The Cloud Atlas

Now I interrupted him. “You didn't,” I said, forcing a patient smile as guilt turned to anger-at Ronnie, and myself. Ronnie was a friend, but not a believer. How could I justify sitting here, by his side, around the clock, when others-the faithful-needed me, as they surely did? Ronnie had not asked me to pray with him. He'd not asked me for much of anything, in fact, other than twenty dollars and a promise to help him die. What should have followed, then, was not an endless vigil of two old men exchanging stories, but rather a priest administering what sacraments he could-baptism, if the man was interested, confession, communion, and the anointing of the sick. At which point, the talking should stop, and the priest should leave, and the dying man should do his best to die.

I prepared to ask Ronnie if, as the hour of his death grew near, he wanted to be baptized with the waters of everlasting life, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I prepared to be rejected. I prepared to stand, say a short, defiant prayer, give a curt nod, and leave.

But none of this happened, because I hadn't prepared for what Ronnie was about to tell me.

“You must not stop talking,” Ronnie said again. “You may speak softly, but your voice must be clear to me. Your voice, your human, kass'aq, priest-voice, it worries the wolf. This tuunraq, he circles me, he circles you, but he is afraid to move closer while you are here. This is good. I am not ready for him yet. You must keep speaking.” He took a deep breath and let his head rest back on the pillow. “Not just because of the tuunraq, but also because that is how I find my way home. Hearing you. I have to travel far this time, to where the dead live. I was not sure I had to go.” He looked at me and shrugged, as though we were discussing an unexpected need to visit Anchorage, or the grocery store. He settled back again. “But this is what I think. This is why I told you the story of the mother and the boy.”

“Ronnie,” I interrupted once more, no longer hiding my anger.

His face was completely open, as though he were indulging me and not the other way around. “Then I tell it again. This was not long ago. This was when the kass'at brought the great sickness to our land.” I wanted to stand, then, and leave, rather than be excoriated-as I'd been a dozen times before-for being of that tribe, that world, that introduced smallpox and tuberculosis and worse to the Yup'ik Eskimo. Disease: the Outsiders' invisible, potent weapon. Within years, we had killed thousands. One out of every three died from TB. More babies died than lived. It didn't matter that we later stormed the tundra with nurses, doctors, and drugs. It was too late. “And this was a mother with a new child. A boy. He was very small, this boy. A baby. He rushed out of his mother too early, and into the sickness. The other wives all scooped him up and held him close and waited for him to die. But he surprised them. He lived. It was the mother who died. The baby had come too soon. She was too tired.” Ronnie took a long breath, tired himself. “They took the mother to be buried. The baby too. No one wanted this boy who had killed his mother. Into the grave he went, placed beside his silent mother, wailing all the while.” He paused, took another long breath, and I realized he was about to reproduce the baby's cry. But the sound that came out-it was unbearable, a terribly thin and eerie wail. If I had never known Ronnie until that minute, if I had simply walked into the room and encountered him there, that sound spewing out of him, I would have said without reservation that this was a man who spoke with spirits. This sound came from far, far beneath him. He caught his breath and continued. “He would not stop crying. He sobbed. This is what babies do. But he cried on and on, and his voice carried, through the dirt, through the grass, through the walls of their homes, through their skulls. He cried so long and so loud that his mother awoke. He had distracted her on her journey to the land of the dead. She heard him, as any mother would, and she knew the villagers had abandoned him. She arose and walked to the village. The people begged her to leave. The shamans begged her. But the mother was confused. She had risen for the baby, but he had fallen silent. What was she to do? She was angry. Why had she died? Why had they buried her boy? She broke things. Stole things. She told the animals to stay away. The hunters could not hunt. She would not leave. Where was her husband? Why had he allowed this? She looked for him, but he hid,” Ronnie finished abruptly. “This is what they say.”

Then his tone changed, from storyteller to teacher. “This is why you must never cry at a funeral,” he said. “You must be quiet when death is near, or the dead will not complete their journey. And this is why you must speak to me. Because I do not want to lose my way in the land of the dead. Keep talking. Your voice will call me back.”