David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

By the third day I could sit up, feed myself, thank my guardian angels & Autua, the last free Moriori in this world, for my deliverance. Autua insists that had I not prevented him from being tossed overboard as a stowaway he could not have saved me & so, in a sense, it is not Autua who has preserved my life but myself. Be that as it may, no nursemaid ever ministered as tenderly as rope-roughened Autua has to my sundry needs these last ten days. Sister Véronique (of the broom) jests that my friend should be ordained & appointed hospital director.

Mentioning neither Henry Goose (or the poisoner who assumed that name) nor the saltwater bath which Autua gave Boerhaave, Cpt. Molyneux forwarded my effects via Bedford’s agent, doubtless with one eye on the mischief my father-in-law may inflict on his future as a trader operating from San Francisco. Molyneux’s other eye is on disassociating his reputation from that now-notorious murderer known as the Arsenick Goose. The devil has not yet been apprehended by the Port Constabulary nor, I suspect, shall that day ever come. In Honolulu’s lawless hive, where vessels of all flags & nations arrive & depart daily, a man may change his name & history between entrée & dessert.

I am exhausted & must rest. Today is my thirty-fourth birthday.

I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.

Monday, 13th January

—

Sitting under the candlenut tree in the courtyard is pleasant in the afternoon. Laced shadows, frangipani & coral hibiscus ward away the memory of recent evil. The sisters go about their duties, Sister Martinique tends her vegetables, the cats enact their feline comedies & tragedies. I am making acquaintances amongst the local avifauna. The palila has a head & tail of burnished gold, the ākohekohe is a handsome crested honeycreeper.

Over the wall is a poorhouse for foundlings, also administered by the sisters. I hear the children chanting their classes (just as my schoolmates and I used to before Mr. & Mrs. Channing’s philanthropy elevated my prospects). After their studies are done, the children conduct their play in a beguiling babel. Sometimes, the more daring of their number brave the nuns’ displeasure by scaling the wall & conduct a grand tour above the hospice garden by means of the candlenut’s obliging branches. If the “coast is clear,” the pioneers beckon their more timid playmates onto this human aviary & white faces, brown faces, kanáka faces, Chinese faces, mulatto faces appear in the arboreal overworld. Some are Rafael’s age & when I remember him a bile of remorse rises in my throat, but the orphans grin down at me, imitate monkeys, poke out their tongues, or try to drop kukui nuts into the mouths of snoring convalescents & do not let me stay mournful for very long. They beg me for a cent or two. I toss up a coin for dextrous fingers to pluck, unerringly, from the air.

My recent adventures have made me quite the philosopher, especially at night, when I hear naught but the stream grinding boulders into pebbles through an unhurried eternity. My thoughts flow thus. Scholars discern motions in history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules; only outcomes.

What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts & virtuous acts.

What precipitates acts? Belief.

Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind’s mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being, & history’s Horroxes, Boerhaaves & Gooses shall prevail. You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? Why fight the “natural” (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?

Why? Because of this:—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Is this the doom written within our nature?

If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.

A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living. Upon my return to San Francisco, I shall pledge myself to the Abolitionist cause, because I owe my life to a self-freed slave & because I must begin somewhere.

I hear my father-in-law’s response: “Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam. But don’t tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell ’em their imperial slaves’ rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium’s! Oh, you’ll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You’ll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!”

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

* Here my father’s handwriting slips into spasmodic illegibility.—J.E.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Mitchell’s first novel, Ghostwritten , was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under thirty-five, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Number9Dream , followed in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta . He also returned to Britain from Japan, where he spent eight years, and now lives in Ireland.