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

Ahead of them, stamping out his wet shoes as he went through the door, a man in a black suit slipped his closed umbrella into a metal stand beside the door and then extracted it quickly.

—Look at that! crowed Szilard.

The wet folds of the umbrella were now sheathed in clear plastic. The metal stand was a machine.

—So it won’t drip on the floor! exclaimed Szilard, standing still to marvel.

He bought three filled donuts at Mister Donut and ate the first as they walked back to the apartment, passersby shooting him brief glances. Ann, holding his umbrella for him, recalled that Ben had said the Japanese did not eat while they walked. She could have told Szilard, should tell him, she thought as they moved forward slowly alongside the wide canal, but she liked watching people stare at him. She liked watching him as he failed to notice.

—Whatever’s in here, said Szilard, his mouth full of the second donut, —this green paste? It’s disgusting.

He spat a clump of chewed dough into a garbage can as a thin old woman, passing them at a fast clip with her arms full of folded laundry, spied him in the act of regurgitation and shrieked.

After Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped Oppenheimer received a commendation from the Army for his good work as Director of the Manhattan Project. At the ceremony, however, his mood fell somewhat short of euphoric.

In his moment of glory as the egghead-hero of the war, and with his customary flare for drama, he said solemnly to the assembled company: — If atomic bombs are to be added to the arsenals of a warring world, the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.

Even as he said this some in the audience were distracted; one man had closed his eyes and was thinking of how his wife smelled, and another probed a loose tooth with his tongue.

The bullet train garnered high approval ratings from Fermi, who set great store by cleanliness and spaciousness in public conveyances. He appreciated the black leather seats and the shining wooden floors, the hygiene of the bathrooms, the shine of the windows. As they sped toward Hiroshima Ann could barely stand to stare out the window: the fastness of the train blurred everything, both far and near, and gave her a headache. She looked long enough to see suburbs and industrial parks spreading out on either side of the train line as far as the eye could see, and in the distance, on occasion, the bald mound of a mountain long since logged clean of trees.

Ben went with Szilard to check out the snack car, where Szilard bought a bento box decorated with a picture of geishas walking beside a pond. Picking at the seafood morsels in the box with his disposable chopsticks, he puckered his mouth in displeasure and shoved away a half-eaten morsel of dry brown mystery fish.

—How about you just throw it away instead of making that face, said Ben. —Because you look like a tourist asshole.

But Szilard ignored him, staring over his neighbor’s head at an open book. Suddenly he crowed aloud.

—Mine! That’s my equation! he said, and in a flash was tapping the reader’s shoulder with an insistent finger.

Szilard operated under the blithe assumption that everyone in Japan spoke perfect English, and so far it had served him well. Dumping the plundered bento box onto the snack counter he grabbed at the open page, nodding eagerly at the startled young man who was holding the book.

—I predicted that effect in 1943! he told him.

—The Szilard complication? asked the young man politely.

—That was my work! I am Szilard! I am Leo Szilard! said Szilard excitedly.

People were staring. Szilard grabbed his wallet out of his pocket and wrestled with it, finally extracting his fake ID.

—See? That’s me!

The young man, puzzled at first, looked back and forth from the driver’s license to Szilard’s face, nodding with increasing confidence. If he was surprised by Szilard’s apparent youth he did not show it.

—It is a pleasure, he said finally. —I am Takashi. I am a student at Tokyo University.

Szilard promptly launched into a loud and rapid disquisition on the exothermic release of stored energy by atoms dislocated by radiation damage. It turned out that Takashi, besides displaying familiarity with a number of interesting recent developments in the field of biomedical nanotechnology, by which Szilard was intrigued, also had a smattering of knowledge of the historical development of nuclear reactor design, in which Szilard, of course, had played what he often called “a leading role.”

Ben listened to them vaguely until the snack car became overcrowded, and Szilard, brimming with satisfaction ever since the young man had known his name, led Takashi back to the green car with them. He huffed and puffed down the aisle as he negotiated children’s protruding arms and legs and simultaneously lectured Takashi on the subject of electroosmosis.

—You know, said Ben to Szilard as they walked, —he probably knows a lot more about physics than you do. I mean, it’s come a long way since your day.

—Don’t be ridiculous, snapped Szilard.

They sat down across the aisle from Ann, Takashi perching precariously on a seat arm as Ben slid into his seat beside her.

He still failed to understand the conversation, which was less like an exchange than a monologue, and chose to focus instead on Takashi’s thin torso and spiky hair. He studied the retro, fifties bowling shirt and tiny, girlish silver-and-pink cell phone protruding from Takashi’s front pocket. A gaudy pastel-colored plastic chain dangled from the top of the phone, glittering Mardi Gras beads with a small plastic dog on the end. Or a bear or a mouse. He could not discern identifying features.

Szilard spoke volubly, his voice rising and falling and irritating other passengers, who turned periodically and stared until a passing conductor shook his head at Takashi and barked out an order.

—I have to go back to where