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Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell


  “Quite a claim.”

  “I’m not asking you to take my word for it.”

  35

  Crustacean shrapnel is piled high. Luisa and Fay Li dab their fingers in pots of lemon-scented water, and Li’s eyebrow tells the waiter to remove the plates. “What a mess I’ve made.” Luisa drops her napkin. “I’m the slob of the class, Fay. You should open a finishing school for young ladies in Switzerland.”

  “That’s not how most people in Seaboard Village see me. Did anyone tell you my nickname? No? Mr. Li.”

  Luisa isn’t sure what response is expected. “A little context might help.”

  “My first week on the job, I’m up in the canteen, fixing myself a coffee. This engineer comes up, tells me he’s got a problem of a mechanical nature, and asks if I can help. His buddies are sniggering in the background. I say, ‘I doubt it.’ The guy says, ‘Sure you can help.’ He wants me to oil his bolt and relieve the excess pressure on his nuts.”

  “This engineer was how old? Thirteen?”

  “Forty, married, two kids. So his buddies are snorting with laughter now. What would you do? Dash off some witty put-down line, let ’em know you’re riled? Slap him, get labeled hysterical? Besides, creeps like that enjoy being slapped. Do nothing? So any man on site can say shit like that to you with impunity?”

  “An official complaint?”

  “Prove that women run to senior men when the going gets tough?”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Had him transferred to our Kansas plant. Middle of nowhere, middle of January. I pity his wife, but she married him. Word gets around, I get dubbed Mr. Li. A real woman wouldn’t have treated the poor guy so cruelly, no, a real woman would have taken his joke as a compliment.” Fay Li smooths wrinkles in the tablecloth. “You run up against this crap in your work?”

  Luisa thinks of Nussbaum and Jakes. “All the time.”

  “Maybe our daughters’ll live in a liberated world, but us, forget it. We’ve got to help ourselves, Luisa. Men won’t do it for us.”

  The journalist senses a shifting of the agenda.

  Fay Li leans in. “I hope you’ll consider me your own insider here on Swannekke Island.”

  Luisa probes with caution. “Journalists need insiders, Fay, so I’ll certainly bear it in mind. I have to warn you, though, Spyglass doesn’t have the resources for the kind of remuneration you may be—”

  “Men invented money. Women invented mutual aid.”

  It’s a wise soul, thinks Luisa, who can distinguish traps from opportunities. “I’m not sure … how a small-time reporter could ‘aid’ a woman of your standing, Fay.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself. Friendly journalists make valuable allies. If there comes a time when you want to discuss any matters weightier than how many french fries the Swannekke engineers consume per annum”—her voice sinks below the clinking of cutlery, cocktail-bar piano music, and background laughter—”such as data on the HYDRA reactor as compiled by Dr. Sixsmith, purely for example, I guarantee you’ll find me much more cooperative than you think.”

  Fay Li clicks her fingers, and the dessert trolley is already on its way. “Now, the lemon-and-melon sherbet, very low in calories, it cleanses the palate, ideal before coffee. Trust me on this?”

  The transformation is so total, Luisa almost wonders if she just heard what she just heard. “I’ll trust you on this.”

  “Glad we understand each other.”

  Luisa wonders: What level of deceit is permissible in journalism? She remembers her father’s answer, one afternoon in the hospital garden: Did I ever lie to get my story? Ten-mile-high whoppers every day before breakfast, if it got me one inch closer to the truth.

  36

  A ringing phone flips Luisa’s dreams over and she lands in the moonlit room. She grabs the lamp, the clock radio, and finally the receiver. For a moment she cannot remember her name or what bed she is in. “Luisa?” offers a voice from the black gulf.

  “Yeah, Luisa Rey.”

  “Luisa, it’s me, Isaac, Isaac Sachs, calling long distance.”

  “Isaac! Where are you? What time is it? Why—”

  “Shush, shush, sorry I woke you, and sorry I was dragged away at the crack of dawn yesterday. Listen, I’m in Philadelphia. It’s seven-thirty eastern, it’ll be getting light soon in California. You still there, Luisa? I haven’t lost you?”

  He’s afraid. “Yeah, Isaac, I’m listening.”

  “Before I left Swannekke, I gave Garcia a present to give to you, just a dolce far niente.” He tries to make the sentence sound casual. “Understand?”

  What in God’s name is he talking about?

  “You hear me, Luisa? Garcia has a present for you.”

  A more alert quarter of Luisa’s brain muscles in. Isaac Sachs left the Sixsmith Report in your VW. You mentioned the trunk didn’t lock. He assumes we are being eavesdropped. “That’s very kind of you, Isaac. Hope it didn’t cost you too much.”

  “Worth every cent. Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.”

  “Have a safe flight, and see you soon. Dinner, maybe?”

  “I’d love that. Well, got a plane to catch.”

  “Safe flight.” Luisa hangs up.

  Leave later, in an orderly fashion? Or get off Swannekke right now?

  37

  A quarter of a mile across the science village, Joe Napier’s window frames the hour-before-dawn night sky. A console of electronic monitoring equipment occupies half the room. From a loudspeaker the sound of a dead phone line purrs. Napier rewinds a squawking reel-to-reel. “Before I left Swannekke, I gave Garcia a present to give to you, just a dolce far niente…. Understand?”

  Garcia? Garcia?

  Napier grimaces at his cold coffee and opens a folder labeled “LR#2.” Colleagues, friends, contacts … no Garcia in the index. Better warn Bill Smoke not to approach Luisa until I’ve had the chance to speak with her. He flicks his lighter into life. Bill Smoke is a difficult man to find, let alone warn. Napier draws acrid smoke down into his lungs. His telephone rings: it’s Bill Smoke. “So, who the fuck’s this Garcia?”

  “Don’t know, nothing on file. Listen, I don’t want you to—”

  “It’s your fucking job to know, Napier.”

  So, you’re addressing me like that now? “Hey! Hold your—”

  “Hey yourself.” Bill Smoke hangs up.

  Bad, bad, very bad. Joe grabs his jacket, snuffs his cigarette, leaves his quarters, and strides across the site to Luisa’s hotel. A five-minute walk. He recalls the menace in Bill Smoke’s tone and breaks into a run.

  38

  A swarm of déjà vu haunts Luisa as she stuffs her belongings into her overnight bag. Robert Frobisher doing a dine and dash from another hotel. She takes the stairs down to the empty lobby. The carpet is silent as snow. A radio whispers sweet nothings in the back office. Luisa creeps to the main doors, hoping to leave with no explanation required. The doors are locked to keep people out, not in, and soon Luisa is striding across the hotel lawn to the parking lot. A predawn ocean breeze makes vague promises. The night sky inland is turning dark rose. Nobody else is about, but as she nears her car, Luisa forces herself not to break into a run. Stay calm, unhurried, and you can say you’re driving along the cape for the sunrise.

  At first glance the trunk is empty, but the carpet covers a bulge. Under the flap Luisa finds a package wrapped in a black plastic trash bag. She removes a vanilla binder. She reads its cover in the semilight: The HYDRA-Zero Reactor—An Operational Assessment Model—Project Head Dr. Rufus Sixsmith—Unauthorized Possession Is a Federal Crime Under the Military & Industrial Espionage Act 1971. Some five hundred pages of tables, flowcharts, mathematics, and evidence. A sense of elation booms and echoes. Steady, this is only the end of the beginning.

  Motion in the middle distance catches Luisa’s eye. A man. Luisa ducks behind Garcia. “Hey! Luisa! Hold it!” Joe Napier! As if in a dream of keys and locks and doors, Luisa stows the vanilla binde
r in its black trash bag under the passenger seat—Napier is running now, his flashlight beam swishing the half darkness. The engine makes a lazy, leonine roar—the VW reverses too fast. Joe Napier thumps into the back, yells, and Luisa glimpses him hopping like a slapstick actor.

  She does not stop to apologize.

  39

  Bill Smoke’s dusty black Chevy skids to a stop by the island checkpoint of Swannekke Bridge. A string of lights dots the mainland across the straits. The guard recognizes the car and is already by its driver’s window. “Good morning, sir!”

  “Looking that way. Richter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Smoke.”

  “I’m guessing Joe Napier has just called you and ordered you not to let an orange VW pass the checkpoint.”

  “That’s correct, Mr. Smoke.”

  “I’m here to countermand that order, on Mr. Grimaldi’s personal authority. You will raise the barrier for the VW and let me follow. You’ll phone your buddy on the mainland checkpoint now and tell him not to let anything through until he sees my car. When Mr. Napier gets here, about fifteen minutes from now, you will tell him Alberto Grimaldi says, ‘Go back to bed.’ Understand, Richter?”

  “Understood, Mr. Smoke.”

  “You got married this spring, if memory serves?”

  “You have an excellent memory, sir.”

  “I do. Hoping to start a family?”

  “My wife’s four months pregnant, Mr. Smoke.”

  “A piece of advice, Richter, on how to succeed in the security business. Would you like to hear this piece of advice, son?”

  “I would, sir.”

  “The dumbest dog can sit and watch. What takes brains is knowing when to look away. Am I making sense to you, Richter?”

  “You’re making absolute sense, Mr. Smoke.”

  “Then your young family’s future is secure.”

  Smoke reverses his car alongside the guardhouse and slumps low. Sixty seconds later, a choking VW swerves around the headland. Luisa halts, rolls down her window, Richter appears, and Smoke catches the words “family emergency.” Richter tells her to have a safe trip, and the barrier rises.

  Bill Smoke puts his car into first, second. The sonic texture of the road surface changes as the Chevy reaches the bridge. Third gear, fourth, pedal down. The clapped-out Beetle’s taillights zoom up, fifty yards, thirty yards, ten … Smoke hasn’t switched his lights on. He swerves into the empty oncoming lane, shifts into fifth gear, and draws alongside. Smoke smiles. She thinks I’m Joe Napier. He yanks the wheel sharply, and metal screams as the Beetle is sandwiched between his car and the bridge railing until the railing unzips from its concrete and the Beetle lurches out into space.

  Smoke slams the brakes. He gets out into the cool air and smells hot rubber. Back a ways, sixty, seventy feet down, a VW’s front bumper vanishes into the hollow sea. If her back didn’t snap, she’ll have drowned in three minutes. Bill Smoke inspects the damage to his car’s bodywork and feels deflation. Anonymous, faceless homicides, he decides, lack the thrill of human contact.

  The American sun, cranked up to full volume, proclaims a new dawn.

  One bright dusk, four, five, no, my God, six summers ago, I strolled along a Greenwich avenue of mature chestnuts and mock oranges in a state of grace. Those Regency residences number among London’s costliest properties, but should you ever inherit one, dear Reader, sell it, don’t live in it. Houses like these secrete some dark sorcery that transforms their owners into fruitcakes. One such victim, an ex-chief of Rhodesian police, had, on the evening in question, written me a check as rotund as himself to edit and print his autobiography. My state of grace was thanks in part to this check, and in part to a 1983 Chablis from the Duruzoi vineyard, a magic potion that dissolves our myriad tragedies into mere misunderstandings.

  A trio of teenettes, dressed like Prostitute Barbie, approached, drift-netting the width of the pavement. I stepped into the road to avoid collision. But as we drew level they tore wrappers off their lurid ice lollies and just dropped them. My sense of well-being was utterly V-2’d. I mean, we were level with a bin! Tim Cavendish the Disgusted Citizen exclaimed to the offenders: “You know, you should pick those up.”

  A snorted “Whatchyoo gonna do ‘bou’ it?” glanced off my back.

  Ruddy she-apes. “I have no intention of doing anything about it,” I remarked, over my shoulder, “I merely said that you—”

  My knees buckled and the pavement cracked my cheek, shaking loose an early memory of a tricycle accident before pain erased everything but pain. A sharp knee squashed my face into leaf mold. I tasted blood. My sixtysomething wrist was winched back through ninety degrees of agony, and my Ingersoll Solar was unclasped. I recall a pick ‘n’ mix of obscenities ancient and modern, but before my muggers could filch my wallet, the chimes of an ice-cream van playing “The Girl from Ipanema” scattered my assailants, like vampiresses the minute before dawn.

  “And you didn’t report them? You dolt!” Madame X sprinkled synthetic sugar over her breakfast bran the next morning. “Phone the police for Christ’s sake. What are you waiting for? The trail’ll go cold.” Alas, I had already amplified the truth and told her my muggers were five louts with swastikas shaved onto their skulls. How could I now file a report saying three prepubescent lollipop girls had bested me so effortlessly? The boys in blue would have choked on their Penguin biscuits. No, my assault was not added to our nation’s wishfully fulfilled crime statistics. Had my purloined Ingersoll not been a love present from a sunnier era of our now-Arctic marriage, I would have kept mum about the entire incident.

  Where was I?

  Odd how the wrong stories pop into one’s head at my age.

  It’s not odd, no, it’s ruddy scary. I meant to begin this narrative with Dermot Hoggins. That’s the problem with inking one’s memoirs in longhand. You can’t go changing what you’ve already set down, not without botching things up even more.

  Look, I was Dermot “Duster” Hoggins’s editor, not his shrink or his ruddy astrologer, so how could I have known what lay in store for Sir Felix Finch on that infamous night? Sir Felix Finch, Minister of Culture and El Supremo at the Trafalgar Review of Books, how he blazed across the media sky, how visible he remains to the naked eye even now, twelve months later. Tabloidoids read all about it across the front page; broadsheeters spilt their granola when Radio 4 reported who had fallen and how. That aviary of vultures and tits, “the columnists,” eulogized the Lost King of Arts in tribute after twittering tribute.

  I, by contrast, have maintained a dignified counsel until now. I should warn the busy reader, however, that the after-dinner mint of Felix Finch is merely the aperitif of my own peripatetic tribulations. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, if you will. Now that is a snappy title.

  ’Twas the Night of the Lemon Prize Awards, held in Jake’s Starlight Bar, grandly reopened atop a Bayswater edifice with a rooftop garden thrown in for good measure. The whole ruddy publishing food chain had taken to the air and roosted at Jake’s. The haunted writers, the celebrity chefs, the suits, the goateed buyers, the malnourished booksellers, packs of hacks and photographers who take “Drop dead!” to mean “Why, I’d love to!” Let me scotch that insidious little rumor implying Dermot’s invitation was my doing, that, oh, yes, Timothy Cavendish knew his author was lusting for a high-profile revenge, QED, the entire tragedy was a publicity stunt. Tosh dreamt up by jealous rivals! No one ever owned up to sending Dermot Hoggins’s invitation, and she is hardly likely to step forward now.

  Anyway, the winner was announced, and we all know who got the fifty-K prize money. I got sloshed. Guy the Guy introduced me to a cocktail called “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Time’s Arrow became Time’s Boomerang, and I lost count of all my majors. A jazz sextet kicked off a rumba. I went onto the balcony for a breather and surveyed the hubbub from without. Literary London at play put me in mind of Gibbon on the Age of the Antonines. “A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, da
rkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.”

  Dermot found me; bad news inexorably does. Let me reiterate, bumping into Pope Pius XIII would have surprised me less. In fact, His Infallibility would have blended in better—my malcontent author wore a banana suit over a chocolate shirt and a Ribena tie. I hardly need remind the curious reader that Knuckle Sandwich was yet to take the book world by storm. It was yet to enter a bookshop, in fact, except the sage John Sandoe’s of Chelsea, and those hapless newsagents, once Jewish, then Sikh, now Eritrean, located in the Hoggins Bros.’ East End parish. Indeed, it was matters of publicity and distribution that Dermot wished to discuss on the roof garden.

  I explained to him for the hundredth time how an author-partnership setup like Cavendish Publishing simply cannot fritter away money on fancy catalogs and team-building go-karting weekends for sales forces. I explained, yet again, that my authors derived fulfillment from presenting their handsomely bound volumes to friends, to family, to posterity. I explained, yet again, that the gangster-chic market was saturated; and that even Moby-Dick bombed in Melville’s lifetime, though I did not deploy that particular verb. “It is a truly fabulous memoir,” I assured him. “Give it time.”

  Dermot, drunk, doleful, and deaf, looked over the railings. “All them chimneys. Long way down.”

  The menace, I trusted, was imaginary. “Quite.”

  “Mum took me to Mary Poppins when I was a nipper. Chimney sweeps dancing on rooftops. She watched it on video, too. Over and over. In her nursing home.”

  “I remember when it came out. That dates me.”

  “Here.” Dermot frowned and pointed into the bar through the French windows. “Who’s that?”

  “Who’s who?”

  “Him in the bow tie chatting up the tiara in the bin liner.”

  “The presenter fellow, Felix … oh, Felix whatizzit?”