by Lydia Millet
—I hope you’re dreaming them, said Ben calmly.
But after he hung up he told the guys he would be back in half an hour. He exchanged his workboots for soft-soled shoes on the back patio and padded through the house, passing the vast cathedral space of the dining room, where Yoshi was nodding patiently as Lynn said, —I mean it’s just not the way I pictured it. So OK. So I’m the client and I’m not happy. I’m paying. Get it? So then make them rip it out!
He stopped in the laundry room to bend over the faucets of the industrial sink. He scrubbed his nails and washed his hands as usual, looking out the small, deeply set window at a bushy young box elder slated for destruction. He would not allow this; he would remove it with roots intact and replant it elsewhere, in his own yard if need be.
He and Yoshi and the other workers were under orders to use only this bathroom. The guest bathrooms were barred from what Roger liked to call “work traffic,” since the perfection of their delicate floors of tropical hardwood and slate could easily be marred by heavy boots.
Ben was glad, personally, because he had ventured into the front bathroom on his first day, ignorant of the rules, and found it chock full of angels. China angels and glass angels holding potpourri were massed on the surfaces, counters, window sills, even the edge of the bathtub, along with stuffed, fabric angels, beanbag angels, stone angels, painted angels, plastic angels, even angels made of twigs and dried flowers. On the wall there were black-and-white photographs of babies with angel wings affixed, sprouting from their baby backs. Cherubs were crowded on the toilet tank, staring at him as he stood over the bowl.
They appeared to take a prurient interest.
Love of knowledge can draw on its credit indefinitely, Ann was thinking as she pocketed her cell phone and turned away from the shade of the tree. In love and knowledge there are two ostensibly virtuous quantities, so love of knowledge is ironclad.
Reaching for its heavy iron handle of the restaurant door she looked at the gleaming glass and the dark wood, felt drawn to them, these strong and beautiful surfaces. She saw the scientists inside and felt the momentum of returning to them, returning to the anomaly, the spectacle of them sitting and eating and saying they were people they could not possibly be, not, at least, if everything she had ever learned in her life was still true.
Feeling the air-conditioning rush up to meet her, goose bumps rise on her arms, she thought: Love of knowledge is still and always sacred, no matter what damage it inflicts.
Driving he wondered if it was wrong that he was tracking her down, if his appearance would irritate her or strike her as intrusive. He hated to make her uncomfortable: her discomfort, even slight, made their separateness heavy. He was happiest when he could interpret the tacit understandings between them as evidence that they were the same.
On the other hand there was something in her demeanor that warned him to pay close attention, that signaled to him the presence of novelty. Where she was concerned he did not want novelty. He wanted everything to continue.
Parking the truck in a dirt lot across the street, mimicking Ann unawares, stalker after stalker, he walked around the side of the building gazing into windows. He wanted to know that she was in the company of others, safe where she’d said she would be. She was not at a window table and finally he had to put his face up close to the glass, stucco window edge against his cheek, dotting it with points of almost-puncture, to see inside without being seen. He did see her then, at a table in the bar area, talking to a portly man who resembled a lawyer, an insurance salesman, someone in a workaday profession. A few feet away, standing with his elbow on the bar, smoking, a third man—gaunt, elegant, and somewhat effete—watched them with an aspect of listening.
Ben stayed motionless, his eyes fixed on them, until the thin man finished his cigarette and ambled over to rejoin the others.
—What we need, said Szilard, —is to get a meeting with someone who can pull strings in the Department of Defense.
—He wants to get you both fingerprinted, to prove who you are, explained Ann to Oppenheimer.
—Why you are so eager to establish our identity is a mystery to me, said Oppenheimer, shaking his head at Szilard. —What is it exactly that you think it’s going to accomplish? We have no assumptions to work from here.
—There are always assumptions, said Szilard, forking up a morsel of shrimp cocktail. —We need leverage. A foothold. Before anything we need authority, we need a purview, legitimacy, for lack of a better word. We’re invisible now. We can’t do anything living out of hotel rooms. We need positions, affiliations, the machinery. You should know that better than anyone, Oppie. Don’t you want to be useful?
—So you’re assuming that what we do has significance of some kind, said Oppenheimer.
—Would either of you gentlemen care for another drink? interrupted a waiter. His blond hair fell over one eye in an extravagant flip, and it reminded Ann of high school for a second before he turned away.
—Thank you, yes, said Oppenheimer.
Szilard shook his head impatiently.
—Should I make the opposite assumption? Ridiculous. Also, my funds are nearly depleted. I had cash only. I will be out on the street. Unlike you I have an economic incentive.
—I can help you, said Ann. —You need a guide, right? I can help you.
—I know one way you can help, said Szilard. —If I run out of money, can I stay in your home? Until I have resources?
Ann was stopped short.
—Here you are, said Ben, and there he was beside her, a hand on her shoulder, glancing across the table at Oppenheimer. —Do you mind if I join you?
—Oh! This is my husband, said Ann, and made the introductions.
The man calling himself Oppenheimer delicately spooned at his soup while Ben, a chair pulled up, gnawing at a buttered roll, gazed over Ann’s shoulder at some library books she had eagerly pulled out of her bag.
—Just a minute, I’ll show you, she said, flipping through pages as Szilard slurped loudly on his iced tea. —Here.
She propped the book against the table edge and pointed to a portrait of Oppenheimer.
—There, that’s him.
Ben looked at it, and then up at Oppenheimer, who was certainly identical. No argument there. —J. R. Oppenheimer, he read, from the caption.
—It was taken in 1940, said Ann. —The picture.
Ben looked down at the page again.
—I’m supposed to have died since then, said Oppenheimer apologetically. —I know. Believe me.
He went back to eating his soup, and Ben abandoned his half-eaten roll and leaned over the book again. Although Oppenheimer was ignoring him, Ann was observing him closely and he could feel her eyes on him. He strove to keep his expression neutral.
—And here, she said, fumbling with a paperback. —Leo Szilard. That one was taken in ’45.
Ben took the second book, looked at it and looked at Szilard, and then gave the book back. Also a dead ringer.
—I died in ’64, said Szilard. —We’re both dead. Technically. But we don’t recall that. Last thing we remember it was summer of ’45. And then here we were.
—They’re both dead, said Ann. —See?
She flipped to an index, where a line read Oppenheimer, Julius R., 1904-1967.
Ben flipped back to the portrait in the first book and then to the front cover, which featured a mushroom cloud.
—He’s definitely a lookalike, he said slowly.
—There’s another one around too, said Ann. —I mean, dead physicist. Enrico Fermi.
—He died in ’54, said Szilard.
—So, said Ben, —you say your name is Oppenheimer, Robert?
—I do say it, said Oppenheimer, putting down his spoon and patting at his mouth with a napkin. —In fact I maintain it steadfastly. My name is Oppenheimer.
—I see. I don’t mean to be rude, but would you happen to have, like, identification?
—I believe I can oblige, actually, said Op
penheimer mildly, and pulled a billfold from his pocket. —I don’t have much, but we all came with wallets. It was part of the package, apparently. Here you go.
He passed Ben a folded piece of paper.
—There’s no picture on this.
—We didn’t have photos on licenses then. Let’s see, this is an ID badge for Site Y. Security clearance. This one does have a photo. There. Also a gasoline ration card, a commissary card—
—“War Department, U.S. Engineer Office.” You’re Oppenheimer the famous atom bomb scientist, then.
—I like to think so.
—Uh huh. Who died in 1967.
—That is my understanding.
—The one who was discredited during the McCarthy era.
—So I hear. There’s also a photograph of my wife Kitty—
—I have ID too, said Szilard. —From the Met Lab. Basically, we showed up here the way we were in July ’45, July 16th, right from the time of the Trinity test. The explosion. We came here from that moment.
—We were watching the blast. The explosion of the first gadget. I was, anyway.
—Not me, said Szilard. —I was in Chicago. But I was aware. I knew it was happening. The hour of the test had got leaked to me, actually.
—Who? asked Oppenheimer.
—Forget it.
—And then I was in a motel room. On a cheap bed.
Ben sat back and watched the waiter remove Oppenheimer’s soup bowl.
—How was your soup? he inquired politely.
—Mediocre at best, said Oppenheimer.
—So how did you first—meet my wife?
—At the grocery store, said Ann. —I didn’t tell you that?
—So many different vegetables you people eat! said Szilard.
—I was shopping, said Ann, glancing at Oppenheimer, —and I saw him and I recognized him from some research I’d been doing at the library. I went up to them and asked them their names. He said he was Oppenheimer.
—Then she fell onto my foot, said Oppenheimer.
—They carried me to the employee lounge, put me down on the couch and took off, said Ann.
—We were late for an appointment Szilard had made at the university, said Oppenheimer.
Ben put down his water glass and sat back, thinking assholes. He crossed his legs and folded his hands on his lap.
—So you’re claiming to be dead physicists who worked on the bomb project at Los Alamos in the ’40s. You have no memories of any other, uh, identities.
—None at all, said Szilard.
—You, uh, woke up in these old suits with old ID documents in your pockets.
—Hardly old, asked Oppenheimer. —This was tailored for me in ’43.
—Fine, said Szilard. —We woke up, fine. Put it any way you want.
—And how did you know where to find each other?
—I found Dr. Szilard, said Ann. —And he knew where to find Dr. Oppenheimer.
—I actually ran into Fermi weeks before that, in a so-called Mexican restaurant that makes a very weak chili, said Oppenheimer.
—How about the logistics? asked Ben. —I mean how do you, uh, support yourselves as dead physicists?
—I have means, said Oppenheimer. —My old bank has been honoring my checks. The account dates from the ’40s of course but it does contain funds. It took some doing to track it down, of course. The bank has changed names several times.
—You’re living off “Oppenheimer’s” savings?
—For the present, yes I am, said Oppenheimer. —I had apparently left funds in a minor account from my days at the ranch, before the war. On the site we were not permitted offsite bank accounts. Postal orders only. But I had a passbook in my wallet and I took it in. The funds were not inconsiderable. They had accrued interest. Believe me, I was amazed to discover it too. But I can hardly be defrauding myself.
—Oppie and Fermi think all this is a delusion, said Szilard. —Personally I have not formed an opinion.
—We’re all still recovering from shock, said Oppenheimer. —We speculate about the situation, but we’re not on familiar territory. It has been suggested that this is a projection of sorts, I use the term loosely, a psychological product, as it were, not an objective reality. But we don’t know. So for the sake of argument, to get through the day, as it were, we’re pretending this is the world, and we’re in it. We’re acting as though this is real. And why not?
—So you admit you’re deluded.
—Clearly, said Oppenheimer.
—What else, said Szilard. —Are we supposed to believe in time machines or reincarnation or something? I like H.G. Wells as much as the next guy, but please. We are men of science.
Ben sat without moving. There was quiet around the table, and Ann reached out and slid her hand into his. From across the room the waiter was moving toward them with a tray.
—My rump roast! exclaimed Szilard, with the joy of a child.
4
So an egg hatched in 1945 and out of it, preening, crawled a bird that would never stop flying.
It should have been apparent to him always, Ben told himself when the dead scientists first arrived, that his way of loving her was primitive and simplistic and would serve him only under a clear blue sky, not in adverse weather conditions. He began to understand that she was not a guarantee of herself.
She could slip away without leaving him.
And only a few days into this, only a few days along in her investigation of the alleged dead scientists, her obsession, call a spade a spade, with these ostensibly deceased masters of the physical universe, he was working in the mansion’s gardens, he was resting for a minute, dizzy from standing suddenly, and aimlessly rubbing a bud off the trunk of a young maple with his thumb when it came to him that this, in fact, this itself was going to be his task, his test, the unquestioning and blind leap of faith. This was him waiting in the rocket ship, preparing for zero gravity.
Szilard has been described by some historians as a “happy warrior” and by others as “selfless.” “His lack of self-interest,” an economist friend once wrote of him, “evokes mistrust.”
He was also described variously as “bossy,” “a genius,” and “an ass,” while Oppenheimer has been called a “suffering computer.”
But Oppenheimer was also described as a “magnificent” person—a person who, even as he was effectively managing the largest enterprise of physical science the world had ever seen, managed to make himself deeply admired and beloved by many of those who worked for him.
Opinion is sharply divided on Oppenheimer. It was Oppenheimer, after all, who was the celebrity.
As for Fermi, because his pronouncements on science were held to be infallible, as a young man he was known to his fellow physics students in Italy merely as “the Pope.”
Ben’s first impulse was to rebellion, even derision, but he knew he could only be generous. It was strategic. Anything else would drive a wedge between them. He was hoping that his collusion in the fantasy would set her free to be bored.
And that was how the short, fat man calling himself Leo Szilard first came to live with them.
—Dr. Szilard is homeless at the moment, Ann told him after their first lunch with the scientists.
They were driving home in separate cars and talking on their phones. Ben could see her car ahead of him, the neat oval of her small head over the driver’s seat.
—Between apartments? asked Ben.
—Hotel rooms, said Ann. —He’s about to be kicked out of his motel. I think he’s run out of money, if he had any in the first place. I know this is a lot to ask, I know it seems like a risk, but it’s important to me: can he stay with us for a while?
For a second as he drove he was conscious of the other cars on the road being far away. He felt his arms reaching for the wheel spiderlike, segmented and nearly detached from the main bulk of his body.
Faced with the end of history people tend to ignore it. But Szilard was not one of these.
&n
bsp; From the first he led the physicists’ opposition to using the bomb. While he was working for the Met Lab in Chicago in 1945, Szilard tried to arrange to see Truman to convince him not to drop the bomb on Japan. Despite the high regard in which physicists were held by the White House, Szilard was blocked by Truman’s new secretary of state.
An overheard conversation—possibly apocryphal—between Szilard and a security guard at Oak Ridge, where plutonium nitrate was being manufactured, is said to have gone like this:
SECURITY GUARD: Why can’t you be a good American?
SZILARD: Like who?
SECURITY GUARD: Well, like me.
SZILARD: Ugh.
Fermi, by contrast, wanted very much to be a good American. After he emigrated to the U.S. he chose to register Republican because he had the impression that Republicans were more American than Democrats. After the war, he moved forward almost unbroken in his stride except for something he told Oppenheimer: I have lost confidence in the validity of my judgment.
Fermi was an honest man who walked the straight and narrow no matter how treacherous the path. Yet he was not without insight into his own foibles. —With science, he said, —one can explain everything except oneself.
Until he gave up hope completely, Oppenheimer too had great faith in the intelligence and resourcefulness of his fellow men.
The following Friday Ben got home from work to find Szilard established comfortably at his kitchen table, a granola bar in his right hand and a can of Coke in his left. There were books open on the formica tabletop in front of him, and Ann hovered at his shoulder.
When Ben set his water bottle on a chair she came over and put her arms around him. He held them and kissed her lips and they were pliable and firm, local as home. She was so known, the sweet smell of cheeks and the nubs of elbows, rough skin over the smooth and nosy bone. Between them was a real border, yes, but he could barely believe it. He knew exactly the span of her wrists, the angle of her chest and shoulders leaning in to him, how her weight felt different from others and no other weight could ever feel like hers by mistake.
The same as ever, except for her insistence on the impossible, everything as ever except what screamed never before.