The Slatted Drum

A whitewashed sickroom of a town hospital in Kampen on a grey September afternoon, blackout curtains drawn aside, beside an empty iron bed a machine one and a half metres long on a white tubular frame, in it a white enamel tub with a dark blue rim and clear pale water, above it a horizontal drum of brown wooden slats wound with many turns of yellowish translucent cellophane tubing, a matt aluminium end disc, a sprocket with a bicycle chain, two empty red rubber tubes over the rim, a chrome clamp left open on the rim, the room empty, a folded white apron on the chair.