they let him sit his exams , most of which he failed , but in a psychiatric hospital , a long road of counselling his reward for genes whose narrow survival he blamed on those same fates , mocking him still , as they mocked his father in his inebriation , mocked his fathers father before a lead-puckered wall as the firing squad was made to reload , mocked his fathers fathers father who in his dotage was to relate a story no-one cared about anymore , the spittle dribbling down his chin as he murmured sgt .