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

beneath it, rivaling the nearby Washington Monument. Behind it were the dark low floats of Fat Man and Little Boy, its primitive ancestors, and around her on the mall the crowd hushed as Oppenheimer ascended the stage. Ann could not tell where the song began because it seemed to come from all quarters, and far from calming her or inspiring her it made her itch. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

It was then that she began to look around at the crowd more desperately, trying to discern a way through it. She wanted a path to open in their ranks to lead her away to freedom. But there was none.

The hymn got louder and louder, more and more oppressive in her ears as Ben lifted her up and she saw Oppenheimer standing patiently at the microphone. Fermi had joined him, head bowed, and then Bradley stepped up behind them and she felt sick to her stomach. Behind them was a screen that showed their faces large and looming. Bradley looked like a fat cat, smug and proud, and Oppenheimer looked sad.

Finally the song trailed off and people clapped, rhythmic claps she thought would burst her eardrums.

—Our dear friend has fallen, said Oppenheimer, and the crowd screamed. Oppenheimer shook his head and they trailed off again. —I ask for a minute of silence for him.

The multitudes hushed. Ben put her down and on the wide screen she saw that Bradley’s face, occasionally visible between Oppenheimer’s and Fermi’s bent heads, was still smug.

—So it’s true, whispered Ben.

Before her hands and face had tingled with fear and shock even when she was not sure, but now they felt leaden. Szilard, she thought, gone: she could not allow it.

The crowd swayed and all she could see was the head of the man in front of her, swirls of thinning dark hair on a white scalp and dandruff above a bright blue T-shirt bearing the loosely drawn white outline of a dove. Even when she went up on tiptoe briefly the blur of the stage came into view too quickly for details, and she was too exhausted to jump, could barely stand straight but was reduced to slumping, shifting her weight off the weak ankle.

Ben was riveted on the stage and she could not ask him to lift her up again. Instead she watched a woman next to her, who was crying softly and scraping her keys along her bare arm, drawing blood.

Then the minute ended.

—At first I did not believe, said Oppenheimer, and the crowd fell abruptly silent. —At first I could not see what was seen by many.

—The king! The king! chanted someone Ann couldn’t see.

—But then I started to see the world through other people’s eyes, went on Oppenheimer, in a despair tone. The woman cutting her arm next to Ann let out a wail and Ann elbowed Ben to look over at the thin line of blood on her forearm. Then the screen behind Oppenheimer lit up with the image of a mushroom cloud and she could not see him but she could see the screen, and the cloud was enormous.

—In Biblical prophesy the end of time was brought by a man. Half man and half God, the messiah who began history returned again to end it. Half man and half God: what does that mean? God is omniscient, as science pretends to be. God has the power of creation and destruction, like the atom. God is also a crucified body who died for our sins—

The song started up again, softly this time. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. But Oppenheimer’s voice could still be heard clearly over the strains.

— … in the West we now have crucified brains. Take Einstein, the benevolent genius who could do nothing to effect peace in his time, no matter how hard he tried. And in the anomaly of our presence here, from the moment the bomb first went off, we have, too, the elements of the Trinity—symbolic elements, of course, but we are a symbolic race, and we always have been. It is no coincidence that the test was called Trinity, and that we came here then, in a split second: Szilard, the one who started it all, I, who was sacrificed by men hunting down Communists, and Fermi, the spirit that moved the bomb by transmuting matter into energy. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All of this I have come to see, and I assure you: we are not gods, but we are something else. We are the end of man.

—He’s lost it, said Ben into her ear, barely audible over the crowd.

—… and why? Because men and God have become indivisible. We see gods in the mirror, but we are ignorant. We have the power of gods but we do not have the wisdom. This is our tragedy.

—Look at Bradley, said Ben, and hoisted her up, fingers digging painfully into the skin on her hips.

Bradley had his arms raised to the sky behind Oppenheimer and she thought she could see his lips moving. Other men ascended the stage from behind as she watched, and they too raised their arms and were swaying. She did not recognize them. She let Ben hold her up till she could not stand the bruises on her hipbones, the jabbing fingers.

—There are more of them up there now, she told him. —Who are they?

—I think it’s the others, he said. —The other Christian leaders.

—Sadly most of us do not yet know what we have seen, said Oppenheimer. —We have not recognized the end of time.

The woman beside her was crying so hard Ann was afraid she would hyperventilate. On the other side a woman was taking off her clothes, peeling off her pants and leaving them in a heap on the ground, then peeling off her coat.

—She’s stripping! yelled Ann to Ben, incredulous, and he looked over and gaped.

—Some of