Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

  —When I died I was older, said Szilard. —You see?

  He leaned over in his chair, tugged at Ben’s shirtsleeve and beckoned him over to tap impatiently at a frayed-looking black-and-white picture in one of the books. In it an older, grayer, fatter Szilard was beside a woman in thick glasses, white flowers on her lapel.

  —He’s with Eleanor Roosevelt! said Ann eagerly.

  —It was taken in 1961, said Szilard, reading off the page.

  —And there’s one from ’64, with Jonas Salk.

  —Right before I died, said Szilard. —I was practically dead!

  One day, when Oppenheimer was on a boat full of world-renowned physicists, he was asked what would happen if the boat were to sink.

  “It wouldn’t do any permanent good,” he said.

  Over dinner Ben subjected Szilard to a battery of informal tests. It would have been easier had he remembered more from Advanced Physics and less from Intro, but he had to give it a shot. If the man was, for instance, a vagrant with a mental disorder, the façade of erudition would crumble instantly.

  Over the salad, as Szilard dropped a large dollop of dressing onto a two-inch piece of lettuce, Ben forced himself to ask: —So how did you first get into, uh, chain reactions?

  —I was already interested in the ’30s, but I refrained from working on fission myself. I knew what the repercussions of fission would be. In ’39 I wrote a letter with Einstein to President Roosevelt. You’ve probably seen it in a museum?

  —Not per se, no.

  —Teller picked me up in his Plymouth. He drove me to see Einstein in his cottage on Long Island and that was where I got him to sign off on the letter. In it we warned Roosevelt the Germans might be getting close to a self-sustaining reaction.

  Ben was distracted by a smear of dressing on Szilard’s chin. It did not please him.

  —You know, because here are the Nazis, and we all knew what bad news they were.

  —Sure. But uh, you’ve got a—

  —And they had Heisenberg, a very bright guy, working with a friend of mine in Berlin, von Weizsäcker. We couldn’t let those goose-stepping morons get a weapon like that. That was the politics. We were alarmed. I knew what those people were capable of. We needed funding for the work. The government was the only place we could go. It was the last gasp of pure science in this country, uncorrupted by commerce. You know, before the corporations owned the universities.

  —Sorry, said Ben. —Did I miss something?

  —Then there was the research itself. In a nutshell, I had my work cut out for me convincing Fermi uranium fission was serious business, but he came around after a while. We started for real in 1940. It was January 1940 when I made the first design for what they call nuclear reactors. The first specific design, that is. It was rudimentary, of course, but quite detailed. We called them piles then, uranium piles. What’s the whitefish?

  —Halibut, said Ann.

  —They grow halibut in the desert these days?

  —They flash-freeze it and fly it in, said Ben. —Cargo freight.

  —Anyway. Mailed the design to myself so I had proof of the date. After that I went to work with Fermi at Columbia. Started off with a paper on graphite-uranium systems. The Germans were stuck on heavy water, using heavy water in their piles as a moderator, you know, to slow down the neutrons. But heavy water was in short supply, plus all the Nazis’ heavy water was lost when Claus Helberg and some other commandos blew up a plant in Norway. Whereas we, here in the States, we got the idea to use graphite, which meant we didn’t need heavy water. Graphite without impurities such as boron, which eats up neutrons. I saw to that. What’s in the sauce?

  —Lemon, said Ann. —Butter. Garlic. Simple.

  —It’s not bad. We were getting our graphite from an outfit called the National Carbon Company, and out with these guys for lunch one day, thinking of the worst possible elements that could have been contaminating our graphite, I said “You wouldn’t put boron in your graphite, would you?” Purely as a joke. But it turned out they were letting traces of boron get into their samples!

  —I 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 reque
st 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, but also so, I don’t know …

  Ben exhaled gently into the darkness, rolling his eyes, wondering if the exasperation traveled through the air.

  —He’s a guy with a lot of drive, he said. —He’s very energetic. But you don’t have to be quite so—and as she turned her face up to him he chose a new word, —gracious. He can be overbearing, don’t you think?

  —Oh, said Ann. —I guess so. I mean, I don’t think he means it.

  When he finally fell asleep he dreamed he was standing in a box with a crowd of hot dog-bananas. It was not clear which they were, hot dogs or bananas: although yellow they were also tubes of gristle and intestine. They were ungainly and had gigantic feet. They smelled like barbecue and were hemming him in, jostling like so many broad-shouldered businessmen in an elevator.

  But in the morning, when he awoke disoriented and warm to find a stripe of sun over his eyes, Ann was already awake and was climbing softly on top. She whispered, —I didn’t tell you before, I stopped taking the pill.

  He remembered how the wide scope of the world could be jogged out of view by the smooth bend of an elbow. He remembered how, for an animal like him, all things could be forgotten for the sake of one.

  Ann was distracted. Her mind was not in the bed but above it, in the mosquito net that hung there as she gazed at it, knotted white gauze and nothingness. It reminded her of something she had once longed for and lost.

  —Is that good? whispered Ben. —Do you like that?

  —Yes, she whispered back, though it felt like an interruption and she barely heard what he was asking.

  Fermi had come over for a cocktail but was not interested in drinking. He did not want to be alone. Oppenheimer could tell. Eventually he dozed on one of the hotel room’s double beds.

  There have always been alarmists, mused Oppenheimer with his library books spread out in front of him on the hotel room table, those Chicken Littles who believe the end times are upon us, the apocalypse is nigh, the world is coming to an end.

  But that does not mean that it won’t.

  Still people believe in this superstition, which says awareness of a possible disaster serves to avert it. Just because he’s paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s out to get him.

  Because they fear without reason, the superstition goes, there is no reason to fear.

  —But the reassurance people offer that life will always go on hangs on a condescension, he said to Fermi, who had stirred and turned over on his bed. —It implies that those who call attention to what is in fact the constant emergency of life are merely seeking to dramatize their own parts in the action.

  —Can you turn off the light? asked Fermi, blinking in disgruntlement.

  —The insult of being an alarmist is dealt by those who wish not to be alarmed, he went on as he stood up to reach the light switch. —And these people are most people. Most people do not wish to be alarmed because, understandably, they would rather exist in denial than in horror.

  —Thank you, said Fermi, and turned away from him again, plumping his pillow.

  So the quick reassurance of most people, he thought, effectively silences the others, those who have glimpsed in a flash the terrible instability at the root of being.

  When she got out of bed and went to the bathroom, and then into the kitchen, she found Szilard on the phone berating a civil servant. —It’s Health and Human Services, he said grumpily when she asked, but did not elaborate.

  Over breakfast he announced he would be conducting personal business for the remainder of the day, and would Ann bring back a book on DNA testing from the library, please. Also, he added as an afterthought, scrawling a list of names on the back of a receipt, all books by these authors—many of them his late lamented colleagues!—plus a dozen donuts, including plain glazed and double chocolate.

  Still in bed after she was gone, Ben stretched out his limbs under the sheets and thought he felt young. But a few seconds later he curled up again and tiredness covered him, and he felt old again.

  Such people are remarkable, thought Oppenheimer, turning on the hotel coffeemaker, not because of this glimpse, which in fact almost everyone has, but because they are willing to live trembling in the memory of the sight. They’re strong enough to be afraid.

  In affluent countries and families, he thought, reassurance is the dominant form of censorship.

  Ben took Szilard aside before he left for work.

  —Listen, he said. —We’ve welcomed you into our home but I’d really appreciate it if you stopped making so many demands on my wife. She’s not your personal servant.

  —You realize, said Szilard, —she offered to be my guide. It was an offer. No one forced her, you know.

  —I know, said Ben. —I know she offered, and she has good intentions. So what I’m saying is don’t take advantage of her. She thinks you’re a burning bush, but I think you’re a guy off the street who wanted somewhere to flop and can talk a good game. And if anything happens that makes me uncomfortable I won’t hesitate to ask you to leave.

  —I assure you, said Szilard earnestly, —I am not a confidence man.

  —We don’t really say “confidence man” these days, said Ben, relenting slightly as he pulled on his boots. —Just “con man” works.

  —People don’t like syllables anymore, mused Szilard.

  —See you later.

  He made his way down the steps.

  —Wait! called Szilard. —I know how to drive!

  —Congratulations, said Ben.

  —Chance of using your truck today?

  —You’ve got to be kidding, said Ben.

  —No, I really need it. I’m an excellent driver, said Szilard. —Though I normally prefer to walk. A brisk constitutional is good for my digestive system.

  —I’m supposed to let you dri
ve my truck around? A man who believes he invented the atom bomb and on top of that has been dead for more than twenty-five years? More to the point, a man without a valid driver’s license?

  —Details, smiled Szilard. —Would you rather I asked your wife? I believe she has a vehicle too.

  —So it’s blackmail now?

  —I prefer to call it a friendly negotiation. The bus doesn’t go where I need to go and I can’t afford a taxi, I really can’t. I have twenty-three dollars that has to last me forever. In change.

  Ben raised an eyebrow.

  —It was a parking meter. It was already broken, I just—you know. Made an appropriation.

  —How do I know you won’t make an appropriation of my truck?

  —Please, said Szilard. —Do I look like a Grand Theft Auto?

  Ben sized him up, a frumpy, rumpled man in striped pajamas, blinking in the sunlight on the top step.

  —OK, I admit, said Ben. —Not so much.

  —There are things I have to deal with, said Szilard. —Look at it this way: the sooner I get myself established, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair.

  —A compelling argument, said Ben. —OK. You’ll have to drop me off and pick me up at work though. Get your clothes on quickly. I’m already late.

  Ann was excited to have Szilard in the house, his unkempt busy presence intrusive, bombastic, but with a vector, a flurry of moving purpose. Up until now, she realized, before this time, there had been a lack: there had been a good life, a pleasant life, what she recognized and acknowledged was relatively speaking an outright gift of a life, but always without a slope.

  Now she was running uphill, felt herself accelerating to the top, her soles angry against the ground and her knees jarred by the shocks.

  —Stop! said Ben, as Szilard began to reverse out of the driveway and a cement truck rumbled past.

  Szilard braked so hard that Ben felt his neck strain.

  —Jesus Christ!

  —There’s something wrong here! cried Szilard, and sat shaken and dumbfounded at the wheel. —I barely touched it!

  —Power brakes, said Ben, running his hand through his hair and clicking the seatbelt into place. —Power steering. You’re not familiar with that.