David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

“Accepted,” Gurley said. “Now, then. As I was saying, circumstances being what they are, my options are limited. The Greeks would have executed you, yes, perhaps, but they didn’t have our modern legal system to worry about. So execution is tempting, yes, but… messy, for so many reasons. This leaves me with one option.”

“Sir, I don’t understand how-if-I’ll never go downtown again, sir.”

“No, Sergeant,” he said, putting his glass down. “You shan’t.” He stood and went to the map. “Downtown, Anchorage, the Starhope- the lovely Miss Lily-will all be very, very far away.” He turned back to me. “For while I cannot kill you-though I do reserve the right to- I shall still cast your body out into a wild, desolate space. I’m having you transferred, Belk. To amp;Little-where are you?” He searched the map. “Yes. Diomede.”

“Where?” I stood now, too, squinting after him at the map. Was that near Russia? In Russia?

“Goodness, Belk, I’m not sure exactly where” he said. “We’ll leave finding it to the plane or boat that deposits you there. La Petite Diomede. An island in the Bering Sea. Wild and desolate, and—”

“Captain,” I said, still unable to spot my specific destination on the wall. “Little Dio-what? Diomede? I don’t understand. It looks-it looks like it’s too far north. It’s nowhere near the flight path of these balloons. I’m not going to find anything there.”

“Exactly, Sergeant. I should hope you don’t find anything. That might complicate things considerably.” He found his chair and sat, though he kept his eyes on the map. “I did consider the South Pacific, of course, the front. Trench foot, land mines, snipers, tenacious enemy soldiers who insist on being killed, and killing, one by one by one. Surely death would find you there.” Now he turned back to me. “But you see how that would be disappointing, your suffering liable to end so quickly. No, I much prefer this island I’ve found. I understand it’s a mostly treeless rock. Some Natives, some soldiers-rampant suicide, homicide, but I trust you’ll hold your own.” He lifted his glass, saw it was empty, and put it back down. “See, Belk, I can be generous. Even to a traitor.”

Bravery, alcohol, the delight in escaping the front-line tropics- something inserted a thin line of steel within me, and I spoke. “Not generous,” I said quietly. “The South Pacific? Lily would never forgive you-for doing that to me.”

I saw him tense. I saw his hands curl into fists, and I saw the thoughts progress in his mind. This didn’t happen quickly, but slowly and deliberately, as he considered each image before him. Heaving his chair at me. His desk. Leaping across the desk for my throat. Lowering his hand to his hip, removing his gun, raising it, aiming, pulling the trigger.

Instead, he slowly drew the book across the desk toward him, staring at me all the while. “Before we part, Belk,” he said. “There was always something I had meant to show you. Something that will demonstrate to you why I might have predicted these balloons would, literally, come to ill in due time. Here is my point, Belk,” he said. “You must never underestimate the nefariousness of the Oriental mind.”

He sounded like Gurley the actor, but he no longer looked like him. He was no longer playing a part; he’d been consumed by it. One hears the term wild-eyed , and thinks of what? A raving drunk? A rabid dog or raccoon? Not nearly: this was wild-eyed. If I’d been nearer, he would have nipped at me, teeth flashing, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I myself were a foaming pit bull or lion, or-take note, Ronnie-wolf: he would have bitten my nearest limb clean through.

His voice skittered high and low, the words tumbling out with manic speed.

“You admired the art in the book,” he said, flipping through it to the back, to those mysterious empty gray pages. He looked up, I nodded numbly. He smiled and produced a pocketknife. I leapt up; he clucked. “Shh, Sergeant. Down, boy, down. As though I’d sully my quarters with your foul blood.” He unfolded a blade and then added an afterthought: “Besides-who knows what disease lurks dormant in you?”

I sat, slowly. He sliced out a page, with difficulty, which shocked me almost as much as anything else: our precious book! Lily’s book! It felt like he was peeling away an expanse of skin.

“As I said, you’ve admired the book, but your appreciation has been superficial, as it could only be.” He poured the glass before him almost full, and then folded the blank page and poked it in until it was submerged. “The paper, Belk. The paper, Sergeant, is most remarkable.”

I could be out the door in two steps, maybe one. Or the phone: it was within reach. But the knife, still open, was within his reach and much closer.

“The paper for the balloons is made of, what did we determine? Something like the mulberry bush.” He sang a little to himself while he poked at the paper. “Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…” Then he looked up, head lolling as though he were drunk. “Quite similar, in fact, to the paper in this book, which, my yeeeeaaaars of education inform me is washi paper. Some of the balloons, in fact, appear to feature a few panels which are this very same paper.” I looked on, genuinely distracted with surprise. “Didn’t that always strike you as odd? A mission this daring, this important, and they entrust it to paper?” I nodded, caught up, despite myself. “Indeed. Well, as it happens, as no one else in this grossly undereducated army seems to know, this paper has precisely the pedigree for the job. It’s very strong, for one, curiously strong-so strong that-well, let me show you.” He drew the now-sodden paper out of the glass.

“Tradition holds that assassins-not radio show adventure heroes-made use of such paper. Say you wanted to kill someone,” he said, his voice sinking. “Say you wanted to kill someone and have no one find out. You wait until your quarry is sleeping. You take a billet-doux-sized sheet of washi paper and wet it”-he held up the dripping page-“don’t worry, it won’t disintegrate. Your prey lets out a great exhale-and you set upon him!” Gurley started, and I jumped, involuntarily, as he intended. “He awakes; he cannot breathe. He is startled, confused, he struggles, but you hold him down” Gurley said through gritted teeth. “You hold that paper right where it is. And he sucks and gasps, but all he’s doing is pulling that paper tighter and tighter and tighter.” I looked away; it was too sickening, as though one of those plague-infected ulcers were spreading across his brain.

But he started speaking again, and when I looked at him once more, I saw that instead of his usual hideous smile, his face was slack and his eyes full of what had to be tears. “Why couldn’t they have just done that, Belk? Why couldn’t they have just-why couldn’t Father Ioa-saph’s angel been a real angel? Why couldn’t he have leapt from his smoking basket beneath the balloon and set upon me?” He was talking solely to the paper now. “I asked them how long the pain would last, and one doctor said, ‘What do you mean?’ and the other doctor said, ‘Forever.’ I ask Lily to move with me south-the medical discharge is there, whenever I want it, a free ticket home, a check every month- and she says one thing and then another but never yes. She talks about how this is her home, but she never talks about the real reason. A goddamn leg that won’t—”

What happened next is ridiculous, except that it really happened, in just this way. Gurley took the sheet he’d so carefully prepared, and slapped it to his face. And sure enough, it settled there, a second skin, each gasp further sealing it with an additional suture. He turned red, fell to the floor, and spasmed. The paper held absolutely fast. Maybe a minute passed, maybe two, and then I remembered that I wasn’t Gurley, that I didn’t have the stomach to stand by while someone killed himself, and that, however hard he’d tried to convince me otherwise, my first loyalty was to Lily, and she had said: take care of him.