung, as many old men do, to memories of happier times—times spent close to those he once shared the roof with. Those memories faded slowly, like the original painting on the bedroom walls, crafted by his father, in the room he once shared with his elder brother. “What’s the use of spending my paltry pension on fixing this place?” he would grumble. His pension... how could he save a dime when everything was so costly? It was, in truth, because he no longer expected visitors that he came to that conclusion.
Whimsical figures shaped from damp patches on the walls and ceiling often became the focus of his gaze during sleepless nights. Some emerged overnight and lingered, prompting him to rummage through old memories. One patch on the ceiling especially amused him now and then—a shape that resembled the athletic body he once had as a teenager. Oh, how he had flaunted it during his flirtatious youth, especially that one asset of his which had surely made other boys in the gang jealous. They used to accuse him of having a bee in his bonnet: “I won’t stop until every girl in the neighborhood has gotten acquainted with it,” he’d declared.
Most of those people were unlikely to have survived the blast of time as he had. That heartbreaking thought—or the sight of medicine boxes on the bedside table—usually snapped him out of his reverie.
One freezing evening, while returning from the grocery store, he turned the corner and caught sight of his house’s façade. A hideous political graffiti had been freshly painted in red across the front. It seemed to mark the beginning of his world’s imminent collapse. Oblivious to the poor, younger generations demanded space for their ambitious visions, and both the house and its owner stood in their way. So deep was his dismay that he dropped the bag he was carrying. Bitter tears blurred his vision, and for a moment, he felt like giving up entirely.
Suddenly, another night came rushing back—nearly a lifetime ago. He had been walking home then too, just after being dumped by his girlfriend. “I don’t think I could stand this kind of misery when I’m old, on a cold night like this,” he’d said, hugging himself.
Yet he had survived, despite countless losses and hardships. And in two years, he would be eighty. With a sigh, the old man resumed walking, already calculating how he might work out the cost of a few small repairs.
by Eusebio Natanael