The Colonel waits for his promised pension which has been unfulfilled for years. Friday after Friday, the Colonel waits in his finest suit for the letter announcing the arrival of his pension. Everyone in the town, including himself, knows that he waits in vain. Every Friday, his wife has to watch him dressing and preparing to receive the letter. But the Colonel stands by his dream for it is the only thing left for him. Hunger consumes the Colonel′s house with his wife reduced to a sack of bones because of asthma and the Colonel living with the shame of a decent man brought down by poverty. Against wind and tide, against hunger, and against his wife′s objections, repeated like a litany, "What will we eat?" the Colonel′s reply is terse-it is a reply he has choked back for more than twenty years: "We will eat shit."