Nothing So Strange (34 page)

“Good for you.”

“But he’ll come again. You can’t keep him off.”

“What sort of man is he?”

“That kind. The kind you can’t keep off. Otherwise not so bad. Fairly
fair. Nothing Gestapo-ish. He told me they don’t know anything against you. I
guess they just can’t let you alone—any more than I can, but not in the
same way.”

“Did he want to see me today?”

“No, only me. To find out what I’d found out—or if I’d found out
anything. He seems to think I have an inside track on you.”

“And you have.” All his nerves, and mine too, came to rest in the way he
said it.

“That makes me very happy.”

“Me too.” He leaned up on one elbow. “I wish we could stay here longer, or
come again, but perhaps that’s impossible…. I’m glad we had this day,
anyhow. A lovely time…. When you see him again, will you tell him
something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell him….” He hesitated and half smiled. “I’m sorry it sounds so
mysterious, but I can’t help it…. Just tell him I’ve kept my word so far.
Will you tell him that?”

“Yes. You’ve kept your word—so far.”

“But don’t make the ‘so far’ sound like a threat. It’s a fact. I can’t be
blamed if … well, never mind…. That’s all.” He began to get up. “And now,
if you’re ready….”

“Sure … the gas.”

“And the motor. We’ve both got to get busy.”

The road was round the corner of the hill, according to the
map, but I had
no idea what chance there would be of a lift. It’s an experience to start off
alone across the desert land; you set a course, as when flying or sailing,
but distances have a fabulous unreality; the place you keep your eye on may
be one or five or ten miles away. I aimed just for the outer edge of the lake
bed; caked hard, it made good walking, and soon the little plane was beyond
sight against the background of hills. Presently I came to a jutting rock
round which the road should be; but then came the hot wind, laden with dust
and tumbleweed. I fought my way and struck the road almost before seeing it.
A dirt road, not very encouraging, though there were fairly recent tire marks
in the ruts. I began to wonder what I could do if no car overtook me. Just
nothing, I supposed, except keep on walking. Twenty miles to Giant’s
Pass—say six hours. I should be scorched and thirsty and dead-beat, but
probably I could do it.

A car came along after a quarter of an hour—an aged Ford, driven by
a Mexican. He spoke little English, and grinned when I used my Spanish on
him. I don’t think he understood much of what I explained, but he cheerfully
made room for me amongst crates of eggs and bundles of alfalfa. We bumped
along for four or five miles, then joined a paved highway for the rest of the
journey.

Giant’s Pass was a small place, with not more than one of anything except
wooden shacks. It looked like a ghost town either reviving or not quite dead.
But for its altitude it would have been impossibly hot. Dogs lay sprawled in
the shade; their barks and the occasional bang of a screen door were the only
sounds. At a single gas pump in the midst of a litter of weather-worn auto
cabins a boy of about fifteen listened curiously to my tale of a forced plane
landing in the desert. It occurred to me later he probably thought it a trick
to buy gas without coupons. Even when I had convinced him of the story there
was another problem; he said he couldn’t leave his place to drive me
anywhere, nor did he know anyone who could. I tried to talk him into a change
of mind till suddenly I saw the Mexican repassing; I yelled out to ask if he
were on his way back. He answered with the same cheerful grin. So I handed up
the cans and found the eggs and alfalfa replaced by enough groceries to keep
a large family for a month. Perhaps that was what they were for. At the last
minute, as we were leaving Giant’s Pass, I remembered the newspaper and
dashed back to the general store for one.

It’s curious to recollect where you were when you learned of big events. I
was having a music lesson in the New York house when John came in to tell us
excitedly that Lindbergh had landed in Paris; I was with a group of friends
in Boise, Idaho, arguing after a long late Sunday breakfast when news came
over the radio that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor; I was walking in
Central Park when I saw all kinds of people struck by some strange
dumbfoundedness and presently a girl’s voice, overheard as I passed by, told
me with sobs that Roosevelt was dead.

And I was riding with a Mexican through the California desert when I
picked up the paper and first saw the name Hiroshima.

The Mexican, with a beaming disregard of his tires and
springs, had
insisted on driving right through the scrub to the plane. He helped fill the
tank, accepted a reward with genial dignity, and drove off in a second cloud
of dust. Brad said he had fixed and checked everything. It hadn’t taken
either of us as long as he had expected, so we could now relax again before
leaving. “Sit down and smoke. It’s an easy take-off and whatever wind there
still is will help us back, though it’ll probably slacken by evening.”

“It’s begun to slacken already,” I said.

He lit a cigarette and lay outstretched on the sand. “I still say I like
this place. I don’t want to leave it somehow.” I handed him the paper; he let
it fall on his lap. “Oh, so you got one? Any news?”

“Yes,” I said.

Then he picked it up, glanced at the headlines, and I saw the glance
become a stare.

He made no comment at first, and I watched him covertly while I packed the
picnic things. I stowed them away in the plane, still to give him more time;
then I came over.

“Read about this new bomb?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Extraordinary thing.”

“Yes.”

“I reckon a good many people are finding it pretty hard to believe.”

“Probably.”

“Looks like they can only split atoms out of rare stuff like
uranium—so far. And at terrific cost. One of these days, though,
they’ll find out how to do it cheaper out of common material—hydrogen,
say. Nothing impossible about that—in theory.”

“Isn’t there?”

“Sure no. All it needs is the short cut. Somebody’ll find it sooner or
later.”

All this casualness had been so absurdly overdone that I simply looked at
him, wondering how best to convey not so much what was in my mind as the fact
that he would have to act much better if he wished to conceal what was in
his.

Presently he said: “What’s the idea, staring like that? Anything
wrong?”

I lay beside him. “You’ve kept your word long enough, Brad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems to me you’re free to talk—after these headlines.”

He made smoke rings through an uneasy silence. Then he said: “I guess
that’s so—to some extent. But I see they don’t go into the science of
it much.”

“Oh, to hell with
that
. Tell me what happened to
you
. That’s
what I’m interested in.”

“It oughtn’t to be.”

“I know … the world … the future … science … all that’s more
important. But with me, last things come first.”

“What last things?”

“The last things we’d have if we lost everything else. Human
relationships.”

“I suppose that must be what they call the woman’s angle.”

He told me, during the several hours that followed, more or
less what had happened. The story was often disjointed in the way he gave it,
and I had to probe to get certain parts clear; but in the end it assembled
itself.

He had intended, he said, to return to America at once, in September 1939;
but after his year in Berlin he found that crossing the frontier into a free
country gave him a part-fascinated, part-frantic interest in the world drama
that was developing. With the release of his mind from technical work he
turned with something of the same intensity to a grandstand scrutiny of
chaos. Perhaps oddly, he said, he hated the Nazis more and not less when he
saw them in this perspective; it was as if Berlin had been too much the
center of the whirlpool, just as America would be too far beyond the outer
edge. At any rate, he lived in France, the nearer distance, throughout the
so-called phony war and most of the invasion. In June, just before that
country’s fall, he crossed to England and was in London during the worst of
the blitz.

I asked him what he was trying to get out of all this and he answered:
“Experience. You yourself once said that scientists lived in an ivory tower.
I’d lived in one so long I couldn’t even wait to come down the stairs—I
had to jump out of the window.”

“How did you make a living?”

“I didn’t. For the first time in my life I idled—idled while Rome
was burning. I pottered about France and then I pottered about England.”

“During the blitz?”

“Well … I took my turn at fire-watching, air-raid work and so on. I
wanted to see what was happening.”

“And you saw?”

“Yes, I saw plenty. I guess you did too. Only I hadn’t the excuse of a
book to write—it was just for my own private education.”

“What did you use for money while you were idling as you call it?”

He laughed. “Those twenty A.T. and T.‘s that my uncle had left me. I sold
‘em without a qualm.”

He went on to say that he lived quite happily—yes, that was a true
word, however strange it might sound—throughout 1941. Once he tried to
enlist in the R.A.F. (he had always wanted to learn to fly), but there were
difficulties about his citizenship. They didn’t worry about that in air
raids, though. He liked the English very much, he said—much more than
he had during his earlier period in London. But of course after Pearl Harbor
he wanted to return to America. He reached New York in January 1942, an
out-of-work and practically penniless mathematician, than which there is
normally no more maladjusted person on earth. But for him, just then, his own
country seemed a wonderful place. He tried again to enlist, and again in the
Air Force, but to his surprise they found something wrong with his blood
count—it was the first time in his life he had ever had to think of his
body in a way that less fortunate people do all the time. The doctor heard
where he had lived during recent years and suggested that he take things easy
for a while, fatten up on sunshine, fresh air, and plenty of good food. But
he had no money to idle any more, besides which, he wasn’t in any mood to
idle in America. The only thing he could think of was to go back “home,” and
home was North Dakota, where members of his family still lived. To his
surprise he got quite a warm reception, which was just as well, because
almost immediately his health broke down, the accumulated strains and
stresses of many years exacting a sudden price.

He said: “I don’t know what I’d have done if it hadn’t been a farm. When
you’re ill on a farm people don’t bother much about you, they don’t fuss,
they have their own work that can’t be neglected, and their contact with
animals and animal ailments makes them very considerate yet also very
practical. And then when you get better you can always find some little job
that really helps them yet doesn’t tax you too much.”

“What really was the trouble—your trouble?”

“I suppose you’d call it a nervous breakdown. If I’d taken much notice of
it I’d probably be having it still.”

“I’m not sure that you aren’t having it still.”

He retorted harshly: “Oh, nonsense. There’s nothing the matter with me now
except … well, anyhow, let’s get on with the story. I improved. I worked on
the farm. I learned to fly—got my license—did quite a bit of
local flying. That took me up to pretty near the end of 1943. Then one day I
went on some farm business to Chicago. On the train I ran into an old school
friend who had since gone into teaching and was science professor at a
college in Iowa. He knew roughly what my own field was because he was
interested in it too, and he told me of some important research being done in
Chicago that was altogether in my line. ‘It’s war work,’ he said, rather
mysteriously, ‘and I daresay they could use you.’ So while I was in Chicago I
called at the place. They were cordial if also a bit mysterious; they said it
was quite likely they could give me a job. But they had to pass me on to
someone else who made all the appointments, and after more questions and
form-filling I was told they would let me know. I went back to the farm and
didn’t really expect to hear from them again. But after a few weeks I
did—they wanted me in Chicago for another interview. This was a
different kind—very thorough, not quite hostile but
almost
—a bit like a cross-examination in court. I found they
knew much more about my association with Framm than I had told anybody.
Anyhow, in due course they sent me to this place in Tennessee—I see one
can mention its name now. They gave me a job there. Perhaps I’d better not
say what, though it couldn’t be much of a disclosure, because it was the sort
of thing any sixteen- year-old physics student at college could have learned
in half an hour.”

“Why didn’t you ask for something more suitable?”

“I did, and nothing came of it. Then I figured that after all, my name was
unknown and my credentials weren’t of surpassing weight. But the real reason
was probably in me—I’m not personally ambitious, never have been, and
if that was the way they wanted me to help win the war, it was perfectly
okay. They had some fine mathematicians already working for them—I
wasn’t boastful enough to think I had anything unique to contribute.”

“Not even your knowledge of the kind of thing Framm had been doing?”

“I’d told them about that. It wasn’t exactly on the same lines as their
work. I’m sorry I can’t explain more fully.”

“I probably wouldn’t understand it if you did. So you settled down at this
elementary job and what happened?”

“Nothing much. There’s really no eventfulness in this part of my story.
After Vienna and Berlin it’s quite without drama. I’m afraid you’re going to
be disappointed.”