by Lydia Millet
—So were you the ones who were threatening us? Were you behind the warning in the Marshall Islands?
—The Marshall what?
One of the soldiers leaned forward and whispered in Bradley’s ear, distracting him.
—Was that your people too? persevered Oppenheimer.
—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Move along, OK? We gotta be going now.
—We were under surveillance. An officer threatened me in Micronesia. Men threatened Fermi in Tokyo. Someone shot a cat.
—Why would we threaten you? You are the final sign. No, that had to be them. They are afraid of the End Times, for they know they will never be saved. We do have some believers in the armed forces who have joined us in the cause, in fact we have many thousands, but they are enlisted men. Many of the civilian and military leaders belong to them.
—Them?
—The ones who do not want the Rapture, said Bradley solemnly.
—The high priests of Mammon.
Oppenheimer stared.
—And now, said Bradley, lowering his voice to a vicious whisper, —you will do your duty.
For the first time, strangely, looking down at Bradley’s prosthetic arm, Oppenheimer thought of the sameness with his mother: she too had only had a single good hand. She had been lovely, and Bradley was grotesque, but still he saw now that both his mother and this man had made him what he was. In that moment he was conscious of repulsion: he was repelled by Bradley, he reviled him. At the same time a shadow passed over his head and he knew that Bradley was right. He was the worst kind of man, but he was also correct.
For Oppenheimer himself was nothing but history. He had loved the world and wanted to build something to honor it, and all he had ever known said this was a noble quest. But instead it was human. It was human but it was not noble, for men are only noble in humility.
So he had built the wrong thing, and his was both the last and the original sin, the tower of Babel.
And all he could do now was to give himself up.
In the distance the missile was still vertical, looming over the trees beneath it, rivaling the nearby Washington Monument. Behind it were the dark low floats of Fat Man and Little Boy, its primitive ancestors, and around her on the mall the crowd hushed as Oppenheimer ascended the stage. Ann could not tell where the song began because it seemed to come from all quarters, and far from calming her or inspiring her it made her itch. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
It was then that she began to look around at the crowd more desperately, trying to discern a way through it. She wanted a path to open in their ranks to lead her away to freedom. But there was none.
The hymn got louder and louder, more and more oppressive in her ears as Ben lifted her up and she saw Oppenheimer standing patiently at the microphone. Fermi had joined him, head bowed, and then Bradley stepped up behind them and she felt sick to her stomach. Behind them was a screen that showed their faces large and looming. Bradley looked like a fat cat, smug and proud, and Oppenheimer looked sad.
Finally the song trailed off and people clapped, rhythmic claps she thought would burst her eardrums.
—Our dear friend has fallen, said Oppenheimer, and the crowd screamed. Oppenheimer shook his head and they trailed off again. —I ask for a minute of silence for him.
The multitudes hushed. Ben put her down and on the wide screen she saw that Bradley’s face, occasionally visible between Oppenheimer’s and Fermi’s bent heads, was still smug.
—So it’s true, whispered Ben.
Before her hands and face had tingled with fear and shock even when she was not sure, but now they felt leaden. Szilard, she thought, gone: she could not allow it.
The crowd swayed and all she could see was the head of the man in front of her, swirls of thinning dark hair on a white scalp and dandruff above a bright blue T-shirt bearing the loosely drawn white outline of a dove. Even when she went up on tiptoe briefly the blur of the stage came into view too quickly for details, and she was too exhausted to jump, could barely stand straight but was reduced to slumping, shifting her weight off the weak ankle.
Ben was riveted on the stage and she could not ask him to lift her up again. Instead she watched a woman next to her, who was crying softly and scraping her keys along her bare arm, drawing blood.
Then the minute ended.
—At first I did not believe, said Oppenheimer, and the crowd fell abruptly silent. —At first I could not see what was seen by many.
—The king! The king! chanted someone Ann couldn’t see.
—But then I started to see the world through other people’s eyes, went on Oppenheimer, in a despair tone. The woman cutting her arm next to Ann let out a wail and Ann elbowed Ben to look over at the thin line of blood on her forearm. Then the screen behind Oppenheimer lit up with the image of a mushroom cloud and she could not see him but she could see the screen, and the cloud was enormous.
—In Biblical prophesy the end of time was brought by a man. Half man and half God, the messiah who began history returned again to end it. Half man and half God: what does that mean? God is omniscient, as science pretends to be. God has the power of creation and destruction, like the atom. God is also a crucified body who died for our sins—
The song started up again, softly this time. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. But Oppenheimer’s voice could still be heard clearly over the strains.
— … in the West we now have crucified brains. Take Einstein, the benevolent genius who could do nothing to effect peace in his time, no matter how hard he tried. And in the anomaly of our presence here, from the moment the bomb first went off, we have, too, the elements of the Trinity—symbolic elements, of course, but we are a symbolic race, and we always have been. It is no coincidence that the test was called Trinity, and that we came here then, in a split second: Szilard, the one who started it all, I, who was sacrificed by men hunting down Communists, and Fermi, the spirit that moved the bomb by transmuting matter into energy. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All of this I have come to see, and I assure you: we are not gods, but we are something else. We are the end of man.
—He’s lost it, said Ben into her ear, barely audible over the crowd.
—… and why? Because men and God have become indivisible. We see gods in the mirror, but we are ignorant. We have the power of gods but we do not have the wisdom. This is our tragedy.
—Look at Bradley, said Ben, and hoisted her up, fingers digging painfully into the skin on her hips.
Bradley had his arms raised to the sky behind Oppenheimer and she thought she could see his lips moving. Other men ascended the stage from behind as she watched, and they too raised their arms and were swaying. She did not recognize them. She let Ben hold her up till she could not stand the bruises on her hipbones, the jabbing fingers.
—There are more of them up there now, she told him. —Who are they?
—I think it’s the others, he said. —The other Christian leaders.
—Sadly most of us do not yet know what we have seen, said Oppenheimer. —We have not recognized the end of time.
The woman beside her was crying so hard Ann was afraid she would hyperventilate. On the other side a woman was taking off her clothes, peeling off her pants and leaving them in a heap on the ground, then peeling off her coat.
—She’s stripping! yelled Ann to Ben, incredulous, and he looked over and gaped.
—Some of us have seen it but are afraid to say what we behold, and live in a state of paralysis—
—Over there! said Ben, and pointed. —That guy too!
Past the woman a man had also begun to take off his clothes. Ann looked around her, feeling a frantic elation that was mostly fear. Behind Ben a middle-aged man was scraping his arms like the woman, scratching them with his fingernails and drawing beads of blood. His lined face was streaked with salt from dried tears.
—What is this? she asked, and pressed herself again
st Ben, her arm around his waist. She did not want to be separated, and for once she found herself wishing Larry were there, Sheila or Tamika or even Clint, anyone. —Why are they doing that?
—Now listen, listen to me, said Oppenheimer urgently, and stepped forward to clutch the microphone. —Leo was a sacrifice to these men here! and he turned to look behind him at the Righteous Army.
Ann gazed up at the screen but none of the Christians had looked at Oppenheimer after he spoke: they were still swaying with their eyes closed and their arms up, as though he had said nothing about them.
—But these men here are not the final threat, went on Oppenheimer. —These men are only pawns. You have to stand and fight, you—all of you! and he looked around at the crowds, —take up arms against your true enemy. Peace will no longer work for you. Peace is a dinosaur. It is the end but no longer the means.
The man beside Ben whined and nodded as he scratched at his forearms. Ann gazed at the sallowness of the skin with the shadow of green veins behind it.
—I beg you: take up arms against the true enemy. For the true enemy is not men, these men or any others …
—What the hell? asked Ben, shaking his head. —What is he—?
—The true enemy is the institutions that men have made. And all of you: you have to be willing to give your lives up in the fight.
Silence spread over the far-flung legions of the crowd and Ann looked around hastily, confused. She leaned close to Ben to whisper.
—What is he talking about?
—Didn’t I tell you? He’s lost it.
—You may have thought before that there was something you were willing to die for, and you may have assumed the question was academic. But it is not.
There was a pause and the sound of breathing over the speakers. On the screen the roiling mushroom cloud vanished abruptly and in its place there was blurred, jerky video of Oppenheimer’s serene countenance, and behind it Bradley’s face over his shoulder, smaller because it was further away, skin sweaty and pink, gaze fixed on Oppenheimer. He raised his arm and gestured at someone off to the side, and then nodded impatiently.
—This is the time, said Oppenheimer, still serene and smiling faintly, —this is the moment at which you are called upon to choose.
Ben was staring at his shoes.
—You can live for yourselves or you can lay down your life for the sake of what is beyond you. Either give up the future or lay your bodies down. Until you refuse it’s not too late. Lay yourselves down. Lay yourselves down!
The sound from the microphone cut off abruptly and the great screen went gray. Beside Ann the man with the bleeding arms looked down at his turned-up wrists, seemingly confused. In front of them someone tittered nervously, and then a man holding one end of a banner that read ENTER THE KINGDOM OF THE LORD began to wave it singing. Later she clearly remembered looking at the man ahead of her again, staring into his dark greasy hair above the blue T-shirt with the outline of the dove just she heard the explosion. Nothing had ever shocked her as much as the sound, the sudden concussion. She felt the shock at the base of her stomach, a jab of fear. Bright lights were streaking into the sky, trails of smoke behind them and above her and from the crowd near the missile issued a different screaming.
—What is it? she asked Ben.
He was propping himself on the shoulder of neighbors, jumping to see.
—It looks like …
—What? What?
—It looks like the cops. Hundreds of them. They’re plowing through the edge of the crowd with shields and gas masks on.
The crowd began to move and a panic rose through it. They wanted to get out but could not: there was no way out and the crowd was pressing and surging, moving forward.
—This is going to get messy, said Ben. —We need to get out now.
—I want to, said Ann, —that’s all I want.
—Did you see Fermi up there?
—They must be taking care of him, she said, —aren’t they?
They could move in only one direction, the direction of the crowd. Bradley’s voice was telling the crowd to Keep calm, keep calm, but they were not calm, they were moving and shrieking and Ann tripped on someone else’s foot and twisted her bad ankle slightly and tried to keep walking but the pain jabbed and brought tears to her eyes.
So Ben had to lift her again and put her on his back, even through his exhaustion. From there she could see the missile and beyond it a bare part of the street with a line of men in black pushing people away from the missile with their convex shields, pushing them toward her and Ben and the stage, compressing the crowd. Past the trees she could see the roof of the White House; or possibly she was imagining.
Ben knew the danger was real and a stampede was imminent. He felt the threat of it in the back of his throat and the muscles of his arms. His back ached but the only way to get out of this was to stay with the crowd. There was no use struggling against it, in fact any attempt to move against the close-packed throng could be lethal. He could feel hysteria mounting in others around them, discerned the edginess he had felt the afternoon at the bright waterfall. He would not let himself cave in to fear though he sensed it all around him, warm and sweaty.
His lower back was hurting so he enlisted the aid of a guy next to him and they hoisted Ann all the way up onto his shoulders, still moving the whole time, pushed along. As they pushed her up she winced from the pain in her ankle. It was precarious but she could not walk and there was nothing he could do about it.
—Can you see where the crowd thins out? he yelled up to her, and repeated it when she did not hear him. She looked around and then pointed past the stage to his right.
—Up there! she said. —Go that way!
It was with the crowd, just a slight veer, and he leaned into it, packed in by other shoulders as they half-walked and were half-carried by the momentum. His neck felt strained, the cords standing out and pulling at his chin and throat, and his mouth was parched. In front of him was denim, a sign bobbing that threatened to take out an eye with its sharp corners, Can You Hear the Voice of the Dolphins?
—Just stay calm, he called up to her, because her hands on the tops of his arms were squeezing too hard.
He stepped on a shoelace and stumbled when it was pulled out from under his foot, but was held up when he fell against a big man beside him.
—Keep pointing me in the right direction, he yelled up to Ann, —you’re the lookout!
That was when the tear gas billowed near the base of the missile, at the far edge of the crowd.
Oppenheimer had felt the explosion, though he had not been looking in the right direction to see it. But from his high place he could see the aftermath: the missile was burning. Smoke rose in columns at the edges of the crowd: tear gas, he thought, most likely, or perhaps some more lethal chemical agent. Was it sabotage, or was it a direct attack?
Then he was pushed backward on the stage and Bradley’s soldiers were surrounding him. Others among the Christian leadership were close—all of them, he thought, so recently euphoric, so recently beyond themselves and ecstatic, now babbling and squawking so loudly among themselves that he could barely make out the words of those nearest to him. Nearby he could see Fermi, but not near enough to address.
Bradley’s soldiers were more frightened, he thought, than they should have been by fireworks and tear gas; certainly they were far more frightened than he.
—It’s gotta be them! yelled one of them to another—Denny, if he recalled correctly, with the Confederate flag on his arm, a thick-necked Baptist from the deep South. Past him stood the soldiers with their rifles raised.
How, Oppenheimer wondered belatedly, had they been permitted to bring their rifles to this public place, in this time of supposed peace? These rifles, one of which had surely killed his friend?
—How do you know it’s them? said Rob, who resembled a well-heeled golfer but whose working-class congregation, he had once told Oppenheimer, enjoyed the handling of snakes. �
�It could just be the D.C. cops. They’re nothing!
—It’s not the D.C. cops, said Denny, and Oppenheimer noticed the color had washed out of his florid face.
—It’s a private security force, said one of the soldiers, a middle-aged man with furrowed brow who spoke near Oppenheimer’s ear. —Either that or Special Ops.
—It’s theirs, urged Denny, —I’m telling you.
Oppenheimer looked off the stage beyond him. In the crowd people had to be fleeing from the tear gas, and yet the crowd was so dense and wide their movement was barely perceptible.
Then there was Bradley again, jogging over from a huddle with his lieutenants, the small mouthpiece of his headphone blocking his mouth.
—This is your fault! he said to Oppenheimer. —We didn’t care what you said about us. We have nothing to hide. But they do. They don’t like to be named. And now they’re coming. We have spotters in helicopters and they’ve seen them. They’re on their way in from all sides and they want to kill you.
Then he was swamped by the others, as overhead a small helicopter hovered and dropped a ladder. Rob from the Pentecostal church was the first to climb up it, shimmying up with a face red from the effort and his thick beige-clad legs clutching awkwardly; but then there were other helicopters above them too, dark, flat-bellied and sinister, ponderous and massive. They were edging the small one out and forcing it away. The noise of them was deafening.
Oppenheimer looked away from them, down and around him at the crowds beyond the stage, beneath the smoke and the screen of gas, which seemed to him a turmoil. He looked up again just in time to see Rob clamber into the blue helicopter as it began to retract its ladder. It occurred to him that Bradley could not hope to get clear in this way, one-armed as he was, with only the rope ladder to assist. But anyway it was not going to be the way out for any of them, for the small blue craft swooped jerkily away flanked by the military choppers.
Surely even Bradley and his soldiers would be overcome by the tear gas; surely they did not have long to formulate their plan. Surely the so-called high priests of Mammon were closing in.