Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet (shoe dog free ebook .txt) 📕

get something out of the refrigerator, —I hear Enrico isn’t happy about your plan to exhume his body.

—Sacrifices must be made, said Szilard, leaning down and scrutinizing the refrigerator’s contents. He pulled out a chocolate milk.

—What if the body’s not even there? I mean, how could it be? He’s here!

—Don’t worry about the logic, said Szilard. —It is complicated.

He trundled back to the couch with his chocolate milk carton open.

—He still treats you like a servant, said Ben, looking up from his book quickly and then returning to it. —Doesn’t he.

It was a book about mystical lights. The jewelry maker from Santa Barbara had lent it to him eagerly, with a heartfelt recommendation. It told of mysterious floating lights, lights over ancient burial mounds and modern cemeteries, lights over swamps and fields. It described a ball of light that had been photographed in a zoological garden near the beginning of the twentieth century and a mysterious fireball sighted in a French barn in 1845.

There were moving lights that chased truck drivers and balls of lightning that attacked young girls as they sat at the dinner table and then escaped up the chimney. There were corpse lights that hovered over places where people were soon going to die in accidents, a light for each victim.

Ann left while he read and went to sit beside the scientists, watching TV. Ben raised his head and looked at her across the room, and then out the window hopefully. What if there was a ghost light out there in the dark?

All he saw was a dipping and rising power line.

They ate breakfast early in a cafeteria-style Mexican place near the university, famous for its chili. Szilard’s student volunteers had come to meet them, and four Wackenhut men sat rigidly in booths on either side. They wore headsets and consulted their watches periodically as though they were the Secret Service.

Dory was along at Oppenheimer’s request.

—She’s documenting this for a paper she’s writing, he said by way of explanation, but then he smiled at Dory with a tenderness Ann had rarely seen.

One of the students, a thin Pakistani man, had brought along a copy of his script for the press conference. Szilard marked it up generously with a red pen, his large cast resting on the table beside him, as the student ate his refried beans delicately and talked to Oppenheimer.

—I saw a very interesting film about you! he told him joyously. Ann wanted to listen to his flowing accent but Dory was talking near her ear about the convenience of digital video. —When I was quite small! Of course you looked a good deal older then.

—Are you a Pakistani?

—Yes sir.

—We didn’t have them back in my day. Pakistanis that is. There was only India and you were all Indians. And Mr. Gandhi. I liked his creed. I embraced it myself: Ahimsa. Nonviolence.

—Yes sir.

—A very good man, Mr. Gandhi.

—Yes sir.

—They shot him to death, didn’t they.

She watched sidelong as he and Oppenheimer faced forward beside each other and forked up their eggs.

Outside the courthouse there were news vans parked at hasty angles and crowds flocked on the steps.

Approaching along the sidewalk with the Wackenhuts flanking them Ann felt a stab of fear in her stomach. What if there was someone there with a gun again, and this time they shot something more important than the fat part of an arm?

But she was pushed back from Oppenheimer and Szilard and Fermi as they started up the steps and the crowd closed in. Ben was up ahead and she could barely see him.

—Wait! she called, but a tall man was in front of her and a boom hit the side of her head.

What surprised Oppenheimer about his kidnapping was the fact that he had not been able to bestir himself to anything more than a gentle amusement at his captors’ precociousness. He had every reason to hold them in contempt, but he could not summon it. He had been irritated, certainly, when they took away his cigarettes, but part of him had been content to watch their antics.

He wondered after the fact whether it was because he missed his own son, whom he had not seen grow up. But on reflection he did not think this explained his strange tranquility. Rather he was fond of them for the eagerness of their absurdity, how even as they tried to be criminals they were still infants. They used foul language and were clearly infatuated with their play violence, but even so he had a feeling of overwhelming benevolence toward them, as though if they turned on him and killed him savagely he would still be unable to stop smiling.

—Are you OK?

It was a young, clean-shaven man in an expensive beige suit and red tie, a cell phone in his hand.

She rubbed her head where the boom had bruised it, watching the last of the crowd swallowed up by the courthouse.

—Fine, thanks, she said.

—Ann. Isn’t it?

She stared at him.

—Do I know you?

—Jonathan Lynne, he said, and reached out smoothly to shake her hand. She had no time to hold back. —I represent a group of Fortune 500 companies. I’m here on their behalf.

He took a card from his wallet and handed it to her, and glancing down she saw he worked in public relations.

—What for?

—Listen. Can we discuss this over a coffee?

—First tell me what this is about.

—My clients are interested in your friends the physicists.

—Interested?

—They’re considering investments and what they need is someone to consult with on the subject. Someone with firsthand experience of what these guys have to offer.

—I don’t get it.

—They’d like to hire you as a consultant.

She stared at him but could detect nothing in his steady gaze and reasonable tone.

—Basically as they make a decision on whether to invest, they’d like the best information available. And there’s nowhere to go for that but the source.

For a minute she did nothing but look away from him, at the street stretching away from the courthouse and the dusty haze