David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

Then I heard the crying, too, and like them, I thought it came from somewhere distant. But they were right and I was wrong; I looked up and saw that the boy was crying again. My hearing was returning. He’d let go of my hand. The vision vanished, replaced by the sight of a dock and a shack and a radio mast flying two flags: above, the Stars and Stripes, and below, a plain red cross on a worn white field.

AND THEN what did you do?

I’m slumped asleep in a chair beside Ronnie’s bed in the hospice. I’m not really asleep, though; only as much as you can be in a chair. And since I can’t enter a state quite deep enough for dreaming, I seem to be passing the time by talking with Ronnie in my imagination. I tell him the rest of the story-it’s easier asleep. My throat’s sore, besides. I’ve been talking too long.

You have.

It may not, in fact, be my imagination. If I accept my experience with the boy as evidence of some-spiritual-ability, perhaps I really am speaking with Ronnie. How far is it, after all, from intuition to connection, from guessing at what someone’s thinking to actually knowing? I’m a priest, besides. I should know what it’s like to look into another’s soul. Whatever the source of my ability, I’m good at it, I have to admit: my imagined Ronnie interrupts me in all the right places, says all the right things.

You’re not imagining me.

Like that.

What happened to the boy?

(Or this.) But I should answer: he died. He died, just like he was always going to. And not of plague. I got him to the infirmary—

Where Lily had led you-

Where Lily had led me, and once I got there, he died.

And so you must lead me.

And this is where I wake up. Because I always try to wake up before these conversations go on too long; it’s not healthy. Not at my age. You reach a certain point in life and you discover that the little moat that’s always surrounded your mind, kept it safe, defined things-this is real, this is not-has dried up. One day you’re daydreaming and the next day someone’s joking about Alzheimer’s, and the next day you wonder-just what day is this?

“The next day.”

This I am not imagining. I don’t think.

“Lou-is,” Ronnie says, and his eyes now meet mine. “You are awake?”

I nod my head.

“The next day,” says Ronnie. “What did you do then? Or was it that night?”

I can hear him, I can see him, but I need a little more time to adjust to Ronnie, still alive.

“Lou-is,” Ronnie says.

“Ronnie,” I say. “You came back.”

“One last time. I heard your voice and followed one last time. I did not know why, but now I do. Because of what you are about to tell me. What did you do then?”

“When?”

“With the boy. Lily’s boy. The boy from the sky.”

The boy from the sky was as gray as the sky as the boat skidded west, out to sea, away from the infirmary where no one would help us. I had lost my mind or left it behind; I was making for Japan. The boy was Japanese. I would take him across the Pacific in my little open boat, the reserve tank almost empty, our food and medicine gone, completely gone.

I never saw Japan. A large island just off the southwestern coast of Alaska got in the way. I’d landed, a madman, only to be faced down by another: Father Leonard, a missionary, the last man on an island of women who had lost their husbands, sons, and brothers to the war effort.

Father Leonard was gaunt, bald, with a thin white beard, and no longer smiled or waved. When he saw my uniform, he said, “You’re not taking any more.” He paused to make sure I understood. I didn’t, and he went on: “What did you think would happen? Draft all the able-bodied men, and how are the wives supposed to find food? Tell me you brought food.”

I didn’t answer. I presented him with the lifeless body of the boy. And Father Leonard took a deep breath, didn’t ask who or why or where, just took the boy in his arms, and began working his way back up through the rocks behind the narrow beach I’d found. For a moment, I considered pushing off once more, using the thimbleful of gas I had left to set myself adrift. Then I’d wait until the time or sea or clouds were right and I’d go over the side, feel the water, feel the cold clamp my lungs, and then, feel nothing at all.

But then I looked up and saw Father Leonard struggle with the weight of the boy as his climb grew steeper, and my reaction was automatic. I scrambled up the rocks after him, offered help, was refused, insisted on at least steadying him, and then the two of us-three of us-made our way to his tiny house.

He asked some of the local women to wash and prepare the boy’s body. And then there was a cemetery forested with weathered white whalebone, a short ceremony, horizontal rain, and the boy disappearing from view.

Everyone left; I stayed. I took down the tiny wooden cross Father Leonard had fashioned for the boy; I wasn’t so sure the boy was ours to give to God. I waited the rest of the afternoon and into the night, afraid and hopeful that Lily would come for him.

Or perhaps for me.

I waited there for her, on Father Leonard’s island, the Bering Sea island where I’d taken the boy. Father Leonard so despised the government that he was only too glad to shelter and hide an AWOL soldier. I waited for weeks; the war ended. Then weeks turned into months, into a year, and still I waited, for I knew what Jesus knew: “Watch therefore,” He said, “for you know neither the day nor the hour.” He was speaking of the maidens awaiting the bridegroom, who sat waiting, as I do still, late into the night. The foolish ones used up their lamp oil. The wise ones waited. And hadn’t Lily told me as much? Awaiting Saburo’s return, she had acted foolishly; she had taken up with Gurley I knew I would not be so unwise. When Lily came, I would be alone, and ready.

So when, in time, Father Leonard mentioned the seminary, I stopped what I was doing and listened. He had read into my quiet, steady patience a vocation, or perhaps he had spoken with God, who reminded Father Leonard that I had been at the doorstep of the seminary not two years before and chose war instead.

But to return to the seminary now seemed fitting and just. If the ensuing deprivations proved painful, so be it: I could not live a life long enough to do adequate penance for my war’s worth of sins. And truth be told, the life’s promised restraint held real appeal for me, especially celibacy. I would not make Lily’s mistake and fall in foolish love.

The priesthood offered something else, as well. A way to be with Lily, or tap into her world, while I waited. It would have been better to be a shaman, but I was not one and could not become one. It had been a struggle enough for Lily, and she had Yup’ik blood in her, had grown up in the bush. Becoming a priest was as close as an orphan Catholic could get. Please understand, though: I have never debased my vows. I do not pretend to pray to God while secretly seeking contact with the spirits of whales or walruses. I render unto God what is God’s, but in my prayers to Him, I have always asked that He make me aware to all things unseen, not simply His mysteries.

But by now, if I am convinced of anything, it is God’s omniscience- how else would He have seen to arrange my life as He has?-and I fear He knows the ulterior motive of my spiritual life. Knows it, and cannot abide it, and so my half-century waiting search for Lily has been a lonely one. He has never helped.

But I didn’t know that then. I only knew Father Leonard, and he always helped. Indeed, in all my time with him, he never denied me anything, never except in the very beginning, the day we buried the boy. I had become obsessed with a need to build a fire, a fire large enough to consume the boy, cremate him, and send his ashes swirling in the air. Father Leonard said no, gently, and then firmly, and even tried to reason with me: there wasn’t enough fuel for such a fire, to start with—