The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
229
gotten the message all right: he was a hair away from death. 
Hagen made another call to Tessio, telling him to come to the mall in Long Beach 
immediately. He didn’t say why and Tessio did not ask. Hagen sighed. Now would come 
the part he dreaded. 
He would have to waken the Don from his drugged slumber. He would have to tell the 
man he most loved in the world that he had failed him, that he had failed to guard his 
domain and the life of his eldest son. He would have to tell the Don everything was lost 
unless the sick man himself could enter the battle. For Hagen did not delude himself. 
Only the great Don himself could snatch even a stalemate from this terrible defeat. 
Hagen didn’t even bother checking with Don Corleone’s doctors, it would be to no 
purpose. No matter what the doctors ordered, even if they told him that the Don could 
not rise from his sickbed on pain of death, he must tell his adoptive father and then 
follow him. And of course there was no question about what the Don would do. The 
opinions of medical men were irrelevant now, everything was irrelevant now. The Don 
must be told and he must either take command or order Hagen to surrender the 
Corleone power to the Five Families. 
And yet with all his heart, Hagen dreaded the next hour. He tried to prepare his own 
manner. He would have to be in all ways strict with his own guilt. To reproach himself 
would only add to the Don’s burden. To show his own grief would only sharpen the grief 
of the Don. To point out his own shortcomings as a wartime Consigliere, would only 
make the Don reproach himself for his own bad judgment for picking such a man for 
such an important post. 
He must, Hagen knew, tell the news, present his analysis of what must be done to 
rectify the situation and then keep silent. His reactions thereafter must be the reactions 
invited by his Don. If the Don wanted him to show guilt, he would show guilt; if the Don 
invited grief, he would lay bare his genuine sorrow. 
Hagen lifted his head at the sound of motors, cars rolling up onto the mall. The 
caporegimes were arriving. He would brief them first and then he would go up and wake 
Don Corleone. He got up and went to the liquor cabinet by the desk and took out a glass 
and bottle. He stood there for a moment so unnerved he could not pour the liquid from 
bottle to glass. Behind him, he heard the door to the room close softly and, turning, he 
saw, fully dressed for the first time since he had been shot, Don Corleone. 
The Don walked across the room to his huge leather armchair and sat down. He walked 

---