by Lydia Millet
She waited until Ben’s face was turned her way and then waved down at him. He raised a hand back and kept talking.
—What point is there in speaking to them, went on Oppenheimer, —If they have no interest in what I’m saying?
—They do have an interest, she said. —They just don’t hear what you think they should hear.
—OK, he said abruptly, —fine. Let’s get it over with.
When the hymn finished they stubbed out their cigarettes and went back in. On the coffee table a series of items was laid out, including a bandanna, several rings and necklaces, a rosary, and a small glass vial.
—These are for you to bless, said Mrs. Bradley, with a slight bow of her head.
—I don’t know how to bless things, he said brusquely.
—All you have to do is touch them, she said.
—Even better is if you could kiss them, said one of the other women, her voice trembling, and picked up the rosary. —It belonged to my mother.
Oppenheimer looked at Ann helplessly. Dory was squatting down panning along the row of belongings with the camcorder.
—He doesn’t feel comfortable with that, said Ann after a long silence.
—I feel as though I’d be pretending, said Oppenheimer. —I don’t wish to take advantage of your credulity.
—Please! said the woman who had asked him to kiss her rosary. —All you have to do is pass your hand over them.
They were gazing at him and waiting. Ann thought they would wait forever.
Oppenheimer stood indecisive at the end of the sofa with Ann next to him, trailing his nicotine-stained fingers along the overstuffed arm. Finally he bent and touched first the small glass vial, and then the rings.
—What is this for? he asked, holding up the vial.
—It’s for holy water, said the black woman who had been weeping at the beginning. —A Catholic friend of mine asked me to bring it.
An older woman with dark roots in her red hair leaned forward from her seat on the couch and clasped his arm with both hands.
—And those are our wedding rings.
—No touching! snapped a Hut from the nearest corner, and stood up, his hand on his gun.
—Sorry! I forgot! I’m so sorry!
—No, I’m sorry, said Oppenheimer gently, and took the woman’s hands in his own as the Hut sat back down. —He didn’t mean to alarm you.
Ann followed Dory’s camcorder up from his hands to his face, and then saw that all the women in the room were gazing at him, still, their faces fixed in a single rapt expression.
Increasingly he was allowing the literal to recede. He was becoming figurative.
It seemed to him more and more than the world was composed of abstractions, himself another among them. His field of view was no longer restricted to what could be or what should, no longer fixed to an insistence on logic. Instead he had begun to see himself as an impression on the minds of others. What was seen and felt, that was all that there was anymore, impressions, convictions, acquiescence. He was less a self-determined organism than outside views of him and so it was easy for him to defer to the perceptions of others.
Instead of reason anymore there was only movement. It was the movement of crowds, to whom faith substituted for education, to whom facts were only a competing myth and the subject of mockery. It was the movement of those who believed.
3
In the morning Ben left Ann in the motel room shower and reported to the bus. It was packed with men in well-cut suits. They sat in a row with their laptops, typing silently.
In the corner lay a gray mound of coats. Even in a heap he could tell they were expensive.
—What happened here? he asked Szilard. —The clock struck midnight and the soldiers changed into attorneys?
—Leo, Al here wanted to give you his report, broke in one of the lawyers. —He has a plane to catch in a few minutes. The situation with the Army.
—Did they make the concession? said Szilard, turning to a black lawyer wearing a purple tie.
—What it looks like, said the lawyer, removing his laptop from his knees and standing, —is now they’ve lost the suit they want to turn a blind eye. They don’t want anything more to do with us.
—Why would they? asked Ben. The lawyer’s eyes flicked over him, disinterested.
—They wanted to try to have us arrested under the Patriot Act, said Szilard. —You didn’t know about that?
—On what basis? asked Ben. —What have you done that’s illegal?
—Apparently they claim we’re terrorists, said Szilard.
—Not per se, said the lawyer in the purple tie. —A national security risk, is how they put it.
—Undermining American foreign policy with our outreach to other countries, said Szilard.
—Probably because we’re not campaign contributors of the president’s, said Larry.
—I can’t speak to their intentions, said the lawyer. —What I can say, Leo, is it looks like they’ve dropped us. We’ve made a couple of disclosure requests to them in the past couple of weeks and they complied gracefully, but with no fanfare. The consensus is, they want to disappear out of this.
—Fine, said Szilard. —There’s no place for the military in this question anyway. This is an issue for the civilian government.
—Leo? Can I talk to you?
Bradley stood at the door.
—Gotta go, said Szilard, dropping the melon rind in the sink and wiping his fingers on his pants. —Be right back.
Larry was sitting with Tamika at the table, writing checks.
—I like the ones with the dolphins on them, she murmured. —I think you should order those.
—When are we leaving? Ben asked Larry.
—I think a couple of hours. Don’t worry, though. We’ll send a Hut to come get you two in your room.
—For New York?
—For New York.
On his way out he glanced along the row of lawyers. Ted the rookie had become a small cog, deferring to the big guys from large firms in New York and Washington. The Christian leaders retained their own counsel but the Szilard legal team refused to work with them, citing potential conflicts of interest. The two teams did not fraternize.
—We need the Ninth Circuit on this one, said a thickset middle-aged lawyer to a young thin one, and Ben shut the door behind him.
There was a reception for Szilard and Oppenheimer before their speech to the United Nations Security Council. It was a few blocks away in a penthouse garden owned by a thin, aging heiress who wore long flowing dresses and bulging jewelry. When the old woman took Ann’s hand in her own pale claw the fingers were spread wide by thick rings, and her eyes were blue and rheumy but her smile was gentle.
The garden wrapped around three sides of a venerable building that overlooked the East River. Ann wandered along the balcony with her wine glass in one hand and Ben holding the other.
—Fermi would have liked this, he said, and touched the rim of his own wine glass to a bush of yellow roses.
He said it as though Fermi had faded away.
Scientists and diplomats milled around talking to news cameras and wealthy patrons, jabbering away in languages Ann did not know. She ducked inside to find a bathroom and heard Oppenheimer tell a man in a tweed suit that the stone carving running along the ceiling of the dining room looked like a Babylonian frieze.
—Very astute, Dr. Oppenheimer. In fact it’s from the palace wall of Ashur-nasir-apal at Nimrud.
She left them nodding speculatively at the fierce stone angels and walked along looking at photographs. One was a sepia-toned portrait of a young bride and she assumed it was the ancient patroness, with clear and unlined skin, beautiful.
When she came out of the bathroom again Szilard was speaking in the garden, booms swinging over his head. —… of course require a rigorous system of inspections …
Just inside the French doors sat the old lady on a needlepoint chair, listening.
—It’s very kind
of you to open your home to us, said Ann, leaning down close.
—Anything for the cause, said the dowager weakly, her chin trembling. It took her a while to muster her next words, while Ann waited and felt awkward.
—Thank you.
—I believe, she went on softly and with difficulty, her voice quivering, —that by the time that our great-grandchildren are the age I am now, everything that we think is beautiful will be gone.
Ann lowered herself down beside the chair, squatting.
—Can I get you anything?
The old woman shook her head.
—I was sorry that Dr. Fermi could not be here, she said. —I met him, you know. When I was a young girl.
—You did?
—And now he is—sick?
—He is sick now, said Ann softly.
In his farewell speech of 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the growing power of what he called the “military-industrial complex.” Said Eisenhower, former war hero, general and Republican, “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals … disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.”
They walked the few blocks to the United Nations complex with the crowd of scientists, stately streets lined with old doorman buildings and tall wide-limbed trees. The leaves on the trees were yellowing and Ben thought the years of his life would have been different had he spent them ensconced in one of these restrained and elegant buildings, in rooms with high ceilings and gleaming wood floors and windows that gave a view of these large and venerable trees.
Finally they turned a corner and saw the scenery change and the building was looming. Ben stopped and held Ann’s hand, watching with the cameramen as the crowd of scientists flowed past them and disappeared inside. As Oppenheimer was swallowed by the doors Ben felt he had watched him vanish over and over again. This was something Ann had known for a long time but Ben had learned recently: Oppenheimer was always in the process of vanishing. He was present only in faded effigy.
Larry was drinking with some friends at an old bar near Union Square and Tamika had promised to meet them. They had no plans of their own and so they let her lead them down busy streets and followed her like sheep, rubbernecking at the sights, the stores and the traffic and the pedestrians, all bustling and full of direction.
In the bar the wood of the counter gleamed and the ancient floor tiles were pleasantly worn, but the air was rancid with stale cigarette smoke and spilled beer.
Big Glen was wearing a mustache of Guinness.
—I thought you were AA, Glen, said Ben.
—No, man. NA and OA. Not AA. Not my thing.
—I see.
—Hey Clint! Over here!
—You didn’t tell us Clint was coming, said Ben.
—Sorry, said Larry. —He just called and asked us.
—He’s an asshole.
—Yeah, but you know. He’s kind of a nice guy.
—What?
—I want to go, whispered Ann into his ear, but then a waitress descended with a pitcher of beer and Clint was already sliding onto the bench beside her. —Damn it!
—Hey little lady, said Clint, affecting a devilish charm that did not exist. He nudged her shoulder with his own. —Whatcha been up to?
—We’ve been steering clear of you, said Ben. —Weren’t you supposed to blow up a toilet or something?
—Oh man, is that a story, said Clint, and helped himself to a stein of beer from the pitcher. —So we were supposed to get Bradley’s guys’ attention diverted, right? And we had the powder from all these M80s, and you know, we packed it real tight. That’s the key. So we’ve got this stuff in my pack and we’re going through the trees at night without even a flashlight, right? All creeping and shit.
—Another couple of pitchers here, please, said Larry to the waitress.
—But we figure let our eyes adjust to the dark and all that and we’ll probably do OK. But what we weren’t banking on is fucking Bradley’s guys actually have this high-tech surveillance bullshit that takes readings off your body heat. You know, like they use to track animal migrations from planes and satellites and shit? I mean, Lar, we’re talking these guys got serious money. I thought you had money till I saw the gear Bradley’s got.
—They took you somewhere you could see it?
—Their satellite truck. You know, like the shit the TV news people have. You wouldn’t believe the setup they got in there.
—But they went easy on you, said Ben.
Ann wished Clint would not breathe on her as he told the story. She turned and looked at the wall on the other side of Ben, which featured a faded photograph of a softball team, circa 1920.
Today wherever she turned she saw old photographs, pictures of old people when they were young.
—Yeah, so what happened? Suddenly we got like eight guys descending on the two of us. The only reason they didn’t do a full cavity search is we had our IDs from the buses. If we’d been regular followers without ID badges? I tell you, man, we’d have been up shit creek. Those guys pistol-whip people. I’ve heard stories.
—Get outta here, said Larry.
—No, I swear. This guy Adalbert knew? Bradley’s soldiers found him stealing shit out of one of their tents and they broke all his fingers on his right hand.
—I told you, Lar! said Tamika. —Total Nazis.
—So then they took you into their van? asked Larry. —Without patting you down?
—They patted us down, they just didn’t search our things. We didn’t have guns, just the powder in the pack. We told ’em we were on our way to go smoke a joint with some chicks. So then this one guy got into showing us their whole system. And you know what? I was fucking impressed.
—Excuse me, said Ann, —can I get by there, Clint? I have to use the bathroom.
—You ladies, said Clint, getting to his feet slowly as though it required a Herculean effort and hefting his beer as he rose. —You and your peanut-size bladders.
—How do they get the images? asked Ben.
—They had these special thermal cameras rigged up in the trees and telephone poles around Bradley’s HQ. These people give new meaning to the word paranoid. I’m telling ya.
She left them behind and lingered in the hall outside the bathroom looking at more old photographs, black-and-white images from the bar’s heyday. There was a faded group picture of kitchen and wait staff, the kitchen staff in chef’s hats, the waiters in tie and tails, holding trays and looking austere. Underneath was marked the date, in spidery handwriting: 1936.
Oppenheimer could have been here then, she was thinking, Oppenheimer or even Szilard.
Back then they could have been patrons in their thirties, young and debonair.
Glen drove them back to the motel on the Jersey Shore to wait for the scientists, who were dining with foreign dignitaries. It was too cold to swim in the pool so they sat in the hot tub after dinner, both of them leaning against the tub walls opposite each other, their goosebumped arms stretching out along the cold cement deck. She found red and brown leaves at the end of her fingers and floated them on the bubbling water.
In the dark on the other side of the pool Big Glen practiced tai chi, a giant in slow motion.
—Room for me? asked Tamika, setting her towel down beside them, lifting her large T-shirt over her head to expose her stars and stripes bikini and slipping into the water. —Let’s play footsies!
—Or not, said Ben.
—That guy Clint makes me really nervous, said Ann. —How come Larry’s friends with him?
—Clint saved his butt once, is all. It was a drug thing. Before Larry cleaned up.
Szilard was pleased with the coverage i
n the New York Times.
—Our case is laid out succinctly, he said over breakfast.
—Can we move to a hotel where there’s somewhere other than that diner to eat at? asked Tamika. —The stuff’s all cooked in lard here.
—We’re leaving today. We’re going to Washington this afternoon, said Szilard. —Can I take one of your sausages?
—You know what Leslie told me? It was old Mrs. Purcell that got them to run that big article, said Larry, and dropped a sausage onto Szilard’s plate. —She pulled some strings. Someone in her family used to own the paper or something.
—Don’t be ridiculous, said Szilard. —We’re talking about the New York Times here. The UN talk was an historic event. That’s why they ran the story.
—So when’s the march?
—Friday, said Szilard. —So many people are coming, there’s all this coordination. But we don’t have to worry till the day before. Bradley’s people are handling it.
—That doesn’t seem wise, Leo, said Oppenheimer, slipping into the booth. —You want them calling the shots?
—They’re not doing the message, said Szilard. —Just the logistics.
—You mean they’re organizing the march, said Ben.
—Not the speakers, said Szilard. —Glen lined up the speakers for me weeks ago. There are peace advocates from all over the world flying in. We have several Nobels.
—You’ve been hijacked, Leo, said Ben. —Why are you kidding yourself?
—Don’t be ridiculous. We’re letting them do the legwork. It’s called delegating authority, said Szilard haughtily.
In a suburb of Washington called Greenbelt the scientists received a heroes’ welcome. When they pulled into the hotel parking lot veterans stood on the wide lawn next to the hotel, saluting them in full uniform. Oppenheimer got out first and moved along the line slowly, shaking hands and bowing his head. Szilard and Ann followed after him and heard the testimony of a man wounded by shrapnel, whose head was misshapen as a result.
—I’m Lenny Wren, I’m an A-bomb veteran too, I head the group out of Baltimore, said the wounded man, holding onto Oppenheimer’s hand for too long. Ann was standing right beside him and could see Lenny’s own thin hand had bitten-down nails and a tattoo that read LAKOTA. —We got about three thousand A-bomb veterans coming in for the march, overall. Including your widows and your kids. You know, the next of kin.