The Cloud Atlas

The longer he went without mentioning this most important (only to me?) fact, the more rattled I became. How could she not have told him? Saburo: her first love, that golden summer, those perfect hands? As Gurley rambled on, however, I had time to think about it, and came to realize that she had every reason to lie to him. Her one desire was to make it out into the bush in search of-well, I'd never let her spell it out that night, but I knew she was searching for Saburo's body. But she couldn't get to Bethel without a military escort-that's why she had wanted me to come. I'd failed her, so she'd gone to Gurley. Riskier, but also better-he would have access to better resources. He could operate with more autonomy. He was an officer, after all, unlike me. He was her lover.

But I got to Lily first that afternoon. I'm sure Gurley expected me to go directly to the airfield without even stopping at my barracks, but instead, I went directly downtown, where I found Lily, peering out her window, as if she was expecting me, or someone. She smiled and gave me a little wave. I ran up to the second floor, a new question popping up on each stair- Did we really see the northern lights? Did I really see a balloon? Did we really run into the forest, the two of us, together, last night?-but when I reached her, what came out first was Gurley's decision to go to Bethel.

She looked both delighted and scared. “We're going to go?” she asked. “You're sure? Me, too? He said all of us?”

“He didn't tell you? It seemed like things were pretty well decided.”

“Last night-” Lily began, “or I guess it was this morning, after I made it back into town, I came back down here, I found him wandering the street.”

“Was he angry?” I asked. “He must have asked why you ran. Did he see me? I was sure he saw me.”

“What did he tell you?” Lily asked carefully.

“About last night?” I said. “Nothing. Just that you'd had this conversation.” I waited for her to augment this, but she didn't, so I went on. “About a ‘spy.’” I paused again. “Lily, what were you thinking? Look what's happened-he's carting us all off to the bush, and God knows what he'll do there, where he won't have to worry about anyone other than us witnessing him completely cracking up. He's dangerous, Lily. He's ready to kill. Starting with me.”

Lily went to the window and checked the street. “That's why I told him,” she said, and then turned to me. “To spare you.”

LILY'S ACCOUNT OF the early morning hours differed from Gurley's. Gurley hadn't mentioned to me that he'd seen Lily or anyone else on the misty streets; and he'd heavily edited his conversation with Lily. He left out, for example, what Lily said was the first thing he'd asked her- Was that you and Louis I saw in the street?-and he'd left out her reply.

“Yes, it was me,” she told him. “But not Louis. You've scared him half to death. I'll be lucky if I ever see him again.”

“I'll be luckier if you don't,” Gurley had said. I wondered how he'd looked when he'd said that. With me, it would have been behind a sneer, or preceding a fist. But it had to be different with her.

“He's just a boy,” she told him, and didn't even smile at me as she repeated the line now.

“Well,” Gurley said. Lily said he kept looking around, like I might still be lurking in the shadows. “Who was it, then? It was someone. It was someone. I know I saw someone with you. A man. Not a ‘customer’? I thought we had an agreement. I thought I'd taken care of that for you. You should have enough now, enough to get by without-God, Lily, we've talked about this. You know what I've said, what I'm planning for you, for us-”

“Not a customer,” Lily said. She told me now that she had been stalling, frantically trying to come up with a plausible scenario. He'd been watching her grow upset, and suddenly decided he knew what had happened.

“No, Lily-you-you were attacked,” Gurley said, grabbing her arm. “My God. My God: he hurt you. And me, limping along after you, your helpless defender. Did he-did he-my God, Lily, did he- rape-?”

Lily said she started crying: she could see no way out. He'd taken over her story-now rape was involved; should she admit to that, peg it on some random thug? One of those brawling sailors, unexpectedly returned? Lost and distraught, she blurted out-because it was true- “He was a friend.”

She gasped, destroyed now because she'd thought she'd revealed once and for all that it was me.

But I was apparently gone from Gurley's mind, and he pressed in on this new quarry: “‘Was’?” he asked. “Who was he? A friend? Why would you cry if it was a friend? What kind of friend is that?”

And that was all Lily needed. Because when he asked the question, the obvious answer, the real answer, came to mind, immediately. What friend had she cried over, again and again?

Saburo.