The Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  “Well, British bombs-to answer your question,” he said. “They're respectable enough. Their bomb disposal crews? The best, no question. They have more experience than a man would want. But I tell you what: I'm glad I'm not over there clearing their beaches. Damn English land mines could kill a man.” He allowed himself a smile. The other guys, catching a word or two, drifted closer to hear better.

  But the sergeant stopped when he saw the lieutenant emerge, blinking, from the building. Redes told us to stay where we were and went out to meet him. After a minute's discussion, the lieutenant started off in the direction of the camp administration building, and Redes returned to us. He dispatched three men back to the building to figure out some way we could hoist the bomb out safely. Two others were sent to retrieve our specially outfitted truck, whose winch would provide most of the required muscle. That left me with no other job than to stand there, beside the sergeant.

  “Careful- and correct,” he said, pleased. “That's what we learned today, right?”

  “Right, Sarge,” I said.

  He watched our guys file into the building. “Wasn't pleased about coming here,” he said, “if you can believe that. Who doesn't like California? Me. I don't like California. Because it's too close to goddamn Japan. And if there's a bomb you don't want to mess with, it's a Jap bomb.” We started walking over to the building. “Because they build a shitty bomb. Japanese military command, if you want to call it that, they don't exactly have the most respect for a man's life. Take your suicide planes, for example. Kids who don't know how to fly, screaming down into our ships.” He cleared his throat. “So your Jap bombmaker, he's not thinking safety when he makes his bomb. He's ready to lose a man here and there. At the factory. On the runway. In the plane. You come across one of those bombs on the ground, you don't know what kind of shit you're getting into.”

  We were at the door to the building now, and he paused. He took a long look around the camp. “Now, then,” he said quietly, “I've never handled a Japanese bomb. Course, that's probably why I'm still here.” He looked around the camp one more time, and then ducked inside.

  CHAPTER 5

  RONNIE IS NOT IN A COMA, OR “NOT A CLASSIC COMA,” AS A doctor just put it to me, as though there were comas one might treasure and frame.

  After Ronnie had awoken to tell me about the wolf, he slipped away again, this time submerging so deep, I thought he had died. I held his hand, I called for him, and then called for the nurses. Ronnie didn't wake up, the nurses didn't come. I had to leave Ronnie there and go chasing down the hall for someone to attend to him. No one quite understood my concern-wasn't this why he'd come to the hospice?- and I tried to explain all the reasons why it was too soon for him to die. He had something to tell me, I said, and they smiled sympathetically. It was urgent, I said, and they began to look nervous. When I finally blurted out something about a wolf, they called the doctor.

  But everyone at the hospital was busy with a snowmachine accident. Two kids were hurt, a third had died. No one could come to see the old, alcoholic angalkuq in his room at the hospice, not for hours.

  Part of the problem was that Ronnie insisted on breathing, his heart insisted on beating. “Both pluses,” the doctor said when he finally got to his bedside. Never mind the big minus, unconsciousness. The doctor didn't understand my concern, or why he'd been summoned. “I thought I'd been called to pronounce,” he said, looking hopefully at the clock, as though there might still be a need to note the time of death. Then he looked at me, professionally, and asked how I was feeling.

  I ignored him. The doctor didn't know Ronnie, or me-he's one of these hotshots from Seattle who come up here once or twice a year, get community service hours, and think they're saving the world. Some of them are good; this one was not. When he switched back to small talk and asked if I was a relative of Ronnie's, I knew he hadn't been examining him-or me-that closely. I was wearing my collar, for once. I pointed that out, plus the fact that I was white, and then the fact that I also served as the hospice chaplain. Now he looked truly surprised. Said he'd expect me to be a bit more “sophisticated,” then, about “these things.”

  I made the mistake of telling him, sophisticated as I was, that I still needed a little help with fancy medical terms like “these things.”

  Then he got right to the point. Ronnie wasn't sick: he was dying.

  What about the two pluses?

  “He's not dying,” I said, because Ronnie would have said the same if he'd been able to. He had something to tell me. And I him. “He can't.”

  “He can,” the doctor said. “He will.”

  “Not on my watch,” I said, trampling over what may have been an empathetic “sorry” dribbling from the doctor's mouth. I couldn't hear him very well.

  “Then keep watching,” the doctor said, and started for the door. “As for me, I'm on the eight o'clock flight.”

  “Godspeed,” I said. When the doctor had gone, I turned to Ronnie and said something different. “Run,” I whispered. “But don't outrun me.”

  EVERYONE IN ALASKA had a secret in World War II; most, like me, still do. There were plenty of men who had made their way to Alaska long before war had broken out. I imagine some came for a love of the wilderness, but more came for the vastness of it. Long before its official motto became “The Last Frontier,” Alaska was just that, an outpost on the edge of the Arctic, the edge of the earth. Nowadays, people flock to remote places to “find themselves,” but in the 1930s and 1940s, men, and some women, went to Alaska to do just the opposite: disappear.

  Maybe you'd robbed a bank. Maybe you'd killed a man-maybe by accident or on purpose, maybe you couldn't say. Maybe you'd caught a man sleeping with your wife. Maybe a man had caught you with his. Maybe you were the wife. Maybe you were nothing more than a middle-grade con man, running out of luck and time, and so you fled to where the North American continent finally ran out of room. Maybe you just wanted an adventure. France has its Foreign Legion; we had, and to some extent, still have, Alaska -places you go to take leave of one life and start another.

  Which, of course, is precisely what I was doing. But I was a kid then, eighteen and only getting dumber, and I didn't realize any of this at first. The longer I spent in Alaska, though, the more I realized-the more I read into eyes cast down, into conversations trailing off. No one had a past. And so while some initially feared the attention and excitement war would bring to Alaska, most grew to enjoy it. There was new anonymity amidst a growing crowd of strangers-and new chances to establish yourself, to craft a new history. War reset the clock for all of us.

  In the Alaskan military community, the secrets ran even thicker. So many men were involved in so-called top secret missions that those who weren't, pretended. Ask a guy at a bar what he did, and he'd more than likely just roll his eyes and shrug. The modest would say something dismissive like “You know how it is;” the vain would look around and then whisper urgently, “It's top secret.”

  A few hours after my encounter with Lily the palm reader, someone was telling me just that-“It's top secret”-over a beer. We were in an unofficial Army Air Corps club just off base, which officers and enlisted shared, after a fashion-the officers had one side of the room, the enlisted the other. It wasn't a friendly place; everybody stared at their drinks, until they no longer could stare at much of anything.

  I'd retreated to the club not long before. Shortly after arriving back on base from downtown, I'd bumped into a sergeant who recognized me from the daily visits I made to Building 100. My officer was back, he said. My official duties were about to begin; if I was smart, I'd grab a last drink while I could. Who knows where I'd find myself tomorrow. But when I'd asked the sergeant where I could find my CO., he shook his head and said, he'll find you.

  “ Top secret,” the man to my right said again.

  I'd wandered in looking for a normal conversation, but was having no luck. My top secret companion at the bar had hands that were rough and callused and creased with dir
t. I figured he was probably busy building base housing, and the only secret was when or if they would finish.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I-well, I work with ordnance. Bombs.”

  “Goddamn right,” the man said, and pointed at my sleeve. “ Secret bombs?”

  I shook my head.

  “They're not secret?” he said.

  “I don't know,” I said, looking around. Try as I might, I couldn't focus; all I could see was Lily's dollar, that magic 11, “careful and correct” (jarringly accompanied by a memory of Sergeant Redes), and then Lily, the loose shirt, the bare legs.

  “Then that's a secret, eh?” the man said, and rocked back satisfied.

  “What is?” I asked absently.

  The man pressed on: “Who's your C.O.?”

  I shut my eyes to erase Lily and opened them on my drinking partner. After a moment spent recalling his question, I answered: “Some captain.” I knew his name well enough, and would be meeting him soon, but I didn't feel like saying any more than I had to.

  “ ‘Some captain’-right,” the man said. “Let's have it.”

  “Top secret,” I said, and looked at the clock behind the bar. It was 9 P.M., but outside, it looked like 9 A.M. Some liked the way the sun shone late into the evenings; I came to feel, and still feel, it made one feel like a drunk. It felt odd to have a drink in my hand when the world outside looked like it hadn't reached noon yet.

  My friend wasn't bothered by the time or the light. Perhaps he had solved this problem as I later learned some men did-they simply drank around the clock. That way, time and sobriety became irrelevant. “Top secret- right” he said, frowning into his drink. Maybe the time didn't bother him, but I did. “You're just fooling with me,” he said.

  I stood up and put some money on the bar. “It's Gurley,” I said. “Captain-Something-Gurley. I'm not sure of his first name.” But it wasn't enough, or it wasn't what he wanted to hear-he grabbed up my hand and held tight. What startled me most was not the abruptness of the act, but the gruff tenderness of it.

  “Best to keep that a secret, then,” he said finally. He finished his drink and stood up without a wobble.

  “Why?” I asked, looking at him intently for the first time all night. A gray hair or two poked out above the collar of his T-shirt.

  “You know why,” he said. “Or if you don't, you'll know soon enough.” Push any man up here far enough, and you always reached this same blind alley of significant looks and silent lips.

  “What the fuck?” I said, exasperated. But I swore so infrequently- I'm still pretty bad at it, at least in English-that my voice involuntarily squeaked at the novelty. A few people turned around. “Everybody's got a secret here. Everybody's a damn spy,” I sputtered, though that's not what I meant, and my voice went soft as a result.

  But the man took no notice, and just shook his head. “We all pretend to be,” he told his empty glass. “He is.”

  The door opened with a shout, so sharp and loud I couldn't make out the word, only the volume behind it.

  “And here he is,” he said without turning around.

  “Sergeant Belk!” my captain shouted. I had not turned to look at him yet. “Sergeant Louis A. Belk, if you're on base or in this bar, God help you if I find you before the MPs do.”

  My friend turned to me slowly, summoned what sobriety he had left, and squinted at my name strip, which I could tell he couldn't read. He stiffened up and looked at me. “Be glad you're not Belk,” he said.

  I swiveled around in my chair, and faced Captain Gurley for the first time. “But I am,” I said quietly.

  “THIS BAR IS CLOSED,” Gurley roared, his voice more musical than loud. “The hour of judgment is at hand. Be gone, princesses of darkness!” Looks were exchanged, heads shook, but everyone filed out quickly enough. Even the bartender tried to leave, but Gurley stopped him-and me.

  He jabbed a finger in my chest. “Belk.” I can feel the force of that finger still; it's a chronic pain, actually, that flares up in times of stress.

  Gurley looked at me carefully. “You're familiar,” he said.

  So was he: he had been Lily's appointment from earlier. He waited a moment, long enough for me to wonder if he remembered or not. Then he spat out my name again: “Belk!” He frowned, and then slowly knocked on the bar, twice. “That is one fucking lousy name, Sergeant.” He looked for the bartender, and then spun back: “God above, what sort of faithless name is that?”

  I said nothing.

  Gurley leaned over and grabbed my chin with a bony hand. I later decided his strength was a mystery until you looked closely. He was tall and thin, but more than thin: skeletal, a look that makes some look emaciated and others as though they'd been hammered out of steel. He had an odd way of standing, too: he teetered occasionally, as though he were having trouble finding his footing. I wasn't thinking about any of that then, though. I was just trying to figure out why I couldn't snap my head out of his grasp. He kept talking, punching each comma and period: “A question requires an answer, Sergeant, not some subhuman gesture. Speech is what separates us- most of us- from primates. Are you a primate?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I'm not sure you got that quite right,” he said, somehow managing to squeeze harder.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Better, but still, not enough,” he said. “Are you a primate?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “As in monkey, chimpanzee, o-rang-u-tan.”

  No.

  “Mmm,” he said, and then took a step back to regard me. “Lutheran?”

  I shook my head.

  “Methodist?”

  No.

  “I'm usually quite good at this…Let's see… ‘Belk’… Presbyterian?”

  No.

  “Not-Episcopalian? Couldn't be.” He frowned, and then leaned close, put his nose at my neck, and sniffed. Once, twice.

  “No,” he said, stepping back stiffly once more, eyes wide with mock horror. “Good God, Belk, Catholic?” He looked me up and down. “A papist?”

  “Catholic,” I said quietly.

  Gurley looked around as if to call someone else's attention to the zebra that had just walked into the room. “ Catholic, then,” he said, and knocked on the bar, signaling something to the bartender. “My family always, and I mean always, had Catholic servants. But that was us. Only the best. Silver spoon in my mouth and all the rest.”

  The bartender brought over a bottle of Canadian Club and a glass. Gurley nodded at him. The man poured. Gurley picked up the bottle, sniffed it, and set it back down.

  “Go,” he said, and the bartender was gone before I'd swiveled back around. He looked to me. “It's true. My mother had a preference for them-and so did I.” I lowered my eyes. “Catholic girls, Belk,” he said, and inhaled. “Are you Irish?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, and started to say something else.

  “Alas,” Gurley said. “There might have been the chance I'd ravished-fucked-a cousin of yours. Perchance a sister.” He looked at me. “Quite sure?”

  “Captain,” I began, eager to stop him before his claims progressed.

  “Sergeant,” Gurley began again, and then changed his mind. “But you must excuse me. I am better bred than my babbling tirade betrays.” He stopped. “Do you know what tirade means?” I nodded anyway. “Ah,” Gurley said. “I see two things. One, that you do not know the word's definition, and two, that you are a pitiable liar.” He drained his glass, then poured himself another two fingers and downed that, upper lip drawn back like he was swallowing vitamins. “So, knowing this, I am pleased to proceed with my experiment. Ready, Sergeant?”

  “Captain,” I said again, and that's all I said, because I was a kid and scared. I tried to think about what Sergeant Redes would have done. Earlier that day, I learned he had been lost at sea, and now realized some things are just out of our control.

  “Are you a good shot?” Gurley asked. I could har
dly hear him for my booming pulse. In the meantime, it was as if he'd invisibly handed something over, some sort of false courage that ran through me and made me want to deck him, ready to deck him, in fact, if he made one more crack about me or his servants. Before that, though, I'd do myself and my faith proud by being as obnoxious as I wanted. Simple enough.

  “I'm a fucking great shot,” I said, my voice bouncing a little less higher over the profanity this time. Then I leaned forward like I had a secret. “Sir,” I added with a small grin.

  Gurley broadhanded me with such force that I barked back into the bar and then to the floor, knocking over both stool and whisky.

  “You fuck,” Gurley said. “Pray that the vessel containing that most precious elixir is not broken.” He kicked me-gently, I suppose, for him. “Do go and find out.” I looked up at him insolently-I had so much still to learn-and I could see he was about to swat me again. But instead, he gave another light kick and went to his glass, looking for another drop or two. Then he leaned over the bar and looked down.

  “It's there,” he said, pointing. “Retrieve.” I crawled to my feet with the help of a stool, and walked around behind the bar. I bent over to get the bottle and almost passed out, but caught myself. I put the bottle on the bar and began walking back around, but he stopped me with a hand. “That's fine. You're safer back there, don't you think? Bar between us?” I nodded. “Thomas Gurley, Captain, U.S. Army Air Corps, late of the O-S-S, Office of Strategic Services.” He winked and held out a hand.

  “Louis Belk,” I mumbled. “Sergeant, I guess.”

  “My word, Belk, be sure about something.” He examined his empty glass and then me. “Good. So you're a good shot, you daresay.”

  As I've explained, I was a terrible shot.

  “Let's see if you can hit this glass,” he said.

  “With what?” I asked.

  “With your gun, Belk,” Gurley said. “Or-whatever. Your forehead. You seem like a bright lad.”