Trinity, p.16
Trinity, page 16
Several times in the course of the proceedings, Robert was forced to admit to all that again, while Kitty sat on a couch in the back of that windowless room, her eyes wide open and very dark, her leg in a cast because she fell down the stairs in those otherworldly weeks leading up to the hearings.
At Three Thirty
At three thirty, the rain stops. A new quiet settles outside the shelter. According to Frank, whom Oppenheimer has put in charge of the shelter, the only sound that can be heard is the croaking of the spadefoot toads that have emerged from their underground tunnels to gather in the puddles formed by the rainfall.
Outside, in the darkness, their pale throats extend and contract. Their webbed feet grip the wet stones.
And inside the shelter, Oppenheimer continues to wait.
I don’t know what he does. I can’t find any accounts.
Maybe he’s drinking coffee. Maybe he stands and goes to the doorway. Maybe he looks out at the desert, where the clouds have finally dispersed, and ten thousand yards in the distance the shot tower is illuminated by starlight.
It looks like an oil derrick, or maybe a steeple. Does Oppenheimer consider that? Does he think of the mice? Does he think of Gruber’s death? Does he remember the eight hundred Spanish settlers, or the millions dead in this war, or the hundreds of thousands whose deaths are still coming?
Does he look out at that steeple and think of the dead, or does he think of the living, or does he remember the name he chose for the test, and does he consider the reasons he chose it?
Trinity. A strange, religious name for a bomb test. He’ll never explain why he picked it. Nearly two decades later, General Groves will finally wonder, then write to ask if Oppenheimer chose that particular code name because it’s common to rivers and peaks in that part of the country.
Oppenheimer will reply:
Why I chose the name is not clear. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation:
As West and East
In all flatt maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the Resurrection.
That still does not make a Trinity; but in another, better-known devotional poem Donne opens, “Batter my heart, three person’d God; — .” Beyond this, I have no clues whatever.
Two decades after the test, that’s all the explanation he’ll manage: Why I chose the name is not clear. That, and a couple of fragments of poems. Beyond this, I have no clues whatever.
Testimonial 5
Lía Peón
St. John, 1958
I CALLED HIM CHESTER, AND I ALWAYS LIKED HIM BECAUSE HE TREATED me like a man. He was in the early stages of building his cottage, so we talked about pouring cement and choosing sawn lumber, and he often asked my advice. By the end of our stay there, he was my favorite of the sad clowns and exiles who hid away on that island.
We only met him after we’d already spent eight months on St. John. When we first arrived, in the summer of 1958, we lived at the Caneel Bay Hotel, because Alice was coming off a bad run. I liked her to have luxuries she wasn’t used to.
In the mornings, we drank strong coffee on the tiled patio. We ate toast with butter and guava jam, surrounded by potted palms and a wide view of the ocean.
We only read the local papers. I checked the headlines before I handed them over to Alice. There were stories about the sugarcane harvest, ferry repairs, and local art shows.
She read them and seemed unperturbed. Of course the island had its own problems, but it was a relief to me at least to know that Alice wouldn’t have to read any more news about “pervert purges,” or “the homosexual menace,” or see Roy Cohn on national television, saying that if you weren’t with McCarthy, you were either a cocksucker or a Communist.
For a little while, at least, I wanted her to have peace over breakfast. Especially in those early months, when she was trying so hard to be better. All morning, she stuck with strong coffee. After breakfast, we went out walking, and in the afternoons she’d try to start painting.
Still, I felt the effort involved. The days went on forever, and we didn’t have any friends. With each passing hour, surrounded on all sides by blue water, I was aware that it had been my idea to move out there. I watched her too closely for signs she was unhappy.
I was like Circe, watching Odysseus sneak down from the palace to the beach, planning new spells to keep him enchanted and hoping he wouldn’t ready the ship. She tried to reassure me that she was content, but I could see she wasn’t painting well. For months, she worked on one canvas of the anemic potted plant in our suite.
That plant was obviously dying. It had some secret disease. She’d set it on a marble table, and all summer, she painted its curled yellow fingers, making slow progress, then blotted it all out by the evening.
The whole suite smelled like turpentine. It smelled like mistakes getting rubbed out. We waited until dark to go down to dinner, but the sun never set.
And after dinner, at night, it was so quiet: the two of us alone in that hotel room together.
She tried to reassure me that I was enough, but Alice was used to being surrounded by people. Even in Washington, she had so many friends. In New York she had admirers. On St. John, I worried she’d lose her mind. She stuck to her word about drinking, but sometimes, in the evening, after she’d given up painting, I saw her striding in from the beach, holding her sandals, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the hotel and ignited by lights from the houseboats beyond her.
I DID WHAT I COULD TO HELP HER FEEL AT HOME. I TRIED TO FIND people who might entertain her. In July, for example, I remembered the Gibneys. We’d met them in New York, where Nancy was an editor. She’d worked at Vogue, but she quit when she married Bob, and they moved to St. John so he could finish his novel.
One day in July, I looked them up and invited them to the hotel to have dinner. We had a table on the patio, and I watched Alice the whole time, to see if she was enjoying herself. Nancy told stories that were funny and mean, and Bob laughed along with her, but when the check came, he became fascinated by a detail on the toe of his shoe. He remained entranced until I’d already paid, when he acted surprised and offended.
Later, when Alice was asleep and I’d gone down to the bar, the bartender told me that Bob sometimes did electrical repair work at the hotel. The novel, apparently, was not coming along. The longer the Gibneys stayed on the island, the less he actually wrote. Which probably at least partly explained why Nancy’s anecdotes were honed to such a sharp point, as though the whole purpose was to show Bob how easy it is to bring a story to a satisfactory ending.
STILL, THEY WERE THE ONLY PEOPLE WE KNEW. AND EVERY SO OFTEN, if I thought Alice seemed particularly caged, I asked them to dinner. We learned how to get along with them well. It was best not to ask Bob about writing. Nancy was the more intelligent one, so we let her talk.
Once, while night fell on the patio, she entertained us with the story of the time Chester and Kitty stayed in their guest room. Two years before we came to the island, Bob and Nancy had sold a small piece of their beach to Chester and Kitty. They’d never intended to sell, but they’d used all of Bob’s inheritance to buy the beach in the first place, and ten years later, Bob was still at work on that novel.
They needed the money. But they wanted to sell to people they liked, so they waited around a long time, and then they met Chester and Kitty at a luncheon at the Trunk Bay guesthouse.
According to Nancy, they were all dressed up in tourist gear: cotton from head to toe, and as pale as if they’d just stepped off the ferry. Right off the bat, Kitty made some rude comment about the heat and Nancy’s thick hair. But Chester was polite, and Nancy and Bob—as Nancy made very clear—were good expatriate liberals.
They’d read about the security hearings. They were disgusted by McCarthy. They hated Roy Cohn. What was happening in Washington, Nancy said, giving me a meaningful look, was nothing if not a disgrace.
So when Chester and Kitty announced over lunch that they were looking to build a house on the island, Nancy and Bob decided to sell them the parcel. It was just after the sale that Kitty called to ask if they could come stay in the guest room while they were drawing up plans for the cottage. Nancy assumed that they wanted to stay for a weekend. But then they showed up with their daughter. And the daughter brought a school friend. As soon as they’d unpacked all their things, they announced that they couldn’t possibly stay the whole summer, but they might be able to manage July.
While Nancy talked, occasionally taking a break to light another cigarette, darkness was creeping over the island. The lights of the houseboats were coming on in the harbor. Whenever Nancy came to a punch line, Alice laughed, politely, but she didn’t draw her eyes away from the houseboats.
They stayed for seven weeks, Nancy said. The girls slept in a tent in the backyard. They were so quiet she often forgot they were there. But Robert and Kitty stayed in the guest room, and they were up every night until dawn, smoking and drinking in bed. Kitty would come out every five minutes to rattle around in the kitchen. Then, finally, when the roosters were just starting to crow, they’d go deathly quiet and sleep until noon, when they’d finally emerge, blinking in the bright light, wearing cotton shorts and big floppy sun hats.
While Nancy went on, I watched Alice light a cigarette. Her fingers weren’t trembling so badly as they had in those last months in Washington. When she inhaled, she crossed one arm over her chest and looked out again over the darkening water.
No matter how much time they spent outside, Nancy said, Chester and Kitty were too pale and thin to be human. After a day on the beach, they’d come back paler than ever, and the first thing they did was pour a fresh drink. They never ate more than a few crackers for dinner. And then, all night, they’d be at it again, smoking and drinking in bed, knocking around for hours in the kitchen.
At that point in the story, the food finally came. Nancy paused her account. Bob assaulted his lobster croissant and when he finally came up for air, there was a fleck of mayonnaise on his chin.
Nancy gazed at it for a moment. Then she sighed and averted her eyes. Toward the end of July, she said, she’d had enough. The Oppenheimers had run the house for too long. Sometime after midnight, Kitty was at it again, rattling around, and Nancy got out of bed and marched out to the kitchen, where she found Kitty herself: pale as a ghost, dressed in nothing but a black negligee. Tail up, head down, her face shoved in the freezer like a skunk with its snout caught in a tin can.
She was using a flashlight, Nancy said, and fishing for ice at the back of the drawer. Then Nancy marched over and pulled her out of the freezer. Kitty, she said, no one who drinks all night needs ice in their whiskey.
When Nancy delivered this line, Bob laughed mechanically. He’d heard it before.
For a moment, Nancy examined him again. She was still beautiful, with that thick head of burnished gold hair. But Bob’s hair had started receding, and the emerging dome of his forehead was sunburned. Nancy noted it, then went on with her story.
Apparently, interrupted in her foraging, Kitty drew herself out of the freezer. Then she took one look at Nancy, and swung the flashlight straight at her face.
Nancy had a bruise for two weeks. When she got back to bed, she told Bob she was going to visit her mother in Boston, at least until those lunatics had abandoned the guest room.
HAVING FINISHED HER STORY, NANCY TOOK A TRIUMPHANT SIP OF champagne.
Alice pointed out toward the horizon. “What are those lights?” she said.
Far off in the distance, there was a swarm of tiny globes of white light, bobbing up some invisible hillside.
Nancy glanced over her shoulder. She shrugged. No idea, she said.
Some ceremony or other, Bob guessed.
The dots of light kept swimming up. It looked as if a mob of angry villagers were storming the sky holding torches.
Of course Kitty’s insane, Nancy went on, but given a choice, I’d take her over Robert.
I don’t agree, Bob said, but Nancy ignored him.
It’s him who’s the real devil, Nancy said, leaning forward. He’s what’s driven her crazy. Once, you know, we asked him about Hiroshima. We assumed he’d be nearly mad with remorse. But he said he didn’t regret what he’d done. He said he never had. And I said, but what about the radiation sickness? What about all the children dying of leukemia? What about the birth defects? What about the people who haven’t been affected yet but still have to wait around, afraid of the day when they will be?
Then Nancy paused and took another sip of her champagne. Out in the darkness, those little globes of light were still climbing.
Anyway, Nancy said, he heard what I had to say. To his credit, he stayed there and listened. But even then he didn’t say he was sorry. He just listened, and didn’t respond, until finally he said something about how a scientist’s job is to know, and how that’s what he’d done. He’d set out to know the mystery of the atom. And I wanted to say, then how about you figure out the mystery of leukemia? Or how about, if you’re so smart, you figure out the mystery of why people wage war? But I knew it wouldn’t make any difference. You could tell how smug he was about the whole thing. He’d accomplished what he set out to accomplish.
Then Nancy finished. She took a bite of grilled shrimp. Alice was still gazing off at the far hillside. Those bobbing globes were reflected in her dark eyes, so that it seemed as if her pupils were giving off sparks.
Then the check came, and Bob disappeared under the table. Nancy watched him carefully. I took the check, and he surfaced again.
Your chin, Bob, Nancy said, at least ten or twenty minutes after she should have.
LATER, BACK IN OUR ROOM, ALICE LET DOWN HER HAIR AND SAT ON the edge of our bed. “I can’t stand them,” she said.
I started laughing. “We’ll never see them again,” I said.
She’d opened the shutters, and the moonlight shone on her hair. When she bent to rub lotion into her calves, she moved her hands in long, deliberate strokes, like someone washing clothes in a river.
AFTER THAT, IT WAS JUST US AGAIN IN THE HOTEL. ALICE DID HER best to make me think she was happy, but I know it wasn’t easy for her.
It wasn’t easy for me, either. What happened in New York was still so close behind us. I felt it breathing down the back of my neck.
To escape it, I hovered around her too much. She tried to pretend my hovering didn’t bother her, but some days she’d startle when I walked into a room. Then I’d catch her absently fiddling with the ring I gave her in Washington, as though it irritated her finger. At night, she’d sleep on the far edge of the bed, and sometimes, when she came home from a walk, she’d knock around in the room for a while, stubbornly maintaining her distance, before finally giving in and coming over to kiss me.
Such little gestures. On their own, none of them meant much. But taken together, after what we’d left behind us, it was difficult for me not to transform them into signs of an impending departure.
I tried to keep myself busy, to avoid thinking such thoughts. I went out for long walks in the hills, keeping my back turned to the water. I moved uphill. That was a dry summer, and though the valleys were still dense and matted with green, as you climbed up the mountains, the hills that rose beyond you began to look like loaves of brown bread, studded with blue clumps of agave like spots of mold on the bread crust.
I walked until I was too tired to think. On bad days, that was my only relief. I’d walk until my thoughts had flattened out to nothing more than the sounds of my own footsteps crunching the stones. And I’d only start thinking again if I stopped, and sat down for a while on one of those rocks covered in suspended sea-green explosions of lichen.
Once I’d started thinking, I couldn’t stop. Then, sometimes, I hated Alice. Sometimes I hated myself. I should have taken her away from Washington, I’d think to myself. I should have swept her off somewhere else.
Why didn’t I see, earlier on, that we had to leave that despicable city?
I should have forced her to give up that job. We didn’t need the money she made. She’d only taken it to prove I didn’t have to support her. But trying to hang on to that job, when so many people were getting laid off: it made her start to go crazy. She became maniacal about keeping things between us a secret. She stopped wearing her ring. We stopped going out with our friends. If we went to a restaurant and ran into someone she knew, she’d introduce me as an old friend from college.
Then all through dinner she wouldn’t touch me. She didn’t hold my hand on the table. And if I reached underneath it to put my hand on her knee, she’d swat it away and her face would go stony.
After a while, we stopped going out to dinner together. It was easier just to see each other at home.
I wasn’t working, so I wasted my days taking walks, or reading magazines in the park, but every second article was about some Hollywood star who’d been “exposed as a queer,” or some politician who was “found out for a pervert.”
At home, every time I turned on the TV a senator was getting interviewed about the secret menace of Communism in this country, about how you just couldn’t tell: your neighbor might be a Red, your secretary might be a Red, your own mother might be a Commie.
Then the conversation would take a new turn, and the same senator, looking dignified in his dark suit, would say you couldn’t separate homosexuals from subversives, because anyone who was keeping a secret was suspect.
So these senators said, as though they weren’t the reason people were forced to keep secrets.
By then, more and more of our friends had been fired. And Alice wanted to hold on to that job, so we had no choice but to learn how to eat dinner like friends. We learned to never walk home together. We learned not to touch each other so often.
