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

and almost empty, with large, light rooms floored in tatami mats, tall, long-leafed plants casting soft shadows from corners and wide windows overlooking the squat gray clusters of buildings around them.

When the maid ushered them through the front door into the living room Larry, who wore a T-shirt and faded blue jeans generously ripped at the knees, stubbed out his long black-and-gold cigarette in an egg-shaped glass ashtray and rose slowly to greet them.

Oppenheimer saw the cigarette and instantly asked if he could light up.

—Sure, man, said Larry.

And the Coordinator of Rapid Rupture was finally released.

Ann excused herself and went to wash her face. The bathroom was lined in black marble, cold and slick, but there was space all around them in the apartment and that was what mattered. They were not hedged in by the millions.

When she got back to the living room Larry was explaining that in Tokyo smoking was allowed everywhere. Oppenheimer told him that Santa Fe was a virtual prison for smokers, or rather for what seemed these days to be called “nicotine addicts” by a culture that pathologized, said Oppenheimer, each and every single human behavior.

—In fact, Oppenheimer went on, after a long and satisfied exhalation, —the tendency of the culture to pathologize is so compulsive and so chronic that it might itself be described as a pathology. In other words, the culture is pathologically prone to pathologize, that is, as it were, pathologically pathological.

—Whatever, man, said Larry, and smiled. —But no worries, you can smoke anywhere. It’s the nonsmokers that suffer here.

Nothing could go wrong for Oppenheimer after that, and where Fermi was sour and quiet, his demeanor oppressively sullen as he brooded at the corner of the table, Oppenheimer was effusive.

—Surfing! he exclaimed, fixing his eyes on a photo on the wall. It was Larry on a surfboard, riding a wave. —Is it a profession these days?

—More like a religion, said Larry.

A Japanese photographer assigned to Nagasaki after the bombing said this of the scene he surveyed: “I tried climbing up onto a small hill to look. All around the city burned with little elf-fires, and the sky was blue and full of stars.”

Later they sat around a low enamel table cross-legged on cushions on the floor, drinking beer from overlarge Asahi bottles and waiting for their sushi. Except for the fact that his long legs were tucked uncomfortably beneath him, the knees jutting upward at acute angles, Oppenheimer was the model of leisure. He savored one of Larry’s expensive black-and-gold cigarettes with his beer and watched with a gratified smile as the drift of smoke was sucked without a trace into a filtering device near the ceiling vent on the wide, bare wall.

—My father likes Cuban cigars, said Larry, following his gaze, —but his wife has asthma.

He picked a brass-framed photograph off a nearby mantelpiece and thrust it at them. There stood his father and stepmother on a beach on their recent honeymoon, spiky palm fronds blurring the foreground. The father was a red-faced old goat of about seventy with stick-like arms and a fat, fish-white belly above a tight swimsuit that did not flatter his physique. The stepmother, who Larry said was twenty-one, was a smiling, deeply tanned peroxide blonde, whose royal-blue string bikini did flatter hers.

Neither the cigars nor the asthma was negotiable, Larry told them, so the ventilation system in the apartment was state-of-the-art. Oppenheimer was highly appreciative.

—Here it is, said Larry.

The maid bent over them with trays of sushi.

—Excuse me, said Fermi, after staring down at a piece of tuna for some time, unmoving. —This fish has not been cooked!

—Never had sushi before? asked Larry. —You kidding? Where you guys from, anyway?

—Another world, said Ben, and picked up his chopsticks.

Ann had introduced the scientists by their real names, hoping Larry would notice nothing amiss. In fact he had noticed only the strangeness of the names and asked where Szilard came from. He had asked one of his father’s assistants to prepare a train schedule for them, with stopping points at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tickets had been purchased and seats reserved for them on the bullet train, green car.

—The green car’s first class, he said. —Don’t worry about it. It’s on me.

—You’re kidding! said Ann. —But that must be, I mean, hundreds of…

He waved his hand dismissively and pushed the schedule toward her as he picked up a piece of sashimi.

—Thank you so much, she said, casting her eyes over the columns of times and seat numbers. —But isn’t that too much—a gift that’s—I mean—for us to accept?

—My dad’s footing the bill, said Larry. —He doesn’t know it and he never will, but don’t worry about it. He’s got more money than God. Worse personality, though.

—I don’t know what to say, said Ann. —That’s very nice of you.

—Thank you kindly, said Oppenheimer.

—And you wanted to talk to bomb survivors, right?

—Survivors, said Oppenheimer. —Yes we do.

—If possible, survivors with a science background, put in Szilard. — They’ll be able to tell us more. We haven’t read the first-person accounts, except for Oppenheimer. We want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

—You guys are, what? You doing a movie or something?

—They’re researching the Second World War, put in Ann. —They’d like to know about the bombings from the biological and physical standpoint. Eyewitness accounts, personal stories.

Larry nodded and said he had asked the assistant to set up appointments for them. He himself had little interest in the subject.

—Ancient history, he said. —No one cares about that anymore. They barely even teach it in school.

—Really? said Szilard brightly. —Then it’s seen as, what? A minor historical episode?

—I dunno, said Larry, shrugging and smearing wasabi sauce on his saucer. —I guess so. It’s like, why make a big deal out of it. It’s already gone down. So do you guys smoke?

—Just Oppie, said Szilard.

—Foul habit, said Fermi.

—No, I mean smoke, said Larry. —You know. Pot.

He opened a drawer in the table, removed a packet and started to roll a joint.

—Pot? asked Szilard.

—Marijuana, said