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

Oppenheimer was a distant and austere presence except when caught up in oratory, and then he was borderline pretentious. Ann did not seem to notice.

And poor Fermi was vestigial, barely there, generously polite, neat, soft-spoken, retiring quickly to the room where he slept after mealtimes and lying there unmoving. At intervals he would take a book to bed with him but for the most part he lay silent. He asked for little.

Oppenheimer also asked for little: he followed a precise and orderly routine and with his cigarettes, coffee, and drinks at cocktail hour seemed to have all that he required. He borrowed clothes from Ben and cigarette money from Ann, keeping careful accounts in the form of a running IOU in a small notebook.

It was Szilard who did all the asking.

The sky has always been home to paradise, always the light and vacant kingdom, holding out a promise. This is why no one is surprised when promise finally descends, silver and purple, a fiery dragon of the air, rising, swelling and falling again, and the ground and the sky are together at last.

This was what Oppenheimer thought when he looked into the emptiness above Santa Fe.

No one is surprised as dirt disperses in the sky and what descended from the sky spreads all across the ground below, the past turning into the future, the future vanishing in the past.

Szilard knew exactly what he was called upon to do. His clear duty was to change the world. This was not the Pollyanna sentiment of a do-gooder or an idealist: rather it stood to reason. The world was a problem that needed to be solved. He would tackle the problem stoutly.

On the sidewalk outside the restaurant they were waylaid by one of Ben’s former clients, a woman wearing tight riding pants on her lean thighs. She insisted on grilling him about a gardening problem as Ann waited beside them, shivering and hugging herself against the chill. A young girl crossed the street clutching a child’s hand and further along the block two soldiers were getting out of a jeep.

—It sounds like root rot, Ben was saying to the woman in jodhpurs.

The soldiers strode together down the sidewalk toward her. There was nothing exceptional about this save for the fact that they were both looking at her, looking directly at her as they grew near and saying nothing to each other. She began to feel nervous and interrupted: —I’m sorry, I’m cold. Can we go?

—Of course, said Ben, —sorry, and the woman in jodhpurs stared briefly at Ann and then turned back to him.

—You provide such an awesome service, she said, and flashed a smile that showed bright lipstick against white teeth.

The soldiers were almost on them as they got into the car. Ben, in the driver’s seat, was noticing nothing, but she kept her eyes on their faces and never looked away. Both of them stopped short as the car pulled off the curb and turned their heads calmly, in unison, to watch it leave.

Ben came into the living room with his morning coffee and found Ann with the war books, which she read when Oppenheimer was not reading them to keep up with him. She did not want to be caught out in ignorance of the world they had lived in, she had told him, and was constantly studying.

—A short walk, maybe?

—Sorry honey I can’t, she said, and smiled briefly before going back to the books.

Hiroshima was chosen partly because it had remained unharmed throughout the war till 1945 and partly because it contained a small number of military installations. Its innocence made it an ideal target, unlike Tokyo or Kobe where firestorms caused by air raids had already destroyed thousands of buildings. The new injuries to the land, buildings and people of the city could not be confused with the ravages of previous assaults.

In Alamogordo there had been only cattle and scrub, but in Hiroshima, for the first time, there would be human subjects.

The ancient capital city of Kyoto had also made it onto the shortlist, but was not selected for bombing because Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a lover of antiquity, decided it was too attractive to be destroyed. This was lucky for Kyoto’s people, as well as its thousands of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, gardens of moss, and blood-red maples.

The leaflets that were dropped on Hiroshima before the bombing were few in number and similar in content to leaflets that had been dropped before, in other parts of Japan, warning of so-called “conventional” air strikes. The government of Japan should surrender, they said, lest the force of American arms be further loosed upon her citizens.

They did not mention a powerful new weapon, different from any that had come before. They did not mention an atomic bomb; it would have ruined the surprise.

This trying to feel something is a strange ambition, she thought as she put aside her book and picked up the newspaper.

She was preoccupied with feelings since Eugene had died, when she saw how easily she could be their victim.

Oppenheimer had put in a request to see something new, out of Hollywood. He said it as though Hollywood was a quaint boutique. As she flipped through the pages looking for movie reviews she thought: I like feeling because it seems like the opposite of reason. Reason is boring even if it does make us human, where feeling is the breath of life and stands apart from reason, all transmogrified.

Then she remembered the soldiers turning their faces in perfect synchronicity to watch Ben drive her away, and what she felt was fear.

The last few times he’d left the house she had barely noticed him leaving, barely felt, as far as he could tell, his arms going around her before he left, his mouth on her cheek, barely heard what he said. As far as he could tell she must hardly be noticing his absence in the