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

forced herself to let the anxieties subside, press them down. Just for a short time: the end was in sight. In the meantime he knew her well enough to feel her distraction if she felt it, he would know she was going through the motions. She had to absorb herself in the skin, the arms and the legs, push and pull, the movement, drive the rest all away.

It was almost right, it was almost the same, he thought, but finally it was not the same. Something was wrong with it. He tried to forget the feeling, this unfamiliar difference, he tried to reject it, and going away from it, thinking of other times, he was able to come.

At 4 a.m. a week after the scientists had left, the telephone rang. She leaned over Ben, who was waking up in irritation, to pick up the receiver.

She heard static, and brief surges of voice.

—Robert? Is that you? she asked after a few seconds, and Ben sat up and turned the nightstand light on beside her.

—… tried to … ould be … ocked … appened—

—I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up, she said loudly, deliberately. —Can you call me back? Or give me your number?

—… ropical—orm … arning …

—I can’t hear you, she repeated. —Robert? You need to call me back, OK?

There was only static.

She hung up reluctantly.

A minute later Ben had just settled back into his pillows when the telephone rang again.

—Where are you? she asked when she picked up. —Why don’t you give me your number? I’ll call back.

—We’re on Majuro, said Oppenheimer. —It’s near—

—Just the number, she said. —Before we get interference again.

—There’s a storm coming in. We haven’t been—

—Robert, give me the number first.

—I think you dial—Leo! Is it 011?

—Just the local number, she said. —I can track down the rest.

—8—4. … sk for—bin number—

—I can’t hear you! The static’s back! Robert?

—… yphoon—lanes fly—n or out. There may be … lay—

—Try me again when the storm’s passed, will you?

—ant … ou—

—Try me in the morning, I can’t understand you, she said, enunciating clearly, and hung up for the second time. —They’re on an island called Majuro now, she told Ben. —Szilard told me about it when I picked them up for the airport. I think it’s near Kwajalein. Where the government still tests ICBMs.

—So how’s the surfing, he said groggily, and flicked the lamp off again.

Oppenheimer was interested in the islands from an anthropological standpoint, but Szilard was not. He had no time for anything that might distract from the mission.

While Oppenheimer enjoyed a cocktail on a hotel balcony, overlooking the shimmering ocean, Szilard was often downstairs in the hotel office, huddled over a fax machine. While Oppenheimer heard about the history of violence in the islands, the traders and whalers who had come there in the nineteenth century and the massacres that had occurred in retaliation for the kidnapping of island women, how first the Germans and then the Japanese colonized the islands, exporting coconut and copra, Szilard was scheduling a series of conference calls with New York.

In 1956, to make up for the disruption of their lives and the radioactivity of their ancestral seat, the U.S. gave Bikini and Enewetak Islanders the kingly sum of twenty-five thousand dollars.

Curiously, the money was handed over in one-dollar bills.

Congress set up trust funds in larger amounts later on to compensate the natives, making ex gratia—that is, admitting no guilt—payments for high radiation exposures.

In the 1980s, a class-action lawsuit by the Bikini Islanders would be dismissed, but at the same time the U.S. government would quietly set up a seventy-five-million-dollar trust fund for them. In 2001, a body called the Nuclear Claims Tribunal would award the Marshall Islanders five hundred and sixty-three million, but lack any funds to pay out on the judgment.

In the meantime, from the 1940s to the 1950s the U.S. would conduct sixty-seven aboveground nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands—the largest explosions the world had ever seen.

Fermi had planted squash, chili, tomatoes, peas, and various lettuces. In the morning after Ben left for work he was watering these with a watering can, bending over each plant to inspect the undersides of the leaves, when Ann shuffled out onto the patio with her coffee. She had barely slept.

He looked like someone’s country uncle, she thought, a humble and stooped old man tending his garden.

—Hey, she said, —Robert called last night.

—Yes?

—We’re supposed to meet them in Las Vegas in a week, right?

—You have the information, said Fermi. —I don’t.

—But I’m worried there’s something wrong. The call didn’t work. There was too much static.

—I’m sure they’re fine, said Fermi, and went on watering. —And if they’re dead, good for them.

It was not what she wanted to hear. She swallowed her tepid coffee and went inside again.

On the Internet she searched for Marshall Islands, weather, and watched as a satellite picture loaded: the eye of a storm. Upgraded to hurricane warning.

—How’s your little wife doing? asked Lynn, coming up behind him while he was burying a light fixture.

—Little?

He waited for her to rephrase. It took a long time.

—You know, uh, she’s so delicate!

—She’s fine, thank you.

—I went to the library the other day for a book-on-tape, you know? To drive to Taos for my weekly regression. I just thought I’d say hi to her? But the guy at the desk told me she doesn’t work there anymore.

—No, said Ben. —She’s taking some time off.

—Probably traumatized. I mean that schizo shot himself right in front of her, right? I heard there was actually brain matter on the bookshelf. The crime scene unit missed it or whatever and a TV camera caught it? And they even aired it before they noticed. So people actually ended up seeing a shot of the dead guy’s actual brain.

—Really.

—A friend of mine plays softball with one of the cops that was there. He said it looked kind of like wet oatmeal. And it was stuck on a copy of Moby Dick. I mean why did he do it