The Cloud Atlas

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-

“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.