by Lydia Millet
—My wife’s very upset, said Ben. —Do you realize how much anxiety you caused her?
—I apologize, said Fermi simply and sincerely, and then Ben was distracted by the messy spectacle of Szilard rising from his seat to flag down a waitress by waving a dirty napkin and shouting —Hey!
—That’s rude, Leo, said Ben, but the waitress was already upon them, smiling nervously. Fermi ordered spaghetti carbonara.
—I have to tell you, said Fermi when the waitress had left, turning to Szilard. —Two men came to talk to me. They asked me about you and Robert.
—You’re kidding, said Szilard. —Why didn’t they come straight to me?
—They asked me what you were planning.
—What are you planning, Leo? asked Ben.
—They were not good men, said Fermi.
—They know we have something, said Szilard. —They know we are a threat to them.
—Who’s they?
—The government, said Szilard.
—What government? Ours? asked Ben. —You’ve got to be kidding me.
Fatigue set in almost as soon as Ann got her answer from the third monastery, a cheaply built compound on the swampy outskirts of a national park, gray grassy hills receding behind the low buildings. On her way back to the bus stop, where she hoped to catch the last bus of the night before they stopped running, she walked slowly, her shoulders heavy. Once, when she looked up at the pavement ahead from the pavement beneath her feet, she was frozen in her paces by the sight of a large brown monkey loping across the road, his knuckles touching the ground.
Her feet hurt from walking so much but she felt glad as soon as she saw him.
The monkey was not Oppenheimer, of course.
Walking dumbly, thinking of the dead children in the museum of the atom bomb, Oppenheimer knew suddenly that suffering was what gave onto love. Suffering itself is beloved: love and suffering are far closer to each other than love and pleasure.
Ben went back to the hotel room to sleep hoping she would be there, having extracted a promise from Fermi not to run again. Far from rebuking Fermi he found himself promising that when they got home Fermi could help him with summer plantings in the garden. With Szilard rebuke was second nature and he often felt like a high school principal, an absurd father figure doling out warnings and slaps on the wrist—without, admittedly, wielding any threat of real punishment.
But with Fermi he felt more like a nursemaid. Fermi was a rigid man with something vital broken.
Instead of Ann in the room there were two messages waiting for him. One was from her, telling him she hadn’t found Oppenheimer, of course. She was staying in a small bed-and-breakfast about two hours distant by train, and here was the number if he needed it. The second was from Oppenheimer, calling not from an isolated monastery high up on a hill, where Ben had imagined him, but from a slick apartment in Shibuya, Tokyo.
Ann ended the evening on a bench outside the train station, under a broad, low tree. Rain threatened but did not fall and passersby looked at her sometimes from the sidewalk, their faces inscrutable in the darkness. She was embarrassed so she turned her face away from the street and hoped the police did not come.
She thought of the pain of Oppenheimer and the pain of the dying. She thought of her parents being hit by the truck and then she thought of people dying more slowly, or sick people not dying at all but acting as though they had battled death and beat it in a contest. She thought of people who claim for example that a famous terminal illness has not conquered them no matter how hard it tried, who brag that they are greater now than they ever were in good health, larger for having fought the fight.
It’s rarely the boast of those who have lived through war, she was thinking as she turned on the bench, hip joints aching from the hardness. Those people don’t boast because they know the real heroes rarely survive.
Trying to go to sleep and failing, she thought: the real heroes are dead. This distinguishes them.
In his new bed Oppenheimer was also trying to fall asleep and failing, annoyingly conscious of his dry cheek against the pillow. Suffering ignites the spark of contact with the sublime and offers proof of humanity, he was thinking. He wondered why it had been given to him to see history unfold, when it would have been so much more usual to die.
Powerful people have the luxury of designing the way they suffer, he thought, while the weak have the manner of their suffering forced upon them. But neither category has much daily business with happiness.
It is suffering, he thought, that is the engine of transfiguration, a hub around which the captive self turns.
4
—It was a total, like, revelation, said Larry. —I’m not even kidding. She stared at him and then at Oppenheimer, who sat smoking in an armchair holding a tumbler of whiskey. He was wearing a well-tailored new suit and new leather shoes. Cross-legged on the floor at the low black enamel table in his living room, a few feet away, Larry cradled a large bong.
Fermi had retired to a bedroom as soon as they arrived and Szilard, who stood across the room talking on Larry’s cell phone, was not bothering to listen.
—He calls me to ask about places to go meditate, right? Like retreats and all that. Meanwhile since you guys were here I’ve been reading up on shit, like the alien autopsy, abductions, Roswell, and then all this stuff about cattle mutilations and the military and Alamogordo and the A-bomb and all that. And then I’m looking at this old Time-Life book my father’s got back there. He’s got a whole set of them, right? So I find Oppie’s picture. I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me!
—It’s hard to explain, said Ann with a note of apology.
—Some people tend to be skeptical, said Ben drily.
—I was blown away. I mean blown away. Totally. So when he calls I’m like, just come here, man. You’re welcome. I go, If you want a like spiritual retreat or whatever I’ll just clear out for a few days, I’ll leave you in peace, know what I mean? I mean he’s the Father of the A-Bomb! And he’s supposed to be dead.
—That’s when Larry called me and told me about it, said Larry’s girlfriend, sitting next to him on the floor. Her bellbottoms were so wide and long she had to hold them up when she walked. Ann had visibly marveled at this sacrifice to fashion—Ben had watched her watching—but also at her hair, so long she could sit on it, dyed blond interspersed with red and green, and artfully dreadlocked.
Larry took a bong hit and nodded, his face pink from held breath, as his girlfriend leaned across the table and took Ann’s hand in both of her own, charm bracelets dangling onto the table’s surface, squeezing the fingers warmly.
—Tamika really admires you, said Larry, on the sighing end of a long exhalation.
—Me? asked Ann.
—I think it is so great that you believed in him and supported him, said Tamika. —That is so great. And oh yeah, the other guys too.
—Oak Woods Cemetery, said Szilard to the cell phone. —Chicago.
—I mean it’s amazing, said Larry. —Robert’s basically been reincarnated as himself. That’s like completely unheard of. It, like, never happens.
—Never, agreed Tamika solemnly.
—You don’t say, said Ben.
—He came back to tell us something. He has a mission here. This guy is like a messenger. I’m serious. I mean it. You know what he is? He’s basically a prophet.
In the hush that followed Larry and Tamika turned their gaze up to Oppenheimer, who in his large, straight-backed chair presided regally over all of them. Ben waited for Oppenheimer to say something, make a self-deprecating gesture, a witty, light dismissal in his usual style. But Oppenheimer was distracted, smoking and gazing past them, paying little attention to anyone but Szilard, who chose that moment to yell angrily into the innocent cell phone —Damn it! I want the body exhumed!
—Leo, said Oppenheimer, when Szilard had stabbed at the END CALL button several times and handed the cell phone back to Larry, —we need to discuss your manners.
/> The guest bedrooms in Larry’s father’s apartment were well-appointed. Each had its own bathroom and jacuzzi with electronic controls, and Ann and Ben sat in one of these, water jetting around them, before they went to bed. On the wall hung a print of a painted scroll depicting a fat, angry demon with bulging eyes.
—So Larry’s a fan, I guess, said Ben.
—He is, said Ann, and she sounded distracted and confused, almost puzzled by the evidence that people other than she could be convinced of the scientists’ legitimacy.
Ben thought: She’s lost her monopoly.
—Almost an acolyte, you might say, said Ben, pressing home his advantage.
—I don’t know how deep it goes, though, said Ann uncertainly. —I mean I like him and he’s been good to us, he’s a really nice guy, but I wonder if he’s—I think maybe the scientists are just his Movie of the Week, you know?
—You mean because he’s a stoner he doesn’t really have opinions, said Ben, smiling.
—Of course I didn’t mean that, said Ann, and lapsed into silence, staring at the foaming water.
Ben put his hand on her knee, worried he had been callous, staring at the damp hair clinging to her wet cheeks, the flush of heat in the skin beneath her eyes.
—You may be right, he said, —this may be just entertainment for him. He probably doesn’t take it as seriously as you do. I mean who does, right?
Faint smile at that but he was still feeling she needed more, reassurance or comfort, he wasn’t sure which.
—Tomorrow we’ll ask them if they still want to go to Nagasaki, he said, since planning could sometimes distract her from current events.
—OK, she said, but she was still baffled.
—Listen, he said softly, —it’s going to be OK. It’ll be fine. We can always use a friend. Right?
—Of course, she said, and let him squeeze her hand. —But how about the men who threatened Fermi?
—I don’t know, he said.
He had been thinking about this and had come up with nothing.
—What if they really do something?
—What I’m hoping, he said, wiping a soap sud gently from the curve of her ear, —is that they were people Szilard pissed off just by being himself.
—Here in Japan?
—Szilard can piss people off anywhere.
She was not mollified by this, staring straight past him and nodding distantly.
—Who knows what he’s been doing while our backs were turned? You know Leo. He’s annoying.
She kept nodding, but he knew she was not listening to him.
She got up when it was still dark and early enough to feel like night and crept through the apartment to knock on Oppenheimer’s door.
Larry had put him in the master bedroom, where he usually slept himself, which featured a four-poster canopy bed, a gilt-edged mirror, and a massive wood cabinet containing a big-screen television. The door was cracked a few inches and after she knocked lightly and got no answer she went in. She found the sheets and blanket rumpled on the bed, the shallow depression left by Oppenheimer’s long, thin body, and the room empty of all but the new suit Larry had bought him, hanging in the open closet. On the floor of the closet were his old shoes, and picking one up, hooking a finger on the worn leather where it had blistered his heel, she remembered a time before she knew him, in her own bedroom, looking at shoes, looking at clotheshangers: what was it? Ben in the next room, shaving, and the world about to turn liquid.
It was before she and Fermi had met Oppenheimer, before she talked to him, but after she saw him in the bar and heard them speak, faces reflected in the warped mirror where she stared at them, the air almost lit around her, before she knew.
The days after Eugene shot himself had been delicate with perception of minute things. Details had been gilded, brought out from their backgrounds, each of them like an adoration of the whole thing. She had forgotten but even walking down the street those mornings, walking in a straight line, she had stopped and hesitated, waiting, infused with sensation and willingness. The parts of the world had been arresting. Something had stopped her and made her look at them.
She left the room, stepping carefully, not to wake the others, not to be heard by Ben, through the living room where Larry and Tamika slept on a wafer-thin futon on the floor, Larry snoring with his arms flung wide, Tamika nestled into his side in the fetal position. Her multicolored hair trailed onto the tatami. There was a silk sheet pulled over both of them, which Larry held up to his chin, and beside the futon their clothes were crumpled, an orange and black sarong covered in primitive shapes of fish, olive-green army pants with multiple pockets.
Ann thought how young they looked as they slept, how despite the fact that Larry was probably pushing forty he had the aspect of a man in his twenties, not because he surfed and smoked pot but because he was innocent, there was something innocent about him, guileless, as though he was trying to impress no one.
She felt old by comparison just because she was more reserved. Reservation was an element of adulthood, embarrassment with forethought.
Larry had offered up all four of his private bedrooms to his guests and volunteered to sleep on the floor. She couldn’t suspect him of having an ulterior motive: what motive could there be? There was no profit to be had by believing in ghosts and as far as the health of the ghosts themselves went, Oppenheimer, Szilard and arguably Fermi all needed to be seen and acknowledged by more people than her, alone she was not sufficient, alone she was a crazy woman, in fact she should be grateful to Larry for making her look sane. Sleeping with his mouth open he was an overgrown child with childish enthusiasms, and she should be fond of him, as she was fond of them all.
He could not be behind the warning. No: it was simple.
All the way from New Mexico they had been followed.
She went back to bed then, Ben murmuring in his sleep and rolling over toward her.
Far away, as though it had never happened, was his past before this, unchanging, a silver place. It gleamed like pavement after rain.
He had been dreaming again of his everyday life.
When she got up in the morning, mouth and eyes dry, it was because there was a haze of pot smoke in the air. She came out of her room to see Larry fishing around in a drawer and then handing a wad of bills to Szilard. Tamika sat up naked on the futon, sheets bunched around her waist, apparently unaware of the resulting discomfort. Oppenheimer stood near the door, behind Szilard, consciously turning his glance away from her breasts, and Ann thought of Keiko doing the same when Ben came out of the bathroom, of the aversion of eyes everywhere. Between people ran lines of eagerness and furtiveness that were clear and strong and sprung with tension.
Only Szilard didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He never seemed to pay attention to nudity. Szilard seemed completely asexual, as though he actually possessed no sexual urges. Szilard was like a prepubescent boy who never reached reproductive maturity. It was impossible to envision him in sexual ecstasy. No wonder he had warned a girlfriend once that he was not breeding stock. She remembered it clearly from his biography. “I am a worker bee, not a drone.”
—What are you up to? she asked Oppenheimer, as Ben came into the room behind her in boxer shorts, rubbing his eyes.
—We’re just in and out, we came to get funding for breakfast, he said. —We’re trying to decide what comes next.
—Engaged in high-level talks, said Szilard, and shoved Larry’s money into his pocket.
The term referred to any talks involving him.
—Just tell me, before you go out, I mean should I be making train reservations again? Do you still want to go to Nagasaki?
—Nagasaki? said Szilard distractedly. —No need for that. Right Oppie?
—No need for Nagasaki, no, said Oppenheimer, and smiled at Ann, almost in apology. —Hiroshima was enough.
—So —what? Are we going to fly home, then?
—We’re discussing it, said Szilard brus
quely. —We’ll get back to you soon.
After he shut the door behind them, Larry rolled a joint. Tamika yawned widely and Ben put his arms around Ann and whispered into her ear, —Leo’s got a new attitude, doesn’t he.
She heard Szilard’s patronizing tone for seconds after he had left the room, and felt like an unpaid servant.
—But to say that pain is what produces us isn’t to dismiss joy, contentment, or pleasure, I don’t think, she said to Oppenheimer that night, when the two of them were alone in the living room. They had been talking about the museum, and Oppenheimer’s guilt. He claimed it would never end.
—No, he said. —All of those are the products of suffering.
—They’re what comes after it. They’re either relief from it or a reward for it. Don’t you think?
He nodded absently.
—What’s wrong with happiness is that people think it’s a guarantee. They hold it up like it’s a promise of joy forever. You know, like you can have it down—as though once you have it it’s yours forever. Like it’s a house or a car.
—It was not like that when I was alive, said Oppenheimer slowly. —Since then the sense of entitlement has been growing. Entitlement is in the air.
A girl who was eight years old when Hiroshima was bombed later said: “I escaped from the city by walking over many dead bodies. There were people with severe burns or people grabbing my legs asking for water, and I escaped by deserting these people just because I wanted to live. I ran away from those people who were held under some objects and were asking for my assistance but I deserted them without giving even a lift to help them out. My life has been miserable since then. I have been ill and unable to succeed in anything I try.”
You won’t believe what day it is today, said Larry.
—It’s someone’s special day, said Tamika coyly.
—Let us in on it, said Ben. —Please, I’m begging you.
His resentment was making him bitter. The bitter skin alone, he knew, the sour rind of his impatience could reduce him before his wife, but he could not help it. It had snuck up on him. Before this kindness had come easily to him and now he tried and failed to be generous, and even external generosity, that is the appearance of generosity, was hard to pull off sometimes, more and more often.