David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

I told myself I was going because Lily was going to help me find some of these mysterious floating bombs, help me save lives. She’d said she wasn’t as good at the future as she was at the past, but she could tell me something.

THE FIRST THING she wanted to tell me was goodbye.

“Hey, friend,” Lily said. She’d emerged from the entrance of the Starhope as I approached. “You came back to see me off.”

I looked at her, and then looked around, in search of something to say.

“I’m going home,” she said, checking to make sure I understood.

I didn’t, but told her I’d be happy to walk her home. I thought I was being quite gallant; a lot of guys back then wouldn’t have wanted to walk anywhere near a woman who looked like Lily. Well-maybe they’d want to, beautiful as she was, but they wouldn’t want to be seen doing it, given who she was.

She looked down at my feet. “You don’t have the right shoes,” she said. “And it’s a long, wet walk.”

“How long?” I asked. “I don’t have to be back in my barracks till midnight.”

“About four hundred miles,” Lily said.

I stared at her. “You’re leaving,” I said. “Really leaving.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the idea. I’m still working on how- travel’s not as easy with this war you all got cooked up. But I’ve got something to do anyway, before I go.”

“What’s that?”

“Have dinner with a friend.” She smiled and put out an arm.

LILY WALKED ME THROUGH the darkening streets to a part of town I hadn’t discovered yet. There were fewer soldiers and sailors here, and more-people. White faces, Asian faces, women, men, children, and very few uniforms. I drew more stares than Lily as she threaded our way through narrower, older streets to a diner.

There were no menus; Lily said they just brought you whatever was on the stove. That night, it was a stew of Thanksgiving leftovers.

We didn’t say anything while we waited for the food. I was tongue-tied-she was leaving? -and Lily was tired. She leaned her head against the back of the booth and closed her eyes.

I wouldn’t have had words then to describe what I saw; I’m not sure I do now. Why did her hair make black seem the brightest color? Why did her breathing through slightly parted lips, her tongue flitting once to moisten them, seem risqué? How could her bare neck, all smooth curves and shadows, suggest that the loose clothes she wore weren’t there at all? I suppose the chemicals that flood a boy at that time in his life are partly to blame, but give Lily and the God who made her some credit.

“Don’t stare,” she said, not opening her eyes.

I mumbled something about how I wasn’t, and she opened her eyes in time to see that I was. The food arrived and she immediately started in.

“You were, just a moment ago, when I had my eyes closed,” she said.

“I wasn’t staring,” I said. “I was trying to figure out what I was going to do without you.”

She stopped eating, and laughed. “That’s silly.” She took another bite, and before she swallowed, added, “And very sweet.”

“No, I had-I had a question for you.” And I did, a hundred, mostly about her. But I had another question, the one I’d spend the war asking.

“I don’t think those two thugs are coming back, if that’s your question,” Lily said. “That’s what I like about sailors. Or liked. They sail away on their little ships. They don’t come back.”

“It’s about something else.” I looked at my hand, then held it up and showed her my palm.

Lily shook her head. “You know-the palm reading-I don’t really read palms.”

“But you know things. You knew things about me.”

Lily put down her spoon; she spent a moment carefully aligning it with the plate. “What do you need to know?”

I offered her my hand, but she kept her hands at her sides and shook her head. “Not here.” She looked around. “I’m not going to do that here.”

“Then how can you tell me-?”

“Just talk,” she said, and as she did, I could feel her feet entangle mine. “Just talk,” she repeated, more softly.

By now, of course, I could hardly breathe. It took me a moment to remember what I wanted to ask. “I need to know where this-thing- will—” I stopped. “I need to know where something’s going to be.”

But that wasn’t good enough for her. She shook her head, again and again, no matter how I phrased the question, until she finally said, “I need a place to start. A detail. Without that, it’s just dreaming.” I thought of all the things I could tell her: places where we knew balloons had landed and exploded; the map in Gurley’s office; the eyes of those men in that private ward. Or I could just tell her my secret- Gurley’s secret, our country’s secret, or Japan’s-I could tell her that high above the Pacific, even now, clearly visible if you only knew where to look, floated balloons laced with powdered fire. All you had to do to catch them was give up a hand, an arm, a face, a leg-or find out first where they were landing and when.

“Are you dreaming?” she asked.

“I’m trying to think where to start,” I said.

“Here’s an easy detail,” she said. “What’s your name, Sergeant Belk?”

I blinked.

“Your first name, brother of Bing.”

“Louis,” I said, relieved I could give up such an easy secret.

“Louis,” she said. “See, I’m not good at this at all. ‘Louis’ I never would have guessed. Okay, what do you want to know, Louis?”

I looked around the room. No one was looking at us, but it seemed as though everyone was listening to us. Intently. I said nothing. Her feet left mine.

“Next time, then,” she said. “Your wallet have anything in it tonight?”

“Please don’t leave,” I said.

“Louis, I told you my secret,” she said. “I’m not a palm reader.”

“But you didn’t tell me how you-why you-know things.”

“What do you do?” she asked. “Or what don’t you do? Me, I don’t read palms.”

“I don’t read palms, either,” I said. She looked at me, waited. “And I don’t read feet,” I added. She smiled and clamped her feet back around mine. “And I don’t…”

I went through a whole litany of jobs, both military and civilian, that I didn’t do. This was much easier than lying, this circling, joking. She seemed to enjoy it, too, protesting every now and then that some task I said I didn’t do-blow reveille on a bugle each morning-I actually did do. Slowly, invisible to everyone but me, her hands crept closer to mine, until they were almost touching, then they were touching, and then resting on top of mine, contented and relieved.

By then, the whole of me was humming. Maybe she wasn’t a palm reader, maybe she had no special powers at all, but she could do this: tap something inside of me-more than hormones, perhaps blood- and seize it, take charge of it. Change the direction of its flow, or arrest the circulation altogether. Part of me believed I was allowing this to happen, part of me thought I was powerless, but most of me didn’t care. I wanted to sit there, be held, touched, like that, and never move. I would have done anything to stay.

“What do you do, Louis?” she said quietly.

“Bombs,” I said, the word out before I even realized it.

“Yes,” she said. “But what kind?” she asked, leaning closer, the shade of a new look in her eyes, but not enough of a new look to spook me, not yet.

“Bal-loons,” I said, my mind rising in alarm with the second syllable, but by then it was too late. Gurley’s thumbnail slid down, and across, and up my neck.

Lily closed her eyes, slowly. And then her shoulders sank, her head sank, my blood began its nervous flow again, and my heart pounded at the secret it had just disclosed.