listened. Explosive lenses. The initiator. Tampers. None of it meant anything to him. Instead he watched Oppenheimer, cool and efficient, run through his checklist of questions. He never wavered again. Connolly marveled at his single-mindedness. There were no more reproaches, no more attempts at any human connection. My friend. Now there was just a flow of information. How much was lost? It was the project that had been betrayed; Oppenheimer’s own feelings had disappeared in some willed privacy. Perhaps he would take them out later, bruised, when the project was safe.
Eisler told him everything. Connolly felt at times that he was eavesdropping on some rarefied seminar. Question. Answer. Observation. They anticipated each other. With Connolly, Eisler sparred and evaded, but now his answers came freely, as if he were a foreigner relieved to find someone who spoke his native language. To him, science really was universal and open-it belonged to everyone who could know it. But mostly now it belonged to Oppenheimer. As Connolly watched them, he felt that Eisler’s eager cooperation had become a kind of sad last request for forgiveness. He would give Oppenheimer everything. They would talk as they always had, and Oppenheimer would feel the pleasure of it again and understand: what scientist could believe it must be secret?
But Oppenheimer was somewhere else now. Whenever he saw that Eisler, too sick to go on, needed medication, he would stop without complaint, almost relieved to go back to his real work. In the morning they would take up where they had left off, and Connolly would see Eisler’s eyes, strained and cloudy, clear for a minute in anticipation. It became a question of how long he could last. Connolly would watch for the signs-a few beads of sweat, the voice suddenly dry, the small movements of his hands on the sheets-and see him struggle with it, ignoring the pain just a few minutes longer to keep Oppenheimer there. Then, after a week, they were finished, and Oppenheimer stopped coming. Eisler would look at the door in the morning and then, resigned, turn his head toward the chair and smile weakly at Connolly, who was now all there was.
“Groves wants to come,” Oppenheimer told him one day, outside.
“Tell him to wait a few days. He’s dying. I’m still hoping he’ll talk to me.”
“How much longer, do you think?”
“I don’t know. A few days. It can’t go on much longer. He’s in pain all the time now.”
“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, and for a moment Connolly thought he saw something break in his eyes. Then he turned to go. “Why this way? There were a hundred easier ways to do it.”
“I don’t know. Fit the punishment to the crime. Maybe something like that.”
Oppenheimer looked at him, a question.
“No, not Karl,” Connolly said. “I think it’s about the bomb.”
But Oppenheimer didn’t want to hear it. “Nonsense.”
“He’s a scientist,” Connolly said. “Maybe for him it’s the elegant solution.”
Oppenheimer started at the words. “No,” he said wearily. “It’s an atonement. My God, what a waste. Does he think anybody’s watching?”
“He asks for you.”
Oppenheimer ignored him. “Groves wants to come,” he said again. Then he anticipated Connolly’s reaction. “I told him you were doing everything possible.”
“He doesn’t trust me?”
“He’ll have to. We’ll all have to, Mr. Connolly. Interesting how things work out, isn’t it? Do you think he’ll talk?”
“If he doesn’t, we’re at a dead end. Literally. It dies with him. Keep Groves away, will you? And no goons either.”
“I’ll do what I can. He has to come sometime, you know. We have to decide what to do.”
“Like what? There’s nothing to be done.”
“You don’t know G.G. There’s always something to be done. In fact, I suggest you start thinking about what- he’ll want ideas. I’d better go now. We’ve still got a gadget to build.”
“You don’t want to see Eisler?”
“I’ve seen him,” he said, and walked away.
So Eisler talked to Connolly. Some days he would lie staring at the ceiling, his eyes half-closed in a daze, and then there would be a rush of talk. Hamburg. A back garden. The damp rooms after the first war, when there was no coal. He talked pictures for Connolly, gabled roofs and tramlines and a summer lake. Then, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun in his mind, block-long factories and slate skies and his father, the hacking cough of damaged lungs. A last attempt, even now, at precision. Connolly didn’t interrupt, hoping instead for a revealing moment. Sometimes he drifted into German, a secret testimony that left Connolly helpless. He had long since stopped answering questions. If Connolly drew him back to the alley at San Isidro, he would grow quiet, then speak of something else. He no longer enjoyed the verbal fencing. There wasn’t time to go over it again. He was talking out his life. Now Berlin. Trude. A hiking trip in the mountains. Connolly sat in the dim room day after day, listening for clues.
He saw Emma only once, on a Saturday when they drove up to Taos Pueblo for an outing, past Hannah’s ranch and along the high mountain road where the villages reminded her of Spain. After days with Eisler, the sun was too bright, glaring off the whitewashed walls, and after a while Connolly wished he hadn’t come. What if Eisler said something and there was no one to hear? He missed the puzzle of the stories. Eisler had wanted him to understand, but all he had learned so far was that his life was inexplicable. It couldn’t end in the alleyway. He had to leave a name, a description.
The pueblo itself was poor and dusty, filled with scratching chickens and occasional pickup trucks and quiet, resentful Indians selling blankets. The mud apartment blocks, windows outlined in bright blue, seemed like tenements, all clotheslines and old tin cans and rickety ladders leading to roofs. Maybe it had always been like this, he thought, the splendor of the Anasazi ruins no more than a leap of imagination. They sat near the fast, high stream that divided the two sides of the settlement, watching children crossing on the railless wooden bridge.
“Are you really all right?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“People are talking. They say you’ve got it too. That’s why you’re the only one allowed. They’re afraid to let anyone else in.”
“No. I’m fine. I just talk to him, that’s all.”
“You mean you’re questioning him. I thought he was dying.”
“He is.”
“What about? Karl? You think he killed Karl? I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I. But I think he knows who did.”
“Why would he?” she said, and then, when he didn’t answer, “Oh, I see. Don’t ask. Run along, Emma. Is it something terrible?”
“Yes.”
She shivered. “Then don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I like him.”
“I like him too.”
“Then why do this to him? What do you actually do, anyway? Give him shots to make him talk? Keep at him till he breaks down? Like the films? God, Michael. Sitting there like a vulture waiting for him to die. Everybody deserves a little peace.”
Connolly was quiet for a minute. “He doesn’t want peace. He wants to talk. We just-talk.”
“About what?”
“His life. Germany. Everything. He’s dying, Emma. He wants somebody to talk to.”
“And you volunteered.”
“It just worked out that way. I can’t explain it now. I don’t like it either, you know. It’s a lousy way to die. It’s not fun to watch.”
Emma stood, picking up a stone and throwing it at the water. “I hate what you do.”
“I didn’t ask to do it.”
“You didn’t say no, either. And now you’ll never give up. Sometimes I wonder how far you’d go. Would you do anything?”
“No.”
“What’s your limit, then? Do you know?” She came back from the stream.
