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

Was he still the same? He should not have left without telling her first.

Of course he could not be blamed for his pain.

But still, Ben had called her their handmaid and it stung with truth. She hated to admit she begrudged the scientists anything but it was a fact: she had paid for this trip with the only savings she had, money she would probably never see again, as Ben had reminded her more than once. She would have been so grateful if Oppenheimer had at least discussed his decision with her before he took off.

She wondered whether she should plan on saying something sharp to him when she found him or sacrifice her anger in the name of finding him, whether anger would stop her from finding him, finally, because angry she did not deserve to.

There was a small Italian restaurant right near the Peace Park, near the Starbucks, near the Coca Cola sign. Everything was convenient.

—So what I need is a favor from you, said Szilard, forking up tiramisu. —Can I count on that?

—My wife wants to find them, said Ben, staring into his espresso. — That’s all that matters to her. And you owe her, Leo. Don’t try to bargain with me. Just lead me to Fermi. You’re smart and you know him well. You can do it.

—It won’t be a problem, said Szilard. —This isn’t quid pro quo or anything. Of course I’ll help you find him. I want to find him too. It’s separate, the favor I’m asking for. It’s for when we get back. I’m asking you as a friend.

Setting down his espresso cup on the glass table Ben glanced over Szilard’s shoulder and could almost not believe what he was seeing. Beneath a gay painted bower of entwined grape leaves that stretched across an arched doorway at the back of the restaurant, beside a gaudy mural featuring an antique-style portrait of some classical Italianate person in a jaunty yet foolish cap—possibly Dante Alighieri—was Fermi, neither destitute nor shivering, emerging from the men’s rest room.

The first two complexes she visited had been fairly close to each other, different neighborhoods of the same city, but the third was in a small village, almost an hour away from them by train and then two hours by local bus and on foot. She would be arriving in the dark.

She did not know where she would sleep, whether there would be a motel near the monastery and how she would find it even if there was. Waiting for the train, a slight rise of panic in her throat as she considered sleeping alone in the train station, sleeping alone as the deaf-mute she was, she found a bright-green payphone and called Ben, using a prepaid card Keiko had made her buy. There was no answer in the room.

When she hung up she stared at the bright-green telephone. There were none of those where she came from.

A train station, she thought, was not the worst place. Train stations were clean here: the floors shone and there was almost no crime. If she had to sleep on a bench she would certainly go unharmed, so there was nothing here to lose. No one would hurt a poor mute woman like her.

—Enrico! exclaimed Szilard, turning from his plate with dessert fork dangling, a morsel of tiramisu straying onto his pantleg as he rose. —Where the hell have you been?

Fermi walked over unsurprised, placidly, as though he had fully expected to find them.

—I’d like to order some food, he said to Ben. —I’m hungry.

—Go ahead, said Ben. He was actually relieved to see Fermi. Of all of them Fermi was least offensive to him: there was an element of dignity in the man’s self-contained demeanor, his reticence, his unwillingness to play the game. But then right away he was thinking of Ann, how she was off somewhere, and it was Fermi’s and Oppenheimer’s behavior that had put her there. Here was one of the culprits, and far from being beside himself with agitation and therefore not responsible for his actions he seemed calm, unmoved, business as usual, and as far as Ben could see impervious to her distress.

—The pesto fusilli is good, said Szilard. —But spill it. Where were you?

—Nearby, said Fermi, and shrugged.

—My wife’s very upset, said Ben. —Do you realize how much anxiety you caused her?

—I apologize, said Fermi simply and sincerely, and then Ben was distracted by the messy spectacle of Szilard rising from his seat to flag down a waitress by waving a dirty napkin and shouting —Hey!

—That’s rude, Leo, said Ben, but the waitress was already upon them, smiling nervously. Fermi ordered spaghetti carbonara.

—I have to tell you, said Fermi when the waitress had left, turning to Szilard. —Two men came to talk to me. They asked me about you and Robert.

—You’re kidding, said Szilard. —Why didn’t they come straight to me?

—They asked me what you were planning.

—What are you planning, Leo? asked Ben.

—They were not good men, said Fermi.

—They know we have something, said Szilard. —They know we are a threat to them.

—Who’s they?

—The government, said Szilard.

—What government? Ours? asked Ben. —You’ve got to be kidding me.

Fatigue set in almost as soon as Ann got her answer from the third monastery, a cheaply built compound on the swampy outskirts of a national park, gray grassy hills receding behind the low buildings. On her way back to the bus stop, where she hoped to catch the last bus of the night before they stopped running, she walked slowly, her shoulders heavy. Once, when she looked up at the pavement ahead from the pavement beneath her feet, she was frozen in her paces by the sight of a large brown monkey loping across the road, his knuckles touching the ground.

Her feet hurt from walking so much but she felt glad as soon as she saw him.

The monkey was not Oppenheimer, of course.

Walking dumbly, thinking of the dead children in the museum of the atom bomb, Oppenheimer knew suddenly