David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

My heart was still pounding at the news he’d just delivered, and it was a moment or two before I was able to remind myself that he’d made this up-that the shadowy figure in the mist with Lily had only been me, that Saburo’s presence had been Lily’s invention, just as this rape was now Gurley’s. But was it? Had she told him something else? Had Saburo been there, in the forest, farther on, in the dark, Lily running toward him, his having just arrived by balloon? No: Lily had lied to Gurley She’d told the truth to me. She always did. But-maybe- just not-Lily, what about the baby? Why hadn’t you ever told me—

“So it was wrong to grow attached,” Gurley said, his eyes full of tears, but not full enough to cry. I wondered now if it mattered whether Gurley had invented the rape; he clearly believed there had been one, just as Lily believed there had been a Saburo. He wiped his nose with the heel of his hand, and then held his face for a moment. “A ring. There was a ring, Belk.”

“There was,” I said, automatically.

“He was always there,” he said. “Even before… this. I knew him before she told me of him, I could see him, sense him, somewhere back behind her eyes, whenever she and I kissed. Made love.” He sat in his chair, somewhat calmer now, and found a handkerchief, which he unfolded and then twisted between his hands. “I could never have all of her. I knew she wanted me to have as much as I would, but somewhere, back in there, deep inside her, this fiend held on-it’s like he holds some piece of her soul. Holds it so tight that he is able to pull her all the way out here.”

I’m right here, sir: I wanted Gurley to look up, see me. I wanted to tell Gurley that I was this other person, but more than that, I wanted it to be true.

But when he did look up, all he saw was Saburo. “We have, what? Two days now, less maybe, before that major in Fairbanks sends his dogs out across the tundra in search of plague or spies. I’ve said I wanted to find the prize before him, and I do. But the reason is not so much for glory but revenge. If the major catches him, this spy becomes a prisoner of war, a resource. If I catch him-and we will, whether it takes forty hours or months-I will finish it. I will find him, remove him, and release Lily, to me.”

And what would happen when we didn’t find him? Lily said he was gone. But Gurley was determined to find him-he’d have to find, and kill, someone. Lily hadn’t thought through this part of her plan. But then, it hadn’t really been a plan.

“Sir,” I said, making one last attempt. “I’m just not sure we will find anyone. It’s more than a needle in a haystack, sir, it’s—”

“It’s a needle in a haystack for the major,” said Gurley. “But we have Lily.” He smiled. “We have you.” He rose.

“I’m just not sure, sir, what we’ll find. What if he’s dead?”

The color slowly returned to Gurley’s cheeks. It was his fury rising in him, but in a way, it was a relief to witness-I’d had plenty of experience dealing with Gurley furious, and could steel myself against it. I’d been frightened, on the other hand, to find myself vulnerable to feeling sympathy when faced with Gurley despondent and brokenhearted.

That danger had passed.

He walked toward me, closer and closer, until he’d backed me up half across the room. “You wish him dead. Fair enough. So do I. But you wish him dead because you wish to be done with this mission, this war, me. You are scared, Sergeant. Both understandable and unattractive.” And closer. “This man is a spy” Gurley continued. “A spy for the enemy. The enemy whose one interest is slaughter. Have you heard what’s happening in the South Pacific, Sergeant? Of the bodies of men and women, men like you, missing eyes and hands and whatever they had between their legs, stuffed into their mouths? ” Gurley’s mouth was now quite close to mine. “This-Saburo- raped a woman that I love, that I hope to spend the rest of a very, very long life caring for. If you need more reasons, God knows they’re offering us plenty-from fires to plague to who knows what next-go ahead and do this for your country. But you know what? Our country’s got more than ten million in uniform fighting for it.” He stared at me hard. “Lily’s only got me.”

I’M NOT SURE IF it was a product of our conversation or his simmering madness or his fear of the major on our heels, but two minutes after he’d left, he returned and declared that we would leave at midnight. We may not have agreed on much about Saburo, but he didn’t think Saburo was hiding in town, either. I thought Gurley would sneak off to Lily’s “VIP quarters” before our departure, but he had me walk him down to the riverbank, doling out additional instructions all the while. He confirmed the time with me, and then I watched him hire a boat to take him across the Kuskokwim to town, in search of a drink or worse.

I figured I had at least an hour, maybe more.

I walked quickly back to the headquarters building, in search of Lily. When I asked the duty officer about her whereabouts, he gave me a blank look. He was putting on a front, of course; Lily had to be the only woman on the base-perhaps the only woman on the base in six months or more. Finally, he leaned back and said, “Oh, you mean the prisoner .”

Now it was my turn to put on a front, and mask my alarm with a knowing nod. The prisoner. The man said he’d been left instructions that she was not to be disturbed, but I countered that I was under orders from Gurley, and the man accepted my bluff. Gurley had obviously made his usual terrifying impression.

They didn’t have cells on the base, so they had put Lily in a signal shed by the airfield with a guard stationed out front “for her protection.” When I entered and the guard closed the door behind me, Lily was sitting perfectly still in the middle of the room, on the only thing in the room, a chair.

Neither of us said anything; we just looked at each other. I’m not sure what my face looked like, but Lily kept hers completely blank. I could have been Gurley I could have been Tojo, I could have been a six-foot raven. She stared.

I looked at her hands; they were cuffed. What had Gurley done?

I knelt beside her and tried to take one hand of hers in mine, but she moved away. “I’m okay,” she said.

“Lily, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Who did this? I’m going to get you out of here. No, I promise. I think-I think Gurley’s finally lost it. I mean, completely. I think he’s gone, or going. I don’t think it will be long now, not at all. Jesus-he wants to leave at midnight. And he’s got you locked in a closet. In handcuffs.”

She shook her head, and rolled her eyes-the first I had seen so far of the old Lily. “He has me here for my safety,” she said and smiled. “He told them I was a prisoner of war, someone with information. He told them that so they wouldn’t bother me. So no one would wonder why a captain flew an Eskimo girl out to the bush.” She smiled, and I couldn’t decide what to do. Was Gurley this crazy? Was she?

I felt bad for her, but now I also felt angry. Part of it was the old anger, jealousy-Gurley held her completely in sway. The new anger was that this growing debacle was all her doing. She’d told Gurley some story about Saburo in order to get herself back to Bethel, and now here she was, cuffed, and here I was, suddenly party to the whole rotten plan. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, but I got up as I said it, and ended up delivering the words more to the room than her.

But she still heard me. “Louis,” she said. “I’m so close now. I’m almost there.”

I turned to look at her and realized that Gurley was with us-or rather, within me. Standing there, eyes cast down at her, chin pointing up, disdain on my face. I was becoming him or had become him. And I couldn’t shake it off. Maybe Gurley was a wizard, too. He’d obviously possessed Lily somehow, even though she was a shaman in her own right. Who was I to think I could resist? And when I spoke, it was his words, his tone.