The Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  The pilot later told Gurley-who told me-that, all in all, it was a good thing I landed in the water. For one, I had deployed my chute late; I would have broken bones on land. And two, he likely would not have turned back to collect me had I landed on the island. Rather, he would have dropped supplies and called for a rescue mission. Any idiot-here Gurley must have smiled-could survive for a night or two.

  But no man could survive in that ocean for more than a few minutes, certainly not one with a chute weighing him down, and so the pilot circled back, landed-a rather skillful, brave act, he insisted to all concerned, and it must have been, because he earned the Navy Cross for doing so, or for saving me. He motored as close as he could and then sent two profane crew members out in an inflatable to collect me, still conscious.

  He had turned around to rescue me promptly, but the approach and landing still took time. I know now that I was only minutes from death. I didn't know that then. I didn't know the water was so cold that sailors who went overboard in Alaskan waters frequently died, especially farther north-even if the alarm had been sounded immediately even if rescuers worked as fast as they were able. The water was always faster. But I wasn't thinking about death. I was thinking about three things, all at once: the knifing cold in my fingers and ears and feet, the way the water tasted nothing like the ocean in Southern California, and most of all: the balloon.

  Almost too numb to form the words, I pleaded with my rescuers to collect the balloon as well. I could see the quick calculus cross their faces: brave or stupid, he's earned at least one favor from us. Plus, there was the added benefit of knowing I would suffer, cold and wet, while they collected what they could.

  “Just one problem with that plan, Sarge,” one of them said. “Who takes care of the bombs? They don't pay any of us to do that. And you don't look in any shape to do it.”

  “Just-they're probably missing,” I twisted around to look. “They would have gone off by now.” It was right about the point I saw them silently reach a mutual “What the hell?” that I decided to go myself. “Stay here,” I said. “Better yet, move back a ways.”

  We'd landed at a thin gravel beach at the edge of a broad bay. The balloon itself had washed ashore, but the control frame had sunk in the shallow water where it fell. I missed my boots, but I also realized they probably would have dragged me straight to the bottom. I tried wading in after the frame-it was just two or three feet of water-but the shock of the cold water once more was so painful and absolute that I had to retreat. I went over to the balloon and pulled. I could feel everyone watching-the landing crew, the guys aboard the boat-but it was Sergeant Redes I was worried about. I was hoping he couldn't see me from wherever he was, because he would never have condoned something so foolish. A bomb on the shore of a deserted island was not a bomb you risked your life for.

  More to the point, you certainly didn't tug on it. I felt a thud in my chest and saw the water suddenly boil, and a plume of water shoot up about twelve feet behind the control frame. I was still so taken with the magic of the balloon's appearance that my first thought was not bombs, but sea monsters!-and then I got back to work.

  Once the water settled, I looked at the control frame carefully. One of the bombs-the last remaining bomb, it appeared-had fallen off. I hauled what remained up onto the gravel and righted it.

  I'd seen one from afar at Fort Cronkhite, and up close in Gurley's Quonset hut, and in the training film he had yet to sit through. But this one seemed extraordinary. Not just because Lily had led me here, but because I was here. I had found it. Mine. It was, as Gurley might have said, a beautiful specimen, largely intact. Fresh from the ocean, still dangling fuses and ropes, it looked like a giant mechanical jellyfish, less a product of war than of some mad Victorian scientist.

  I waved the guys over; they hesitated. I frowned, I was freezing. I'd found my prize and wanted to go. I turned back to the control frame and thought about how it resembled the one I'd seen in the film. Mine looked nicer, I thought. I could see the expressionless, silent man in the film point out different features of the device while an invisible narrator droned on. The silent man onscreen never showed a trace of emotion, but I remembered how the narrator's voice had speeded up just once: A good location to look for booby taps is under the-I looked up. The crew was walking toward me now. I shouted at them to stop.

  I carefully took hold of the control frame, noticed my hands were almost completely without sensation, and slowly tilted the apparatus on its side. And there it was. Not a booby trap, but the demolition block. A small tin box, about six inches long and two wide-I've got a breastpocket Bible not much bigger now. Inside would be a paper-wrapped two-pound picric acid charge, enough to destroy any evidence of the balloon. A fire would start in a forest, and no one would ever know how. Or a benumbed bomb disposal sergeant would blow himself up on a rocky shore, and no one would care how. I cut the fuse and removed the block. Then I carefully set it down at the other end of the beach. We could have safely transported it home, and Gurley would have wanted it for evidence, but I knew there was no way I could bring it on board-not after everyone had seen me take such care. Or rather, not after everyone had seen me almost forget to take care of it.

  It took a bit of convincing to get the crew to finally come over, but they did. We hauled the control frame into the boat, and then onto the plane.

  Within minutes, I was in dry clothes and growing warmer, though the cold I felt remains to this day. Ask anyone who has been rescued from icy waters. One's bones, cells, never forget; they need only the barest reminder of a raw, wet day, even the sight of one onscreen, and the sea's chill comes surging back.

  My swim, as the crew called it, was significant not because of what we collected-a souvenir; I believe the control frame now sits in a collection of wartime artifacts in a museum in Canada-but because of that deep, cold water. I functioned differently after that. If I knew anything about biology, maybe I could tell you how-but I know everything about me felt changed. My skin, the way I moved, the insides of my eyelids, even. I'd get these flashing headaches when I sneezed, and I swear my blood flowed in reverse, or at least in some direction that allowed me to feel it. Really. Sitting there, I could feel all those molecules and cells and whatever other sludge blood ferries about inside us.

  This would have made no sense to Gurley nor even the doctors at the hospital back at Fort Richardson. (The army had a large, if dwindling, corps of veterinarians, holdovers from the days of a mounted cavalry and mule trains-and since everything else about the military in Alaska was jury-rigged, we just assumed they'd been redeployed to work on humans.) So I didn't tell them. But my heart had suffered some damage, and it was to my benefit. It made me more reckless, more eager for danger.

  As for what happened to the other, less physical aspect of my heart, it's obvious it froze as well. In time, one led to the other-the physical death to the death of a spirit-and I found myself willingly executing Gurley's most every demand. In time, I did worse than that-I came to anticipating his demands before he would issue them. This is not to say that I became him, that he had molded me in his image. Hardly. But the truth was far worse.

  “HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

  This is what Gurley asked me when I returned.

  It's also what I asked Father Pabich when he found me in the hospital only minutes after I was installed there. (Who had told him I'd arrived?)

  And it's what Father Pabich asked Lily when she later joined me at my bedside.

  When Gurley asked his question, I didn't answer, pretending to be even more groggy than I was. And when I asked Father Pabich, he didn't answer.

  But when Father Pabich asked Lily how she knew what she knew about Shuyak-and how she knew me-not answering was not an option.

  After his initial visit to the hospital, I didn't see Gurley for a day or two. He'd promised as much; he said he was being summoned to yet another meeting, this time in Juneau. Might be gone for a week. He didn't look pleased. I mentioned how Shuyak at
least gave him something to crow about, and he shook his head. “Something's up, Belk. Not good.” And with that, he was gone.

  Father Pabich, on the other hand, checked back in on me several times. At first, I was touched-tough Father Pabich was actually a tender man. But when he returned again and again, and then once more right after dinner, I realized that what I was witnessing wasn't so much tenderness but curiosity. The man wanted to know what I had done and where I had done it.

  Fat chance. The more callow the secret keeper, the more tenaciously kept the secret. The Army had told me to keep quiet. Gurley had told me to keep quiet. I wasn't going to tell Father Pabich, though the more he pressed, the more I realized I'd have to tell him something. Then an idea came to me, a fabulous one: I'd ask him to hear my confession. No priest could reveal anything told under the seal of confession. I didn't know much, but I knew that.

  So I asked to confess, and instead of saying yes, Father Pabich looked at me strangely. He knew something was afoot, and when he turned to look around the room, he thought he knew what, or who: Lily had appeared in the doorway.

  As horrible as that moment was-Father Pabich assuming I'd hurriedly asked for confession because I'd caught sight of my illicit lover-that picture of Lily in the doorway is one of my favorites. I carry it around in my head as if a photograph actually existed. The lighting is poor, but she's clear enough, and beautiful.

  She had changed: she was wearing a long, dark coat (cashmere?), the collar trimmed with fur, a matching hat, long black gloves-but pretty, Park Avenue gloves that must have been useless against the cold. She was wearing equally pretty but useless boots, and was carrying a tiny black purse.

  It's her face I remember best. She wasn't smiling. No, much better, she was worried. Thinking back on it now, I suppose she had plenty to be worried about-she was a woman, alone, on base, and her Eskimo features would have only made her the subject of increased attention and prejudice. But all I was thinking about then was that she was worried about me.

  All the relative splendor that had caught my eye had caught Father Pabich's as well. Her appearance and my sudden desire for confession combined to convince him of one thing: she was a prostitute. He didn't say this, but he didn't have to. Lily wore all that finery and no wedding ring, and that was proof enough for him. As corroboration, a semiconscious guy a few beds down gave a low whistle. Father Pabich shot him a look and Lily ignored them both. She took off her hat, peered into the room. She saw me, took a step, saw Father Pabich, hesitated, but only a second, and then came over to the bed.

  She nodded to Father Pabich first. “Father,” she said quietly, and already, he was won over, just a little bit.

  “Louis?” she said next, looking toward me.

  I looked her up and down and grinned. “Who in the world arej you?”

  She grinned back, but then Father Pabich said, “Indeed.”

  “Oh, gosh, it's okay, Father, I'm just joking,” I said, not quite yet realizing how much trouble I was in, or that we all would soon be in. “I know her. This is Lily,” I said, and then made things worse. “I'm just not used to seeing her, you know, dressed-this way.”

  Lily pursed her lips. The whistler whistled. Father Pabich spoke: “Not another note, whistling soldier-or I tell the lady here, and the whole damn ward, just where it was you got operated on.” The man blanched and tried to roll over. “Perhaps a chair for your guest?” Father Pabich asked me. For a second, I thought he meant me to get up and fetch it for her. Perhaps he did, but I didn't move, and he turned and dragged one from beside an empty bed.

  “I'm not staying long,” Lily said.

  “No,” Father Pabich said, and then, after a perfectly timed pause, added, “I imagine that gets expensive.”

  It got really quiet then, except for over at the whistler's bed, where two tiny words floated up: “Jesus Christ.”

  “F-F-F-ather,” I whispered.

  Father Pabich and Lily stared at each other, neither giving quarter. I saw Lily decide to smack him and then decide to back off. I saw Father Pabich determine to add further insult and then decide to remain quiet. Then Lily spoke, a short string of something I didn't understand. She'd said it so softly, and in such a rush, that I took whatever she was saying to be in Yup'ik. Profane Yup'ik.

  Father Pabich stared at her, flabbergasted. I did as well. I was embarrassed how she was reinforcing the fact that she wasn't white-and I was embarrassed that she was cursing him in some Eskimo language that only she understood.

  “I'm sorry, Father,” I broke in. “She's-she's Yup'ik, and that's her”-I glared at Lily, but she didn't look at me-“and that's just her way of saying-”

  “That I'm an ass,” Father Pabich said.

  “Well, no,” I said.

  “As are you,” he said. “Yup'ik,” he added, and shook his head. “Qui sine peccato est vestrum primus in illam lapidem mittat,” he said to me. “That's what she said. That sound like Eskimo?”

  I shook my head. “What part of the Mass is that from?”

  “It's from the Bible, dipsh-,” he said, and caught himself. “Can you translate it for him?” Father Pabich asked Lily. She said nothing. “Of course you can,” he added, lowering his eyes, involuntarily deferential. “What she said was ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ An odd verse to memorize in Latin, but there you are: John, chapter seven.”

  Finally, Lily smiled. “Eight,” she said.

  “Somewhere, a nun is smiling,” Father Pabich said.

  “Not in my experience,” Lily replied. “I'll come back,” she said to me, and then extended her hand to Father Pabich. “It was nice meeting you, Father.” Father Pabich let the hand dangle there a moment, and then he shook it, cautiously.

  As she left, I thought back to Father Pabich's initial question: How did you know? “That's how,” I said, watching the tail of her coat disappear through the door.

  “What?” Father Pabich had been staring after her, too. When he turned back to face me, though, I was feigning sleep.

  “HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

  I was walking with Lily downtown the night after I'd been discharged from the hospital. It was late, the streets were almost empty and I was due back on base.

  Lily answered my question with one of her own. “You really saw one? You saw a balloon.”

  “Proof is back at the base.”

  “I was right,” Lily said, more to herself, and we walked on in silence for a block.

  I'd never had a girlfriend-it wasn't something the nuns facilitated at the orphanage, and the Army hadn't given me an awful lot of options-and so I wasn't in much of a position to judge whether I had one then. But walking along like that, down a quiet street late at night, not even touching, but always just about to: it had to be something like this, I thought. I knew nothing of the world then, maybe I know less now, but I knew that much. I knew I was in love, or its teenage equivalent, and I knew Lily loved-well, I didn't know if she loved me, but I knew she noticed me. She'd come to the hospital to see me, she'd braved Father Pabich, and she was walking alongside me now. We weren't holding hands, but we were walking close enough to, and it felt like we could if we wanted to, and if I could ever feel that way again, just connect with another human, even my desiccated shaman friend Ronnie lying here-God forgive me, but I'd sell my soul for half price.

  Lily finally broke the silence. “You believe in ghosts, right?”

  I did, but in a storybook, Halloween kind of way that has nothing, really, to do with the true world of ghosts. But back then, I'd never seen a ghost. Nowadays-well, some winters you'd be hard-pressed at the end of the month to do an honest accounting of whom or what you'd seen. And I'm not talking about the Blessed Mother (who, you'll note, more frequently reveals herself to the faithful in warmer climes- like Mexico or France).

  So I told Lily no. And when she looked at me, disappointed, I tried, “Well, the Holy Ghost.”

  “What are you going to tell Gurley when
he asks you how you knew about Shuyak?” Lily asked.

  “He already did ask, and I didn't tell him anything.”

  “He'll ask again.”

  “Maybe. What makes you so sure?”

  “Because he will. That's the way he is.”

  “And you know him so well,” I said, the words out so quickly, I didn't realize what I said until I saw her coming at me. Her face stopped just short of mine, and two minutes before, I would have closed my eyes and waited for the kiss. Now I blinked and swallowed and held my breath.

  “I do know him,” she said, and the way she said it, I would have preferred that she had slapped me or kneed me or put a gun to my chest. She stepped back. “Better than you do, better than either of you know me.”

  We'd stopped walking now. We were a couple blocks shy of the main road out to Fort Richardson.

  “I told you I was Yup'ik-”

  “Lily, I'm sorry if I-”

  “And Russian-”

  I tried a smile: “ ‘Boom.’ I remember.”

  Lily tried to smile, too. “Well, this doesn't come from the Russian part, that's for sure.”

  “What doesn't?” I asked, but Lily ignored me. She was staring down the block ahead of us, talking.

  “In fact, I'm sure the Russian blood just lessens my ability to- understand things. Because every generation of Yup'ik Eskimos has- people who-see. It's just that it's hard, and getting harder to see things here. In Anchorage. That's why I'm going home.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You don't,” Lily said. “That's why I asked you about ghosts.”

  “Shuyak was real. The balloon was real. The ocean was very real.”