Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

  In Roswell the caravan had picked up a urologist from Santa Cruz who offered to write prescriptions, and Ben began to take pills at night to fall asleep.

  The people close by in the busy dark of the bus made him restless, the sounds of their sleeping or not sleeping, the faint smells of their soap or deodorant or shampoo. A ban on incense in the bus had rid the atmosphere of Tamika’s sandalwood, but there were still other offenders: Oppenheimer’s cigarette smoke, which lingered on his suit jackets, and Szilard’s unfortunate cheap cologne. It had been presented to him by a follower as a token of her esteem, and though Szilard had never worn cologne before he now splashed it on his neck and jowls all too liberally.

  Ben could rarely find a comfortable position on his sleeping pad. Even when he did manage to fall asleep without the pills he was a light sleeper and so the movements and exhalations of others in the night often brought him awake again. He did not want to hear what the others did when their guard was down, he shied away from intimacy with them because they tended to repulse him, but he could not help hearing. And camped in the Ozarks, around one in the morning, he heard Dory get up from her futon and tiptoe into Oppenheimer’s room.

  Alone among them Oppenheimer had his own room. Szilard and Fermi slept in the space next to it, on the other side of a thin wall on a foldout bed. Szilard was snoring and it obscured Dory’s whisper, but Ben thought he heard her say —Is this OK? Do you mind?

  Then the springs creaked and he heard the sound of her settling onto the mattress, a rustle of sheets and—he was grateful—silence.

  Near Little Rock, beside a campfire, the gospel chorus gave a special performance. They were large black women with one elderly white man, and stood in purple robes holding hymnals with small lights on them. They sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and another hymn that went O that will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me; when by His grace I shall look on His face, that will be glory, be glory for me!

  The followers gathered as the sound of the hymns floated over the camp. They stood silent outside the rent-a-fence while the songs were sung, listening respectfully. I will know my Savior when I come to him, by the marks where the nails went in.

  —It’s beautiful, said Ann to Ben, who had come out of the bus to listen with a sheaf of membership applications in hand.

  —With music it doesn’t matter what they’re actually saying, said Ben.

  Ann was thinking that even what the songs said was beautiful, but she added nothing. Shall we gather by the river, where bright angel feet have trod? With its crystal tide forever, flowing by the throne of God?

  Ben watched the singers in the dark and wondered how they had decided to come here, what brought them away from the rest of the faithful.

  —This is the march on Washington, said Szilard to reporters in Memphis, Tennessee.

  He wanted to make the speech outside Graceland, because, he told Ann earnestly, it had once been the home of a well-known dead singer named Elvis Presley.

  The others dissuaded him.

  —And what do you plan to do when you get there?

  —As we tour the country we make an average of six stops a day. Campaign volunteers gather signatures for our petition, which we plan to present to the president and Congress. And there will be a demonstration, said Szilard. —We are planning a spectacular event.

  Later she asked him what he meant by that, but he would not tell her how spectacular the event would be.

  But Szilard insisted on visiting Graceland, trouping through the house’s narrow halls with the rest of the tourists, marveling at the gold records on the walls and the meditation garden. And that night, in a rare digression from his usually narrow focus, he sat outside the bus reading a book about Elvis that detailed the singer’s exploitation and victimization by Colonel Tom Parker, who had managed his career.

  —A very charismatic individual, said Szilard admiringly as he read. —And surprisingly intelligent.

  —Elvis?

  —Of course not! The colonel.

  They were eating lunch in a diner in Nashville when they heard Szilard from all the way across the room.

  —They said yes to the DNA! he whooped, jogging over with a crumpled fax in his hand. He leaned over and clasped Fermi’s shoulder in a rare display of emotion. —Your family!

  Fermi paused in his eating and looked up into Szilard’s face for an instant. Then he nodded, looked down at his food again and continued to eat.

  —In return for very generous compensation, of course, went on Szilard. —Thanks to Larry.

  Fermi nodded and refused to meet his eyes again, focussing on his hamburger. He was cutting it up with a knife and fork and chewing slowly, with distaste.

  —The logistics are extremely challenging, said Szilard. —We have to send out the samples to multiple labs, the whole testing and comparison process has to be overseen by neutral parties for verification purposes, and when they collect your present sample, Enrico—Glen’s setting it up for Greensboro—there will be a lot of witnesses, some of them probably hostile. But don’t worry. It will go quickly.

  —I will submit to this, Leo, said Fermi curtly. —But I don’t wish to discuss it further.

  Ben watched as Szilard stood crestfallen. Then his hurt shifted to disappointment, and he trudged around to the other side of the booth and slid in.

  —Do they have ice cream? he asked quietly, and reached for a menu. —I want a sundae with hot fudge and whipped cream.

  Watching as he trailed a finger down the menu selections, looking over the glasses that were perched halfway down his nose and pretending to concentrate on what he was reading, Ben felt a rare pang of affection for him.

  Later Fermi said, —They paid my family to let my body be dug up.

  —Don’t judge your relatives for it though, said Ben. —I’m sure Larry offered them so much they couldn’t refuse. They may be giving the money to charity, for all you know. They may be endowing a physics program. We don’t know.

  —It’s not that I care about my body, said Fermi. —It’s that Larry knows more about them than I do.

  —It’s best for them, said Ben.

  Fermi nodded. —But not for me.

  Ann discovered a lack of order in the office of the bus. Big Glen’s approach to filing was whimsical: he piled all file folders of the same color together, reds with reds, purples with purples, moss-green with moss-green. But the colors were not a code. They had no meaning.

  As she labeled the files and arranged them in the drawers the bus traveled east from Knoxville at its usual sluggish speed of forty and it struck her that she had turned into a secretary. She had demoted herself from librarian to executive assistant, a groupie with secretarial skills.

  She sat down heavily next to Oppenheimer, who was reading the news off his laptop, and thought: I joined a cult. Next came the Kool-Aid and the mass suicide.

  Fermi wished that he could isolate himself, Ben could tell. But he did not want to be alone with no tasks. He wanted work to do; he wanted to keep busy. And in the bus there was nothing for him to do except respond to his public—which duty he refused—or endure Szilard.

  He educated himself with gardening magazines and a few books on contemporary physics. In general, he told Ben, he found them highly speculative, all math and no mechanics. Physicists ceased to value experimentation, he said, and had apparently begun to think of themselves as philosophers or high priests, due in part to the ascendancy of their field of study.

  Many of them were concerned with the origins of the universe, said Fermi, and because of this they confused mathematics with theology.

  —Hey Ann, said Clint, waving in to her from outside the window. —You want to come slumming and drink with us later? We’re celebrating. Webster’s divorce came through.

  —I didn’t even know he was married, she said to the window. Behind Clint she could make out Leslie, looking in at her with arms crossed on her chest. She could not see Webster and she wondered if he was
somewhere in a yoga pose, his head beneath his feet, celebrating in his own way.

  —What?

  —I didn’t know he was married in the first place! she said more loudly.

  —Yeah, well. He’s just one of the little people to Queen Ann.

  Clint strode out of the frame of the window and she went back to her filing. She moved her ankle slightly in the sandal, stiff and faint. She wondered whether Webster’s wife had been stiff and faint or a contortionist like him.

  Lately she wanted to hit Clint. She felt weak, but she wanted to hit him. He was pent-up and small, a scrawny nut of a man. There was nothing grandiose in him: if he could hunker down and shoot at his opponents out of a small hole in a concrete wall, he would. He did not know how to be fond, it seemed to her, and this dried him up and stretched him into meanness.

  That was the risk of an ungenerous nature, she thought, whereas adoring made people spill with life. It was a talent to love, to adore and worship, and it was how they adored that made them tender, made them live as though life was a gift instead of a right.

  Life glowed in many houses but one of them was faith. At first she hated this recognition: it seemed a concession to weakness. Her parents had raised her to believe in science—or not science, but rather information. There were categories of information and these categories had a hierarchy. Very low in the hierarchy was religion, a fanciful tale, a bright piece of costume jewelry, a fake bauble to dazzle the eyes. Religion always struck her as sad, a sad answer to need, a handout for those impoverished minds who were not more discerning.

  But information was worse than sad. Information was tragic.

  During the decades of the Cold War there could never be enough nuclear weapons, yet there were always too many. For any practical purpose up to and including global annihilation, there were simply far too many.

  At the height of this frenzy of production in 1960, before it refined its arsenal for accuracy instead of brute force, the U.S. alone possessed twenty thousand megatons worth of bombs. This was the equivalent of 1.4 million Hiroshimas.

  The next day they pulled into a rest stop so that Szilard could amass volunteers to collate fliers, on tables set up in a long row on the pavement. They were in the mountains of western North Carolina. As they traveled east it had become greener and greener until Tennessee, and after Tennessee it was still green, but with more buildings.

  At the rest stop there were tall trees planted in a straight row, each equidistant from the next. Ann bought watery, sugary lemonade from a vending machine and stood staring at the row of trees as she drank it, regretting the straightness.

  —Ann? Is it you? I mean are you kidding me?

  She turned and saw her friend Sheila from Santa Fe standing a few feet away, in a bright pink sundress.

  —I can’t believe it!

  Sheila screeched and ran over, throwing her arms around Ann’s shoulders before Ann could say anything. When she backed off again she was smiling broadly and Ann caught a glimpse of food between her teeth. Her face shone and Ann saw she had her hair braided all over her head with small colorful beads.

  —Are you with us? asked Sheila.

  —I mean, are you? asked Ann. —With the caravan?

  —We call it the parade, actually, said Sheila expertly. —Yeah, I’m an oldtimer. Picked ’em up after Albuquerque. I read about the parade in the paper and I just followed my instincts! Are you new?

  —No, said Ann. —The parade?

  —You haven’t heard that? Where have you been?

  —I’m in the RV with the scientists.

  Sheila stared at her, brow furrowed.

  —You’re shittin’ me.

  —They were living with us in Santa Fe before this. In our house.

  —When?

  —It started after the shooting. In the library.

  —Get out. Are you for real?

  —I promise, said Ann. —Sorry I was out of touch. It was—I don’t know. A hard time.

  —I mean—how did you meet them?

  —It’s a long story.

  —I got nothing but time!

  Sheila grabbed her arm and steered her over toward the women’s rest room, in a concrete bunker lined with dirty beige tiles. The line for the toilet stalls was long, snaking out past the water fountain and into the parking lot.

  —I’ll just go in the bushes, then, said Sheila. —I guess you guys have a bathroom on board? But for those of us who just have cars, oh my God. It is like this all the time. I haven’t seen the inside of a toilet bowl since Tucumcari.

  —What does Rick think of all this?

  —We kind of broke up. I wanted to talk to you about it but you were still traumatized. It’s part of the reason I came out. You know, to get a feeling of liberation. Just to do my own thing. The thing with Rick was, I mean I was really into him but what I found out was, he didn’t want me to be a whole person. He had no interest in my personal wholeness. He wanted me for what I could do for him. Basically all he wanted was my body. Then when he found a better body, he decided to go for that one.

  —Really? said Ann.

  —It turned out he was having this affair with a twenty-year-old blond girl named Finki. She went to Choate or something and she had a trust fund. I gotta empty my bladder. I mean really. Wait right here! You promise?

  She went to pee behind the rest room building, in a dark place in the trees that smelled of soil. Ann could smell the soil from the parking lot where she stood, as though it had been freshly turned. Other women were emerging from the dark place in the trees, adjusting their skirts or buttoning the waists of their pants, and still others were going in.

  Ann stood back, sipping her drink and looking around for a smoker who would let her have a cigarette. But everyone was wholesome.

  In fact she did not mean religion, she thought, looking into the branches of the nearest tree and then turning and leaning back against it. The brown of the bark was a soft brown to the touch, and the green was deep on the eyes. It was like home, which was also brown and green but drier brown and drier green. Here the colors were lush but too many buildings had dulled them.

  She did not think of religion when she thought of adoration. Religion was a place that feeling went, but it was not feeling itself. She meant something that was not religion and also was not love, because there was no reflection of the self in it. At least there was no enlarging of the self.

  In the face of the unnameable the self became very small, and then it t turned buoyant.

  —The test was a match, said Szilard softly to Oppenheimer and Ben. —Fermi’s DNA and the corpse of Fermi. I haven’t told him.

  For a few moments Ben considered the possibility that Szilard was lying, that in fact everything Szilard ever said was a lie, with elaborately fabricated documentation. Then he realized it did not matter what he thought.

  —No one’s going to believe it, Leo, he said.

  He was standing with Oppenheimer beside a picnic table at the rest stop, smoking. Two burly Huts guarded them, telling loud racist jokes. Szilard sat on the table, his feet on the bench, his laptop on his lap, fingers on the keyboard.

  —We have independent third-party verification, said Szilard, eyes scanning the screen rapidly. —From four different sources. We subcontracted four separate analyses at four separate labs. There was oversight. They all got the same results!

  —It doesn’t matter, Leo, said Ben. —No one’s going to buy it. It won’t mean anything to them. You can’t prove what no one wants to believe. If some guy stepped up to a microphone and claimed there was proof that little green men had come down and killed Elvis, people would just laugh. Even if he had the proof. You see?

  —But that’s ridiculous.

  —I’m telling you, the media won’t buy it and neither will the public.

  —That’s where you’re wrong, said Szilard. —People want to believe. Didn’t you ever see The X-Files?

  Clint came up to her while she was in a conversation with She
ila. She had started to dread his approach, but she never found it easy to raise her voice or speak harshly.

  —So, you still stoop to talk to the little people.

  —If you resent it all so much why don’t you just take off?

  Exasperated was the best she could do, though she still wanted to slap his face. If she had been the bitch he thought she was, she thought, she would have called over the nearest Hut and had him dragged off screaming.

  —I mean no one is keeping you here, she went on. —And you can stop with the attitude, too. None of this was my idea. I’m not the boss.

  —Come on, I’m just pickin’, he said, and punched her arm with a gesture that was supposed to pass for light. But it hurt and she felt the sharpness of his hairy knuckles and put her hand on the bruised-feeling place. He leered. He had taken to wearing a white ribbon on the end of his greasy ponytail, tied into a bow. It hung down his chest now, a bizarre complement to his greasy black leather cap. —Dontcha even got a sense of humor?

  In eastern North Carolina Szilard did campus recruitment, taking Oppenheimer along for a mascot. Together they made the rounds: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, Duke University. Often Szilard would make his stump speech and then Oppenheimer would step up to the microphone and pronounce a sentence or two. It was all that was required of him.

  The caravan gained in numbers, camped out in a moist small-treed private forest outside Durham. Permission had been given by a wealthy local landowner with ties to a fast-food chain, so the caravan waited with its generators and satellite dishes for Szilard to decide it was time to move on.

  —His press conference about the DNA was a failure, said Ben, coming back to camp after a day in downtown Raleigh.

  Ann was entering phone messages into a database on the computer in the bus while Dory opened fan mail for Oppenheimer. You rule the starry night king of Kings lord of Lords. Pray for my son he has spina bifida. Can you sign this piece of cloth with Ballpoint Pen and send it back, I will keep it with me every waking moment.

  Having Dory help her with menial tasks made Ann feel like a little woman, like one of a huddle of submissive females enlisted to back up the great men. For that reason she preferred to work alone. But lately Dory came toward her in the morning saying —How can I help?, asking questions and bustling around till she was given a task.