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

picked up the clock and turned it over: it was old, with no battery compartment.

Oppenheimer’s suitcase was opened at the end of the sofa in the extra room and his suits were laid over an arm. Without contemplating the act she picked one up, lifted it to her face and inhaled: cigarettes and something she could not identify, musty and sweet.

—If you can drop me off on your way out, said Ben to Roger.

At 6:30 p.m. he had still not seen his truck again.

—Sure. I’m heading to the club to play some squash, said Roger. —You play?

—Racquetball, used to, said Ben.

—Racquetball’s a fag’s game, said Roger. —Just kidding. Wanna join me?

—Thanks for the invitation, said Ben, —I appreciate that. But I have to be getting home to my wife.

—What I’m offering you, said Roger, —is a superior product. C’mon, wife versus squash and single malt after? No contest. I mean who’s shittin’ who here.

The call came while they were outside after dinner, leaning against each other. Ben had been talking about the child they would have while Ann listened and smiled faintly, her fingers brushing along his arm also light, skimming over the skin, not holding it. The night was warm and Ben had the sense of a boundary between them, renewed. She was with him only the way someone else would be, casual, not herself but a distant acquaintance. Her distraction was distracting him; he did not follow it. It nagged at him like a mistake that was only half-forgotten. Was she there or not?

If he were coloring it in, the crayon would stray outside the lines, leaving ragged loops of green and blue and hazy brown to confuse the blank space. The boxes were not aligned, the fields were not in place. Things were disorderly.

They let it ring three times and then Ann relented, thinking it might be Oppenheimer. —Would you? and Ben stepped inside to pick up. It was Szilard, who reported that he was in police custody.

Ben hung up and went outside again.

—Excuse me? said Ann when he told her.

—They’ll release him if we post bail and pick him up.

—But what’s the charge?

—Breaking and entering.

There are men and women who have neat and benign visions about how to improve the world and others who have dramatic and urgent visions about how to save it from catastrophe. Many of these men and women are passionate and gather followers behind them.

Szilard should be counted among both groups, though he had few followers during his lifetime.

Frequently these men and women with grandiose visions do not believe the laws that apply to common people should apply to them. Because they have a mission, unlike the scurrying nine-to-fivers, the billions of performers of mundane tasks, they believe themselves to be exempted from obligations and niceties. Besides being so-called great men, for example, they may be shoplifters or kleptomaniacs, reckless or absent-minded drivers, habitually late or chronically unwashed.

The truth is, they know they can get away with it.

Also they know that many of the customs and rituals with which we fill our time are just that. So many routine acts seem invented to use up the day.

For those who are not invested with a sacred sense of purpose, organization may become important. A small landscape, say a kitchen, a closet, or a drawer, takes the place of a kingdom.

It is transparent, but that does not mean it is obvious.

To be fair Szilard, though he saw himself as exceptional, did not see himself as superhuman. In fact he identified with the masses. “I am a worker, not a drone,” he once said while attempting to shrug off the affections of a young woman named Alice.

It was not Szilard’s job, he was saying, to service the Queen.

When they got to the jail the clerk told Ann they were releasing Szilard only because a police shrink had deemed him mentally unstable.

—So they’re not pressing charges, they said, said the clerk. —The Army, you never know. Sometimes they’re hardcore, like with radicals or whatever, other times, if it’s just a crazy, they shrug it off.

—The Army?

—Yeah, didn’t they tell you? When they picked him up he was trying to break into some Air Force facility. He got stuck on a fence or something. Razor wire.

—And my truck? He must have had it with him then?

—Impound lot.

Ann waited for Szilard while Ben went to reclaim the truck. When he emerged from a door at the back, unattended by cops, she almost ran to get to him. There were scratches on his white arms, and his hair was tousled, but otherwise he looked the same as always.

—Are you OK?

—Hungry, he said cheerfully.

He did not seem remorseful.

—What happened?

—There was a young man in the holding cell who’d never heard of World War Two, he said. —Fact he’d never heard of Europe.

—I meant, before.

—A very interesting case.

—Why did they arrest you?

—I was in the wrong place.

—You tried to break in, they told me.

—I did break in. They caught me on the way out.

—You did? What did you—

—Forget it. It was a waste of time. The new systems are computerized but the archives barely go back. No use to me.

—What is going on? asked Ann. —Would you clue me in, please?

—Records, said Szilard. —Fingerprints.

—You were looking for them?

—But no luck.

In the car driving home he stared out the window, tapping his fingers on the door panel.

—Wait! he said, jerking forward. —What if I gave up my body to science?

—I don’t see how that would help, said Ann. —Frankly.

—No, I mean then! In ’64! Maybe it’s still around somewhere, or part of it. DNA! Right? They can do that. Compare!

—I doubt it, said Ann. —I don’t think they keep the corpses for that long. Unless cryogenics existed then.

He was quiet for a moment.

—Also, a small matter. There was a—I had a traffic incident.

—Incident?

—There’s a dent now. In the side door where a lady hit it. Just a little caved in. It still drives though.

—You had an accident in his truck?

—It was a