The Cloud Atlas

“‘Good prices,’” the white man repeated. “Not if you're buying junk. Mind you, that's what I thought at first, when I saw them come up in the jeep and take him off: I thought, there you go, he's getting arrested for selling inferior products. But no, wasn't that at all.” He looked again at the Yup'ik men, all of whom stared at me.

“Where'd you take him?” one of the Yup'ik men said.

“I don't know,” I tried, taking a moment to figure out what he was asking. “Some soldiers took him?” My questioner turned away.

“Now, boys,” the white man said. “Not every soldier knows every other soldier. See here, he's not from that kind of a unit.” Instead of pointing to my bomb disposal insignia, he pointed to my sergeant's stripes. “No, the government took Jap Sam down to California, I hear, for his capital-S safety. Mind you, he was Japanese, and I'm sure we're all safer, too, knowing all them Japanese are safe in that camp.”

“No one's never heard from Sam,” one of the Yup'ik men said. “Never since.”

“Mind you, boys,” the white man said. “There's a war on.” He looked out into the street. “Good day, Captain,” the man said to me, and left.

I stood there a minute, trying to decide what to do next, growing tense under the collective stare of the men. “What you want Jap Sam for, anyway?” said the one who'd spoken up earlier.

“Met a friend of his down in Anchorage,” I said.

“Jap friend?” the man said.

“No,” I said. “She's Yup'ik.” Glances were exchanged; I must have gotten the pronunciation close. “Well, Yup'ik and Russian.”

“Lily!” one of the other guys said with a shout and smile. Suddenly they were all talking. “How's our Lily?” “How's that girl?” “She still tall and pretty as anything?” Then one guy gushed, “Wasn't there a kid? How's he doin'?” and the other two frowned and fell silent.

No one said anything for a moment, and if you'd asked me, in that very instant, if I'd ever be able to speak again, I'm not sure if I'd have said yes. I'd been asked to believe a lot of things over the course of the war-that bombs could float through the air for thousands of miles, that teenagers could be given guns after a few weeks of training and be called soldiers, that the frozen-solid emptiness of Alaska was of strategic importance-but now I was being asked to believe that Lily had once been pregnant, had had a child.

The Yup'ik man who'd first questioned me looked up. “You're going to want to see Auntie Bella,” he said. “She's going to want to know about Lily, what she's doing and all.” He gave me directions, and when he finished speaking, it was clear I was to leave, immediately, without asking another thing.

BELLA: THAT NAME PROMISED someone huge, and round, and, I assumed, Yup'ik. But Bella was as thin and worn and white as the wooden posts that held up the porch outside her small boardinghouse.

Before I could say anything, she told me she had no vacancies, but when I told her I had news of Lily, she reluctantly let me in. Bella asked a lot of questions, mostly about Lily's health. Whenever I tried to ask a question, she interrupted with another one, asking questions about me when she'd run out of ones about Lily.

A noise outside distracted her and I jumped in. “One of the men I met, he said something about a kid-Lily has a child? Here?”

Bella gave me a hard look. “If she didn't tell you, don't imagine she wanted you to know,” Bella said, and we sat in silence for a bit.

Finally, Bella spoke up. “Wasn't no kid” she said. We sat a while longer. “I'm thinking about telling you a story,” she said. “But if I do, it's only because I want you to feel bad for having asked.”

“I already do,” I said. She snorted, and then got up and left the room. When she returned, she had a single, steaming mug of something, which she put on the table. After a moment, she picked it up and took a sip.

“I'm down to the one decent mug these days,” she said. “So I don't mind if I do.” Another sip. “Now, from all that you said, you sound like you're a friend.”

“I am,” I said.

“Boyfriend?” she asked, and I was so taken aback, I said nothing.

“Didn't think so,” she said, and shifted in her chair. “Well, you'll still feel bad,” she said. “But you'll probably also want to help her. And that's reason enough, I suppose.” She put the mug back down. “Feel free,” she said, nodding to it. But once she started talking, I couldn't move, and lost myself to the story.

LILY HAD RETURNED from her summer trip alone. People took some notice, but not much; few had seen her leave on her trip weeks back with Saburo, and in the meantime, the person who probably knew the most about Saburo, Sam, had been taken off to California, interned at Tule Lake.

And as the months passed, few people even noticed Lily had returned from her summer pregnant. Winter clothing concealed her secret from most everyone, except Bella, of course, who'd given Lily a room in the back.