The Cloud Atlas

Only later, too late, did I learn what is really true, a truth that, in some ways, has nothing to do with God: ghosts only haunt those who do not believe. Someone who already believes can never be surprised to see something he knows already exists. The shadow that disappears into a corner of the community center one winter night is doubtless your cousin who drowned the year before. The creaking floor that wakens you is your husband, finally returned from the hunt. The face outside the hospital window is an angalkuq, pulling rain from the skies.

And the boy in the tent, the tan'gaurluq who dropped from a hole in the blue-

“Louis,” Lily started, stopped, and then started again. “I don't know why this happened. Or how. I was so anxious to get back out here, where I thought my powers would be strong again. That's why I went on my journey the other night. To see what had changed since the last time I had been able to see that other world-that world of spirits and life and everything real. And I wanted to see Saburo, see where he had put our little boy. I didn't see anything at first-but what I saw-what I finally saw frightened me.”

Lily had seen another child. At first she thought it was her own, but came to understand that it wasn't. It was a boy a Japanese boy who had come from beyond. And since no spirit comes into the world without another life departing it, Lily explained, she knew then that Saburo had died, and this boy had come to tell her that. The spirits- Saburo-had sent him to her, just as they had sent me. But whereas they had sent me to remind Lily that Saburo lived, they had sent this boy to let her know that Saburo was dead.

Worse, she believed she had killed him, by falling in love or into the spell that Gurley cast-whatever it was, she had lost hold of Saburo. “I let go of his memory, Louis, and when I did, I let go of him, he sank away, he died. No one should take another lover while the first still lives, while you are still in love with him. I knew this.”

I know: madness. Arctic hysteria. Or half a dozen newfangled names they now have for conditions like Lily's (or Gurley's, for that matter). But we had none of those names then. We had a first- aid kit with some bandages and another kit to blow up bombs. We had a boat. A balloon. A boy.

Lily's maternal instincts already lay raw and exposed; it was easy for her- perhaps essential for her-to believe this boy from the sky had been sent by the sky. Any hope for the happy repose-and forgiveness-of the Saburo she lost now lay with this child, whatever his name was.

She was absolutely certain, and wanted me to be, too.

“He cannot die,” she said. “If he dies, I will die with him, and I will join Saburo, but not in a good place. In this place, we will wander, all of us, searching for good souls to take us.”

“Lily,” I interrupted.

“Louis, listen to me: if the boy lives, he may go on to a life of honor, he may do the work that the spirit world requires of the living. Feeding us, sheltering us, bringing us peace until that day when he has finally done enough and we may all rest.” She turned to the tent, and then to me. “Louis,” she said. “I'm not-I can't do what I once could. I'm not strong enough, not against a man with a gun. But you know Gurley You'd know how to stop him. Just don't let him take the boy. I'm afraid of what he'll do. He's just a boy. Louis? Promise me. Please. Louis. Protect him.” She clasped her hands together. “Us,” she said finally. “Protect us.”

AND WHAT DID I say then? With Lily's eyes shining, or maybe glistening, with what faint light still held, and looking to me for help?

I said nothing. I stepped past her, around the tent, and into the brush, toward Gurley. I was afraid I would start crying-over the childish confusion and disappointment over everything, but finally, over that us-“protect us.” She might have been talking about the boy, or Saburo, or even in some strange way, Gurley-people whom she had loved. But not me. I had been a friend, just a friend, and worse still, I was now failing at that as well.

Stumbling in and out of holes, crashing into the brush here and there, I was making enough noise to hide any sniffling, and later, enough noise to allow Gurley to walk up and take me by surprise.

“Sergeant?” he said, his voice not quite a whisper. He spoke as though we'd been planning to meet, just like this.

I squinted hard to make sure my eyes hid any trace of tears and answered him: “Sir?”

“That's a good lad,” he said softly. “You had a choice to make back there, me or her, your country or your crotch, and I'm glad to see you chose your country.”

It started as a punch, my right fist right to his face, but I was too angry, had been imagining this for too long, and found myself following my fist with my head, plowing into him like we were brawling in a schoolyard.

But there'd never been this much blood in the schoolyard, nor the orphanage. I'd never found myself atop a foe so quickly or easily swinging away, had never discovered how nauseating it is to beat someone who won't beat back.

And he wouldn't. Not after blood had run into the seams between every tooth, not when his left eye had swollen into its own kind of bubo, purple and wet, not even when I-I know I didn't do this, that I couldn't have done it, but I remember it all the same-when I bit his forehead, right at the hairline, and tasted blood.

He laughed, not a sensible laugh, but an off-key cackle that I could feel-because that's where I was sitting-in his diaphragm. That's why I bit him, if I bit him. If he laughed at my fists and feet, what did I have left? My head. Those teeth. I'd learned this from Gurley this wildness.

The bite caused his laugh to switch to a screech, but it was all part of the same wail, and when I stood, disgusted as much with myself as with him, the laugh returned. Then he felt around in the back of his mouth for something, and winced. Two crimson fingers returned with what must have been a tooth.

“Tallyho!” Gurley chortled, or gurgled. He held up the tooth to me and I looked away. I expected him to get up, but he lay back and blinked several times and looked at the sky.

I was about to walk away when he spoke. “She's still with the boy?” he asked, and I almost had to ask him who.

I finally nodded, once, and he nodded in return, and struggled to sit, and then stand. The place where he had fallen had begun to fill with water, and he bent over the puddle to study his face. When he stood again, I looked him over, embarrassed. He looked both worse and better than I thought he would, like he'd been attacked by a dog, or had snapped his head against a steering wheel.

I turned away again.

“There, there, Sergeant,” he said. “I'm sorry. Very sorry. We should have gotten that over with long, long ago. Shouldn't we have? Shouldn't we?”

I left him there. I walked away-away from Gurley away from the balloon, away from the tents and the boats. I walked toward nothing. But I didn't get far before I ran out of land. I waded in, stumbled, soaked myself, and retreated. I walked back toward Gurley, who was still talking-to me, to himself-and tried a different direction. Again I sank. I just wanted to leave, and leave all of them behind. I wanted to keep walking until I could no longer hear Gurley's voice, until I could no longer see anything. But wherever I stepped, the water rose around my feet. I wanted a balloon of my own.

I returned and stood by Gurley. He kept talking, and talking, whether or not I was looking at him. Usually I wasn't. I was embarrassed with what I'd done to him. I might as well have attacked the little Japanese boy; Gurley looked almost as pathetic and wild-eyed.

Gurley made it worse by insisting that he forgave me. He said this in a dozen different ways, cited anecdotes, quoted the Bible, said he understood, offered consolation, commiseration. Unfortunately, I was young enough and Christian enough to want and need, and worst of all, believe, that forgiveness. Which meant that when he finally worked his monologue back around to Lily and the boy, the two of them in the tent, it was already too late for me. The most potent tranquilizing drug would not have worked on me so quickly or so well. He was planning, and I was listening. “A little awkward, a little awkward,” he concluded, “but-we'll make it work. We'll find a way. We've had bigger challenges in this war, haven't we,