by Lydia Millet
Ben exhaled for a second time, leaned in close to Larry and whispered, —Put it this way. He’s not at liberty to say.
—No thank you, said Fermi, when Ben passed him the joint.
—Really? You ever been to Area 51? Or Roswell?
—Roswell? Yes I have, as a matter of fact, said Oppenheimer. —I’ve been to Roswell on several occasions. Of course it was some time ago, in your terms. When I was working for the Army.
—He used to work on a secret base in northern New Mexico, whispered Ben. —I’m not kidding.
—Come on, urged Larry. —Spill the beans, Bob!
—Spill what beans?
—When were you there, huh? Was it after the alien crash? Were you part of the military coverup? Huh Bob? Did you see the dead alien corpses?
—I’m not familiar with any dead aliens, said Oppenheimer. —You have my word on that.
—They dissected them! There was a movie of it but it turned out to be fake, said Larry.
Szilard accepted the joint from Ben awkwardly, inhaled, coughed vigorously, and promptly asked Larry if there was anywhere he could get a donut.
—They got Mister Donut, said Larry. —Right around the corner. The donuts kinda suck though.
—He’s not picky, said Ben. —Believe me.
—Come with me, said Szilard to Ann.
—How about asking her, said Ben.
—Do you want to come with me, said Szilard.
—OK, said Ann, and shrugged at Ben, smiling apologetically.
—Umbrellas near the door, said Larry. —You’re gonna need ’em. It’s like two blocks over, right out the building, turn the corner, pass the kind of like river thing and then make a left.
—Thanks, said Ann, Szilard already bustling out the door.
Larry turned back to Oppenheimer.
—So seriously Bob. I’m not a security risk, I swear. I won’t breathe a word. Were you involved in the coverup?
—Coverup? asked Oppenheimer.
Larry nudged Ben with his elbow.
—Man, you know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb.
The rain was light but steady, the crowds thinner. Bicycles passed close by them as they walked through the drizzle, careful and distracted, holding their umbrellas far above their heads for visibility. It was soon to get dark.
—Do you think it’s heaven, Leo?
—Tokyo? More like hell.
—No, I mean, heaven the idea. It lets us think the world isn’t enough. You know, that bodies aren’t enough, we have to separate ourselves from them to be happy.
—Did he say turn right after the river?
—Left. I mean, if we didn’t have heaven, or if some of us didn’t, would we behave ourselves better? If this was the only world?
—The munchies, they call it. I saw it in a video.
—I’m serious, Leo. Why won’t you ever talk to me about anything?
They crossed a bridge over a cement canal and peered down to see fat gray carp hovering nearly motionless in the shallow water, only the tails waving in slow precise symmetry. Floating garbage gathered around them and stuck, and above them raindrops pinpricked the surface. Planted at the top of the walls of the canal, level with the street, were azalea bushes with blooms three lurid shades of pink.
—The brain of a carp …, started Szilard, and then trailed off, distracted. —Can I get a cup of coffee at the donut shop? I want a coffee with the donut.
They walked past the Mister Donut looking for a coffee shop and found a hole-in-the-wall McDonalds and a fried chicken place that featured, confronting them assertively on the sidewalk, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Colonel Sanders clad in startling Samurai armor.
Finally they caught sight of a Starbucks and Szilard, who had acquired a taste for strong contemporary coffee and now shunned the weak coffee to which he had become accustomed in the war years, announced that he wanted a latte.
Ahead of them, stamping out his wet shoes as he went through the door, a man in a black suit slipped his closed umbrella into a metal stand beside the door and then extracted it quickly.
—Look at that! crowed Szilard.
The wet folds of the umbrella were now sheathed in clear plastic. The metal stand was a machine.
—So it won’t drip on the floor! exclaimed Szilard, standing still to marvel.
He bought three filled donuts at Mister Donut and ate the first as they walked back to the apartment, passersby shooting him brief glances. Ann, holding his umbrella for him, recalled that Ben had said the Japanese did not eat while they walked. She could have told Szilard, should tell him, she thought as they moved forward slowly alongside the wide canal, but she liked watching people stare at him. She liked watching him as he failed to notice.
—Whatever’s in here, said Szilard, his mouth full of the second donut, —this green paste? It’s disgusting.
He spat a clump of chewed dough into a garbage can as a thin old woman, passing them at a fast clip with her arms full of folded laundry, spied him in the act of regurgitation and shrieked.
After Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped Oppenheimer received a commendation from the Army for his good work as Director of the Manhattan Project. At the ceremony, however, his mood fell somewhat short of euphoric.
In his moment of glory as the egghead-hero of the war, and with his customary flare for drama, he said solemnly to the assembled company: — If atomic bombs are to be added to the arsenals of a warring world, the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.
Even as he said this some in the audience were distracted; one man had closed his eyes and was thinking of how his wife smelled, and another probed a loose tooth with his tongue.
The bullet train garnered high approval ratings from Fermi, who set great store by cleanliness and spaciousness in public conveyances. He appreciated the black leather seats and the shining wooden floors, the hygiene of the bathrooms, the shine of the windows. As they sped toward Hiroshima Ann could barely stand to stare out the window: the fastness of the train blurred everything, both far and near, and gave her a headache. She looked long enough to see suburbs and industrial parks spreading out on either side of the train line as far as the eye could see, and in the distance, on occasion, the bald mound of a mountain long since logged clean of trees.
Ben went with Szilard to check out the snack car, where Szilard bought a bento box decorated with a picture of geishas walking beside a pond. Picking at the seafood morsels in the box with his disposable chopsticks, he puckered his mouth in displeasure and shoved away a half-eaten morsel of dry brown mystery fish.
—How about you just throw it away instead of making that face, said Ben. —Because you look like a tourist asshole.
But Szilard ignored him, staring over his neighbor’s head at an open book. Suddenly he crowed aloud.
—Mine! That’s my equation! he said, and in a flash was tapping the reader’s shoulder with an insistent finger.
Szilard operated under the blithe assumption that everyone in Japan spoke perfect English, and so far it had served him well. Dumping the plundered bento box onto the snack counter he grabbed at the open page, nodding eagerly at the startled young man who was holding the book.
—I predicted that effect in 1943! he told him.
—The Szilard complication? asked the young man politely.
—That was my work! I am Szilard! I am Leo Szilard! said Szilard excitedly.
People were staring. Szilard grabbed his wallet out of his pocket and wrestled with it, finally extracting his fake ID.
—See? That’s me!
The young man, puzzled at first, looked back and forth from the driver’s license to Szilard’s face, nodding with increasing confidence. If he was surprised by Szilard’s apparent youth he did not show it.
—It is a pleasure, he said finally. —I am Takashi. I am a student at Tokyo University.
Szilard promptly launched into a loud and rapid disquisition on the exothermic release of s
tored energy by atoms dislocated by radiation damage. It turned out that Takashi, besides displaying familiarity with a number of interesting recent developments in the field of biomedical nanotechnology, by which Szilard was intrigued, also had a smattering of knowledge of the historical development of nuclear reactor design, in which Szilard, of course, had played what he often called “a leading role.”
Ben listened to them vaguely until the snack car became overcrowded, and Szilard, brimming with satisfaction ever since the young man had known his name, led Takashi back to the green car with them. He huffed and puffed down the aisle as he negotiated children’s protruding arms and legs and simultaneously lectured Takashi on the subject of electroosmosis.
—You know, said Ben to Szilard as they walked, —he probably knows a lot more about physics than you do. I mean, it’s come a long way since your day.
—Don’t be ridiculous, snapped Szilard.
They sat down across the aisle from Ann, Takashi perching precariously on a seat arm as Ben slid into his seat beside her.
He still failed to understand the conversation, which was less like an exchange than a monologue, and chose to focus instead on Takashi’s thin torso and spiky hair. He studied the retro, fifties bowling shirt and tiny, girlish silver-and-pink cell phone protruding from Takashi’s front pocket. A gaudy pastel-colored plastic chain dangled from the top of the phone, glittering Mardi Gras beads with a small plastic dog on the end. Or a bear or a mouse. He could not discern identifying features.
Szilard spoke volubly, his voice rising and falling and irritating other passengers, who turned periodically and stared until a passing conductor shook his head at Takashi and barked out an order.
—I have to go back to where I am sitting, Takashi told Szilard. — Worse ticket! See?
—Ridiculous! said Szilard angrily to the conductor. —He’s not even taking up a seat here!
But the conductor did not speak English and apparently had little interest in learning.
When Takashi was gone Ben was relieved. His ears were ringing, and Ann, distracted, had given up trying to read her book to gaze dreamily at the seat in front of her.
—Why don’t you take a nap, Leo? said Ann. —You didn’t sleep at all last night.
But Szilard scoffed, got up and set off after Takashi, bustling pompously down the aisle in the direction of the cheap seats.
—Quite a handful, isn’t he, said Oppenheimer as he sat down beside Ben, having lately crossed paths with Szilard on his way back from the smoking car.
Hiroshima was a nondescript city. Sitting in the back seat of the taxi with Ben beside her and Szilard in the front, rounding a curve and catching sight of a distant looming tower that Szilard claimed authoritatively was a rebuilt ruin known as Hiroshima castle, Ann was swiftly and decisively disappointed. She found herself in a dawning indifference to the trip, where she was, and this day, she felt a sense of waste and detachment, resignation to boredom.
She thought: After all that there is nothing much here.
Or there was plenty, a surfeit of normal shapes. The city was a dull continuum of buildings, roads and trees, in short a city like other cities. Nowhere was there a vast and yawning crater, nowhere a dismal military graveyard stretching out with its army of uniform stones that testified to an enormity of deadness.
In the fifteen minutes it took them to travel from the train station to the hotel she felt the mundane actually oppress her, the sameness of urban geography throb in her temples, on the tired end of an arc that had lifted and dropped her, halfway around the spinning globe, only to gaze dully at billboards and concrete, confronted with the same gray dirt you found in say Albuquerque or any other spreading and bland inhabitation.
She had not wanted to come here, but she realized as they cruised along the busy multilane road, compact cars buzzing behind, around and ahead of them in spurts of efficiency, that she had expected to find the confirmation of an expectation nonetheless. She had thought she would disembark from the plane into importance: a brooding and massive loss, a moment trapped forever in structures. She had thought she would find an architecture of grief, outrage, horror, a place that felt like a cry of shock, husky and shadowed aftermath, dark broadcast that this was the place, the place where the end had begun.
But Hiroshima was businesslike and had buried its past in normalcy. Where the bomb had been dropped was now a park with a deep, cement-lined canal that passed for what had once been the Motoyasu River, old trees, green manicured stretches of lawn. Small, grimy crafts advertised as “river pleasure boats” took tourists on rides past the “A-bomb dome” and the banks with their planted shrubs and fading impressions of pink blossoms.
Asked about it later, many of the atom bomb physicists said they did not regret the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Many of them were lucid and thoughtful in defense of the decision, and many were also staunch advocates of nonproliferation after the war. The eminent Manhattan Project physicist Hans Bethe, for instance, believed the decision to drop the first bomb had been the right one but also believed that Nagasaki was a crime and that the decision to use nuclear force should never be made again.
Hiroshima, he believed, should have remained a singularity.
Bethe, by all accounts a kind and considerate man, arrived at his belief that Hiroshima had been justified by using reason. He used reason both before the fact and after it, when nothing could be undone.
In the hotel lobby, scientists clustering around them, Ann and Ben studied their guidebook’s crude map and picked out a route to Ground Zero, which now housed a Peace Museum. The radioactive debris had been buried in soil, covered in grass and planted with trees, and the area had been renamed the “Peace Park.” They left the lobby and walked with the scientists a few paces ahead of them until finally they crossed a bridge, found themselves surrounded by monuments, and stood still.
None of them moved for a minute. Oppenheimer did not even reach for the pack of cigarettes in his inside breast pocket. They were standing on soft grass in a grove of widely spaced trees; over the tops of the trees they could see parking structures and other tall and graceless buildings, skirting the park, looming. Near them was a sculpture that looked like a rocket with a little girl standing on top of it, her arms raised. It was built in the middle of an expanse of pavement, and in front of it sat schoolchildren in dark blue uniforms, in perfectly straight lines, listening to their teacher. A booth near the foot of the statue was full of bright colors.
No one broke the silence, and cars passed until finally, in a quick shuffling movement from Szilard’s foot, there was the suggestion of restlessness. Slowly they walked toward the statue and the booth, its green and orange and yellow contents. The air was humid and still.
Ann noticed azaleas blooming here too, light pink and hot pink and white on the same bush.
—It does not look as though a bomb fell here, said Fermi as they walked.
—It was almost sixty years ago, Enrico, said Szilard. —You don’t think they’ve renovated? Get a clue.
She resented the azaleas. They were the ugliest flowers she’d ever seen, she said to herself, possibly the first ugly flowers she had ever seen. No: it was not the flowers that were ugly but the bushes they grew on, bulky and square. It was the bushes that made the flowers ugly.
—Cranes, said Szilard, as they approached, reading a sign. —Paper cranes.
The little girl on the sculpture, they read, had survived the bomb only to fall sick ten years later with radiation-caused leukemia. In the hospital she had folded hundreds of cranes out of colored paper, following a Japanese legend that said that folding a thousand cranes could make her well again. She never made it to a thousand, but now children all over the world made cranes and sent them here in memory of the girl.
—What a sentimental story, said Fermi.
—The crane is a lovely, mythical bird, said Oppenheimer.
—Look at those dirty pigeons, said Szilard.
On the ground pige
ons clucked and hustled, fat and greasy as back home. They were pecking at the papery remains of what appeared to be a McDonalds cheeseburger.
Ann recalled that pigeons could be highly intelligent, and then looked at Szilard.
—We all died of cancer too, said Fermi. —All of us.
—Except me, said Szilard.
—You died of being fat.
Walking over the lawns of the Peace Park toward the Peace Museum they passed monuments and fountains, large, stylized stone hands open wide to release water that flowed along a white trough toward a cenotaph whose plaque was covered in cut flowers. Its stone chest contained all the names of the dead.
—More than three hundred thousand, announced a Japanese tour guide to a group of tanned and camera-clicking Germans. —Every year on the anniversary they open it, add more names to the list, of those people who just died that year from long-term effects of the atom bomb. And then they lock it away again. But there is a controversy. Some people say not all of them have died of radiation sickness or cancers from the bomb. Some of them just died from regular cancers, some people say. Some people say they just want their dead parents’ name in the cenotaph.
In the lobby of the Peace Museum they introduced themselves awkwardly to Keiko, a neatly dressed housewife who worked as a volunteer while her children were in school. She met tourists at the museum and took them on tours of the exhibits and the monuments. She bowed repeatedly, shaking each of their hands in turn.
—I will be your interpreter today, she said, nodding and smiling, in case they had not yet fully understood the arrangement.
She pointed out a tall digital clock looming beside the door. It said PEACE WATCH. It was counting the days and hours and seconds since the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and beneath that, said Keiko, since the most recent nuclear test, which had taken place at the Nevada Test Site a few weeks before.
It had been a subterranean, subcritical test that had not made the papers in the United States. None of the new tests ever did, said Keiko.
—I thought testing was banned, said Oppenheimer.
—Not subcritical tests, said Szilard.