Oh Pure and Radiant Heart - Lydia Millet (ebook reader online TXT) 📗

see, lied Ben. Szilard shook his head ruefully as he dipped it to his raised fork, never raising his eyes from his food.

Men of Szilard’s generation, thought Ben, avoided eye contact. No one had taught them to look into the faces of others.

—Obviously the boron was corrupting. My point is … and he trailed off, distracted. —What are those, green beans?

—Snow peas, said Ann.

—Snow—?

—What do you mean, asked Ben, —slow down the neutrons?

—For uranium 238 to split, said Szilard, —it has to be bombarded with slow-moving neutrons, not fast ones. Right before the invasion of Czechoslovakia I did this experiment with Walter Zinn, using radium and beryllium blocks, that showed a large neutron emission. We—uh oh. Spilled.

He looked down at his shirtfront sulkily.

—I’ll get that, said Ann.

—But can you explain to me, asked Ben doggedly, resolved to urge him into a telltale stumble, —what makes a neutron slow?

—I’m not a high-school teacher, said Szilard, irritated. —But I’ll try. You know a neutron has no charge, right? Which is how it can enter a nucleus.

—I do remember that, said Ben, nodding.

—What’s in the salad dressing? It’s good.

—Ben made it, I didn’t, said Ann, swabbing at the butter sauce on the table.

—Cilantro, said Ben. —Cilantro is the key.

—What was I saying? Oh. A nucleus has an electrical barrier around it. Heavier elements have a more powerful barrier, so charged particles like protons can’t get close enough to interact with the nucleus. Since the neutron has no charge, it can hit the nucleus. A fast neutron actually tends to bounce off the nucleus, especially if it’s stable, and so it doesn’t lose momentum …

Ben found himself nodding mechanically, wishing he was doing something else. One thing was clear: the vagrant had tenacity. And there was no way for Ben, lacking in expertise, to tell whether he was full of shit.

—… what gives us beta decay, and how we make plutonium, by bombarding U238 until it turns into a heavier isotope of itself, and then a transuranic element with atomic number 93. Is there any more bread?

—Uh, sure, said Ann, just sitting down, and rose from the table again.

The testing methodology should be changed. In fact it would have to be developed from scratch. Ben did not currently have a plan of action.

—Well thanks, Leo. That’s cleared up. More salad?

—I’m not finished.

—That’s OK. Don’t worry about it. I mean thanks. But I’m not keeping abreast. I should probably read a book or something and save you the trouble.

—You don’t want me to finish explaining?

—I’ll pass for now, said Ben. —I’ve got this headache starting.

—Honey, asked Ann, —do you want me to get you some aspirin?

—No, said Ben. —Thanks.

—We were reading a biography, said Ann, putting down the bread and slicing. —Leo met luminaries all over the world in the years after the war. He really got around.

—It was news to me, said Szilard.

—How about Winston Churchill, did you ever meet him? asked Ben.

—Not personally, it would seem, said Szilard. —But, you know, I did once meet an advisor of his. Lindemann, also known as Lord Cherwell. Talked to him in Oxford in ’43. Tried to get him to convince Churchill we needed strong international arms controls. Did no good. Turned a deaf ear. The British are stubborn as mules. Is there any dessert?

He was an effective impostor. Good to know they were being conned by a professional, at least. It took the sting off.

Later that night, before settling down to his lengthy bath—in the course of which, Ben did not fail to notice, he monopolized the only bathroom for no fewer than ninety minutes, emerging pink, perspiring, and puffy as a blowfish—he put in a request to Ann for no fewer than twenty yellow legal pads. —I’m always having ideas, he said, grinning. —Have to jot ’em down when I have ’em. Could be lost if I didn’t!

Washing the dishes, Ann said she would pick some up for him at the drugstore in the morning. Then he pressed his luck by putting in a further request for a dinner of veal on the following evening.

Ben was relieved to hear Ann turn him down.

Fermi once had the idea that chimpanzees could be trained as servants. This idea was not among his finest.

Oppenheimer, when he was first hired to head the Manhattan Project, decided that all the scientists who worked on the Project—many of them newly emigrated from Europe—should have to join the United States Army as part of their service agreement. (The scientists almost uniformly demurred.) Later he explained his impulse guilelessly. He said that he himself would have been honored to be inducted, and had not, at the time, understood that the others might not.

But Szilard was the master of bad ideas. He generated ideas by the thousands and took out patents on almost anything that came into his head. This arrogant gesture, repeated endlessly, worked in his favor; he sold valuable patents to, among other entities, the Army. Most of the ideas were bad, but on occasion an idea was of uncommon strength, and also new to the world.

In the shower together they could hear the blare of CNN through the wall. Szilard had been glued to it the minute he exited his bath, taking copious notes. He watched the anchors with his head cocked pensively to one side, as though deciphering a code.

Drawing the bar of soap up and down Ann’s back and then in circles over her shoulder blades, Ben bent and kissed the top of her head, wet but still unshampooed. He wondered how it was that she could smell warm.

—You really think this guy is a dead physicist.

—Not right now.

She turned toward him and took the soap from his hand, pushing him to turn so that she could scrub his back.

—I mean obviously, he’s not dead at the moment.

In bed with the lights out she rested her damp head in Ben’s armpit as he lay quiet staring at the ceiling.

She said, —Dr. Szilard. He’s so smart, I mean, clearly,