David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

“The balloons,” I said. “I can do it. I just need one of the incendiaries from the balloons.” I was so addled I didn’t realize that there was a possibility-or rather, as was always the case, a probability-that no fire balloons had happened to land nearby.

Father Leonard looked at me. “Balloons,” he said. “What, in God’s holy name, are you talking about?”

Tell me how he died, Lou-is.

Ronnie: I glance at him; did I just hear him speak or imagine it? His eyes are closed. I take a deep breath. And then he says it again: “Tell me how he died.”

This time I am sure I hear him, and this time, for the first time, I realize something else.

“You first,” I say.

SOMETIMES I DREAM I KILLED HIM. THAT I CLUBBED THE doctor who wouldn’t ease his pain with morphine and went for the cabinet myself. Sometimes I find the morphine, enough to administer a compassionate, lethal dose. Sometimes the cabinet is empty. Sometimes the boy screams, and the doctor screams. Sometimes the doctor shoots him, sometimes I shoot the doctor.

And sometimes, the boy’s wailing stops and his eyes close. And I move to his pillow, and I place the barrel of my revolver just two inches from his head. And then I wait. I wait for him to stop breathing, so as to render my bullet unnecessary. I wait for courage. I wait for mercy to replace rage. I wait for Lily to come into the room and open my hands and find the future there.

I wait for Ronnie to speak.

“There was a boy,” Ronnie said. This was just a few hours ago. “A boy and his mother.”

Would not stop crying , I could have said, but did not have to; Ronnie knew what I was thinking.

“I did not tell you this,” Ronnie said. “There was a mother and her baby, a baby that had come too soon. And no one could help her, and the doctor wouldn’t help her, and they sent for me.”

I—

I couldn’t move, or speak: Ronnie had been there , in that room, with—

“Lily,” Ronnie said. “Yes. This was Lily,” he said, and waited. I still said nothing, and he went on.

“When I was young and strong, my tuunraq , my wolf, he was a good spirit helper. He could go inside a sick person, tear out the sickness. He would return to me, his jaws red with blood, and I would know he had done good. I saw this. I know this. But that night, with Lily, that was when he ran away. Lily had asked me to help her, and the tuunraq , he ran away. When we journey, we angalkut tie them to us, these spirits, because this is what they do, they run, and they will run away if they can. And this wolf broke free. I could not stop him. I have searched for him ever since. I wanted to find him before he found me.”

He did not so much speak as take the words and place them, one by one, behind my eyes, beneath my scalp. I can feel them there now.

Ronnie started again. “When they came for me, asked me to help Lily, I did not want to go. These were women’s matters. But I came and I looked and I saw what the others had seen. The baby had come, the baby had died. I saw this. But I also saw something else, something else no one saw, something Lily had hoped I would see. I could see the child’s spirit floating just above him, in the dark. You know what this looks like?”

Yes. I do. And I could see Lily’s baby, just as well as I could see the boy from the balloon. I could see blood and hair and tiny hands and—

Ronnie was shaking his head. He held up a hand, palm up. “Like this,” he said.

“Like what?” I asked, staring at Ronnie’s face, not his hand.

“A breath,” Ronnie said. “The boy was dead, maybe they thought he was born dead, but he had taken a breath, a single breath-did you know this?-and when I got there, it was still hanging in the air above him.”

“Ronnie—”

“No,” Ronnie said. “My wolf saw it, too, asked me if he should fetch it, take this spirit, this breath by the scruff of its neck, and plunge it back down inside the boy. The wolf looked at me. He asked me this. Lily was saying things, too. I did not hear. I just looked at the boy. The wolf looked at me. Then he lunged.”

Ronnie had been staring before him as he said this. Now he turned.

“But I was too quick for him. I was younger then. Faster. With two feet. I sprang for his spirit, that breath. I jumped and I got it.” Ronnie made a sudden fist and then opened his hand once more.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I jumped before the wolf. Because I understood. I thought I understood what the wolf did not. This boy was not to live here. Within him ran Yup’ik blood, but also the blood of another place. And I knew that this blood would be the end of us. Just as I knew when I first saw you and the priest before you and the priest before him. Such new blood would be the end of us. The end of how the Yup’ik lived. Yup’ik : this means the real people. This child was not real. I saw this. I knew this. When I saw the boy, when I saw his father.”

Worse than hearing this was believing it, and I tried to stop: “You were there, Ronnie? You were really there? This isn’t alcohol or diabetes or—”

“You have the proof,” Ronnie said.

We stared at each other.

And I almost wish it had ended that way. That each of us, in turn, would feel our eyelids droop and close, our jaws go slack, and then, slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed, our life seep out of us and into the floor.

But it didn’t.

“When the wolf left, I knew I had done wrong,” Ronnie said. “I took the breath, I went to the boy-but it had been too long now, and without the wolf, I could not plunge his breath deep enough inside him. Lily only knew-Lily only knew that I tried. She saw my tears and saw my failure, but did not see all of it. Lou-is: when her lover came, this Saburo, when she asked me to help him out of town, help him deliver the baby’s body into the tundra? Yes. I would never say no again.

“One of the aunties had talked-there were soldiers, police, everywhere. We almost got caught, several times. We took two kayaks; I led him an hour downriver, and from there, he insisted he go on alone. You would know the place? Where the bank is worn away? Where the ircenrrat gather? He said to wait there for him, that he would come back, return the map-the path Lily might take to see their son.” Ronnie shook his head. “Why there?”

“I know it,” I said quietly. “I know the place.”

“It was not a place I could go, not then, not after my tuunraq had left me, run before me and set all the other spirits against me. I could feel them coming, worming through the ayuq , the soil, down the bank, to the water. I ran for my kayak, I started upstream.”

“You left Saburo?”

“He found me,” Ronnie said. “I took the map from him, but-but by the time he caught up with me, I’d almost made it back to Bethel. A boat-with a light-it saw us. I went to shore, into the cottonwood. Saburo went downriver. I heard yelling, shots, then nothing.”

I waited before speaking.

“What did Lily say when she saw the map?” I asked.

“I couldn’t face her, not then,” Ronnie said. “Not after what I knew had happened to Saburo. I found some gin. Then more gin. I got drunk. Police came. And when I woke up in my cell, the book was gone. I at least gave Lily and Saburo this: I would not let them beat the truth out of me. I played the drunk fool, said I had no idea where the map came from, what it meant.” Ronnie scrunched his face at the memory. “I was the drunk fool,” he said, and looked at me, shrugged. “Proof.”

I shook my head. Ronnie smiled, exhausted, and looked outside.

“The wolf, he’s closer,” Ronnie said. “Not close enough.” The window looked the way our televisions up here used to before satellite: snow swirling against a dark screen, pressing to get in. “But you’ll help him, Lou-is, won’t you? Give him what he’s coming for.” Ronnie paused, tried to smile once more. “Tell him he’s late.”