la manta - the blanket

"El hijo tiende las sabanas y pone una sola manta porque - advierte - hay calefaccion. Al viejo le da igual: se ha traido su manta de siempre, adelgazado ya por medio siglo de uso. Imposible abandonarla; es su segunda piel. Le ha protegido de lluvias y ventiscas, ha sudado con el las mejores y peores horas de su vida, fue incluso condecorado con un agujero de bala, sera su mortaja."

Jose Luis Sampedro, La Sonrisa Etrusca, Narrativa Actual, RBA Editores, Barcelona 1993, p.17

[The son puts the sheets on and just one blanket because - as he points out - there is central heating. The old man doesn't care: he has brought his old blanket along, worn thin already by half a century's use. Impossible to leave behind; it is his second skin. It has protected him from rain and blizzards, has sweated with him in the best and worst hours of his life, even been decorated with a bullet hole, it will be his shroud.]