The Cloud Atlas

Or perhaps he and I were the two first men-but which of us was stone, which clay?

I asked him. He scowled.

“This is what I have said,” Ro

“More than one?” I interrupted, still not understanding. “Sounds like quite a story.”

Ro

A nurse arrived, bearing a syringe on a tray. Ro

“You heard what I said?” he told the syringe as it approached. “You told the doctor? No painkillers. No sleep medicines.” He pointed at me. “I have things I need to discuss. With my priest.” The nurse nodded gently, and reassured him that his request had already been written down on his chart. Then she explained that she was just there to draw blood. Ro

“What she wants to take,” Ro

“Raven,” he said.

“Ro

“What I need to say, I need a clear head to say,” he said.

Now, a few years before, there's only one thing Ro

Instead, he said something I'd never heard him say before: “Father.” I tensed. Then another surprise: “I want to confess.”

This was so startling I assumed we were joking again. “Oh, Ro

“Enemies,” he said, and smiled. “I want to go to confession.”

“You're not even Catholic, Ro

“I don't have to be Catholic to tell secrets,” Ro

RONNIE IS NOT CATHOLIC. Nor is he Russian Orthodox. Nor Moravian Protestant. Nor Baptist, nor a member of any of the other churches that crowd vulnerable Bethel. As a result, it was somewhat difficult for me to obtain for him a position as assistant chaplain at the hospice some time ago, but it was certainly easier than getting him a position titled, say, “staff shaman.”

It's not that people would have frowned on the term shaman. (Or maybe they might have; it's a white man's word, and imprecise the way white men's words are. Angalkuq is the Yup'ik term.) Shamans, or angalkut, served many functions in times past, but a chief duty was healing, and even the hospital in town incorporates such traditional medicine into its care today.

But people did frown on Ro

Until a tide of alcohol flooded it.

Ro

By the time I met him, he lacked both powers and respect. To my shame, I did nothing to help him. I thought an enfeebled foe made my job that much easier. Though Ro

But eventually, I'd had my fill of respect. And I'd come to like Ro

He should have been long dead by then, and I think he knew this. I say that because I can't think of any other reason why he would have let me help him as much as I tried to. Except for one. I'd suggested a dozen times he enter a treatment program, but he didn't agree until I- or a mischievous God putting words in my mouth-a

In any case, I could see in Ro

We've had a truce, a delicate one, with alcohol ever since. But a strange thing happened when Ro

So for the past three or four years, before this most recent set of ailments put him in bed instead of beside one, Ro

Ro

Unfortunately, other families want Lazarus-level care, and this leads to disappointments. I know-I thought we all knew-that sometimes people get better, and sometimes they don't, especially in a hospice, but I guess some people expect more of Ro

And lately, me. I'd thought my role was i

And so word travels, this wide-open land doing nothing to check its course, and the bishop hears one of his priests is aiding the practice of witchcraft, and an inquiry is made, and another, and these are ignored, and then you are where I am. At the bedside of a shaman, magic having failed both of you, at the mercy of gossips and gods and bishops and ravens.

So I sat with Ro