The Cloud Atlas (25 page)

When I looked up, Lily's eyes were full of tears. “Any drunken soldier who walked into that building and actually wanted his palm read, I could tell him anything. But you-once I knew you actually did work related to what Saburo was doing-that you might have access to that journal-” She stopped. “Like I said that night I first told you about Saburo-I wanted to be useful to you.”

“Useful?”
I was discovering what it was like to be Gurley; I could feel rage uncoiling inside me, seeking out a fist or arm. “And Gurley?” I said, to stall.

“Yes-or no. I mean, I knew he was involved, but eventually I realized he wouldn't help. Couldn't. And then it was too late. Things with Gurley-I don't know.”

“You tricked us?”

“Louis,” she said. “I wanted you to need me. I needed you to.”

“Gurley too?” I asked, but she didn't say anything. I felt her hand inching closer to mine again, but I didn't move. I tried very hard to stare at the page before me and nothing else. “You were helpful,” I finally said. “Or, I guess Saburo was. But how did he know about Shuyak? Portage around the Katmai volcanoes? Kayak across the Shelikof Strait?”

Relieved, I think, to submerge into detail, Lily began speaking rapidly. “Shuyak was an old crash site, one he'd heard about before he'd come to Bethel. I sent you there thinking you'd find an old balloon, not another one, a new one.”

I quickly scanned the other pages with new eyes and saw rivers, peninsulas, mountains, even towns emerge. One page looked particularly interesting. Green to the left and then a series of arrows to the right. Had Saburo known about plans for germ bombs? Had he told her? I wanted to ask her, but I couldn't. I was so angry and sad and defeated, I didn't want to know. More than that, I didn't want to see her lie, not to me.

She saw me studying the page. “I don't know what that means,” she volunteered. “We were going to go through the whole book, him explaining, me figuring out, translating names, but we didn't get any farther than Shuyak.” I didn't want her to say another word.

“So you lied about being a palm reader,” I said, the anger in my voice surprising me more than her. “You lied about-or didn't let on why you thought I'd be so useful. Did you also lie about your supposed ‘powers’? You hold something, and you know its story? How the hell did you know about me? About who I was? My childhood?” She snatched the papers away and crumpled them, tighter and tighter. “Did-did Gurley tell you? Was that a trick, too?”

“No, Louis,” Lily said.

“So what am I thinking now?” I said. “Read my thoughts. Prove it.” But there was nothing to read. I can't tell you what I was thinking. I was angry, but it was a boy's anger, fiery and violent and insensible, and even if you'd cracked my skull open to look inside, you would have seen nothing, only red.

I don't know what Lily saw. She said she saw nothing anymore.

“That's part of the reason I came all the way out here.” She held the ball of paper to her nose and mouth and breathed in. “In the city, in Anchorage, the longer I've been here, the harder it's been, the more everything-everything I know-is fading.” She took the papers away from her face and put them in her lap, absently smoothing them out. “I see Saburo now, but I don't know if that's the paper or just memory. And even those memories-I'm losing those, too.” She dropped the papers, found a crevice in the rock and wedged her fingers there, closed her eyes. After a minute, she'd stopped crying and was breathing deeply.

“There is a story, Louis,” she began. “About a boy, a baby boy, and his mother, that's been told for many years…”

I stopped her. I couldn't hear it. I wonder now what would have been different if I'd let her tell the story, the whole story, then, if I'd just been patient enough to hear her out. But I wasn't. I didn't say a word, I just raised a hand, and she stopped. She didn't argue, but just looked at me, disappointed and resigned.

“You really believed,” she finally said.

I nodded and sighed and slipped the papers back toward me. I studied them for a few minutes until she spoke again. Then she said, “Look.”

I turned, slowly, and saw nothing. But as I turned back, something above us distracted me, and I looked up to see something like clouds, or thinner than that, mist, twisting and undulating, changing colors as it did.

It would have done no good to tell me that I was seeing the aurora borealis for the first time and nothing more. This deep in the woods, this deep in the war, this far along with Lily: nothing was real anymore, at least nothing that I could not see, right at that moment.

And the lights above me, these I could see. I slowly leaned back until I was lying there, staring, looking up and watching the display, wondering if this was magic, or if the book had been, or the balloons, or if Lily was a magician, or Saburo, or Gurley

“Lily,” I finally whispered, worried the lights above were too fragile for me to speak any louder. Lily made no reply. I called her name, and when there was still no reply, I craned my neck to see if she was still there. She wasn't. Then I surprised myself. Instead of leaping to my feet and running off the rock to find her, I lay there, staring up. I suppose the word is
hypnotized
, but that doesn't give me enough credit. I was entranced, but I wasn't in a trance. It was like it always was with Lily: a debilitating fascination. So I lay there, and after a while, I heard her voice. She wasn't far away.

“I had seen the northern lights growing up in Bethel, but in Fairbanks, it seemed like we could see them almost all the time.” I kept staring at the sky, now pulsing. “Are you scared?” she asked.

I shook my head. I wasn't scared, just surprised. Minutes ago, I had wanted to scream. I had wanted to hit someone. Lily. And now here I was, lying on the ground, looking at the sky. If it wasn't Lily's magic, then it was Alaska 's, made present by the northern lights.

“Some people get scared. Of course, in Fairbanks, nobody was. The lights were as familiar as rain. But one March, far earlier in the evening than was usual, a tremendous red cloud of light appeared, just to the north. The lights had only just gone out in the dormitory, and as soon as they had, the cloud became instantly visible to all of us inside. We rushed to the window and watched it fold and wave, first one way then the next. And then suddenly-” Lily slapped her hands together, and the light show above me disappeared. I blinked, squinted, and then blinked again.

“Lily?” I sat up on my elbows, and when she didn't reply, stood up.

When she first touched my hand, I flinched, but then she reached out with her other hand and touched me gently on the chest. I relaxed, and let her take my right hand back in hers.

“People who have lived here their whole lives-white, Yup'ik, Inuit-will tell you the northern lights never make a sound. They did that night. They made a crack, just like that, and they were gone.”

“What happened just now?”

“One of the teachers tried to tell us what the lights
really were
the next day, like it had something to do with science. But we all knew what the lights really were. Really are: the souls of women who die in childbirth. Suicides. Those who have been murdered. That's who you see.”

Lily fell silent, and when I looked over a moment later, she was crying. “Who do you see?” I asked.

She didn't answer. Then she said, “When I first came to Anchorage, there were things I could see, I could hear, there were things I
knew
, but the longer I've been here-it's flowing away from me. I
can feel
it.” She ran her hands along her arms. “Here-here.”

“Lily,” I said. “I know why you want the journal. You want to find him.” Lily kept rubbing her forearms. “You want to find Saburo.”

“Saburo,” Lily said. “He's gone. He's died,” she whispered. “I know it, or knew it. What I want to find is-”

“Whatever you need,” I said. “I'll help you.”

Lily looked at me.

“I'll talk to Gurley when he's calmed down. I'll get this transfer canceled or postponed, and I'll go with you. I'll help.”

“Tonight,” she said. “We have to leave tonight.”

“Lily.”

She stepped away. “Come with me,” Lily said. “I'd go alone-I should have already gone alone. But I don't want to. He left something for me, out on the tundra. Something I need to find, to see. Something that's going to be very hard for me to see. I want a friend with me. I want you, Louis.”

“I want to be there, Lily. It's just that-”

“Jesus, Louis. If you won't listen to the real reason, how about this one, since it's the one you'd believe anyway. I need to
use
you. I can't get out of Anchorage, can't get to Bethel, can't get into the bush, can't go anywhere, without permission from the military. The whole state is restricted. You know what it's like to be a civilian here? A
half-breed
civilian? Wasn't so long ago the goddamn officers' club was off-limits to any girl who wasn't white.”

She just wanted to use me. I'd fallen, again, for that fiction about friendship and trust and whatever simulacrum of love that offered, and then she'd come out with it. Why she really needed me, then, there. The worst part-for her-was that I couldn't help. A kid sergeant like myself? Like I'd be allowed to escort a civilian-a “half-breed”-into restricted areas.

Years later, with the benefit, or burden, of knowing all that would happen next, I see that she was right, of course-about everything. About what Saburo left her. About the need to leave that night. About how Anchorage was sapping her. About how she thought of me, first, as a friend, and about how she knew I'd never think that was enough.

What I want now is another chance, just one more chance to live this life over. To make the right choice back when I stepped off that train in San Diego, or all the way back, when I left my mother's womb for someone else's arms. To answer the right way when Lily asked a final time,
Tonight?
, to not hear myself say,
I can't
, to not hear her say quietly,
I know you can, or knew.

Instead I'm just left with the memory of her drawing close a final time, and picking up my hand, my left. She held it to her mouth, I could feel her breaths, tiny and rapid. She drew her lips along the back of my hand. I leaned forward. But she was already backing away. In two paces, she was gone into the dark, and for a horrible moment, I thought she'd leapt off the rock into the rapids, but then I heard someone, something, beating through the brush.

I followed her, the sound of her, for as long as I could hear her. An hour, longer. I had the right answer for her now.

But by the time the sky had gone light again, I had nothing left to follow. No sound, no sign. The forest floor was a trackless carpet of pine needles. I stopped, looked around. Overhead, I heard the first morning planes in and out of Elmendorf Field. I was about to turn and head back the way I had come when I saw something hanging on a tree. It was a tiny mask of weathered gray wood, no bigger than my palm. The face was simple-two eyes, a nose, a mouth set in a line. A small feather dangled from the chin. I took down the mask and turned it over. Then I lifted it to my face, peered through one of the eyeholes, and saw-another feather? I lowered the mask. Sure enough, not twenty yards away. Not far away, I found another feather, and not far from that, another. They were tiny, and easy to miss, but what they led me to was not. A clearing with a giant boulder in the center like a bull's-eye.

The balloon had missed its target, though. It dangled from a tall tree nearby, explosive payload intact, the whole mess swaying and creaking with each gust of wind.

The first day, it was still possible. The hospital was just a few hours away, I was sure. I could see it plainly on the map: on the coast of the Bering Sea, just below the mouth of the Yukon. We would make it there in time, the boy would live. We'd used up most of the morphine, but I administered what was left in order to keep him comfortable, especially as we'd soon be in open water. He didn't like the needle, but he was too tired to cry.

I left most of the gear behind. I hadn't wanted to waste time packing, and thought the trip ahead would be brief. I avoided portages. I ran the throttle wide open whenever I could and tried to let all that was invisible guide me. I listened; I tried to remember how to concentrate. I prayed. But all that came to me was the roar of the motor and, occasionally, the crying and raving of the boy.

Then the clouds came, at first soft and high above us, then lower and thicker until they surrounded the boat and it was no longer clear which way to go. I looked at the map; it was useless. It showed the land and sea: we needed one for clouds.

We spent a day in those clouds, and then another. And when the mission infirmary materialized around noon that third day, I was more angry than relieved. Never finding it would have meant absolution, that I'd gone in search of something that wasn't there.

I DID NOT SLEEP HERE LAST NIGHT-I HAD PREPARATIONS to attend to-but it seems as though I missed little. Ronnie is still unconscious.

I thought this morning, when I entered and shouted, “Good morning!” that Ronnie flinched, or raised an eyebrow, but the nurse who was already there saw nothing. I sat with him awhile, and then checked the ward for Friday's new arrivals.

I eventually returned, greeted Ronnie again-nothing-and sat. I opened my breviary and tried to read, but could not. Ronnie wasn't flinching, but I was, every time the high hum of another plane finally grew loud enough to reach my hearing. Thursday's weather had cleared, and long-delayed planes were pouring into Bethel. The bishop, or his emissaries, weren't due in until late this afternoon, but perhaps they'd decided to play it safe and catch an early flight. Perhaps they'd decided not to come at all.

Could they really take me away from all this? Kidnapping is what it would be. Murder. I can't breathe Outside. Some attic apartment in a Seattle rectory? A room, way at the end of the hall of some Gonzaga dormitory, in Spokane? No weather or shamans or wilderness to battle? I'd suffocate.

I imagine these men landing, the plane's door popping open, and them peering out. I imagine them clambering down the steps and crossing the tarmac to the terminal. Inside, they'd look around for me with false but energetic smiles. (As though I would go to meet them, even if Ronnie didn't need me at his side!) There was a pay phone there that sometimes worked; maybe they'd use it to call the church. Maybe they'd ask around. Maybe they would sit, and as the waiting area emptied, discuss what they planned to do.

I tried not to worry. I'd been gone for the night; Ronnie had gone without the sound of my voice. (But how far?) I studied him carefully, and then, after ducking into the hallway to make sure no one was around, went back to the bed and raised the sheet. I wasn't sure what I would find, whether I'd be pleased or frightened to discover that another limb had fallen prey to something as invisible as it was ravenous.

THE AIRPORT TERMINAL at Bethel today is a sturdy, modern building, where the signs are all bilingual-“EXIT/ANYARAO”-and the atmosphere is informal. The male and female restrooms (“ANARVIK”) share the same bank of sinks, and those sinks are located in an alcove that's wide open to the waiting room. Look in the mirror, and you can see everyone in the waiting room looking back.

Back at Elmendorf, back in the war, the airfield terminal was even more intimate, if that's the right word. The building had but one window, and that was almost always covered with a giant chalkboard listing the day's flights.

I remember searching the chalkboard the morning after Gurley had ordered me to the post on Little Diomede. To attract as little attention as possible to my supposedly top secret mission, I was to travel as far as I could on regularly scheduled flights. That meant I had to make my way first to Nome, and then determine the most efficient and least attention-getting means-sea or air-of continuing on to Little Diomede.

I'd already missed the 0600 flight to Nome. I'd not made it out of the forest until about eight-thirty. I'd spent some time looking for Lily time I should have spent lowering the balloon to the ground and rendering its payload safe. Instead, when I found my way back to the mysterious crash site she'd led me to, I found it ablaze. The incendiary bombs had fallen to the forest floor and ignited. The balloon itself, still trapped in the tree, had caught fire as well, and as I stood watching, the tree sloughed it off to the ground, a fiery scab. I thought the incendiaries meant it was unlikely germ weapons had been aboard-and if they had, they'd likely been incinerated.

Even so, I held my breath as much as I could as I ran for the river, expecting the fire or a belated blast to take me down before I'd made twenty yards. But twenty, fifty, one hundred yards went by, and I was still upright and running, ricocheting through the spruce down to the river. If anything exploded, the noise was lost to the rapids, which I followed back down to the trail, and then the trail into Anchorage. Instead of dissipating, the smell of smoke had only grown stronger the farther I had run. And once I was running along the city streets, I could see why-a great column of smoke now rose from the forest.

I didn't stop running until a hungover soldier, sprawled on the sidewalk, called out to me, “Didn't have enough money to pay 'er?” Then I realized I'd attract less attention on the nearly empty streets if I walked, and so I did, straight to the Starhope. Lily had to have escaped the forest before me. But the front door was locked. Lily's window was dark, and no one came to it when I called, not even Gurley

EVEN THOUGH IT WAS almost 10 A.M. when I got to base, I had decided to follow through on Gurley's orders. To be honest, part of me wanted to escape Gurley and the growing mess-which now included a balloon crashing in our backyard, not to mention a forest fire-and part of me thought I might be better positioned to help Lily. Little Diomede might be a barren rock in the Bering Sea, but it was well out of Gurley's sight. I'd discover a way to sneak off and find Lily-and Gurley would never know.

But Father Pabich would.

“My favorite sergeant!” he said when I walked into the terminal.

“Father,” I said, quietly.

Either Father Pabich didn't detect my anxiety or didn't care. He got up from the crate he was sitting on and came over to crush my hand.

“You look like twice-baked dogshit, Sergeant,” he said. “I'll take that as evidence you've been working hard.” I thought he might take silence as evidence I agreed, but when I didn't answer, he said, “Sergeant? Haven't seen you around, haven't seen you at Mass. Only one good excuse, and you better have it.”

I took a deep breath, trying to reacclimate myself to the real world: the war, Elmendorf, Father Pabich. I tried to smile. “I've been saying the rosary?” I said.

“Goddammit, son. Learn that joke from your little Protestant friends? Just for that, let's have you say the rosary, three times, each day this week.”

“Sir,” I said.

“I warned you,” said Father Pabich.

“Father?”

“And pray a special devotion to our Blessed Mother,” he said. “Now then-”

Two other soldiers walked in, and Father Pabich smiled and shouted at them as well. I was relieved to be out of the spotlight, and maybe sad that I no longer warranted it. He brought the two men over, introduced me-two Polish boys from Chicago. Good boys. They were shipping out to the Aleutians, and he was going with them. They'd be there for six months; Father Pabich, two weeks. Laughter. Some of the soldiers out there hadn't seen a priest for a year, he said. Any longer and we might lose them to a wandering Russian Orthodox missionary. Laughter. The two Polish guys looked younger than I, and even more embarrassed. We all smiled, though, and sincerely, because this was our priest. One of us. For us. And here he was, in Alaska, the abrupt edge of the world, tending to the likes of us-when we all knew none of us had souls worth tending. We were boys, after all, about to leave our teens, and we were being sent out to kill people.

Though Father Pabich had been out to the Aleutian Chain just last month, he was going again-all the other chaplains, of every faith, had been called elsewhere. Not that anyone begged for the duty. The conditions were too harsh, the men beyond saving: those who didn't kill themselves or each other were often done in by the weather. Father Pabich had almost been stranded on Kiska during his last trip.

“I was supposed to be on Kiska for only an hour,” he said, settling back. “I was spending my time on Attu, but they flew me out to Kiska, said the men would like a visit-said they had more than twelve Catholics there, and that's my rule: when you outnumber the apostles, you get a priest. So I went.” He patted his pockets for a cigarette, but one of the Chicago boys leapt in with his own pack. Father Pabich removed one, winked, and pocketed the pack. “Williwaws? You know what I'm talking about? Those Aleutian storms when the rain falls up as much as it does down? I'm in a PBY-Navy's flying me-goddamn pilot is flying like he's an atheist. Like he's not going to have God to deal with if he crashes that goddamn bird into the side of goddamn Kiska. Excuse me.” Puff. The other Chicago boy wanted a cigarette. He pointed to the pack in Father Pabich's pocket, but Father Pabich waved him off. “So we land. I almost drown getting to shore, but I get ashore. The pilot's said I've got an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes. Storm coming in and then nobody's taking off. So I get inside. First of all, there aren't twelve Catholics. There's six guys, tops. And one of them's a Jew. Tells me he is.
Tells
me he is. But he says they're all going to die. The island's haunted with ghosts from the Battle of Kiska, storms a-coming, wild dogs-and I don't know what. Scared. Wants to go to Mass. What am I supposed to do?” Shrug. “Like the Holy Father's gonna know.” Puff. “But I've been using up precious time talking to this one. So it's on to Mass. ‘Oh, no, Father,’ this other one, red hair, now says to me. ‘I got to go to confession. I can't receive communion if I'm not in a state of grace.’ Jesus
Christ
, is what I tell him. We're all going to be in a state of death, son. But-right, what does the Bible say? This might be Jesus Himself talking to me. So I sit down, send the other boys out, start with the confession. In the name of the Father. Now-of course you don't reveal what's said under the seal of confession, but mind you, he's not saying
anything
of interest. He's been on Kiska, for Christ's sake. The world has been sinning against
him.
But he's going on and on. Talks about his Friday fast. Says he's been eating things on Friday. Like what? I say. ‘Like meat, Father,’ this one says. Meat! When he'd been lucky to get a goddamn ration of meat out there. No time now. It's going to be a twenty-minute Mass at this point. No Litany of the Saints-like I can afford to piss
them
off. Hurry up, lad, I tell him. What other sins you got? Let's go. You ate meat, now what else, what else?”

Father Pabich leaned back, took a long drag, grinned ear to ear. I remember thinking, here's a man about to risk his life flying into the world's worst weather, and he couldn't be happier if he were the pope himself.

“You know what he says?” Father Pabich leaned forward, and then bellowed, “ ‘PEAS’! Oh, sweet Jesus, ‘What else, son?’
‘Peas, Father.’
Oh my Lord.” We laughed. Everyone in the terminal laughed, but no one laughed harder than Father Pabich, who roared until he coughed and teared up and accidentally lit a small fire when his cigarette fell from his fingers into a nearby wastebasket.

I suppose that's how Gurley was able to enter without anyone noticing.

I was helping the Polish guys put out the fire when I heard my name. I straightened up, but didn't turn around-I wasn't nearly ready. They called Father Pabich's plane. He picked up his bags, smiled, and punched me the best he could with his elbow. “Be a good boy, now,” he said. “Fight us a good war.” I'd like to say that I ran after him, told him an elbow wasn't good enough, that I wanted to shake his hand before we parted, receive his blessing, but I didn't. Gurley was already coming toward me then, so I blame him, not the Japanese soldier who, a month or so later, overran Father Pabich's position as he was giving last rites to a Marine on Okinawa. The Japanese soldier bayonetted them both.

“Sergeant,” Gurley said, grinning for some reason. “I greet you with the very best of news.” I studied the exits, decided which would be easier to reach. But I didn't move.

First, Gurley said, he was not going to charge me for disobeying orders-though I had clearly done so since I was still in the terminal instead of on a flight to Little Diomede. But the better news was that he no longer wanted me to go. He had found a far more important and interesting task, much closer at hand. He couldn't tell me this in the terminal, however, and so ushered me outside, hand at my elbow.

“Sir,” I said, “I thought we agreed. I thought it was clear that I should go. That this would be best.”

“Would have
been
best, Sergeant,” Gurley said. “But things have changed. This is what happens in war. We must let bygones be bygones, we must put our differences aside, and we must-”

“Sir,” I said. “Last night, the office-the paper?”

Gurley's theatrical glee momentarily waned. “Yes, Sergeant?” he said. “And who have you told about that?” I looked away. “No one, I take it?” He waited until I met his gaze. He looked around to see if anyone was close to us, and then threw an arm around my shoulders, hissing into my ear as we walked. “You may think your captain mad, but what have you done about it? Nothing at all, it would seem.”

“Maybe I will do something,” I said. “Sir.”

He hustled me farther from the building before he spoke again. “Maybe you will, Sergeant. But you haven't yet, and I daresay you won't. Because your case is thin, because as scared as you are, you're even more curious, and because…” He let the word hang there while he looked at me, as though waiting for me to finish the sentence. But I couldn't, so he did, speaking slowly and evenly: “…you know that
lives
, the lives of certain people, depend on the actions you take.” Did I know whom he was referring to? This is what his gaze now asked. I lowered my own eyes; this was my answer.

“Good,” he said, smiling once more. We started to walk. “I admit, we have had our difficulties. But I promise, dear Sergeant, that all that will be forgotten in the excitement of the days ahead.” He darted a quick look behind us, and then replaced his arm around my shoulders. “What did those fools say up at Ladd? Five days? We'd wait five days before searching the tundra for signs of sabotage, or saboteurs?”

I nodded. “Three now, I suppose.”

“Three days,” Gurley said. “Seventy-two hours to beat that major, that galoot Swift, and the rest of the Army to the waning war's greatest prize.”

“Sir,” I started.

“Belk,” Gurley said, but I persisted.

“Sir, the major was right. They probably never got to launch their balloon. And even if they did, they probably did nothing more than make some moose sick. Maybe some mice, or ravens. And that's assuming the infected fleas were able to fight their way through the tundra winds long enough to-”