I am posting this on what would have been Donald Sutherland's 89th birthday. The title is from a GQ interview with him (gqDOTcom/story/donald-sutherland-hunger-games) that I chose because it reminded me of the end of Voltaire's Candide. I don't know if he ever read that, but given how widely read he was I would not be surprised.

The girl had never been allowed in the greenhouse before. There are lots of rooms in grandpa's house from which she was barred: his study, his bedroom, the meeting room, the wine store, the basement and its vast secrets. And yet the greenhouse was the place she yearned for most, glass and roses, glittering and green and white and forbidden. But everything is different now. The war has reached her city, her home, right up to the threshold of her bedroom, which she is never allowed to leave. People fill the house who she does not recognize and they point guns in her face if she argues.

When a guard opens her bedroom door and tells her she is being taken to the greenhouse she thinks, Who are they to give me permission?

The girl understands some of what has happened. The war and rebellion, her grandpa's deposition — these she understands. There are strangers in her home, now, and she understands that it is not really her home anymore. She understands that there is a girl here called Katniss Everdeen, and that once that girl was her hero. She does not understand why the girl hates them and she does not understand what will happen to her. But for the first time in her life, she is learning to understand fear.

She is escorted by two guards, which she thinks is unnecessary. She is thirteen years old and they have guns. She does not even know how to fire a gun. She knows how to play arpeggios on the harpsichord and charcoal-sketch still lifes and how to speak a little Latin, but she does not know guns. Perhaps she was brought up wrong. Is this someone's fault? Whose? Is it hers?

When the greenhouse doors are opened to her, warm, sweet air envelops her small face and wrinkled nose. The guards remain outside. She is alone, for a little while. Everything is white and cold except the sticky air. The arced roof is embroidered with snow and the flowers are so pale. It smells of grandpa.

'My darling,' comes that voice she knows so well, and for a moment perhaps everything is alright. Relief and delight firework inside her as she sees him: perfect, neat, regal, smiling in a wine-red robe. His white hair is as carefully tamed as the roses. If not for the handcuffs, it could be any other day.

'Grandpa!'

She rushes to his embrace and it is warm, but also awkward on account of the cuffs, so he cannot really hold her back. His hands grasp at her arms the best he can and he tries to hold her. It doesn't feel right to see him try and fail at something.

He smiles at her the way he always does, with warmth and with secrets. 'Are they treating you well, my darling?'

'They feed me. They won't let me out of my room. I haven't spoken to anyone I know in days.'

His nod is full of understanding, like this is the way things ought to be. It calms her. 'It will be like that for a while. But not forever.'

'The guards hardly talk to me at all, they're nothing like the old staff. Where are they all, Lydia and Marcus and Sulla?'

Grandpa only smiles. 'Gone. You do not need to worry about them.'

'I don't like the new ones. They smell, and they talk about me and they think I can't hear through the door.' She tries out the words she has to say in her little mouth and it frightens her to give them voice. 'They said I was being sent here as a last request. Whose last request?'

Grandpa takes this moment to sit upon a bench. His movements are slower, she thinks, and his smell is worse. Grandpa has always smelled strange, like thick, rich, liquid salt. Sometimes like rotting meat. A collared dove once got stuck in her chimney and died there, and that's what grandpa smells like. She has never said anything. She does not want to be rude.

'My last request,' he says. 'I wanted to see you one last time.'

She is not so stupid that she does not know the answer when she asks, 'Before what?'

'Before I die.'

She knew. Of course she knew. In some way, she had always thought of her grandpa as dying, like it was some state he assumed long before she was born. On television, he looks perfect. At home, when he thinks she cannot see, he is tired and slow. He coughs and spits blood. It was such a common sight to her that it took until she was eight years old to learn that not all old people spit blood. She thought it was normal, as common to old age as wrinkles and age-spots.

'Are you dying?'

He likes this question, like it's a game. 'In two senses, yes. My body is dying. But my life will soon be ended by other means, so I am dying in that sense, too.' His smile is one of his more peculiar. 'Do not worry. I am not afraid to die.'

She cries: briefly, like an actor on command. Her grandpa is dying, so she has to cry. Just a few tears that she wipes away with her sleeve. She wishes she had one of her nice white silk handkerchiefs. Grandpa does not offer her his.

'Am I going to die?'

He looks at her with interest. There is a particular way that grandpa looks at things in which he is interested, and though he often looks at her with love he never looks at her like that. It can hurt, sometimes, to know she can never be one of his little fascinations.

'Why do you think you are going to die?'

'I heard them talking, the guards. They said there was going to be a special Hunger Games in the Capitol. They said I was going to be reaped.' Saying it makes it real. Saying it fills her with terror. 'That's not true, is it? I can't be in the Games. That's for District children. You always said I'd be safe from the Games.'

'And so you shall be,' says grandpa quickly. 'There will be no Games. You will be safe. I will make sure of that.'

The girl looks at her grandpa. He is death-pale and sick, his old wrists are bound, and he cannot leave this greenhouse. And yet still he smiles at her.

'How? How can you keep me safe?'

He introduces a new smile to her, one she only ever catches glimpses of. It is not a smile meant for her. 'Katniss Everdeen will protect you.'

The girl shows her confusion and her disbelief. 'Katniss isn't on our side. You said she was the mockingjay, that she had to be eliminated. She wouldn't help me.'

'Yes, she will. Katniss Everdeen is a protector. She will not allow a girl like you to go to the Games. You are an innocent.' When his eyes flick away, you can see a thousand calculations and schemes running riot behind his eyes like honeybees. 'Yes, I shall ensure she protects you from Coin.'

'How can you do that?' the girl demands. 'Isn't Katniss your enemy?'

Now there is nostalgia to his smile. 'Yes, my darling. But it is alright. It's part of the game.'

'She's here, you know. In the mansion. She's sleeping in the Peacock Room, I think.'

Grandpa's eyes briefly close. 'I know that room well. On the eastern side. It gets such a golden shock of sun the morning, even in winter. She will like that.' His eyes open. 'I've slept there before.'

She does not understand him. 'Aren't you mad at her?'

Grandpa laughs. He does not laugh often; his mirth is contained to strange and quiet smiles. 'Oh, my darling, of course not. I am not angry with Katniss Everdeen.'

'But she put you here,' the girl insists. 'She's the reason you're going to die. I'm mad at her and she was my favorite.'

'One day you might understand.' His smiles are as big and content as the roses.

'You like her,' says the girl, an accusation. 'I think you like her more than me.'

This amuses him. 'I like you differently.'

The girl rolls her eyes. The levity helps; it makes the death less real. They are in a pretty dream here, full of roses and smiles. It's almost like being dead already, if you went to heaven. She reaches out her small, nail-bitten fingers (how grandpa chastises her for the habit) to one of the flowers and her fingertips learn the texture of its veined petals, the spiral contours, and the smooth leaf.

'Why do you like roses so much?'

'They are beautiful things that can be controlled,' he answers, as though he has thought about this a thousand times. 'And if you are not careful, they can cut you. Do you understand?'

She looks at him with her face screwed up in teenage amusement.

Snow realizes, with a pang, that he will never see her grow up.

'I know what a metaphor is, grandpa.'

'I am very glad.'

She rubs her fingers against a thorn, but it does not cut her. She is careful.

'You weren't careful enough,' she observes.

'No. Or perhaps I was careful in the wrong way.' Grandpa seems to be amusing himself. 'Too focused on the roses when I should have been worried about a pair of rival secateurs.'

She does not understand this.

The air is lovely and fragrant, and a water fountain bubbles pleasantly away. So much electricity cut to the Capitol, and still the fountain sings. Something is unfair in this.

Outside the glass doors, the guards are peering in.

'We don't have long, darling.' Grandpa tilts his head. 'Not long at all now. Listen to me. They will take you to your mother and father. Don't listen to anything they say about the Games. They will not touch you. You are not going to die like that.'

'But you're going to die.'

'We all die in the end,' he smiles. His voice is a little worn from talking. Grandpa never gets tired from talking.

Time is running out, she knows. The guards are impatient. The roses are too big, ready to wilt. Somewhere in the mansion is a girl with a bow and arrow and she wants to kill someone.

'I don't want you to die.' She wishes she had a more sophisticated sentiment. Perhaps if she was older or cleverer she would know what to say, or she would understand death. 'What will happen to your body?'

'I imagine they will cremate it,' he says, reasonable and certain.

'They'll burn you?'

'After I am dead, yes. It will not hurt.'

How unfair it all is. His beautiful blue eyes becoming grey ash. His smiling mouth dissolving. Do the bones burn, too? Do they have to break them up? Will they crush up his insides with a hammer? Will she be allowed to see the ashes after or will they dump them out somewhere, like dust, like he was never real at all?

'And what about the rest of you?' she asks. She does not have the vocabulary for soul. 'Where will you go?'

His perfect blue eyes are curious. 'Nobody knows what happens after death. What do you think happens?'

She shrugs and she sniffs. 'Father says we go to a beautiful garden called heaven and we live there forever. But you don't think that.'

'No. No I don't. I believe that we become nothing.'

She is crying again, and this time she does not bother to wipe away the tears. 'But that's horrible.'

'Oh no.' There is urgent reassurance to his voice. 'No, no, no. It would be peaceful. It would be the end. It would be being finished.'

'I don't want you to be finished.'

He smiles on her tears. 'Well, for you I won't be. Here, come closer.' She does, and he raises his cuffed hands to her heart. His fingers find the trembling bird of her heartbeat. 'A facet of me will remain within you. I think that some of the best parts of me will live within you.'

The question comes before she can stop herself. 'And what about your bad parts?'

His smile is bright and amused and sad. 'I am sure some of those will live on in Katniss Everdeen. Along with some of my good ones, I hope. I do wish I had the opportunity to share with her some of my better facets.' He shrugs. 'Perhaps you can share them with her, one day. And that is how I will stay with you.'

'But it's not real.' Her voice won't lie flat anymore; tears have rumpled it too badly. 'It's just pretend. You're not really going to be with me.'

'The memory of me will be. The dream of me. We only ever know dreams of one another, after all. I cannot truly exist in you, nor you in me. Like diamonds.' He raises his blue eyes to the curved glass roof and the white sky beyond. 'Infinite facets dreaming of one another.' He looks at her once again. 'Do you understand?'

'No,' she sobs.

He gives her his kindest smile. 'You do not have to.'

There is a jostle of hands on doorknobs, of intrusion, of the guards entering. They yell something that the girl ignores.

'But I don't want you to go,' she repeats. 'I want you to stay. Please stay. Please stay.'

Grandpa holds her hands in his. 'There are few things beyond my power, but I am afraid this is one of them.' The noise of boots on gravel approach and they count the seconds away. 'Be brave and remember me. That way, I will not leave you.'

'But—'

And that is the end of it. Heavy hands grasp her small body and drive her away, drag her eyesight from her grandpa, and she cannot crane her neck to look back until they have pulled her outside and shut the greenhouse doors once again. When she turns, all she can see is the faintest wine-flame behind the warp of glass, fading into white and green, the red lost among the roses.