Mangan left Ireland on a rain-filled morning, flying up the mouth of the Shannon River toward the Atlantic, the plane rising high above a winter storm. He flew to New York, landing in another rainstorm, and caught a flight to Montreal. And so he arrived home eighteen hours after he had first spoken to Margrethe, not knowing whether his father was alive or dead.

As he stood in the Montreal terminal waiting to clear customs, he saw, rising above other waiting heads in the outside gallery above him, Don Duncan, his father’s old friend, dressed in a heavy sheepskin collared coat, waving to him; a comic figure, but also a figure of dread, for in his face Mangan could read neither hope nor sorrow. And so, as he went out to meet Don, who bulled his way through the crowd, coming toward him, he felt a premonition that the news would be bad, that his father had died, that what his father had wanted to ask him or tell him would never be said. His face must have signaled his fear, for Don, joining him, at once embraced him in a bear hug, saying: “Good you got here. He’s still hanging in.”

For the first time since he had heard the news of his father’s stroke, he wept, tears on his face as he went with Don out into the snowbanks and freezing winter winds, a winter landscape unchanged in the weeks since he had left Montreal. “How is he? Is he able to speak?” he asked, and Don said yes, his speech was affected but he could speak.

And then, when they were in the car and driving out of the airport entrance, Don turned to him and said: “Did Margrethe tell you? It’s a bad stroke. He could go any time. It’s a slow thing, a stroke. It may take two or three days before it goes either way.”

Mangan, staring ahead, saw the steaming exhausts of other cars, the high dirty slabs of shoveled snow, the cleared lanes of traffic racing in the smoking Arctic air: a landscape of death. “Is he still in intensive care?”

“No, he’s back in his own room, now.”

“So, he’s a bit better.”

“Not necessarily. I asked the doctor about that. There’s not a lot they can do for a stroke victim. They just have to wait and see if he’ll pull through.”

“How’s Margrethe?”

“She’s a great girl,” Don said.

The hospital, the Montreal General, was familiar. Mangan had visited it years back, when his mother was operated on for a benign tumor. His father was on an upper private floor. Don showed him the way, pointing out the room, then shaking hands. “I’ll be back after supper,” Don said. “It’s right there, number 423.”

The sign on the door said no visitors. Mangan did not know whether to knock and so decided to push open the door. When he did, he saw Margrethe sitting in the room. His father, lax in the bed, seemed to be asleep. Margrethe, her face drawn, wearing no makeup, dressed in a long woolen sweater and gray flannel skirt, rose, smiled at him, and came outside to join him in the corridor.

“How is he?”

“He’s much the same. Oh, I’m so glad you managed to make it. Was it a terrible flight?”

“Is he asleep or what?”

“He dozes most of the time. His breathing is difficult. Anyway, he’s going to be very happy that you’re here. Look, you go in now and sit by him. He’ll wake in a while. Maybe when he sees you, he’ll manage to tell you whatever it is that’s worrying him. It’s hard to understand him. You have to listen carefully.”

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“No. I’m going down to the cafeteria to get a coffee. I think it would be better if you were alone with him. I’ll be back. I’ll check with you, okay?”

He nodded and watched her go off down the corridor, her straight back, her lithe walk, this thirty-year-old bride of his father’s last years. He wondered if his mother had been told. But, of course, they would have told her. She might even be here. He looked along the corridor again. Margrethe was standing by the elevator, waiting to go down. She waved to him. He waved back and then, fear in his mouth, pushed open the heavy hospital room door and went in.

In the room, the overhead lights had been switched off and a light was lit over his father’s head, its beam like an aureole behind the long thinning locks of gray hair which straggled around his ears. His father’s eyes were closed and his breathing was stertorous, labored, as though each breath were being torn from unwilling lungs. In the white hospital robe his father’s neck seemed particularly bare and vulnerable, an old child in a nightshirt, the skin pale, almost translucent, as though its normal ruddy color had been drained out. To Mangan’s surprise there was no heart-monitoring machine, nor were there any intravenous plastic tubes attached to his father’s arms. He lay in the bed, solitary, linked to no technology, as though his case had been considered and abandoned.

Mangan tried a small, throat-clearing sound as he sat in the chair vacated by Margrethe, but as he did, he realized that the loud, labored breathing in the struggling chest of the ill man must shut out all other noise. One hand lay lax on the sheet, discolored by bruises or the marks of needles. Mangan reached out and took that hand in his. At once, his father opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked at him, at first seeming to see nothing, his eyes blinded by the labor of gasping for breath. And then, with a sudden cough, his father said: “Jamie—it’s you. Jamie.”

“Yes, it’s me.” He rose up and, as he had rarely done in his life, kissed his father on the brow, felt clammy sweat on his lips. He sat again. “I came from Ireland this morning.”

“Ireland.” His father said the word perfectly, then nodded. “Tracing . . . your . . . double.” His eyes sought the ceiling as though he were summoning up his strength. “Any . . . luck?”

“I don’t know if luck is the right word,” Mangan said. “But listen, Dad, Margrethe said you wanted to talk to me. You wanted to tell me something.”

His father nodded. His breathing seemed to stop, then started again. Mangan noticed rivulets of sweat running in the corded gulleys of his neck. “Yes,” his father said. “I’m glad you . . . came before I . . . kick off.”

“You’re not going to kick off.”

His father shrugged his shoulders in a painful parody of his usual noncommittal shrug. “Maybe,” he said, at last. “But . . . if I die . . . I’m in a . . . mess, Jamie. My . . . fault.” He turned his head and tried to smile, then reached out his hand as if to hold Mangan’s hand. Mangan took the offered hand, felt the old man’s fingers grip him tightly, then lie loose in his own.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Margrethe,” his father said, gasping again. And then said something Mangan did not hear, the words slurred to unintelligibility. “You see?” he added.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that. What was it?”

“I said . . . she’s . . . pregnant,” his father said. “And I don’t . . . have . . . savings. House is . . . mortgaged, has been ever . . . since . . . your mother . . . got divorce. She . . . needed money . . . then. And I . . .” Suddenly, surprisingly, he smiled. “I over . . . extended.”

“Don’t worry, I got money from Beatrice. A lot.”

“So . . . you said on the . . . telephone. Before you . . . went to . . . Ireland.” His father stopped and gasped painfully for breath, gasped and gasped until Mangan was sure he was having some sort of attack. Then suddenly he said, “It’s not . . . fair to . . . ask you but I’m . . . asking. She’ll need . . . help.” Again his father stopped and labored to breathe. “At least . . . until she . . . mmmarries . . . again.” He coughed. “And the . . . child is going to . . . need someone for . . . longer. That’s what I . . . wanted to . . . ask. Will you keep . . . an eye . . . on it?”

“Of course. Anyway, you’re going to be all right.”

“Well . . . maybe,” his father said. He added something which was so slurred Mangan could not hear it.

“Sorry, Dad? What was that?”

His father shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. This bloody . . . speech. Your grandfather died . . . just like this. Couldn’t . . . speak. Anyway, we’ve . . . managed to talk. Thanks. And listen. Will you . . . phone . . . your mother? Margrethe’s been speaking to . . . her. I spoke to her on the . . . phone. I told her . . . don’t come. But, will you . . . call her?”

“Yes, don’t worry.”

His father coughed again and gasped for air. “A child,” he said. “It will . . . be a son. I . . . feel it.”

Mangan nodded and smiled.

And then his father closed his eyes, still gasping. “Just a . . . minute,” he said in a slow, slurred voice. “Just . . . a rest.”

“Yes, of course. Rest,” Mangan said. He watched the old man’s chest expand and contract painfully, listened to the constant tearing sound of his breath. A child. He’s going to have a child. And I, flying the Atlantic, wondered what secret he wanted to tell. And it was then, watching his father try to rest, watching his pale sweating face, his long, lank, thinning gray hair, his childishly awkward white neck, that he knew his father would die. A stroke is a slow death. He bent his head and rested his cheek against his father’s hand. The old man opened his eyes. “You . . . all . . . right, Jamie?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” He lifted his head and looked at his father. “I’m very fond of you, Dad. Do you know that?”

His father, breathing laboriously, raised himself, looked at him, then said, “Were you . . . in a fight over . . . there? You . . . lost a tooth.”

Mangan nodded. Through his father—who knew noth***thing of Gorteen, Duntally, Norman towers, and lonely headlands—the uncanny facial resemblance, the poetry, the wild blood had been transferred across the Atlantic Ocean to this cold winter land, to this, his father’s harsh native city in which he now lay dying. He looked at his father’s face and wished that those features were his own.

Someone had entered the room. He turned and it was Margrethe, carrying a plastic cup of coffee. “All right?” she whispered. “Is he still asleep?”

“No,” his father said suddenly, his eyes still shut. And added in a slurred voice, “We . . . had . . . a . . . talk. Good . . . talk, eh, Jamie?”

“Yes, Dad. Now take it easy. Rest.”

Silently, Margrethe offered the coffee, then went to sit at the other side of the sick man’s bed. They sat in silence, watching him labor to breathe, watching him die.