by Lydia Millet
These things disappeared, you could barely recall them except when you thought about childhood. Or as time went on you remembered remembering childhood, one step removed if not more. You went back not to the first memory but the ones that followed it, the many references to the memory you’d made over the years and subsequently added to the bank of even older memories. Like what Oppenheimer was describing, though less tragic and sweeping in scope: small objects rendered obsolete by custom, and the constant manufacturing of new things, the constant discarding. In her grandfather’s youth—at least this was the impression she had—things had been made to be kept, and repaired many times by men with highly specialized skills, men who took care.
For example: the men who had the shoeshine chairs in airports now, weren’t they a vestige of a bygone age, anachronistic and out of place? Those men, if truth be told, were not for shining shoes but for sitting above. A businessman liked to have another man kneeling in front of him and scrubbing at his feet. That was why they still existed. Their sales technique and their product was subservience.
Oppenheimer was not her grandfather. He should be a century old now but here he was, only a couple of years older than Ben but far, far more tired. Tired: yes.
For her Oppenheimer had risen over the horizon, startling in suddenness, but for him this was just an extension of the routine exhaustion he had known before, the exhaustion of work in an institution. For him there was no wonder in being here, only confusion and the degradation of an accelerated, busy future choked with chemicals, cars and ugly buildings. It was void of loved ones and packed with indifferent strangers, a future of anonymity and isolation, a half-life.
He was injured.
Oppenheimer leaned back in his chair, arms crossed on his chest above the table edge, and closed his eyes.
—More than any of it, he murmured, —what astounds me is the blindness of you people now. A civilization that is blind to itself. I mean blind. In my day there was ignorance too: ignorance is timeless. But at least we were ashamed of it.
—You see this? How the door’s hard to open? That’s going to cost me hundreds of dollars to fix, Leo. And I don’t really have the money.
Ben had almost no investment in the appearance of his truck; the door would function well enough and the damage didn’t reach the wheel well. But he was angry at Szilard anyway. The guy had deceived him on purpose, in premeditated fashion, and then on top of it, after he wrecked the truck and made an incursion on a stronghold of the U.S. military, had the cojones to call them to bail him out. They should have left him in jail. One night might have done him some good.
Also, after all that, not a word of thanks had passed Szilard’s lips. Szilard stuck in his craw.
Ben watched him standing beside the dent, gazing down at it without evidence of interest. That was what needled him with Szilard: the man was impenetrable. The truck might be dented but Szilard was untouched. Szilard was so convinced he was right that no competing opinions could even be entertained.
—I mean for all intents and purposes you’re a freeloader, said Ben, in a gambit to get his attention. Admittedly he didn’t know what he’d do with it once he had it.
Szilard nodded slowly, meditative.
—And if that’s not bad enough you’re a freeloader who steals and then wrecks my truck.
—Why now? asked Szilard. —Have you asked yourself that?
—Why you wrecked my truck now? Why you stole it and wrecked it today?
—Why we’re here, said Szilard impatiently, and came around the hood to stand uncomfortably close. Ben could see donut sugar lining his upper lip. —The three of us.
—Because my wife had a dream, said Ben. —And you are a freeloader.
—What I’m telling you, said Szilard, —is that it’s coming to a head. History does have an end: ask the dinosaurs and the Carolina parakeet and the giant sloths. The drums of the very last wars are beating.
Oppenheimer sat beside Ann on the side of the fountain, where she always sat at night. He crossed his legs and she noticed his bony knees, and the knees brought her own dream back to her again. He had been bent then, with grains of sand on his skin. The skin was scraped. When the mushroom cloud rose he had skinned his knees.
She had always known there was something disturbing in a skinned knee, something wrong, like chalk screeching on a blackboard. Where that enormous thing had been, that blossoming and roiling pillar and cloud in the sky, also nearby there was something as minor as a skinned knee. Too near each other were the pinprick and the vast desecration. They were not separate enough.
She recalled that Oppenheimer, in life, had been concerned that the scientists working on the Manhattan Project should not be compartmentalized. He had been opposed to compartmentalization. Groves tried to insist upon it, to some degree at least. Groves did not want the right hand to know what the left hand was doing, unless the hands in question were both his own. Groves got his way in many things, but in this he had not been completely successful. Compartmentalization meant that some of the scientists, technicians, and engineers knew what the project was doing overall, and some knew very little.
She herself wanted things to be separate, she wanted categories, she wanted some spaces reserved for particular things and other spaces prohibited to them. She did not like how the scraped knee, the texture of the torn pants that had opened up to show her the knee in her dream, and the mushroom cloud could be so close. They were of different orders.
But this was a weakness of hers. She should be comforted instead of displaced: because if small things were vast, then vast were also small, and ceased to be fearsome.
—Of course, said Oppenheimer, —we may have been the beginning of that. It doesn’t escape me. The beginning of the end. When I accuse you, I’m accusing myself too. It doesn’t escape me, what we left to all of you.
—What are you—?
—Forget it.
They were quiet. She took one of his cigarettes.
—It’s a nice garden, said Oppenheimer, lighting the cigarette for her.
—Thank you.
Dreams, she thought, both of us. Why we talk about dreams, think of them as anchors: because everything in a dream must be true. That it cannot be explained only makes it more true. More not less. How it vibrates near the edge of the mind, or forever buried.
—I saw a picture of my son today.
—Peter?
—Peter. Yes. He’s alive. He’s older than I am now. I tell you what …
He leaned back, holding the cigarette up to his lips and closing his eyes, face upturned. The light of the moon made his face metallic: if skin could be made of metal, his was. It was silver, and his eyes hollows there.
—What.
—My children were never happy.
—Oh, now …
—They grew old and one of them has already died. My daughter killed herself. She was unhappy and she took her own life.
—I read that. I’m sorry.
She could not see his face anymore. Behind him in the dark of the garden crickets chirped and made the darkness larger.
—When I last saw my son he was an infant, did you know that? He was born during the war. In 1941, in Berkeley.
—It must be—
—But we discussed it, Fermi and I. We can’t be in touch with our families, the ones who are here now but who we left behind when we died. We wanted to. Believe me. It was the first thing we thought of when we understood where we were. But clearly, it would be a disaster.
—That’s probably very—
—How does a man have happy children? Is there a way to be sure?
—I don’t know. I don’t think so.
He nodded slowly. She noticed his Adam’s apple.
—Because I did love them, even if I was preoccupied. So that’s not it. It wasn’t the absence of love.
—I’m sure it wasn’t.
—And I hardly saw Kitty at all those last weeks. We didn’t have time. I’m supposed to
believe she’s dead now? Overnight?
—But she had a happy life with you. It went on for decades. After the war it went on for twenty-two years, until the day you died.
—She might not have been robbed, but I was.
—I know.
—That wasn’t me. I am Oppenheimer.
—But it might have been.
—It was not! I am here.
—I know that. But maybe you were there then, and you’re here now. Maybe you were both.
—Sometimes I think the books are just books, the films and the microfiche are nothing but objects. It might as well be a stage. It’s just props, all of it, everything around us. Around me. Even you. It’s elaborate, certainly, well-articulated, but in the end the facts are just documents. They’re not the people of my life. How am I supposed to believe them? It’s a production. It’s not real. All the history you put in front of me—it could be a joke!
—I know.
—But then I feel it. I smell things, the sage, the creosote in the rain, and I remember. And I can no longer deny that this is the world I knew. The world I knew grown old.
The light from the open garage made the driveway visible, the cactus along its adobe wall and the weeds growing through cracks in the stubbly gray pavement. From the garage itself she could hear the faint drone of Ben’s voice.
—It happened so quickly, whispered Oppenheimer.
She let the silence sit until he ground out the cigarette under the toe of his shoe and a tired calm settled on both of them. He sighed and hunched over, his chin tucked in toward his breastbone, arms straight, fingers curled around the rim of the fountain, rocking forward and lifting himself slightly on the heels of his hands. Again she thought of a bird: his eyes were always so large in the bony face. She recalled a passage Mr. Hofstadt had read to her: The ocular caverns of a bird can occupy most of the space in its skull.
—So you’re starting to know this is real, she said finally.
—It’s wearing me down.
The night was tranquil. There was no breeze, only the burble of the water in the fountain and behind it the soft regular chirp of the invisible crickets. She felt tender toward the garden, how it seemed to want so little. The wind chime hung steady in the air and she thought: at such a moment I myself could believe this is all an unreal life. I myself could believe what he said.
If he told me all the world was a river of unconsciousness, that all of us here are nothing more or less than the dream of the universe, I could almost believe it.
Escape is the most common impulse, thought Oppenheimer as they went inside to the warmth and left the night outside them. He stubbed out a cigarette in the usual place and then stepped over the piles of newspapers Leo always left on the floor along the hallway. Governments offer solutions that assume only the worst about human nature: they fight back in anger, a flying outward, a panic of blame, as if the problems are always outside the subject. Sometimes crimes are perpetrated by others, yes, he thought, but more often crimes are perpetrated at home. Only those who live at home cannot see them. The crimes have become part of the wallpaper, a pattern no longer noticed.
Not knowing better, observers may even find them attractive.
The crimes of others bring terror but our own are almost quaint, he thought. To discuss them is in bad taste: it smacks of desperation. It smacks of needing someone to blame, of a whining attachment to the right to complain.
It is so out of style that its substance is irrelevant.
—Not just any war, but the last war. Remember the last time they said that? How hopeful it was? The War to End All Wars? But this is the real McCoy.
Ben walked around to the back of the truck and began to unload gear from the bed. He would need it in the morning, for work here before he went back to Lynn’s. Trowels, pruning shears, hoe. Szilard followed him, shaking his head, huffing as he began to pace.
—Did you hear what I said? We’re here for the last war. Because we started it. We’re needed.
—You think quite highly of yourself, don’t you, said Ben.
—You think this is arbitrary? You think we’re here because we chose to be?
—I think you’re here because my wife and I are the only fools that would have you, said Ben.
—It’s going critical, said Szilard. —It’ll reach critical mass.
—What, said Ben.
—For the first time since ’45 they’re planning to use nuclear weapons in war. They want to throw out deterrent strategy. Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a so-called gentlemen’s agreement. It worked during the Cold War, as well as could be expected. But when that was over all bets were off. You can never trust a gentleman. Believe me.
—What are you talking about.
—They want to be able to use nuclear arms like any other weapons. Just another tool in the toolbox. They’re chomping at the bit. Did you even know that? Do you even notice the government? You people have so many games to play you have no time for what’s real. It’s coming to a head. Next thing you know they’ll be building mini-nukes and lobbing them across battlefields. Battlefields like cities and farms. They’ve even mentioned the neutron bomb. The neutron bomb is being planned for battlefield employment. Do you know what a neutron bomb is? It’s an enhanced radiation warhead. Designed to kill the maximum number of people but keep buildings safe. How’s that for materialism? They’ve already decided. The clock is ticking.
—Who are they, Leo? You’re a conspiracy theorist, aren’t you. Add that to your resume. Schizoid delusions, conspiracy theories.
—The public either buys it wholesale or just isn’t watching, you tell me. When I see what you people have done to democracy it disgusts me.
—You can fix it all though, can’t you Leo. But not the dent in my truck.
He ran his hand over it again.
—I predicted it, of course, all of this. I always do. But I had hoped my predictions were wrong.
—Perish the thought, Leo. You’re never wrong.
—Afghanistan maybe wasn’t quite the right target for them. People too poor, country already a garbage heap. Neither was Iraq. They used uranium-tipped shells over there during the first Persian Gulf War, remember? In a few years we’ll find out what they did the second time. Last time they left hundreds of tons of DU in the desert when they left. Depleted uranium. Hundreds of tons. You people don’t bother to know the basic facts about what your government does to other countries. You really couldn’t care less, could you?
—Stop haranguing me, Leo. I’m not your whipping boy.
He turned to go inside and Szilard followed him up the driveway toward the door, badgering.
—I’m telling you, they’ve started. I don’t know who the ultimate enemy’s going to be. I can’t tell yet. It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is they want it. They want it.
—Nuclear war? Get real. No one wants it. Come on.
He opened the door to the kitchen, now empty. But once inside Szilard would still not leave him alone.
—Look at the evidence! Read the posture papers! I can give you the documents. Any exchange could mean escalation. You know that, right? You only need a thousand hundred-kiloton warheads. That’s the threshold for nuclear winter. I’ve been trying to convince Oppie, tell him we have to act. He won’t listen. He never listened, and where did it get him? It got him blacklisted, basically. In life I mean. He wouldn’t take my advice because he was too busy being a bureaucrat, cozying up to the powers that be. And what good did it do him? They threw him out with the bathwater as soon as it suited them. At the end of the day all his kissing up to the establishment brought him nothing but tears. And now he has a second chance and he still doesn’t listen to me.
—Leo. You’re starting to sound hysterical, said Ben. —Tone it down. Take it slow.
He cleared cigarette butts and an empty bottle off the table as Szilard hovered over his shoulder.
—I’m not kidding. We’re on the brink. I’ve come up against
this before. Remember? They have tools they’ve spent money on and they have to use them. Inertia. They have to and they want to. Do you get it? It’s not reason. It’s not strategy. It’s a fantasy of power. It’s what they want.
That a man, a group, or an institution should want to employ a nuclear weapon, should desire its employment is difficult for a thoughtful person to credit, thought Oppenheimer.
And yet weapons are full of desire, shaking with it. They are instruments for the expression of longing.
He said goodnight to Ann and left her drinking a glass of water at the bathroom sink, staggering into his bedroom.
At the window he thought of missiles streaking across the sky streamlined and ardent with purpose. He lit the evening’s last cigarette and studied its ember. In an instrument of mass destruction is distilled great artistry, a gorgeous swiftness and a fierce will.
What was it Leo had said, lecturing him on current events? The four largest defense contractors in America have spent forty million dollars lobbying over the past three years, he had said. In one year alone, he claimed, these businesses received $35 billion in Pentagon contracts.
Therefore weapons of mass destruction are big business, yes, thought Oppenheimer, and turned to look out his door to where Ann was padding along the corridor in sock feet, carrying her toothbrush and stumbling into her bedroom.
In fact, in monetary terms, the biggest business there is, Leo had said. Was that possible?
Leo made it seem like it was all about profit, greed and expansion. But it could not be.
The cynics are wrong, always wrong, thought Oppenheimer as he ground the cigarette into the outside wall beneath the window.
Because finally all the most obsessive work in the world is done not for profit but for pure devotion.
After extracting various promises from Szilard—no more illicit driving, no more auto theft, no more felony B&E—Ben went down the hall to the bedroom to find her standing on their bed, a chaos of clothes erupted over the bedroom floor.
—You’re drunk! he said with great insight.
It was rare. To drink enough to get drunk she had to be goaded like a teenager. Left to her own devices she had little interest in alcohol.