Black Water

by Louise Doughty

  He could have stood there for some time – but a shape passed the window and all at once, Nina flung the screen door wide.

  In the kitchen, Nina said, ‘I’ll make tea, shall we take it out into the garden?’ but he replied, ‘Let’s sit at the table,’ because it reminded him of his first evening in the house and how he and Poppa had sat at the kitchen table drinking milkshakes and he had gazed longingly through the window at the garden and Jimmy the dog. Jimmy had died many years ago but there was still the iron stake dug into the grass at the bottom of the slope.

  It was six years since his last visit: he had come for two weeks just before he began his military service in Holland. Nina’s brown hair was stranded with white, she was stouter round the stomach and there was a certain stiffness in her movements. She fetched down the tea set he had brought from Amsterdam on that trip, the blue and white, standing on a chair to lift it down, refusing his help, holding it under the rattling tap for a few minutes to clean it of dust. When the kettle had come to the boil on the stovetop, she warmed the pot and the cups, set it on to boil again.

  They were enjoying each other’s presence so much that they talked of unimportant things until she wiped her hands on her light blue apron, joined him at the table and said, ‘He will be so pleased to see you. I can’t wait to see the look on his face.’

  ‘How is he?’

  Nina tried to prevent her smile from becoming effortful. She lifted the teapot. ‘It’s not good, Nic,’ she said. ‘A year, maybe, maybe less. Sometimes . . .’ She did not finish the sentence but Harper guessed she had been about to say, sometimes I wish it would be a lot less. The news that Poppa’s condition was terminal had come just before Harper had left Holland for Jakarta. It had not stopped Harper taking the job.

  It would be less than a year, as it turned out. Poppa would succumb to his illness five months later, and two years after that, while Harper was working as a labourer on a farm in the north-east of Holland, near the German border, Nina would be knocked down and killed by a Dodge pick-up that was speeding round the corner of Firestone Boulevard: and with Nina’s death, his last link with America, those five years he had spent in California as part of a family, with grandparents and a little brother, would be gone. He would never return.

  ‘Is the doctor good? Should I speak with him while I’m here? Do you have enough money?’

  Nina smiled then. ‘You were always trying to send us money.’

  ‘What else am I going to spend it on?’

  ‘Well you know what your Poppa would say, booze and women, son, booze and women.’ This was a joke: Poppa had always been such an upright citizen.

  ‘I like a bit of whisky, I guess. Drank a bit too much of it over there.’ It was risky, mentioning his life in Europe. He wouldn’t do it in front of his grandfather as it would be sure to prompt a question, but Nina was used to not-knowing things. She had not-known about Michael for year after year, not-known how Harper was getting on in Holland – never really known exactly how it had happened, losing Bud.

  ‘And women?’

  He shook his head slowly, grinning at her, already copying his grandfather’s grin. ‘Tryin’ to marry me off?’ He heard how his accent had aligned with hers. There had never been any Dutch in his English, not after those years here, but in Europe and Indonesia his English accent was completely blank – and here he was, in Nina’s kitchen, drinking fine hot tea, already regaining his West Coast edge.

  ‘You’re a good-looking young man, mid-twenties, perfect age some would say.’

  ‘I’m not sure marriage is for me.’

  ‘Marriage is for everybody.’ She had waited many years for it to be legal for her and Poppa to wed, just because she was Latina, him black.

  ‘There’s not a lot of women would want a husband does as much travelling as I do.’ This, too, would be dangerous territory in front of Poppa.

  He saw her glance at his forearms then. He was dressed in a loose T-shirt – the scratches had mostly faded during his time on the run but there were still some very fine white tracks on his brown forearm, unnoticeable but to anyone who really looked. If he had thought about it, he would have worn a long-sleeved shirt. Maybe he had wanted her to notice, wanted her to say, are you okay? What happened over there?

  Nina raised her teacup to her lips, put it down.

  He read the question in her face. ‘I always meant to come back, but, you know, military service, and then this job, you know, and travel. I’m not saying never. I have to go back and straighten things out with work, then maybe, I don’t know.’

  Nina smiled delicately, to take the sting out of her reproach. ‘We always kind of hoped for another child around the place one day, if you got married one day I mean. We always hoped you would come back here for good once you were old enough so’s Anika didn’t have any say in the matter.’ Quickly, she added, ‘But we knew in our heart of hearts, once we lost you to Europe . . .’ She shook her head. ‘It’s funny, you know, how when kids grow up, you can look back and see what they’ve grown into. You always wanted to go places. You once set off up the road when you’d only been living with us a month, taking a look around. Poppa and I came to the front of the house and just watched you head off along the pavement, up the hill. You didn’t look back once. We were so amused, we just watched you, until you disappeared over the brow of the hill, that is, then Poppa got worried about you getting lost and came chasing after you. Don’t know why, you were old enough to find your way back, it was just ’cos you were new to us. We worried about you as if you were an infant but you were six, after all.’

  There was a long silence. Then Harper saw that a tear was making its way slowly down Nina’s cheek, leaving a shining trail.

  ‘Come on . . .’ he whispered.

  She fumbled with one hand for the handkerchief stuffed up the other sleeve, then whispered to herself, ‘I’ll never forgive her. I know that’s wrong of me. But to take you away from us, when we’d already lost Bud. We were the only family you knew.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘We had to put you on a boat with a tag around your neck, send you off like a parcel, across that big ocean, all on your own, just a boy, to somewhere you couldn’t even remember. Wasn’t it enough, what we’d been through? Everything we had been through?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t quite see it that way, I guess.’ His mother – the mother who had demanded him back, after what happened to Bud, only to make it clear that having a son living with her again was a mighty inconvenience when it came to her complicated love life.

  ‘Don’t go upsetting yourself because I’ve showed up.’

  She lifted her head then, gave her face a final wipe, right and left, beamed at him resolutely. ‘You showing up is always the best thing in the world, make no mistake about that.’

  She looked up at the ceiling, then back at him. It was time.

  The first thing he noticed as they mounted the stairs was the smell: a strong smell of antiseptic, something faintly rotten underneath. Then, as they paused on the landing, both of them listening to see if he was awake, the harsh rasp of Poppa’s breathing, the effort in it, the sound of a man exhausted to be alive. The door was ajar; Nina pushed at it gently. Poppa was in the middle of the bed and on the other side of the room was a small cot that Nina must have been sleeping in at night. An oxygen cylinder stood upright on an iron support by the bed, the mask and tube hanging from the post of the bedstead. They still had the same flowered wallpaper, dusty roses, was how he had always thought of that pattern, faded now in the light through the net curtains.

  They stopped just inside the door. Poppa looked asleep, his mouth open, his face tilted to the ceiling – even in repose, his brows were knitted in pain. Harper stared at him; the concave hollows of his cheeks, the white stubble on his chin.

  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 for
giveness, 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.’

  He thought, then, of the occasional card or letter he had sent to Nina and Poppa f
rom Holland, during his teenage years. I am well. It has been raining here all week. My favourite lesson at school is Geography. The maps are very interesting. Staying in touch had never been his strong point.

  Poppa had his eyes closed. Gradually, his breathing steadied, became slow and regular. On the branches of a tree outside the window, a bird was singing, out of sight.

  *

  Downstairs, Nina was wiping at the stovetop, more furiously than was strictly necessary. Harper saw how neat and clean the kitchen was – much tidier than he remembered it. He imagined Nina scrubbing the whole house, all of the time, in her impotent fury at Poppa’s suffering.

  ‘I’m afraid we have some folks coming round for supper later,’ she said. ‘Neighbours who moved in a couple of years ago, they’re nice people. I told them our grandson was coming and hoped they’d take the hint but they said they’re dying to meet you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be cooking supper for anyone,’ Harper said, ‘you have enough to do.’

  ‘Oh, they bring their own supper. You know how people are round here. Remember all that food they brought round after we lost Bud? I had to bring the dog in the house for the first time in his life and feed it to him in secret.’

  They shared a smile.

  ‘Your room is just the same. Want to take a look?’

  ‘Maybe later. I want to know what I can do for you and Poppa while I’m here.’

  She straightened up from where she had been wiping, shook the cloth over the sink, folded it once and laid it over the side. ‘Like mending things? We have people lining up to do that.’

  ‘Why can’t he realise what a good man he was?’