The Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  When Mass was finished, he told me to stay, and then rolled the altar cart back inside. He reemerged without the stole, carrying a package of cigarettes. He shook one out, looked at it a moment, and then lit it. I'd already prepared an answer for when he offered me one, but he never did. Instead, he sat there, studying me, until something over my shoulder caught his eye. He stood up.

  “Too late!” he said. A couple of blond, young-very young-soldiers looked up at him, confused. “We're closed!” he said. They didn't move, so he stood. “I'm hearing a goddamn confession!” The two backed out. He sat down again. “So?” he said. I started to say something, but he held up his hand, took a long drag. He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Your name was-” He squinted. “ Bell? Belk.”

  “Father?”

  “Mass is every God-granted morning at 0555.” He looked at his watch. “It's now 1400.”

  “I wasn't even looking to-I didn't even know.” I looked down.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I was going to take-I was going to-pray.”

  He looked at my insignia. “Bomb disposal?” I nodded. “I think we'd all feel safer knowing you weren't relying on prayer.”

  I looked away and said nothing.

  “Oh, Lord,” he said. “I understand now. Sergeant from the bomb disposal unit, in chapel alone, midafternoon. You want out.”

  “No, sir-”

  “That's right, the answer is no.”

  “Father?”

  “Every week, I get a nervous nellie in here, decides he doesn't like the way war smells, wants to transfer to the chaplaincy corps, or worse. They look like-they look like you, Belk. And here's what I tell them: no.”

  “I don't want-I wasn't looking for a transfer.”

  “You're not getting one, you especially.” He paused. “Bomb disposal,” he said, and shook his head. “Well, that's your lot, son: you're a kid, at war, in Alaska, the back shelf of the devil's own icebox, and you've been told to run after bombs the rest of us are told to run from. It ain't fair, but neither was the cross.” He looked at me. “You want to know what's not fair? Three times, Belk, last week, I get on a plane, fly out to some god-awful piece of frozen waste, and say last rites for a guy who'd gotten blown up by a mine or a bomb. Two of those bombs were ours, by the way. One, Jap.”

  I waited.

  “I couldn't do a damn thing for those boys, other than try to get them into something like a state of grace before they made a run at heaven. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He paused to shake out another cigarette and light it off the one he had. “Pray for us,” he finished. “This army doesn't need any more damn priests saving souls, Belk. We need somebody who can save lives.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said.

  He waved this away. “Or take some lives,” he said, hunching forward. “Then you come to me, Belk,” he went on. “You shoot a few of those bastards for me.” He stood. “Then we'll see if you want to be- or can be-a priest.” I stood as well, thinking I was supposed to leave, but instead, he talked for another twenty minutes.

  Anchorage, apparently, was a frozen Gomorrah, and Father Pabich was worried about me. Not so much that I'd damage my potential as a priest, but more that I'd “fall into the sins of distraction.” And Anchorage offered many: bars, women, men-and, Father Pabich said, “magicians.”

  “I'm not much for magic, Father,” I said.

  “I don't mean card tricks,” he said, “although you'd be wise to give cards a wide berth, too. I mean people who don't trust the way of God, people who see spirits, people who worship idols. Masons, Republicans, or strike-breaking Pinkerton men-you know who I'm talking about. Magicians: I'm trying to make it simple for you. People who put their faith in something other than God.” He looked at me carefully. “Listen: people say God's got a lot of work still to do up here,” he said. “I say, we've got work to do. Right?” I nodded. “Go in peace, son,” he said. “Just don't go too far.”

  MAGICIANS: SUDDENLY, I wasn't worried so much about doing evil. There were plenty of others here doing it for me, and what's more, it sounded pretty damn interesting. Rather than striking fear in me, Father Pabich gave me a kind of fearlessness. As a stand-in for God, Father Pabich was of the roaring, Old Testament variety, but the cigarettes and swearing made me realize that, just like everything else, God operated under different rules in the Alaskan army.

  Which is a long way of saying that I went straight back downtown. But after Father's hype, downtown was actually something of a disappointment. Magicians: maybe I'd expected I'd walk down the street and be in the midst of a circus parade. But it looked a lot more like scout camp. Mountains all around, loud voices, uniforms, dirty faces, and everywhere, mud and muck. No girls.

  Scout camp isn't so far from the truth, I suppose. Alaska was still a territory then, not a state, and Anchorage was more outpost than town, its civic boosters' and newspapers' claims to the contrary. Downtown, such as it was, looked like a city for a few blocks, but soon enough, paved streets gave way to gravel and, inevitably, mud. Much of it looked like it had been built by a film crew for a B-grade western-sagging wooden facades, peeling paint promising goods and services from another era. A source of great pride was the city's Federal Building, which housed the court and post office. It showed up on more than one postcard, looking quite formal and impressive, if a bit small-it helped that the various ramshackle buildings nearby were always cropped out of the picture.

  Any magicians had been cropped out as well; from my walks around town, I determined that Anchorage 's population consisted entirely of men and dogs, the dogs more likely to be sober. That's probably because dogs couldn't read the paper, where they'd find ads like the one I spotted that afternoon for the Big Dipper Liquor Store (conveniently located next door to the Big Dipper Bar). The type must have been four or five inches tall: “1 CENT SALE. GIN-RUM- BRANDY. Buy a Bottle at OPA Prices-Have Another for One Cent.”

  But it was a much smaller ad, in tiny type, that intrigued me. In the midst of the classifieds, which consisted largely of desperately worded ads seeking housing, appeared a section called “Personal Services.” Here were found notices for professions that Alaska did not seem to need-professional tailoring, pet grooming, even a phrenologist. But, then: “Lily reads palms and tells fortunes in the Starhope Building, room 219, most days, 5-7. Careful and correct.”

  So I went. Of course I went. Out of curiosity, and out of respect to Father Pabich, who I suspected would be disappointed if I didn't get in some kind of trouble downtown. And out of respect to a bomb disposal sergeant I'd trained under, whose three favorite words were careful and correct. It would be interesting to meet a woman who adhered to the sergeant's philosophy.

  “First,” she said. “The rules.”

  I had climbed the stairs of the Starhope, less sure with each step. Debris-paper, sand, bits of construction material-was scattered everywhere, as though the building were in the process of going up or coming down. The sounds of the street faded, the muffled din and occasional shouts now sounding like a far-off party that I'd been left out of.

  I'd expected many doors-or at least nineteen-on the second floor, but found only three. One, missing a door, opened into a darkened office. More trash. The third door was locked. A smoked glass window gave no clue as to what lay behind it. The door to 219 was ajar. A bare bulb burned inside.

  “No yelling. No laughing. No spitting. No taking your clothes off. No stupid questions.” That all seemed easy enough, if odd. The only difficult rule was the last one: once my eyes adjusted, all I had were questions.

  Lily-I assumed-stood beside the room's one window, which overlooked the street. My first question was whether this really was the Lily from the ad-the palm reader. I had no idea what a palm reader looked like, but I suppose I thought of them as being older, heavier, maybe wearing some strange getup. Lily was none of that, or rather, she was her own strange getup. She was tall, tall as me, and when she stepped closer, taller. She had lo
ng straight black hair, black eyes that didn't reflect, a wide, flat face, and-well, which of the most striking facts should I mention first? The one that surprised me more then, or the one that surprises me more now?

  Let me share the one that surprised me then, since that does more to explain the mix of idiocy and naïveté that I was in those days: Lily- was the enemy. It only took a single glance-at her face-to tell me this. Me, who had never exchanged a word with a Japanese citizen. No matter. I was a highly trained soldier. I'd seen newsreels. I read the papers. I knew, precisely and instantly, who or what she was. Japanese.

  But the second surprise is better, and unlike the memory of the first, still brings a smile to my lips: Lily was wearing a man's shirt, long but not that long, a clunky pair of boots, and absolutely nothing else.

  In that respect, in every respect, she was the most remarkable palm reader I had ever seen. And having seen her, I knew that I had to leave, immediately.

  I ducked my head in a kind of goodbye, and then moved quickly to the door. Or I thought I moved quickly. But then there was some against-the-rules shouting-from her, I realized, but it took a moment because the noise seemed too loud, too off-key-and when the shouting was done, she was in the doorway, blocking my exit.

  “Damn you,” she said, staring hard, breathing hard. “You're not a damn cop, are you? Or an MP? Because they've been through. And things were taken care of.” She'd been moving on me as she spoke, and before I knew it, I'd stuttered back half a step.

  She frowned. “You're not a cop.”

  “Ma'am,” I said, touching my hat like I'd seen the good cowboys do in the movies. “I'm sorry.” I looked down at her legs. They started where the shirt stopped, and descended, smooth, brown, and, here and there, bruised, into those boots.

  “I said no laughing,” she said quietly. “I wear boots. So do you. It's cold. Welcome to Alaska.” She scuffed at the floor. “Why do boys get so hung up on the boots?” she asked, and then left the doorway to walk around me. “There's a discount if you've got some cigarettes.” I didn't. “And sometimes a discount if you're a gentleman.”

  That's when she saw my shoulder insignia: that bright red bomb, fat and finned and ready to drop. On a trip into Anchorage a few years ago, I saw the patch disposal guys wear now-our World War II-era bomb is still there, but smaller, crowded by a base of lightning and laurels. Naturally, I prefer the one we wore. Nothing but that bomb, the red brighter than blood. People's eyes usually caught there a moment, but Lily did more than that. She flinched slightly, like I'd raised a hand to hit her.

  “Well, hello!” she said, or stammered, unable now to meet my eye. I relaxed, sure that I was intimidating her rather than the other way around. A pause followed as we both tried to figure out something to say.

  But a sharp voice behind me figured it out for us: “Problem here?”

  I could feel someone step around me, and then, there he was: thin, taller, blond, milky blue eyes scanning Lily and me. “Young man getting out of line, Miss Lily?” he asked.

  I could tell two things by his insignia: he, too, was in bomb disposal, but more important, he outranked me. Once he discovered the same, he smiled.

  I shook my head, but turned to Lily: Had I been out of line, somehow?

  “No,” Lily said. She laughed weakly, gave me a questioning look- surely this man and I knew each other?-and then retreated deeper into the office.

  “No,” I mumbled.

  “Good night,” the man said, not even looking at me. I felt like I was moving out the door without really moving my feet.

  “Right,” I said, but by then I was outside, the door was closing.

  Before it shut completely, Lily shouted for me to wait. The door eased open again, and I could see her rustling around in the room's pile of blankets while the man watched. As soon as I realized my vantage point afforded me a somewhat intimate view of her backside, I looked away. The other man did not. I looked again.

  Lily came back with a closed fist, and pressed something into my left hand. “Your change,” she said, waiting until I met her gaze before she let go.

  I shook my head, but only slightly and the man cut off any protest. “Make haste, young man.” He drew back and looked at me with disdain. “Change?” He exhaled. “As for myself, I intend to get my money's worth.” He turned to Lily. “Mademoiselle?” he said, and I left.

  I DIDN'T REALIZE for several blocks that my hands were two fists in my pockets. Only then did I unclench, and only then, with a huddled display of instruments in a music store window looking over my shoulder, did I pull out my change and examine it. She'd given me a dollar. On it, she'd written a message. A very short message, actually, all she had had time to write: “ 11.”

  I looked around, refolded the bill, and continued down the street. For whatever reason, I started walking faster and faster, until I reached the main road out to Fort Richardson. By then I was running, sure in some vague way that someone was pursuing me. But when I finally allowed myself to glance back into Anchorage 's blackout dark, I couldn't see anyone at all.

  WHAT I FEARED then is what Ronnie fears now, and has feared for some time: the unseen forces that hound you through the night.

  Old explorers who first witnessed this phenomenon struggled for words to describe it; eventually they settled on arctic hysteria. The affliction did not discriminate: both Natives and Outsiders occasionally succumbed to some force-often during this very time of year, deep winter, which is characterized less by snow than endless dark-that caused them to strip off their clothes and run outside, into the cold, into the tundra. If they're not caught in time, some wound up (wind up) running into the great beyond.

  It's a story I like to share when people who have never been to Alaska ask me what it's like. This usually comes right after they've squealed something along the lines of “ Alaska! It's so big!” as though it might fall on them. But they don't really want to know what it's like. For them, asking me about Alaska is like pressing “play” to watch a horror movie; they just want to be scared: Alaska! A short discussion of arctic hysteria usually satisfies them, as it has all the things they think an Alaska story needs: cold, dark, death. It's missing a bear or a wolf, but I have other anecdotes to cover that.

  Years ago, when I asked Ronnie about arctic hysteria, he had a ready punch line: Sometimes, they don't come after you. Time was, he explained, before the white man, before Ski-Doos, before Village Public Safety Officers, before medevac helicopters-sometimes, they just let people run away and disappear.

  He was trying to spook me, of course, but it didn't work. As it happens, I have found myself chasing after Ronnie a dozen times, more frequently of late. I'll hear him run howling past my window late some night and leave my warm bed to run him down. Sometimes I catch him, sometimes I don't find him until much later, when he's passed out, in the shelter of some truck or house or Dumpster, often on a night that's cold enough to kill.

  Whenever he comes to, in a few hours or a few days, he rarely mentions just what drove him into the night. But sometimes the memory is fresh or frightening enough that he can't help but speak of it, and out it comes, a similar story every time: an eagle, a caribou, a bear, encounters him, alone, walking down some street in town. He's recognized, and the animal gives chase. And as the chase continues, the animal changes from one form to another, always drawing closer, closer, until finally it is at his heels, and then Ronnie knows, hears, smells, feels, who it was all along. “The wolf, Lou-is,” he says then.

  “The wolf,” he says now, blinking awake, and staring straight up at the hospice ceiling. “The wolf, Lou-is, he's closer now. He knows. He remembers. The boy. His mother. The baby. The wolf. My tuunraq.” Ronnie turns to face me, to make sure I am listening, though I myself can't be sure. Am I listening? Or dreaming? I feel a kind of fire in my legs, an urge to run myself. “He's heard I've been acting as an angalkuq once more. Without him. After all these years. He heard I was working right here. This place. That's how he found
me. He's coming now. I hear him. He's coming now. Lou-is. Tell me-”

  CHAPTER 4

  “YOU ARE NOT CRAZY.”

  First day, first hour of bomb disposal training, and a dozen of us enlisted were crammed into a makeshift classroom barracks at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Gottschalk was still alive. That first balloon, Alaska, Lily were all in my future.

  First question: How can you tell the difference between a BD officer and a BD enlisted man? Some of the guys actually worried it out, raised their hands and gave answers about insignia or uniforms. One guy said something about the way a man stands, which caused another to mutter something lewd, and that's when the sergeant instructing us gave the correct answer: the difference between us guys and officers? We are not crazy.

  Because it turned out there was a basic principle in bomb disposal, one they taught you before they taught you anything about bombs.

  The officer defuses the bomb.

  “Then what do we do, Sarge?” asked a guy nearby, whom I took to be even younger than I.

  The sergeant smiled. “Grow old.”

  * * *

  THIS DIVISION OF DUTIES was British and was already in the process of changing. Soon enough, both enlisted and officers would be trained to render bombs safe. But when I went through, guys like me mostly had just one duty: dig. Think about bomb disposal today, and you're thinking of ticking, wiretangled things, hidden under a desk or a bridge. Maybe that sounds scary, but to us, something tucked under a desk would have sounded like roast turkey with trimmings. The bombs we went after had, for the most part, tumbled out of planes. Drop a bomb from that height, and if it doesn't explode when it's supposed to, all one hundred pounds-or five hundred or one thousand or more-of it disappears right into the ground.