The Cloud Atlas

When I looked up, Lily's eyes were full of tears. “Any drunken soldier who walked into that building and actually wanted his palm read, I could tell him anything. But you-once I knew you actually did work related to what Saburo was doing-that you might have access to that journal-” She stopped. “Like I said that night I first told you about Saburo-I wanted to be useful to you.”

“Useful?” I was discovering what it was like to be Gurley; I could feel rage uncoiling inside me, seeking out a fist or arm. “And Gurley?” I said, to stall.

“Yes-or no. I mean, I knew he was involved, but eventually I realized he wouldn't help. Couldn't. And then it was too late. Things with Gurley-I don't know.”

“You tricked us?”

“Louis,” she said. “I wanted you to need me. I needed you to.”

“Gurley too?” I asked, but she didn't say anything. I felt her hand inching closer to mine again, but I didn't move. I tried very hard to stare at the page before me and nothing else. “You were helpful,” I finally said. “Or, I guess Saburo was. But how did he know about Shuyak? Portage around the Katmai volcanoes? Kayak across the Shelikof Strait?”

Relieved, I think, to submerge into detail, Lily began speaking rapidly. “Shuyak was an old crash site, one he'd heard about before he'd come to Bethel. I sent you there thinking you'd find an old balloon, not another one, a new one.”

I quickly scanned the other pages with new eyes and saw rivers, peninsulas, mountains, even towns emerge. One page looked particularly interesting. Green to the left and then a series of arrows to the right. Had Saburo known about plans for germ bombs? Had he told her? I wanted to ask her, but I couldn't. I was so angry and sad and defeated, I didn't want to know. More than that, I didn't want to see her lie, not to me.

She saw me studying the page. “I don't know what that means,” she volunteered. “We were going to go through the whole book, him explaining, me figuring out, translating names, but we didn't get any farther than Shuyak.” I didn't want her to say another word.

“So you lied about being a palm reader,” I said, the anger in my voice surprising me more than her. “You lied about-or didn't let on why you thought I'd be so useful. Did you also lie about your supposed ‘powers’? You hold something, and you know its story? How the hell did you know about me? About who I was? My childhood?” She snatched the papers away and crumpled them, tighter and tighter. “Did-did Gurley tell you? Was that a trick, too?”

“No, Louis,” Lily said.

“So what am I thinking now?” I said. “Read my thoughts. Prove it.” But there was nothing to read. I can't tell you what I was thinking. I was angry, but it was a boy's anger, fiery and violent and insensible, and even if you'd cracked my skull open to look inside, you would have seen nothing, only red.

I don't know what Lily saw. She said she saw nothing anymore.

“That's part of the reason I came all the way out here.” She held the ball of paper to her nose and mouth and breathed in. “In the city, in Anchorage, the longer I've been here, the harder it's been, the more everything-everything I know-is fading.” She took the papers away from her face and put them in her lap, absently smoothing them out. “I see Saburo now, but I don't know if that's the paper or just memory. And even those memories-I'm losing those, too.” She dropped the papers, found a crevice in the rock and wedged her fingers there, closed her eyes. After a minute, she'd stopped crying and was breathing deeply.

“There is a story, Louis,” she began. “About a boy, a baby boy, and his mother, that's been told for many years…”

I stopped her. I couldn't hear it. I wonder now what would have been different if I'd let her tell the story, the whole story, then, if I'd just been patient enough to hear her out. But I wasn't. I didn't say a word, I just raised a hand, and she stopped. She didn't argue, but just looked at me, disappointed and resigned.

“You really believed,” she finally said.

I nodded and sighed and slipped the papers back toward me. I studied them for a few minutes until she spoke again. Then she said, “Look.”

I turned, slowly, and saw nothing. But as I turned back, something above us distracted me, and I looked up to see something like clouds, or thinner than that, mist, twisting and undulating, changing colors as it did.

It would have done no good to tell me that I was seeing the aurora borealis for the first time and nothing more. This deep in the woods, this deep in the war, this far along with Lily: nothing was real anymore, at least nothing that I could not see, right at that moment.

And the lights above me, these I could see. I slowly leaned back until I was lying there, staring, looking up and watching the display, wondering if this was magic, or if the book had been, or the balloons, or if Lily was a magician, or Saburo, or Gurley