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

the war, Truman would make claims ranging from a quarter-million to more than a million American lives—a claim that was still being upheld almost fifty years later by best-selling Truman biographers and news sources such as Nightline and USA Today.

These numbers, as far as Oppenheimer could tell, had no basis in fact.

They were sitting reading after dinner when Fermi appeared in the living room doorway and cleared his throat.

Surprised at this uncharacteristic boldness all four of them turned to look at him.

—This incident was the last straw, he said. —I do not want to go to Japan. I do not think my presence will be a benefit.

—You’re coming with us anyway, said Oppenheimer, who brooked no dissent. Szilard pretended to be immersed in an issue of Scientific American.

Fermi stood there for a while and then turned and shuffled back to his room.

In life Fermi had been an avid hiker, climbing quickly and energetically through the Jemez and the Sangre de Cristo and before that the Italian Alps, always at the head of the column, liking to be first and liking to be fast, wielding a walking stick.

The afternoon after the accident Ben came home for lunch and Fermi was perched on a stool at the kitchen’s wooden bar nibbling quiet and rabbitlike at an egg-salad sandwich. Then, following his daily custom, he retired to his room to lie on his side and close his eyes without sleeping.

Ben followed him and knocked on his door. Fermi sat up on the sofabed and waited politely.

—I was thinking, maybe you’d feel like taking a walk in the mountains when I get off work. There should be color in the high meadows now, Indian paintbrush blooming. Back in your time a big fire went through there, and now the hills are covered in aspen.

It took Fermi some time to answer.

—I’m tired, he said finally.

—You don’t have to go far, said Ben. —You don’t have to go fast. Do you good to get out.

Later they drove upward, winding, almost in silence except for once when Fermi asked if he could open the window. He rolled it down carefully, as though the handle might break in his fingers. Then he leaned. He reminded Ben of a dog, listing toward the opening to catch the force of the wind in his face. His hands rested neatly, almost formally on his knees, but his torso leaned away toward the breeze, which rifled what remained of his hair.

When they got out Ben handed him a full water bottle, which he accepted wordlessly. Along the wide disused Forest Service road, hard-packed dirt, dried grass, tire treads and small-headed yellow flowers bending along the edges, Fermi followed him uphill, trudging the gradual but wearing slope. When Ben said something and turned to look at him he would nod or shake his head, but he was distant.

Where the trail narrowed a hawk swooped suddenly over them, the white of its underwings so close Ben thought he could touch the feathers. He wondered what had drawn it so low, what prey it had dipped to catch. Fermi stopped in his tracks and stared up at it, arms hanging at his sides, head tipped back, as it lifted on a swell and rose away from them again.

After that he began to walk faster. He passed Ben and strode ahead more and more quickly until finally Ben didn’t feel like keeping up.

—Turn back, he called, —at four thirty! OK?

He thought he saw the back of Fermi’s head move vertically in a nod, but he wasn’t sure.

At five he got tired and turned back, hoping that Fermi, ahead of him, further up and in colder air, was doing the same. One knee was hurting where he’d had surgery. He waited for him at the car, until the sun set and the dark dropped. There was silence around him except for the wind in the trees now and then, and every few minutes a car passed behind, headlights swinging as it rounded the near curve.

After a while he was too irritated to do nothing. He hummed and swung his arms, walked in circles and stretched his legs, counted branches, trees, stars and constellations. He cleaned the car’s interior, wiping the dash with wet wipes from the glove compartment, collecting bubble gum wrappers and paper cups and the wrinkled stiff white balls of wax paper that Szilard invariably tucked under the passenger seat after eating his daily donut. He thought of Szilard’s fleshy face, his sloped shoulders. Normally Szilard was the butt of his private jokes but the longer Ben waited for Fermi the better Szilard looked by contrast: the reliable homebody, the good dog on the hearth.

It was almost ten when Fermi came trotting briskly down the path again, water bottle in one hand. He was smiling, and when he got into the car his apologies were so profuse and heavily accented that Ben smiled and forgot to be angry anymore, and they drove back down the mountain in a warm exhaustion that was almost contented.

—Goodnight, said Oppenheimer, stepping into the living room where she sat and waving to her after his last cigarette of the evening. Szilard was in bed and Ben and Fermi were still in the mountains.

She turned a page in the book of photographs she was looking at, beautiful photographs of foreign landscapes. She felt a surge of joy looking down at them and decided it would be wise never to go there. This was best, sitting here, looking at them like this, flat, fully captured, perfect.

Joy rises unexpectedly, she thought, now in peace, now in crisis. The feeling of it escapes design, surging only at the far end of endurance, on the lip of despair. It trills a faint pulse beyond the normal in the tiredness of limbs, a lifted grief, the flash and glitter of the sea.

When they came in the door they smelled of the cold. Ben could tell, smelling the cold that was on his own face.

He and Fermi