The Cloud Atlas

CHAPTER 13

GURLEY DIDN’T COME IN THE NEXT MORNING. I DIDN’T expect him to. I almost went looking for him in the vain hope that I would not find him where I knew he was. But I stayed put. He was Lily’s, for now. And she could have him. She could use Gurley leech whatever secrets she might from him. That’s what she wanted, all she wanted.

Alone in the Quonset hut, I spun open the safe, removed the atlas, and set it on my desk.

But I didn’t open it, not at first. To do so would have been to stumble into another tryst. Lily and Saburo’s romantic summer scrapbook. The most I could console myself with was that here, at least, lay evidence that Gurley had competition, too.

I laid my hand flat on the cover. How big was Saburo’s hand? Was it callused? Soft? Smooth? Creased? What did it look like, when it was clenched as a fist or with fingers splayed, cupped or about to caress? Had it ever unlocked a cage, delicately removed a rat? Swatted a flea?

I wiped my hands on my pants, despite myself, felt foolish, and then opened the book again.

The problem was, our book-Gurley’s and mine, Lily and Saburo’s-was too beautiful. It might have looked like the other atlas on the outside-and the more I looked, the more certain I was that they came from the same source-but on the inside, it was completely different. What little I’d seen of the other book had revealed only writing, a scribbled diagram here and there, hasty notes, that strange code. No pictures. No watercolor sketches.

But this book—

I leafed through the drawings, the written passages alongside. Much of the book was given over to weather observations, with notes of wind direction and speed. The balloons were mentioned repeatedly and predictions were made as to where they would land in North America, Alaska in particular. Some of these locations were plotted on maps. Beyond that, however, little was clear. The book was “maddeningly poetic,” Gurley had said; the descriptions grew more lyrical and opaque as the book progressed. The maps were rich in topographic detail, but none bore place names. And they were done on a microscopic scale; no pages depicted the whole of Alaska, say, or the entire Pacific Northwest. Instead there were detailed coastlines of indeterminate islands. Stretches of riverbank. Tempting paths plotted across lush but vague landscapes.

I tried to imagine Saburo’s hand at the end of a day, cradling a pencil or brush, dabbing at the page while Lily stoked a small fire for dinner. I tried to tease figures of Lily out of the watercolor sketches. That vertical brushstroke, there, the way it intersected with that thin line: that was Lily.

Saburo and I shared this, at least: only we knew that she was everywhere in this book of balloons and bombs, hidden within the stroke of a pen or a brush. There was no trace of her if you didn’t know how or where to look. Once I decided I did, I found her everywhere, even in the little maps that were inked in here and there. One seemed to trace a path clear into a sun-clear across the Pacific, most likely, the route Saburo wanted to use to spirit Lily home.

I know what you’re hiding, Saburo. Where you’re hiding. Right- here.

But it was no use. Trace the drawings as I might, rub at the maps with my thumb until the page began to smudge, nothing emerged, nothing of Saburo, of Lily. Gurley had thought bombs were hidden here, and I suppose there were, if Lily had been telling the truth. But I hadn’t seen them, not balloons, not bombs, and certainly not buboes, swollen with disease. I found myself wanting to exonerate Saburo, at least from this last, most heinous crime. Well, Lily was alive and healthy, that was evidence enough, wasn’t it? He couldn’t have been handling dangerous germs, not without risking her life, let alone his own—

He’s gone, Louis.

Oh, Lily, no—

I stood to leave. I had to find her, ask her. Even if Gurley was still with her. I looked at the clock: 1900 hours.

I was about to put my hand on the door when it banged open in front of me.

THE EYE PATCH WAS GONE, a red-stained, black-rimmed eye in its place. His color was better, though, and from his first words, I knew he had recovered, as much as he ever would, anyway.

“Sergeant… Belk,” he said, with enough space between the words to make me wish I’d left long before. “And where are you going? Please join me, in my office. We have much to discuss. So much.”

“Sir?”

“In-my-office.”

I followed him in, sat down. He went to the map and studied it for a while, running his finger along Alaska ’s western coast and then on to Russia. He examined some spot in the Bering Sea. Then he removed a pushpin to play with, and sat down.

“Sergeant Belk,” he said. “First of all, I must thank you.”

Better to just sit there than respond.

“No, really. I shouldn’t have gone to Fairbanks -delightful as it was, as it always is to see two dead enemy soldiers, stretched out before you. And you? A stalwart. Standing there, the soul of discretion, restraint. Didn’t even turn green. You’ve earned my admiration. For getting through Fairbanks, and getting me home. And getting me downtown last night.” He’d been playing with the pin, but now looked up. “And for so much more, I understand.”

This time, he waited for an answer. “Sir?” I asked.

“My companion-our, what? mutual friend-tells me that you both have been, well- looking out for me. This is touching.”

“Sir, Lily and I haven’t-not for—”

“Not fond of sentences that start that way, Sergeant, if we can get right to the point. I’m not fond of learning that I’m being looked out for, either, as though I were some doddering uncle, as though I were some amputee invalid unable to wipe his own ass-but no, what troubles me more is this ‘Lily and I’ business.”

“Captain, I’m not sure what—”

“Neither am I. I thought we had a rather clear, specific discussion about this topic on the plane to Wyoming so long ago. Christ, Belk, I showed you an ad for a ring. What did you think I was up to? I thought we had an understanding. I trusted you. And Lily. I told you that she was amp;unavailable. And now I learn you availed yourself of her quite consistently.”

“That was way back, sir,” I said, before realizing that made it sound like something had happened. “It’s been weeks, sir. Months, since—” Worse. “Nothing ever happened. Or will. I swear. I promise.” What had Lily told him? I watched his hands, surveyed the desk, wondering which way he’d come for me, what he would hit me with.

“Sadly-for you-I almost believe that, Belk. But you’re what? Fourteen? What could happen? No, the lovely Lily offered no insight into matters carnal between you. Rather, it was left to me to review all that she said-the number of times she used your name, or included you in a ‘we,’ or spoke tenderly of how you both would conspire to take care of me-and determine for myself exactly what you had or had not done.”

And that was his error, or hers, or mine: that he’d said she’d repeatedly mentioned my name; or that she had, even after all these months; or that learning this so thrilled and alarmed me that I turned the guiltiest shade of red a man can manage.

“Nothing happened, sir,” I stammered.

“Nothing, indeed. Without trust, there is nothing.”

“Surely Lily told you—”

“Oh, that woman,” Gurley said. “As painful as it was for me to hear her say your name, I find it even more grating to hear hers come from you. Silence.”

And so we sat there. Gurley stared at me for a while, as though I might break under the pressure and confess to-I don’t know what. Had she told him we’d never shared more than a meal? Had she told him about that last evening we’d had together, about the map of her body that she’d undressed to show me?

I was too scared to speak, or move, or even look away. I sat there, swallowing his look, unable to muster anything for him in return. He finally swung around in his chair and looked at the map again.

“You know how I hate a spy, Sergeant,” he said, looking at me over his shoulder. “And by spy, I mean traitor. Do you know what I mean, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that I would still be serving in the main of the OSS, serving in Paris, most likely. Or Rome. Or Casablanca. Some part of the war where there was as much sun as wine as women…”

“Yes, sir.”

He came around the desk, finally, and towered over me. “I’d still have two fucking legs to stand on, Belk, had it not been for a spy, for lack of a better word, for whoever betrayed me, got me kicked out of headquarters and into this maliciously absurd duty. Chasing balloons. With a boy sergeant. And an Eskimo-oh, what? Whore.”

He didn’t hit me. He lost something with the mention of Lily, and after a moment, retreated back behind the desk.

“That’s why this upsets me. More than wondering if you and Lily did… anything, that you discussed, plotted to—”

“I told her, sir,” though of course I hadn’t, “you didn’t need taking care of. I didn’t know why she was talking about it. I could have cared less. I don’t care,” I added, a second before realizing how far I had gone.

Gurley drew a deep breath and smiled. “That, too, is touching, Sergeant,” he said. “No better way to extricate yourself from a tight spot than by shooting yourself in the foot and then taking aim at your captor.” He smiled, and then pulled open a file drawer and rummaged through it. Out came the bottle. Then two glasses.

“We met over a whisky, Sergeant,” he said, unscrewing the bottle, smelling it, and then pouring a measure in each glass. “Let us part the same way.”

I stood so rapidly that I knocked over my own chair. I really thought he was going to kill me. Had he been wearing his holster? The way he was sitting, I couldn’t tell.

“Sit, dear boy,” he said. I backed a step away. He rolled his eyes. “And to think-I had such hopes. A young, tractable mind. A mind to fill with knowledge-wisdom.” He pointed to a spot on the wall to the left of the map. “ Greece,” he said. “Right about there. What did the ancient Greeks do to traitors, brave Belk?” He took a sip. “Good Lord, son, sit. It tires me so to see you devote feeble resources to both standing and thinking.” He drank down the rest, and then poured himself another shot. “We’re sharing a drink, Sergeant. Appreciate this for the outlandishly generous gesture that it is-the sentry might burst in and charge me with fraternization, surely-and so sit down, and take, up, your, glass.”

I righted the chair, and moved around into it. What had Lily told him to make him this mad? It was jealousy, but it was more than that. It might have been his leg. Betrayal.

He raised his glass. I raised mine. “Salut,” he said, and watched me. “Now is when you drink.” I drank. He closed his eyes in pleasure. He pointed to Greece ’s spot on the wall again. “You were killed, of course,” he said. “That goes without saying. Still true today. Spies are hanged. But-the ancient Greeks did us one better, as is true in so many things. The goods of a spy were seized. Their houses-razed. Their progeny treated as outlaws. And their bodies, Belk? Not buried, but cast out in some wild, desolate place.” He sipped at his drink. “Not as good as what I paid for it, but better than I’ve had of late. What think you?” I nodded.

Gurley turned back to the map. “So shall be your sentence, Sergeant.” I froze, but Gurley waved his glass at me when he saw I had. “No, no. I’ve had all day to think about this. You have no goods to seize, no house to raze, save that orphanage, I suppose, and I have no interest in immolating nuns.”

“Sir, I just want to apologize,” I said, only sure that was where to start.

“Accepted,” Gurley said. “Now, then. As I was saying, circumstances being what they are, my options are limited. The Greeks would have executed you, yes, perhaps, but they didn’t have our modern legal system to worry about. So execution is tempting, yes, but… messy, for so many reasons. This leaves me with one option.”

“Sir, I don’t understand how-if-I’ll never go downtown again, sir.”

“No, Sergeant,” he said, putting his glass down. “You shan’t.” He stood and went to the map. “Downtown, Anchorage, the Starhope- the lovely Miss Lily-will all be very, very far away.” He turned back to me. “For while I cannot kill you-though I do reserve the right to- I shall still cast your body out into a wild, desolate space. I’m having you transferred, Belk. To amp;Little-where are you?” He searched the map. “Yes. Diomede.”

“Where?” I stood now, too, squinting after him at the map. Was that near Russia? In Russia?

“Goodness, Belk, I’m not sure exactly where” he said. “We’ll leave finding it to the plane or boat that deposits you there. La Petite Diomede. An island in the Bering Sea. Wild and desolate, and—”

“Captain,” I said, still unable to spot my specific destination on the wall. “Little Dio-what? Diomede? I don’t understand. It looks-it looks like it’s too far north. It’s nowhere near the flight path of these balloons. I’m not going to find anything there.”

“Exactly, Sergeant. I should hope you don’t find anything. That might complicate things considerably.” He found his chair and sat, though he kept his eyes on the map. “I did consider the South Pacific, of course, the front. Trench foot, land mines, snipers, tenacious enemy soldiers who insist on being killed, and killing, one by one by one. Surely death would find you there.” Now he turned back to me. “But you see how that would be disappointing, your suffering liable to end so quickly. No, I much prefer this island I’ve found. I understand it’s a mostly treeless rock. Some Natives, some soldiers-rampant suicide, homicide, but I trust you’ll hold your own.” He lifted his glass, saw it was empty, and put it back down. “See, Belk, I can be generous. Even to a traitor.”

Bravery, alcohol, the delight in escaping the front-line tropics- something inserted a thin line of steel within me, and I spoke. “Not generous,” I said quietly. “The South Pacific? Lily would never forgive you-for doing that to me.”

I saw him tense. I saw his hands curl into fists, and I saw the thoughts progress in his mind. This didn’t happen quickly, but slowly and deliberately, as he considered each image before him. Heaving his chair at me. His desk. Leaping across the desk for my throat. Lowering his hand to his hip, removing his gun, raising it, aiming, pulling the trigger.

Instead, he slowly drew the book across the desk toward him, staring at me all the while. “Before we part, Belk,” he said. “There was always something I had meant to show you. Something that will demonstrate to you why I might have predicted these balloons would, literally, come to ill in due time. Here is my point, Belk,” he said. “You must never underestimate the nefariousness of the Oriental mind.”

He sounded like Gurley the actor, but he no longer looked like him. He was no longer playing a part; he’d been consumed by it. One hears the term wild-eyed, and thinks of what? A raving drunk? A rabid dog or raccoon? Not nearly: this was wild-eyed. If I’d been nearer, he would have nipped at me, teeth flashing, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I myself were a foaming pit bull or lion, or-take note, Ronnie-wolf: he would have bitten my nearest limb clean through.

His voice skittered high and low, the words tumbling out with manic speed.

“You admired the art in the book,” he said, flipping through it to the back, to those mysterious empty gray pages. He looked up, I nodded numbly. He smiled and produced a pocketknife. I leapt up; he clucked. “Shh, Sergeant. Down, boy, down. As though I’d sully my quarters with your foul blood.” He unfolded a blade and then added an afterthought: “Besides-who knows what disease lurks dormant in you?”

I sat, slowly. He sliced out a page, with difficulty, which shocked me almost as much as anything else: our precious book! Lily’s book! It felt like he was peeling away an expanse of skin.

“As I said, you’ve admired the book, but your appreciation has been superficial, as it could only be.” He poured the glass before him almost full, and then folded the blank page and poked it in until it was submerged. “The paper, Belk. The paper, Sergeant, is most remarkable.”

I could be out the door in two steps, maybe one. Or the phone: it was within reach. But the knife, still open, was within his reach and much closer.

“The paper for the balloons is made of, what did we determine? Something like the mulberry bush.” He sang a little to himself while he poked at the paper. “Round and round the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel…” Then he looked up, head lolling as though he were drunk. “Quite similar, in fact, to the paper in this book, which, my yeeeeaaaars of education inform me is washi paper. Some of the balloons, in fact, appear to feature a few panels which are this very same paper.” I looked on, genuinely distracted with surprise. “Didn’t that always strike you as odd? A mission this daring, this important, and they entrust it to paper?” I nodded, caught up, despite myself. “Indeed. Well, as it happens, as no one else in this grossly undereducated army seems to know, this paper has precisely the pedigree for the job. It’s very strong, for one, curiously strong-so strong that-well, let me show you.” He drew the now-sodden paper out of the glass.

“Tradition holds that assassins-not radio show adventure heroes-made use of such paper. Say you wanted to kill someone,” he said, his voice sinking. “Say you wanted to kill someone and have no one find out. You wait until your quarry is sleeping. You take a billet-doux-sized sheet of washi paper and wet it”-he held up the dripping page-“don’t worry, it won’t disintegrate. Your prey lets out a great exhale-and you set upon him!” Gurley started, and I jumped, involuntarily, as he intended. “He awakes; he cannot breathe. He is startled, confused, he struggles, but you hold him down” Gurley said through gritted teeth. “You hold that paper right where it is. And he sucks and gasps, but all he’s doing is pulling that paper tighter and tighter and tighter.” I looked away; it was too sickening, as though one of those plague-infected ulcers were spreading across his brain.

But he started speaking again, and when I looked at him once more, I saw that instead of his usual hideous smile, his face was slack and his eyes full of what had to be tears. “Why couldn’t they have just done that, Belk? Why couldn’t they have just-why couldn’t Father Ioa-saph’s angel been a real angel? Why couldn’t he have leapt from his smoking basket beneath the balloon and set upon me?” He was talking solely to the paper now. “I asked them how long the pain would last, and one doctor said, ‘What do you mean?’ and the other doctor said, ‘Forever.’ I ask Lily to move with me south-the medical discharge is there, whenever I want it, a free ticket home, a check every month- and she says one thing and then another but never yes. She talks about how this is her home, but she never talks about the real reason. A goddamn leg that won’t—”

What happened next is ridiculous, except that it really happened, in just this way. Gurley took the sheet he’d so carefully prepared, and slapped it to his face. And sure enough, it settled there, a second skin, each gasp further sealing it with an additional suture. He turned red, fell to the floor, and spasmed. The paper held absolutely fast. Maybe a minute passed, maybe two, and then I remembered that I wasn’t Gurley, that I didn’t have the stomach to stand by while someone killed himself, and that, however hard he’d tried to convince me otherwise, my first loyalty was to Lily, and she had said: take care of him.

I fell to the floor, reached to peel the paper away from his face, but lost my balance as he thrashed.

That’s when he made his move.

And then the paper was on me. It smelled of whisky and spit and Gurley and something else-rice, I suppose, strange as that sounds. He couldn’t get it to adhere, not as well as it had on him, but he didn’t need it to; he was on top of me, pressing me down, his hands making up for anything the paper failed to do.

“And you hold him down, Sergeant. He sucks in, he gasps for air, but he is only making it worse.”

If I’d have taken a breath first, if I’d been prepared, I would have had no difficulties. I would have had the air to slither out from under him. But I hadn’t taken that breath, and now, instead of fighting, I was panicking. I watched him, watched for him to watch me. Look at me, I willed him. Look at me. Wouldn’t this make it harder to kill me? Even for Gurley?

I don’t know. It would have made it harder for me. But for whatever the reason, he did look, and maybe he saw me, or maybe he saw Lily, or maybe he saw himself. He tore the paper away, rolled off, and stared at me while I panted there.

I slid away from him, but only a short distance; I was surprised by how tired I was. I looked back at him; he was tired, too. Sitting on the floor, back against the wall, he even looked a bit like the old Gurley, comically instead of criminally mad.

We sat like that for a while. I think it was only a minute, but if someone measured it as an hour, I wouldn’t argue.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. He waved an arm so that his apology included the whole office, the whole war, perhaps. “I’m-listen,” he said. “Help me up.”

I laughed. Well, I didn’t laugh. I puffed. I rolled my head to look at him, and then rolled it back to stare straight up. His left foot was cockeyed; the leg had detached.

“Louis,” he said: my first name. I don’t know why; I wish he hadn’t. “I still think-I mean, we can see, but-given everything. Maybe you should go anyway to-maybe it’s best.” He stopped.

“Sergeant,” he said, the old voice. Not angry, but the officer once more.

“I’ll go,” I said.

“You might be able to help from there,” he said. “Truly. That fishing boat-it wasn’t so far south of there. It’s just that, with Lily and all—”

“I’ll go,” I said, and slowly got to my feet. “First thing,” I said. “First flight I can get going anywhere. Anywhere north.”

“Good boy,” said Gurley. “Good man. I’m sorry, Sergeant—”

“Good night, sir,” I said, going to the door.

Gurley put on what he must have thought was a brave face: he wasn’t going to ask, again, for help getting up. Which was good, because I wasn’t going to.

“Louis,” he said, which was again so strange that I turned back to look at him, even though I was through the door.

But he was still slumped against the wall, and the half-closed door obscured his face. I could only see his legs, and hands, and the sheet of paper, drying on the floor.

And I could hear him softly calling after me: “Sleep well!”