Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, Lydia Millet [top romance novels .txt] 📗

Ann stood outside on the balcony with him and smoked and listened. When she glanced in at the women, standing in the cramped space between the sofa and the kitchenette, she thought they shone with contentment.

—Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.

—Nothing I say can change their opinion, he said to Ann, shaking his head, voice pitched high in disbelief.

—It’s not an opinion, she said. —It’s faith.

When she first met Oppenheimer, she realized, she had been one of these women. In fact she was one of them still, except for the matter of doctrine. To her he was a dead scientist, to them he was a living messiah. The only difference between her position and theirs was that she and Oppenheimer happened to agree.

—The way you look at science, she said, drawing on her cigarette and then sipping from her cup of lemonade and taking note that she did not like it, —that’s the way they look at you.

He glanced at her quickly and then turned, nodding, and looked out over the parking lot, where Ben was pacing and talking on his cell phone under a street lamp. Near him a truck pulled into a space and parked, and men began to unload rifles. She wondered if they were reinforcements for Bradley’s army.

She waited until Ben’s face was turned her way and then waved down at him. He raised a hand back and kept talking.

—What point is there in speaking to them, went on Oppenheimer, —If they have no interest in what I’m saying?

—They do have an interest, she said. —They just don’t hear what you think they should hear.

—OK, he said abruptly, —fine. Let’s get it over with.

When the hymn finished they stubbed out their cigarettes and went back in. On the coffee table a series of items was laid out, including a bandanna, several rings and necklaces, a rosary, and a small glass vial.

—These are for you to bless, said Mrs. Bradley, with a slight bow of her head.

—I don’t know how to bless things, he said brusquely.

—All you have to do is touch them, she said.

—Even better is if you could kiss them, said one of the other women, her voice trembling, and picked up the rosary. —It belonged to my mother.

Oppenheimer looked at Ann helplessly. Dory was squatting down panning along the row of belongings with the camcorder.

—He doesn’t feel comfortable with that, said Ann after a long silence.

—I feel as though I’d be pretending, said Oppenheimer. —I don’t wish to take advantage of your credulity.

—Please! said the woman who had asked him to kiss her rosary. —All you have to do is pass your hand over them.

They were gazing at him and waiting. Ann thought they would wait forever.

Oppenheimer stood indecisive at the end of the sofa with Ann next to him, trailing his nicotine-stained fingers along the overstuffed arm. Finally he bent and touched first the small glass vial, and then the rings.

—What is this for? he asked, holding up the vial.

—It’s for holy water, said the black woman who had been weeping at the beginning. —A Catholic friend of mine asked me to bring it.

An older woman with dark roots in her red hair leaned forward from her seat on the couch and clasped his arm with both hands.

—And those are our wedding rings.

—No touching! snapped a Hut from the nearest corner, and stood up, his hand on his gun.

—Sorry! I forgot! I’m so sorry!

—No, I’m sorry, said Oppenheimer gently, and took the woman’s hands in his own as the Hut sat back down. —He didn’t mean to alarm you.

Ann followed Dory’s camcorder up from his hands to his face, and then saw that all the women in the room were gazing at him, still, their faces fixed in a single rapt expression.

Increasingly he was allowing the literal to recede. He was becoming figurative.

It seemed to him more and more than the world was composed of abstractions, himself another among them. His field of view was no longer restricted to what could be or what should, no longer fixed to an insistence on logic. Instead he had begun to see himself as an impression on the minds of others. What was seen and felt, that was all that there was anymore, impressions, convictions, acquiescence. He was less a self-determined organism than outside views of him and so it was easy for him to defer to the perceptions of others.

Instead of reason anymore there was only movement. It was the movement of crowds, to whom faith substituted for education, to whom facts were only a competing myth and the subject of mockery. It was the movement of those who believed.

3

In the morning Ben left Ann in the motel room shower and reported to the bus. It was packed with men in well-cut suits. They sat in a row with their laptops, typing silently.

In the corner lay a gray mound of coats. Even in a heap he could tell they were expensive.

—What happened here? he asked Szilard. —The clock struck midnight and the soldiers changed into attorneys?

—Leo, Al here wanted to give you his report, broke in one of the lawyers. —He has a plane to catch in a few minutes. The situation with the Army.

—Did they make the concession? said Szilard, turning to a black lawyer wearing a purple tie.

—What it looks like, said the lawyer, removing his laptop from his knees and standing, —is now they’ve lost the suit they want to turn a blind eye. They don’t want anything more to do with us.

—Why would they? asked Ben. The lawyer’s eyes flicked over him, disinterested.

—They wanted to try to have us arrested under the Patriot Act, said Szilard. —You didn’t know about that?

—On what basis? asked Ben. —What have you done that’s illegal?

—Apparently they claim we’re terrorists, said Szilard.

—Not per se, said the lawyer in the purple