Absolution

When Gramps knew he was dying, he asked me to visit him. 
   Why his granddaughter and not his son? We had always been close. But perhaps, too, because the old and the young have respectively lost and yet to acquire a fear of sharing their secrets.   
   We sat on the patio outside his bungalow, sipping tea and watching a robin peck at the bird feeder. 
   “His name was Klaus Lehmann,” he said without preamble, “and I killed him.”
   Gramps had never talked about the Great War, and I realised then that all he wanted of me was to listen. 
   “After the shelling,” he began, “I became lost, wandering alone for hours. Then I saw him, sitting in a crater. He was about the same age as me, nineteen or twenty. He looked up and put a hand to his pocket, grinning in a way that seemed to say You’re a dead man, Tommy. So I lifted my rifle and shot him."
   Gramps took a moment to compose himself, then continued.
   “He pressed his hands to his stomach, watching the blood run through his fingers and spread over his tunic...”
   I squeezed his knee. 
   “You mustn’t blame yourself, Gramps; there was a war on.”
   “No, Jill, there wasn’t. It was just after two-o’-clock on the eleventh of November, 1918, nine hours after the Armistice had been signed and three hours after hostilities had officially ended.” 
   A solitary tear rolled down his cheek. 
   “Dear God, Jill, the look he gave me! Both a rebuke and a plea for explanation. ‘Aber der Krieg ist doch vorbei!’ he said. But the war is over! 
   “When I looked in his pocket, all I found was the flask of brandy he’d wanted to share with me.”

End