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

this late, cold world, there could be forgiving but no forgetting. And Szilard was no real company because he had no weakness save gluttony. He was only marginally human. He had the capacity to reason but not to weep. At least, this was what Oppenheimer suspected. It was all Szilard had shown him.

Of course he himself was human in form only these days so he should not fault it in Szilard. Even he could tell he had become reduced to a symbol of himself, because while he still felt, he still shivered in the chill of morning, he also saw himself as others did. Increasingly his impulses were defined by what he sensed they should be, and his movements were guided by a view of himself from over his own shoulder.

Ben wanted to stay with Fermi but there was nothing to do. He got into the bus reluctantly, with the letter and an Italian-English dictionary. When they left Pennsylvania they were heading for Rhode Island, bypassing New York since it was not on the schedule yet.

—It’s beside the sea, yes? said Oppenheimer, as they sped along I-80.

—Why? Do you want to go to the seaside? asked Ann.

Ben was staring out the window at sprawling industry.

—I would like to see dunes, said Oppenheimer pensively. —With dune grass growing on them.

—We can go for a walk on the beach, said Ben.

He also needed a book of Italian verbs, he realized, with conjugations. There were too many words he could not find in the dictionary. When they stopped in Providence for dinner before they made camp, he drove to a bookstore and bought one.

His translation of the first paragraph was awkward and he had to change the order of the words so that they read more fluently. The crane that makes the noise of a trumpet has a graceful white body, a head that is red and black and long wings with black ends. Once it lived on the lands of grass in the West but when all the people went there the crane disappeared. Now there are almost none left.

—How’s it coming?

—OK, he said.

His was the only light in the bus. While the others slept he sat at the counter on a tall stool and translated.

—Go back to sleep, why don’t you, he went on softly.

—What did he write about?

—Birds.

The great cranes nest in marshes among rushes and cattails. They eat insects, fish, mollusks, frogs, and small rodents. In the winter they perform their dances of courtship, and after that they mate for life.

—I can’t sleep with that light on, she whispered from a few feet away, where she lay in her sleeping bag.

The great birds have been killed by the draining of the wet places where they nest. These places have been made into fields. The birds have been shot by hunters. They have been electrocuted by power lines. They have died of lead poisoning, cholera, and tuberculosis. In 1941 a last flock of fifteen flew north for the summer. They were all that was left of their kind. They followed the paths of their ancestors.

—It’s been half an hour, she whispered.

—OK! OK! he muttered, and tucked away the originals in a manila folder.

He lay down in the dark beside her but could not fall asleep.

—Are you feeling bad you couldn’t do more for him?

—I’m still trying, he said.

Falling asleep he thought of the crane in Fermi’s letter, a letter that had been addressed to no one. He thought of the black and red face and the long slender body. Crane that makes a noise like a trumpet, he thought. Must be a whooping crane. They were highly endangered, if he recalled correctly.

He would ask Oppenheimer if Fermi had ever said anything before about whooping cranes.

Early in the morning Ann and Oppenheimer were leaving to walk on the beach, their coffee mugs in hand, when Szilard bustled out of the bathroom in his striped pajamas and insisted on going along.

—Wait! I have to talk to you about our message! he called to Oppenheimer, so loudly that others began to stir and turn over in their bedding.

On the wet sand two Huts walked behind them, though one of them had wanted to walk ahead. But Oppenheimer refused to have him ruin the view.

Ann took her shoes off and hooked them over her fingers. The others kept their shoes on.

—My research indicates, said Szilard, —that almost half of all Americans call themselves either Evangelicals or Born-Agains.

—You’re kidding, said Oppenheimer.

—Approximately forty-four percent of two-hundred and eighty million. We’re talking about a hundred and twenty-five million.

—Where do you get your information?

—I can show you the citations, said Szilard impatiently. —I do have a source that reports Protestant Evangelicals as low as 23 percent but that’s a different accounting system. To be conservative, we can estimate a quarter of our countrymen at the low end to almost half at the high end.

—I know it didn’t used to be that way, said Oppenheimer. —In our day. People were Christian, of course. But not fanatical.

—Seventy-seven percent of Americans claim to be Christians, said Szilard. —But the Born-Agains and the Evangelicals are the ones in our following.

—What are we talking about here? asked Ann.

—Belief in the literal truth of the Bible, said Szilard. —Some Born-Agains do not hold themselves to such strict standards, but most tend to insist.

He was fatter than when she first met him. His stomach was almost bursting the lowest button on his shirt. But his face was bronzed and healthy, despite the jowls. It struck her for the first time that he looked like a working man.

—For the dogmatic, he went on, —requirements include a belief in the physical and bodily return of Jesus at the End Time, a belief that Satan is an actual being of flesh and blood, and the conviction that good works have nothing to do with salvation. Oh!

He stepped over a jellyfish, dying on the sand. Ann leaned in close to see if it was still breathing. The tentacles appeared