He looked at his grandfather then and thought, you spent your whole life doing good, saving people, and now I need you to save me. I have done something that puts me beyond reach of forgiveness, and if you do not tell me how to find my way back into the world, I will never be able to do it.
A cough shook the old man then, and the sound of it was so deep and hollow: it came from the depths of his chest cavity in the same way that earthquake tremors come from the depths of the earth. It was hard to believe that such a cough could not shake his bones apart. From the knitting on his face, it was clear it was causing him great pain. They stepped forward into the room. Nina laid a hand on Poppa’s arm and leaned down to him as he opened his eyes, saying with quiet joy, ‘Look, Michael, look who is here to see you.’ And Poppa looked past Nina and saw Harper, and his mouth opened in a huge if effortful grin and their gazes met, and Nina looked from one to the other, smiling with pleasure at the sight of them together.
They raised Poppa up a little in the bed and adjusted the cushions behind him to make him as comfortable as they could, then Nina left the room on the pretext of making more tea but they both knew it was to give them some time alone together. She would be downstairs while they talked, moving around her kitchen, maybe humming a little.
He drew up a wooden chair from the corner of the room and sat on it. Poppa had closed his eyes, briefly, pausing from the effort of being hoisted upright, but he opened them again, grimaced, and said, ‘Well, son, look how tall and strong you are now. That’s the good thing about not seeing you that often, you really get to appreciate the changes.’ He coughed. ‘Not too sure about that beard.’
‘I’ll shave while I’m here. How are you?’ Harper said, a straight and simple question, to indicate that Poppa could speak the truth to him even if he was putting on a brave face when Nina was in the room.
Poppa grimaced again. ‘Not so good, son, not so good at all.’
They talked then about the doctors who came and went, a nurse that Poppa had disliked who had to be dismissed, how helpful the neighbours had been. ‘Take a look at all the good wishes downstairs.’ He didn’t know whether Nina had told Poppa about the money he had sent from Holland — Poppa was such a proud man, it was possible Nina had kept quiet. Poppa told him he had been relieved when the doctor had said there was no point in further surgery. He wasn’t scared of dying, he said, but he was scared of mutilation. He had seen some terrible things done to people during some of his spells in hospital. It was a great relief to be allowed to die at home. There was a new drug on the market but it made him real sick.
After a while, Poppa reached out a hand, and Harper bent forward in his chair and took it, and then he leaned further forward still and rested his head on the stiff white sheets and Poppa stroked the back of his head and Harper wept a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ he snuffled after a while, his head still down, ashamed of crying and struggling against breaking down entirely.
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for. .’ Poppa said, his voice low and rattly. ‘You’d be surprised, you know, son, just how many people come here to visit and end up crying on those bedcovers. When you have an illness and people know you won’t live through it, well, it’s strange, it’s like you can offer them absolution.’ He gave a chuckle then. ‘Don’t know why. All that training to be a lawyer, now it turns out I’m a priest. An awful lot of them cry. Say, did Nina tell you about the riots we’ve had here?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s been bad.’
Harper was still and silent then, turned a little, let Poppa stroke his head. He could tell Poppa what he had done, that he had killed a woman, drowned her with his bare hands in an irrigation ditch. What would Poppa think of him then? The son he had raised when he had no reason to other than he was a good person? All those other people who came — he could just imagine the string of visitors Poppa must be getting after all the people he had worked for, over the years. He had expected to find the house full when he came; Nina must have got rid of them for his visit. Didn’t he, Harper, deserve and need absolution more than any of them? All those people who had used and needed Poppa over the years, when Poppa should have belonged to him, to them: and they were still using him, coming to his deathbed wanting something. He realised that in the five years he had lived with this family, he had always wanted more of Poppa, always resented how much he had cared for other people, his standing in the community. He was a big man in every sense of the word but there had never been enough of him to go around.
Poor Poppa, always expected to have the answer, to be wise — but even as he thought this, and felt guilty for it, Harper could not prevent himself from craving it. Say the right thing, he pleaded, in his head.
Surely Poppa had intuited that all was not right with him? Surely now, he would ask Harper what was wrong, and fix it.
‘What was it all for, Nicolaas?’ Poppa said.
‘What do you mean?’ Harper asked, lifting his head.
‘All that work. Young folk, smashing things, just wanting to be heard I guess.’
Harper looked at his grandfather, then rubbed the back of his hand across his face and drew breath. Poppa was dying. It wasn’t about him.
‘All that work,’ Poppa repeated with a sigh. Nina had warned him of this downstairs, that Poppa had started to question his life, as any man in his position was entitled to do. She said he didn’t even raise a smile about the Voting Rights Act.
He couldn’t bear the thought that Poppa might be hard on himself: plenty of men had cause for that, not him. ‘C’mon Poppa. . You worked so hard.’
‘Maybe if I’d worked a little less hard, I’d have taken better care of my own family.’
Was that really what Poppa thought? Here this man lay, a man who had worked so tirelessly for what he believed was right, and yet that very passion and tirelessness meant he could only see all the things that were still wrong. Harper thought of all the people he had met who were self-serving: the people in his line of work, who cared nothing for how their actions affected others as long as they earned a good living in an exciting way; the clean evil of the men with machetes and sickles for whom politics was no more than an excuse; himself — yes, himself. How many of those people would lie on their deathbeds excoriating themselves for what they had done or failed to do? The most evil would be the least self-questioning of all. And yet here, on this bed in this room smelling of antiseptic, lay a man who had worked all his life to do the right thing: a man who had done so much that he couldn’t forgive himself for not doing enough.
Harper rested his hand on top of Poppa’s where it lay on the bed sheet, lightly, because he didn’t know if his skin would be sensitive — it felt as though it should be. It was hot and papery, the veins standing out in ropes. To see this man on his deathbed: it catapulted him backward and forward at once.
Poppa had his eyes closed now and for a few moments, Harper wondered if he had fallen asleep, then the hand beneath his moved, turned and grasped at Harper’s with surprising strength, although he did not open his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was suddenly clear.
‘When I die, Nicolaas, you’re going to be the only one who saw what happened. I’m so sorry, son, so sorry to leave you with that.’
It was the only time Poppa had ever mentioned what happened to Bud, their joint complicity that day, their failure to save him.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Harper said then.
‘Sure, ask away.’
‘When Anika asked for me back, why didn’t you try and stop her? Why didn’t you fight it?’
Poppa looked at him then and the expression on his face was, if anything, amused rather than hurt. ‘Is that what you think, son? We didn’t fight? Oh, we fought. I was used to fighting.’ He coughed again. ‘Your mother wanted you back because of what happened to Bud. It happened when I was looking after you, too. It was my fault. You think there was a court in the land that would stop a child being sent back to his mother after that?’ More coughing. ‘We didn’t tell you any of that because we didn’t want you to go back to your mother hating her. We wanted to give you a chance.’