by Lydia Millet
He was barely dressed when there was an explosion of hammering on the bathroom door and he opened it into Szilard’s bug-eyed face, all too close.
—What are you waiting for? Primping in front of the mirror?
—You give me a headache, Leo.
—Bye sweetie, said Ann as they went past, —I’ll leave you a message if I go out.
Before they reached the elevator Szilard was already delivering a sermon on Oppenheimer and Fermi’s participation on the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee on Atomic Energy.
—Stimson, you know, at the War Department, convened it in ’45, purportedly to find out whether there were technical alternatives to dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.
The elevators slid open and they stepped in, Ben leaning forward to push the button marked 1, Szilard curiously scrutinizing his blurred and elongated face in the stainless doors as they closed but not suspending his relentless patter.
—Of course there were alternatives—I was advocating several myself, including a demonstration of the bomb without human victims—but Oppie and Fermi ended up saying “No, there’s no alternative.” Keep in mind that these guys weren’t soldiers, they weren’t military planners, they were just basically academics with an analytical job to do, an essentially qualitative job, a subjective assignment they’d been given by civilian government, and they could have said anything they wanted to. But the scientific panel—and of course this was after Trinity, this was something this Oppie and this Fermi didn’t formally have time to do before they showed up here with me, it was their other selves that did it—Oppie and Fermi and some other scientists you never met, officially they put their names to a document that said “All we can do is bomb women and children.” They said: Go ahead. Use the bomb.
Ann sat across from Keiko on the bed as she made calls from the room phone, a reel of niceties, Domo arigato gozaimashita, one of the few Japanese phrases she had learned, repeated over and over. Yoshi had taught it to Ben and Ben taught it to her. Thank you very politely.
It was soon clear that almost none of the monasteries were willing to disclose the identities of their guests. Finally Keiko gave up, shaking her head, and all they could do was make up a list of the institutions, with Keiko’s careful directions written beside them, from the nearest to the furthest away. They would not disclose names over the phone, Keiko said, this was not something they would do, but certainly, she thought, if Ann went in person and showed a picture, and if Oppenheimer was actually in residence, they would at least ask him if he cared to receive her.
Keiko could not come along, she had to get back to her duties at home, but the inquiries themselves would be simple. Ann had a picture of Oppenheimer in one of the books she had brought with her, and she could show it wherever she went.
After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki U.S. occupying forces ordered a moratorium on photographs and films of the destruction and the victims. As American interests rebuilt the country with the help of many of the Japanese industrialists who profited from the war, the Japanese government was complicit in this suppression.
—I’ve been working on them, you wouldn’t believe how hard, all the time I’ve been talking to them, trying to motivate them, said Szilard urgently, just as they stepped into a pachinko parlor.
Happily for Ben his voice was instantly drowned out by the overwhelming racket, clinking and jangling of tens upon thousands of coins, bells ringing, metal balls dropping and colliding, infinity of slots paying out constantly, nothing but clamor, chaos, hysteria of noise, screaming machines. Players sat slumped at their stations, baskets of silver balls between their feet, staring forward, oblivious, cigarettes dangling from their dry lips or growing long ashes on the sides of flimsy ashtrays.
Szilard, however, continued to talk. Ben ignored him.
Walking down the widest of the crowded rows, Szilard shoving and tripping behind him, he checked briefly from side to side like a cop on patrol, head right and left, everywhere, seeking a hunched-down, shivering, destitute Fermi, choking as he tried to breathe through the heavy, stale smoke. The air was so thick it almost closed his throat.
The word suffering is full and whole and perfect as a pierced heart, sweet, rushing and tender, thought Oppenheimer. Suffering is the joy of someone about to be martyred, illumination of something given up as an offer. When suffering is invoked only its magnitude remains to be specified, he thought, and turned to stare across the lawn at a blurry monument.
Nothing is nearer or more sympathetic than the one who suffers.
In the museum there had been an exhibit all about radiation sickness, and now the suffering of victims of radiation sickness seemed to him to have a tinge aside from other sufferings. It was as though the poisons that emanate from a divided nucleus infected the body more insidiously than all the sickness of the past, as though a death from invisible rays was indecent, dirty and dishonest.
Only cancer approaches the stigma of radiation, he thought, the disease that in life had supposedly killed him. Cancer has come to seem a symbol of insidious decay, a sign of something gone fatally wrong deep beneath consciousness, rotting in stealth behind the curtain of the flesh, where spectators cannot presume.
Ann sat on the train by herself, not a bullet train now but a local train, dingy and old with worn, frayed upholstery and faded linoleum floors. She watched the passing of the flatlands as they rose into the hills, the drab lots, warehouses, apartment buildings fanning out on both sides, signs on buildings she still could not read, was now and always would be blocked from reading but also in fact had no interest in reading, finally.
Keiko had written sounds for her in a lined notebook, sounded out the Japanese for “Hello, please excuse me, I am searching for my friend,” after which she was to present Oppenheimer’s photo. She repeated them again and again under her breath, —Sumimasen, tomodachi o sagashiteiru n desu ga, and then, when the car briefly emptied, out loud. When the hills began she was relieved to be in the shade of cedar and fir, on the gentle slope upward, out of the floodplain.
She was not sure how she would know when to get out of the train, since not all the station names were written on the signs in an alphabet she could read. She thought how alone she was without language, more alone than she had ever been, isolated among buildings, deaf and blind.
Keiko’s carefully written directions to the monastery took her out of the station, her bulging knapsack slung over one shoulder, down a hill, past a convenience store, through the back streets of the town with their pink-and-white fish windsocks, small Shinto altars and stunted, sculpted trees, miniscule cars parked tightly in carports that looked even smaller, to a brown wooden door in a wooden wall. It was unlocked and Ann pushed it open, walked down a path through a neatly trimmed garden empty of people, passing, on the side, an imposing temple whose front steps were flanked by stone lions, to a modest modern building with another carved wooden door in the front.
She knocked. She was nervous but she told herself she had to find him, she was here not for her but for all of them. Here for all of them.
The man who opened the door was dressed like a businessman, in a gray suit. He bowed and behind him she could see a shining long hall saturated with quiet, and feel the force of the silence tangible around them, static in the air. She asked her question softly, stumbling over the syllables, Su-sumimasen, tomo-tomo-dachi o sagashiteiru n desu ga wide-eyed, and then fumbled with Oppenheimer’s portrait, a photocopy from a book, stepping closer to show it to him as he backed up slightly, shying away from contact.
But after all that he only shook his head, as she should have, and almost had, expected.
Some say that when they walk at night near Hiroshima Ground Zero and there is wind in the trees they can hear the genbaku obake, the ghosts of the atomic dead, weeping for their children.
Beyond aspects of pain that are physical, thought Oppenheimer, sickness or injury or privation, beyond the so-called obvious, suffering can be a work of art. It ca
n be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the vacuum left by longing, call without an answer.
In a face-off with happiness suffering often wins, he reflected, not by being a necessary hardship but by being chosen. Suffering is chosen over happiness by almost everyone. It is designed, coddled, caressed and persuaded; it is worked over by the brain so that it informs the limits of our freedoms and the shape of our fulfillment. It ties us to other people where happiness does not.
Suffering is embraced.
The men approached Fermi when he was sitting on a park bench, staring ahead of him dazedly. On his lap he had an American newspaper, freshly purchased but had not opened.
One was older, the other was younger, but neither was of an age to be noticed. They wore suits and had faces and voices that were difficult to remember. Later, thinking back, he would ask himself whether one of them had a Dutch accent: had it been Dutch or had it been German?
They sat down on either side of him, too close.
—We are given to understand, said the first one quietly, —that you are a reasonable person with no ax to grind.
—I’m sorry? asked Fermi politely. His fingers curled on the front page of the New York Times so that the edges of his fingernails scratched into the fiber.
—He must confide in you, said the second one.
—Who? asked Fermi.
—The man who calls himself Leo Szilard.
—Who are you? asked Fermi.
The men shot each other glances of amusement over his head.
—We have been watching him ever since his arrest at Kirtland, said the second man.
—What is Kirtland? asked Fermi.
—You don’t know?
Fermi looked at him blankly.
—Kirtland Air Force Base, said the first man.
—Albuquerque, said the second. —He tried to break in. It was laughable but it drew our attention. And then we stopped laughing.
—I was not told about this before it happened, said Fermi quietly. — Are you the police?
The first man only smiled again.
—We had secret police in Italy, said Fermi. —You cannot intimidate me.
—We do not intend to, said the first man.
—Do you know what Szilard wants to do? asked the second man.
—No, said Fermi.
—Would you tell us if you did?
—Not necessarily.
—You have heard nothing? He hasn’t told you what he’s planning?
—He talks to Robert, said Fermi. —The two of them have conversations. I have not paid attention.
—I find that very difficult to believe, said the second man.
—Well, said the first one briskly, and got up, —thank you for your time, Dr. Fermi.
The second man rose too, a little reluctantly.
Fermi did not like him.
The first man leaned forward, clapped Fermi firmly on the shoulder and smiled without opening his mouth. Then they both turned and Fermi watched their backs recede as they walked away. Finally they turned a corner and were lost to sight.
Several minutes later he got up himself.
—We’re not going to find him like this, said Szilard as they left the pachinko place. —He was a betting man but not exactly a gambler, you know what I mean? And he hated smoking. He and Laura would have parties and people couldn’t even smoke in the house. And this was in the ’30s. Everybody smoked then. He would never be in a place like this.
—You could have said so before, couldn’t you, snapped Ben.
—I think we should look for Italian restaurants, said Szilard. —Let’s look there. They have Italian restaurants in Hiroshima, don’t they?
—I really don’t know, Leo, said Ben. —Have you seen any?
—Plus then we can get lunch, said Szilard. —It’s already past three. We can order pasta. Those spiral ones.
Oppenheimer had been thrown by the shock of the effects of the bomb, laid out there in the museum in panoramic display, in black-and-white photographs and videos on wall monitors that showed the torments of the dying. He had been struck by all the names and faces of these victims, girls and boys, the five-year-olds and the six-year-olds, the seven-year-olds, the eight-year-olds, the nine-year-olds and the ten. A child should not die. There was death, and death in the natural order was a simple grace; it gave life over to those who were newly made. He had no quarrel with it then. But surely, in violence and in sickness too, the infants should be spared.
He had been silenced by the frail old men talking humbly to rooms of schoolchildren, telling them in soft voices all about the bomb and what it had done, how it had made a world vanish in plain sight and whisked away their mothers, mothers barely remembered.
Fermi had simply wanted to be alone until the weight that oppressed him lifted to give some slight relief. Not only was there the evidence of the bomb, what it had done to innocent children, but there was the cloying thickness of the world around him, from which nature had been removed. Cities were built and built and over time converted into prisons. Apparently the Japanese did not demand trees on their streets: beyond the park the city was all gray blocks, unrelieved by green.
But now there were the questions, and the attitude of the men who asked them.
The second time she knocked on a monastery door she was ushered in by a monk wearing a robe of pale orange, his bearing serene. He could not understand her question, Sumimasen, tomodachi o sagashiteiru n desu ga, so she sat waiting in a high-ceilinged anteroom while he went to find someone who spoke English. She was shy, embarrassed at the ungainliness of what she had probably said to him. She told herself she should have had Keiko write down the characters for her so that she could show her paper to the men at the monasteries when her tongue failed, like the deaf-mute she was, wandering door to door. She turned her face up to a skylight, through which the sky was a bland and senseless white. What was Oppenheimer doing? Was he near or far, alone or in company, still or speaking? Was he still the same? He should not have left without telling her first.
Of course he could not be blamed for his pain.
But still, Ben had called her their handmaid and it stung with truth. She hated to admit she begrudged the scientists anything but it was a fact: she had paid for this trip with the only savings she had, money she would probably never see again, as Ben had reminded her more than once. She would have been so grateful if Oppenheimer had at least discussed his decision with her before he took off.
She wondered whether she should plan on saying something sharp to him when she found him or sacrifice her anger in the name of finding him, whether anger would stop her from finding him, finally, because angry she did not deserve to.
There was a small Italian restaurant right near the Peace Park, near the Starbucks, near the Coca Cola sign. Everything was convenient.
—So what I need is a favor from you, said Szilard, forking up tiramisu. —Can I count on that?
—My wife wants to find them, said Ben, staring into his espresso. — That’s all that matters to her. And you owe her, Leo. Don’t try to bargain with me. Just lead me to Fermi. You’re smart and you know him well. You can do it.
—It won’t be a problem, said Szilard. —This isn’t quid pro quo or anything. Of course I’ll help you find him. I want to find him too. It’s separate, the favor I’m asking for. It’s for when we get back. I’m asking you as a friend.
Setting down his espresso cup on the glass table Ben glanced over Szilard’s shoulder and could almost not believe what he was seeing. Beneath a gay painted bower of entwined grape leaves that stretched across an arched doorway at the back of the restaurant, beside a gaudy mural featuring an antique-style portrait of some classical Italianate person in a jaunty yet foolish cap—possibly Dante Alighieri—was Fermi, neither destitute nor shivering, emerging from the men’s rest r
oom.
The first two complexes she visited had been fairly close to each other, different neighborhoods of the same city, but the third was in a small village, almost an hour away from them by train and then two hours by local bus and on foot. She would be arriving in the dark.
She did not know where she would sleep, whether there would be a motel near the monastery and how she would find it even if there was. Waiting for the train, a slight rise of panic in her throat as she considered sleeping alone in the train station, sleeping alone as the deaf-mute she was, she found a bright-green payphone and called Ben, using a prepaid card Keiko had made her buy. There was no answer in the room.
When she hung up she stared at the bright-green telephone. There were none of those where she came from.
A train station, she thought, was not the worst place. Train stations were clean here: the floors shone and there was almost no crime. If she had to sleep on a bench she would certainly go unharmed, so there was nothing here to lose. No one would hurt a poor mute woman like her.
—Enrico! exclaimed Szilard, turning from his plate with dessert fork dangling, a morsel of tiramisu straying onto his pantleg as he rose. —Where the hell have you been?
Fermi walked over unsurprised, placidly, as though he had fully expected to find them.
—I’d like to order some food, he said to Ben. —I’m hungry.
—Go ahead, said Ben. He was actually relieved to see Fermi. Of all of them Fermi was least offensive to him: there was an element of dignity in the man’s self-contained demeanor, his reticence, his unwillingness to play the game. But then right away he was thinking of Ann, how she was off somewhere, and it was Fermi’s and Oppenheimer’s behavior that had put her there. Here was one of the culprits, and far from being beside himself with agitation and therefore not responsible for his actions he seemed calm, unmoved, business as usual, and as far as Ben could see impervious to her distress.
—The pesto fusilli is good, said Szilard. —But spill it. Where were you?
—Nearby, said Fermi, and shrugged.