David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

It sounds funny, I know, to be so fascinated with another man, let alone his hands, but it has something to do with being a priest. No, not in that sense, thank you, but more of a professional interest. A good priest is sensitive to his hands the way a pianist might be to his. They are essential to his work-praying, celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass, offering communion, the sign of peace. It’s well known, at least among missionaries, certainly among Jesuits, how Isaac Jogues, Jesuit missionary to Canada in the 1600s, had to later receive special dispensation from the Vatican to say Mass. His hands had been mutilated during his tenure in North America, fingers frozen or eaten, and without the pope’s express permission, he would have been considered unfit to serve at the altar. (Jogues’s later plea to return to Canada was reluctantly granted, but his arrival coincided with sickness and blight. The Mohawks took this as evidence of sorcery and cut off his head.)

I think the real reason I admired Ronnie, or those hands of his, was that he clearly had never used his hands the way I had mine. He was a drunk, a failure, a grifter, but the earth was no worse for his being on it. If Saint Isaac Jogues had ever descended from the sky during one of those trips in the bush, he would have reached for Ronnie’s hand first, and Ronnie would have taken it, whatever condition Saint Isaac’s hand was in, and shook it firmly. Ronnie had a grudge against missionaries but admired men who, like him, had survived.

More to the point, if Jogues ever dropped down, Ronnie would have been the first to see him. Ronnie was always looking up, especially in summer, especially out in the delta. He had a theory that if you sat in one spot long enough, stared at the sky carefully and remembered all you’d seen, you would be the wisest man in the world. All the knowledge of the world was contained in the skies, he said. He was going to write it all down one day, he swore, a book of amirlut , an atlas of clouds, and it would sell better than any bible. I asked him how he’d ever manage to chart on paper something that was always changing. He shook his head at my stupidity. “Not a map of where things are now,” he said. “No: where they will be.”

I WONDER IF RONNIE’S right, though. That staring at the sky will give you a better sense of what’s to come. After the morning reconnaissance flight, for example, I was back out at Todd Field, searching the skies for some sign of the C-47 Gurley said he’d be on. And when I finally caught sight of one, I followed it all the way down to the ground, half thinking that, if I concentrated hard enough, I’d be able to see if Lily was inside.

But Gurley could have had Saint Isaac or Saint Nicholas aboard; staring revealed nothing. It wasn’t until I saw them emerge that I knew.

They’d taxied to a stop some distance from the terminal, and a pair of jeeps raced out to meet them. I couldn’t make out faces, but the first man at the opened door was certainly Gurley, whose preening I could have spotted from the moon.

And the second person: no hat, no uniform. Just long black hair, black trousers, and a knee-length, Native-style shirtdress I’ve since learned is called a kuspuk. Though I could see well enough that I saw her turn to face my direction briefly before continuing down the stairs, I could not see her features. I couldn’t be sure, but I was. Military men are trained, after all, to recognize the silhouettes of aircraft and ships, friendly and foreign. And Lily had trained me to believe in what I knew, what I knew because I was certain of it, not because I had evidence.

So it was Lily. Gurley hadn’t sent me to Bethel just to get rid of me; the three of us really were going to journey into the bush. But then something happened that shook my faith a bit. Gurley and Lily exchanged words, it seemed, and then Gurley stepped back. The MPs took Lily by both arms, placed her in the jeep, and sped off toward some buildings at the other end of the field.

Gurley watched them go, then turned and began to walk toward me.

GURLEY HAD A NEW name for Lily: Sacagawea. We were discussing their arrival in an office he’d commandeered. I interrupted to ask him where she was. He said she’d been taken to Todd Field’s “VIP quarters,” and then pressed on with his monologue.

“I introduced her this way, as ‘our very own Miss Sacagawea,’ thinking that a rather clever shorthand introduction-to wit, our Native companion and guide-when, to my slowly building horror and delight, I realized that the good men of this forgotten outpost were assuming that that was her actual name. Sacagawea. Tell me, Sergeant, of the many subjects no longer taught in school-is American history among them?”

Gurley seemed hurt when I did not reply.

His eyes were sunken and dark and he looked even more skeletal than usual. His hands were covered with fine scratches, as though his Franklin bouts had devolved to his fighting stray cats. But then I remembered the wall map, the pushpins, and the trails he’d trace across his skin.

“Dear Sergeant,” he said. “You’re rather glum. This is a lonely outpost, and I imagine quiet duty, but look here: you have been given a reprieve, and your friends have come to join you. Where flees your smile? Think of what lies ahead: to catch a spy .”

For a moment, my mind had seized on fleas. I’d been out of Gurley’s company for so long, I’d lost some of my ear for his strange language. As a result, it took an extra beat for the words to come out of my already-open mouth. “Sir, I’m not sure that—”

“Splendid, dear Belk. You are still among the living. You are sentient and curious and apparently sober. And so you have your questions. But more important, do you have my spy? Or will we, in fact, have to set out after him?” The words sped from his mouth, faster and faster. He smiled, as if he noticed this, too, and thought it delightful. “Forgive my eager possessiveness: but yes, before we speak of the devil we know-fair Sacagawea, dear Lily-let us speak of the devil we don’t. Mmm?”

Mmm. I told Gurley about my wandering around town. I told him about the Emporium of Everything, and about Jap Sam. Maybe Lily wasn’t worried if Gurley didn’t find anything-anyone-but I was. So I tried to describe the now-interned Sam in such a way that Gurley might take him for our missing quarry. That would mean we could just pack up and leave Bethel -ruining Gurley’s fun and Lily’s quest, but giving us all, I thought, a better chance of finishing out the war alive. You didn’t need Lily’s kind of magic to sense the evil that was looming. Or maybe you did, and that magic had attached itself to me: here in Bethel, far from the numbing, civilizing influences of Anchorage, the spiritual world hummed that much closer to everyone.

Gurley wasn’t the least bit interested in Jap Sam. He wanted Saburo. Lily’s Saburo. The enemy’s Saburo. His Saburo.

“No sign of him, sir,” I said. “I didn’t go house to house, of course. But you’d think-in a town this small-he’d attract attention, too much attention to hide.” I made another attempt to derail the search. “If you want to know what I think, sir—”

“Always a dangerous preface, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. But I think he died. I think he’s dead. Captured, and we don’t know about it, maybe, but I bet he”-I tried to call on a little magic for inspiration-“drowned. There’s a lot of water around here,” I added, not hearing how foolish that sounded until I saw Gurley’s face.

“There is that” Gurley said. “I assume you’re joking?” he added, suddenly brusque. He patted his pockets for cigarettes that weren’t there, and stood. “Perhaps you forgot we saw him. Lily and I, both. In the mist. In Anchorage. Perhaps you—” He started to pace. “I’m afraid I-I’m afraid I didn’t tell you everything about the other night, about what Lily told me.” He was scanning the room as he spoke, not looking at me. If he had, he would have seen me turning red with alarm: What now? “She swore me to secrecy,” he said, talking more to himself now. “And what could I say? I shouldn’t tell you, but I will, because it’s relevant to what we have to do. To our mission. To our quest. But I tell you this in the strictest of confidence because-because-no woman, no girl, no girl even with a past as-as-weathered as Lily’s deserved to have happen to her what happened-Louis!” He spun on me, with such force I almost burst out, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have gone to see her! He knew! He had to; he was just toying with me, but before I could speak he said something even more bizarre: “He raped her, Belk. The filthy, yellow-when we find him, Belk, no quarter. Lily. Lily.”