December 1944
1
Lotte
Nialu
She hears singing: one lone voice at first, clear and resonant, a tenor, then others join in, and the song rises and falls, until it swirls into a cloudburst and overtakes them all. From the medical tent, as she moves from stretcher to stretcher, Lotte watches the shiny faces of soldiers, crowding between village huts, their chests expanding as they sing of war, and wonders if all men are drawn to battle not by hatred or patriotic duty (as most suppose) but by song. A patient cries for help—Sister! She drops her needle into a tray, crayons M onto a tag, pins it to Sergeant Levy’s pocket, and turns her attention to the now weeping soldier.
Later in the day, Dr Riccard sends her on a break. She sidesteps her way through the smoking, laughing, shoulder-thumping men to the mess. Outside, a private diligently hammers in the final tent pegs. The whole place still being set up. War moves fast when it needs to. At the serving bay, she collects a plate from the counter. The cook is dishing out pork and pitpit stew. Someone shot a pig, she hears. Probably stole a pig, she thinks. Cook grunts hello. She’s grateful he treats her like everyone else, like all the men. Counts it as respect. Pitpit, he explains, is the local pidgin name for an edible bamboo. Tastes better than it sounds, he adds. The only spare place is at a table of engineers, but she needs to sit, decides to risk it. When she does, they all turn to her and speak at once. During school years, she’d learnt to be invisible, but thrust into an army environment, she’s suddenly so desired it terrifies her. She eats quickly, makes excuses, and has enough time to take the longer shaded pathway—circling the hordes of military men—back to work. The luminous jungle light soothes her; it has brightness, like grass crickets, but also depth.
A soldier, rakish and muscular, head down, hands pushed deep into his pockets, is strolling towards her, whistling.
She stops, her breath short and sharp. ‘Virgil?’
He looks up, coughs out a laugh. ‘Lotte?’
They hug each other, awkward, like strangers.
‘So you went nursing.’
His face is tanned and the army haircut brings out his eyes. They seem larger, darker.
‘You knew I wanted to.’
Virgil slips a pack of Lucky Strikes from his shirt pocket, taps two out, offers her one. He lights a match and they both lean in.
‘I’ve been in New Guinea three weeks,’ he says. ‘Wondecla jungle training before that, a year there; Canungra for a bit; started out at Watsonia, Victoria. You?’
‘Three months in New Guinea,’ Lotte replies. ‘In Aitape, with the 2/11 Australian General Hospital. We’ve only just moved there from Madang. The Aitape hospital isn’t open yet. Basic facilities up, but they’ve not started on the wards. Some of us were sent here to help set up the medical staging post.’
Her voice is oddly formal; she doesn’t know why.
Virgil seems not to notice, he blows out smoke, grins. ‘Look at us, meeting here, two country kids. Who would’ve thought?’
A cockatoo screeches and something inside Lotte cracks. For a moment the world goes silent.
He must sense the change in her, for he says, his voice as soft as a kiss, ‘I sent you a letter.’
Inside the crack wildness stirs and she laughs. ‘Can you call five lines a letter?’
‘Ah, you got it.’ He stares at thick vines looping between trees. ‘I was hoping you might write back.’
‘Did you deserve a reply?’ She’d always wondered what she’d say to him if she saw him again. Now she knows. She’s been blunt but is not sorry for it.
They smoke. Lotte isn’t sure what to say next. Maybe he doesn’t know what happened to her that night. His five lines had not been clear on that score. Her own memory of that terrible night is usually locked away, a rabid dog chained in a place where it can do no harm.
Virgil steps closer, his movements tentative, as if feeling his way along a dark passage, unsure which door might lead to the light. ‘How’s Billy getting along?’
Lotte frowns in disbelief. Don’t people talk, write? Had the whole town blotted her family from memory?
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, understanding. ‘Where?’
‘Tobruk. He was a messenger, riding a bike, hit by a mortar.’
‘I didn’t know.’
There’s always this cramping in her heart when her brother’s name is mentioned. With it, she imagines his body exploding. He died in ’41 but there’s been no easing of her grief. Bikes had been her brother’s downfall. At the start of the war he’d been sent to a boys’ reformatory for pinching their uncle’s bike. He didn’t pinch it, he borrowed it without asking. But their uncle hadn’t seen it that way and wanted to teach Billy a lesson. When Billy got out, his life was forever altered. He carried the shame of incarceration inside him. Stuttered, that was new. Walked with a hunch. Then not long after Virgil joined up, he did too. It was like a virus in their town, everyone underage but keen to be part of the war. This is my one chance to be free, Billy had told her. The irony of that statement.
She deflects to the conversation starters she uses with patients, her voice strangled. ‘What company are you with?’
‘They’re calling us Piper Force, Companies A and C. I’m with A.’
‘We’ve had some of your lot in this morning—concussion, broken arms, torn ligaments. Who was foolish enough to order the crossing of a flooded river?’
Virgil laughs, uneasily. ‘I think our Major is out to prove something.’
‘Prove he’s an idiot?’
‘We didn’t lose anyone—there’s that to be thankful for.’
Two companies, over four hundred men, are mountain bound. The equivalent along the coast road. The current campaign is only a few days old, fighting hasn’t even begun, but the injuries keep rolling in. It’s December, monsoon season. Floods every other day. Lotte doesn’t know much about military strategy but the campaign timing smacks of more ambition than sense.
‘To be honest,’ Virgil says, ‘the New Guineans crossed with ease. There’s worse planned for tomorrow—we’re going up the Staircase.’
The Staircase, Lotte had learnt earlier from a patient, is an infamously treacherous trail leading up the mountain to the village of Tong. There’s to be an Advanced Dressing Station in Tong. One of the surgeons Lotte worked with in Madang is there now, getting it ready.
‘Some of us have a bet on,’ Virgil says, ‘we’re racing to the top.’
Still the same competitive Virgil, she thinks. Back home, he’d won the Spring Valley Sprint three years in a row.
‘You like a challenge,’ she says.
‘That’s why I like you.’
‘Ah! You have a funny way of showing it.’
His face creases with concern. ‘Lotte …’ he says, but gets no further.
She will never go back to her hometown, she’s decided that already, but her fury from that night is again unleashed. Throwing her cigarette down, she grinds the burning end into the dirt.
Virgil reaches to touch her but she goes rigid and his hand drops.
She can’t look at him, keeps staring at her boots, but inside her still body, all is frenzied. He stands there immobile, a reed bent towards her. There’s intimacy in their closeness and gnawing pain. She doesn’t know what to say, is confused herself by the charge in her reaction. Damn it. She thought she’d tethered this emotion. She wants it gone, the savage memory of that night obliterated.
The hush between them lengthens.
‘Look after yourself, Lotte,’ Virgil finally says. ‘It’s good seeing you.’
He leaves the path, picking his way slowly between groups of men. What’s it called when you know you should run after someone, but can’t? She watches as he’s hailed by three comrades. They slap him on the back, poke his stomach, tickle him. One bumps his shoulder, again and again, until the two are almost dancing. The ease of men. Virgil doesn’t look back at her, not once.
As she enters the medical tent, Dr Riccard says, ‘Patient on the third stretcher needs his wound cleaned.’
Lotte collects green soap, a bowl of water, spills a little, then puts the bowl down until her raging hands stop shaking.
2
Virgil
Nialu
Damp sticks fizz in the campfire, spill inwards as they burn. Virgil’s hand hovers above the writing pad, pencilled on it two words—Dear Lotte. Ever since their meeting, he’s been a galloping horse on an endless track, all thoughts splintering, except this one: write a letter longer than five lines.
Around him, men snore beneath army-issued tarps; others are playing cards. At the camp perimeter, beside the raucous jungle, soldiers gather in twos and threes and weather the oncoming mist with restless banter about battles to come. Virgil can’t think war, can’t think enemy, can’t think combat. Can only think Lotte.
Before he’d even met her—this when he was sixteen and home on holidays from his scholarship school in Adelaide—he’d see her down by the river, absorbed in watching birds, dark hair pulled back, bright eyes scanning the trees, whistling and chattering as if she knew their language. He’d be further upriver, fishing. Shy with girls, he’d not had the courage to say hello. Bird-girl they’d called her in town. Some tale about how the schoolyard magpies never attacked her the way they did other children. There was always gossip about her family: her father a terrible gambler, and a violent hitter some said; her mother a miserable drunk because of it. Some called her mother a gypsy, others said she was Jewish, only that didn’t fit with what happened later, when it came out about the uncle. Then the mother gained other names. No one knew the whole story. In a town full of Scottish and German immigrants, mother and children stood out for their dark olive skin and bodies that were fine-boned yet sturdy. Virgil’s father, a big Scotsman with a shock of white hair, emotionally hard, yet weepy about brilliance, taught Lotte at the local school.
‘Uncannily smart is young Lotte,’ his father had said. ‘She’s grades above the others and they resent her for it.’
Virgil first spoke to Lotte when she came to the local dance, escorted by her brother. She wore a deep green dress, home- made, as plain as could be but she looked more beautiful for it. Sister and brother stood together on the far side of the hall, until Billy got caught up with friends and Lotte was left on her own. Virgil braved his mates teasing, crossed the room, asked for a dance. She was good with waltzing. He wondered who had taught her. They talked about the war, how hot it was for December, how she was keen to study nursing, but mostly they talked about birds. She wanted to show him the barking owl that lived by the river, couldn’t believe he’d never heard it. They sneaked out the back door and ran along the riverbank, the trees like a shadow play, and came to the spot where she knew the owl perched. They hid behind bushes waiting for it. It landed in the branches above, and they sat close together to watch and listen. Then they kissed. It was startling, enlivening, but also drifty, sensuous, tender. Yet immediately after there was something withheld about Lotte, as though the sweetness of the kiss caused her to close in upon herself. Reserved with each other, yet somehow also intimate, they returned to the dance hall, where his mates ribbed him.
Following that night, he and Lotte met up for walks, sometimes a picnic. She was attentive, occasionally wary, but also unpretentious and curious. They were both intrigued by bush plants, especially grasses, both had energy to burn. Sometimes they’d race each other along forest tracks, the smell of eucalyptus in their noses; they’d come out from the trees, sweaty and content, and head for the river to drink their fill of sweet water before parting.
Then came the day, it was early in ’41, when he asked her to the Spring Valley Dance. It was on the following night. He said it would be their first proper date, and they had kissed again.
After, she’d asked, smiling, ‘So are we boyfriend and girlfriend now?’
He’d nodded, even though he’d signed up to the army, was leaving in two days to join his battalion and hadn’t yet told her. It wasn’t calculated, the not telling. He’d been refused enlistment twice before. He was too young, but both times had lied about his age. Age wasn’t the problem, bad eyesight was. This last time, he’d kept quiet about his intentions, didn’t want to be teased by his brothers if he failed again. Lotte had told him she’d sent off an application form for nursing; he wanted to get his own life in order too. So he learnt the eyechart off by heart and rode his bike to an enrolment centre thirty miles away. They signed him up immediately. When he and Lotte kissed that second time, he couldn’t bear spoiling the moment with news of his departure. Decided he’d buy her something, a ring maybe, or a necklace, and tell her at the dance.
On the night of their date, his father, delighted with his son’s courage, insisted on taking him to the pub. A goodbye drink. But at the six pm closing, his father guided him into the pub’s function room, where family and friends had gathered for a surprise party. It was a shock, so much attention from his father; he hadn’t anticipated it. Virgil sent his younger brother Harry to Lotte’s place to give her a message—he’d meet her outside the hall. Only Harry knew about Lotte and Virgil. Drinks were handed out. Then Virgil’s three older brothers arrived with news about Lotte’s uncle’s arrest: he and the other local fascists, ten men all up, mostly German immigrants, were being sent to an internment camp. They hadn’t previously been considered a threat to the war; all were residents. The story was, some months earlier, all ten had attended an official meeting with members of the Italian Adelaide Fascio. Someone from the Adelaide group had written a lengthy report on South Australian infrastructure: roads, transport, airports, hospitals, water, electricity and the like. It was sent to the Italian Consulate by post (to Virgil’s way of thinking that said something about the level of expertise in the two groups) but had been intercepted by the South Australian Criminal Investigation Branch. The rumour circling the pub that night was that in the report there was information about the Spring Valley region written by one of their local members.
Lotte and Virgil both thought the uncle a lonely figure. They used to joke that nine fascists in a tin shed were the only mates the uncle could get, but that day the uncle and his friends went from fools to monsters in the space of an hour. The mood in the pub was such that Virgil didn’t dare mention his date with the niece of one of these men. He kept thinking, I’ll leave after the next drink. But for reasons he has never been able to justify since, he got drunk instead.
At the train station the next morning, hung-over, feeling guilty as hell but with no plans to do anything about it, he played kick-the-ball with Harry, his younger sister, Brigid, and their baby brother, Finn. It was announced that the train would be delayed by an hour. Virgil’s father, who’d been nattering with the station-master, returned to the platform, his mood disconsolate. He told them what had happened the previous night to his favourite pupil. Harry gasped, looked like he was about to spill the beans about Virgil’s relationship with Lotte. Virgil kicked his brother in the shins. No way he was telling his father now. With time to spare, he feigned stomach pain, pretended to go to the restroom, but instead left the station and sprinted the two miles to the Wylds’ run-down farm. He had the necklace he’d bought for Lotte in his pocket. He’d apologise, give it to her. But no one was at home. No Lotte, no mother, no father. Train due, family waiting. No paper at hand to scribble a message and, in any case, what would he say? The whole situation a shameful mess.
Virgil turns to a new page on his pad. Dearest Lotte, he writes. An improvement on Dear Lotte. But how to make clear his feelings? His inaction that night showed him to be a spineless idiot. He imagines her standing alone outside the dance hall waiting for him. His dishonour is a festering wound. What kind of man is he? How can he fix what can’t be fixed?
The boy, Taiko, squatting on the other side of the fire, watches him. He’s been marching alongside Virgil’s platoon. Ramus, their New Guinean guide, told Virgil that when the Japanese held the region they’d started a school for the local children and the boy had gone to it. They’d given him a Japanese nickname—Taiko, which means drum. Taiko can speak some Japanese but rarely does, and is shy about it when asked, as though he knows it places him with the enemy, but the name has stuck. There are no aerodromes in the mountains, so, despite the boy being only eleven years old, his job will be to guide the walking wounded back to the Advanced Dressing Station in Tong, or on down the mountain to the Australian General Hospital in Aitape, where Lotte had said she was going to work. The non-walking wounded will be carried on stretchers by older New Guinean boys and men.
Taiko points to the writing on the pad. ‘English?’
‘Greek,’ Virgil says, because writing this letter is as hard as writing Greek.
‘No Greek.’ Taiko grins. ‘English. You teach.’
The boy’s determined expression is hard to resist. Virgil holds his pencil in the air. ‘Pencil.’
‘Pencil.’ Taiko pronounces it correctly.
Virgil points his finger at the campfire. ‘Fire.’
‘Fire.’
‘Tok Pisin?’ Virgil has a list of pidgin words in his kit that he’s attempting to learn. He doesn’t remember fire being on it.
‘Paia.’
Virgil repeats the word, then holds up the pad he’s writing on. ‘Paper.’
‘Paper,’ Taiko says. ‘
Tok Pisin?’ Virgil asks.
‘Pepa.’
‘That’s easy.’
They go on this way for a bit, swapping words, then Virgil returns to writing. It seems easier now, as though the boy’s resolve has underwritten his own. Taiko inches closer. Watches him mark the page. Virgil gives him a sideways glance, flips back to the first sheet, crosses out the two words scribbled on it, and writes Taiko’s name—how he thinks it might be spelt—in big letters.
‘Taiko,’ Virgil says.
The boy looks at the writing. ‘Taiko,’ he repeats.
Virgil tears the page off his pad, digs into his pack, brings out another pencil and a book—the one his father gave him the night before he left, Virgil’s The Aeneid. His father read The Aeneid twice through on the night Virgil was born. Mother and son had been close to death, the birth sixteen hours long. As his father sat waiting in the hospital corridor, reading had apparently kept his mind focused and his heart calm. Hence Virgil’s name and his father’s long-held belief, evoked in the story, that any hardship can be overcome if one perseveres, faces it stoically. His father, literary in nature but gruff with it, believed that part of the story’s meaning was that home was not only a place but also a fulfilment of destiny. Home was earned, it required effort.
Virgil gives Taiko the book, places the paper on top, hands him the pencil. ‘Your go,’ he says.
Taiko concentrates on copying the letters of his name, the writing long and squiggly.
‘Good,’ Virgil says, when the boy has finished. ‘Again. This time petite.’ He makes a sign with his thumb and forefinger to indicate the writing should be smaller.
The boy bends his head, tongue coming out the side of his mouth, as he writes his name again and again. His tenacity astonishes Virgil. So much resolve in one so young, and an open honesty. Nothing hidden. No deception. It spurs to action a part of Virgil that has been languishing. The mist is thickening, Virgil’s campfire nearly out. He writes now about the colour of regret and the texture of shame. When he is done, he seals the letter up, scribbles Sister Lotte Wyld on the front. He can’t risk delivering it himself, wants her to read it first and then decide whether she can ever bear his presence again.
Turning to Taiko, he points to the medical tent in the distance, the outside lantern glowing like a tiny moon. ‘You take to that place?’
‘Cigarette?’ Taiko thrusts his hand forward for payment.
Virgil shakes his head. ‘Pencil.’
Taiko gives a snort, like he can’t believe his luck. ‘Pencil,’ he agrees.
The boy stands, carefully wraps the paper with his name on it around his new possession, the pencil, and puts both into the string bag that hangs from his neck. Clutching Virgil’s letter, he runs off, a shadow weaving through sleeping soldiers, until he disappears into the mist.
3
Robert
Los Alamos
Robert pushes open the office window, brushes snow from the ledge, and leans out to peer at the mountain. The morning has been non-stop talk. He has a thumping headache and a shooting pain down his leg. He and Bob Bacher, leader of G Division (G for ‘gadget’, their code name for the atomic bomb), have been preoccupied with the laboratory’s implosion problem. Now, with Bacher out of the room fetching coffee, Robert is chewing on a thought that won’t go away—is the project’s lack of progress his own fault? A leadership error? If only he could get away from Bacher’s endless optimism, he might be able to think it through.
Snow covers most of the mountain, but there are still swathes of green. The mountain would help him clear his head. That’s it, he needs to foreground trees. Robert grabs his hat, leaves the office, knowing a speedy exit is required if he’s to evade Bacher. He takes the corridor at a hobbled lick, is almost at a run as he passes the internal offices, desperate not to be waylaid. A group of theoretical physicists are hard at work, heads bent together, one chalking equations onto a blackboard, another scribbling notes. Robert makes it to the front door of T Building without interruption, then there’s a call from behind.
‘Oppie?’ Bacher, at the end of the corridor, holds two steaming cups. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Sorry, Bacher, need a walk.’ He waves, strides off.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Bacher shouts.
‘No need, thank you.’
Through the door and down the stairs, he crosses the yard to the checkpoint. Robert is almost certain now that the decision he made last July to stay on as laboratory director had been the wrong one. They’d discovered then that while the gun-type approach to building the bomb—using explosives to shoot one sub-critical element into another, causing a critical mass and a fission chain reaction—worked for uranium it would not work for plutonium, where instead of a bang, everything would fizzle. It was a disturbing setback.
If a solution for the war wasn’t wanted yesterday, they would simply produce more U-235—an isotope of uranium—for uranium bombs. But despite a separate and expansive secret site dedicated to U-235 production, by mid-June next year they will still have only enough uranium for one atomic bomb. One bomb won’t cut it; General Groves is adamant on that score. They need follow-up. Man-made plutonium, specifically Pu-239—an isotope of plutonium—provides another option, but only if someone can work out how to blow the damn stuff up in a dependable way.
So this is the conundrum: they can blow up U-235 dependably, but can’t produce enough of it quickly; they can produce Pu-239 quickly, but can’t blow it up dependably.
Since July, implosion, as a possible procedure for detonating plutonium, has been their focus. A method was proposed: create segments of explosive material, called lenses, in a sphere around a plutonium core, to produce converging waves and compress the core to a greater density to create the fission chain reaction. In theory it should work, but in six months there’s been no practical progress.
Word is, if all goes well, Germany could fall by next summer. The Allies only have the north of Italy to win now, but, even so, Robert is acutely aware that war is unpredictable and, despite Groves’s confident assertions that the Allies will be victorious, there’s no certainty about the future, in Europe or in the Pacific. A solution to their implosion problem could guarantee war’s end soon. The stakes could not be higher. If he leaves the project now, today even, there’s a chance someone else, perhaps fresh to Los Alamos, could guide the implosion experiments to a swift, successful outcome.
Is it a strength to leave and a weakness to stay? Or is it a weakness to leave and a strength to stay? This is what he must decide.
And to do it, he needs Bacher—who is running after him—to vanish.
The checkpoint queue is long. No one gets in or out of the Tech Area, not even military personnel, without having their pass checked. There’s also the tedious questioning from the Military Police: Your name, sir? Your name, madam? the MP will ask, as if the badge owner may have forgotten it. Well, some have. Most of the European scientists have American aliases printed on their badges, but some pronounce their American name with such a thick accent that the MP cannot understand and refuses them entry. More than once, Robert has had to walk from T Building to the checkpoint to rescue his own staff.
Robert hustles his way to the front of the queue—has to be some benefit in being the director—and slips through, ahead of the scientists and lab assistants, all engaged in flirty talk. He is counting on Bacher feeling obliged to line up, but Bacher, damn that man’s persistence, shadows him. On the other side of the checkpoint, despite the increasing pain in his leg, Robert picks up the pace. He’ll tire Bacher out. The dirt road takes them past the army-built apartment blocks where the top scientists and their families live. Jeeps and trucks hurtle by, honking as they skirt kids playing ball, their watchful mothers reclining beneath the Douglas firs that Mici Teller (as much of a handful as her husband) saved from the military chop. She stood between the evergreens and the army sergeant sent to clear them, shouting, ‘Leave trees, please you!’ It did not please the sergeant, but you don’t get to say no to Mici. Alongside the chattering women and the cries of children, hammers bang out a rhythm as new housing goes up, and all this is interrupted by explosions from the canyon, like bursts from a tuba in a madman’s symphony.
Robert leaves behind the apartments, Bacher still on his tail but visibly tiring. The road is full of potholes, the grading no match for the constant roll of military vehicles. Los Alamos is set on a mesa two miles long, called the Pajarito Plateau—pajarito meaning little bird. It’s a place of birds, especially woodpecker, hawk and pygmy nuthatch, but it’s also a place of bear and elk, mule deer and coyote. A wild place of rugged spectacle, with an army town dumped in the centre.
East, there are green meadows, and on from the meadows, a sharp drop to the swirling brown waters of the Rio Grande. Pueblos nestle alongside the river; beyond, in the far distance, the Sangre de Cristo mountain peaks gleam blue and white. Sometimes, at sunset, they blush a deep red. Blood of Christ.
West is the Sierra de los Valles mountain that with the mesa forms part of the Jemez mountain range. The Jemez rims a section of the Valles Caldera—a huge saucer of land, an eerie magical place, formed from the collapse of an ancient volcano. Robert sometimes hikes there in the morning mist, drawn to its otherworldly atmosphere. It’s a place too cold even for plants.
On one side of the mesa is a canyon, striped with yellow clay and red sand; on the other, dark volcanic rock, thick with trees. A glassy stream runs along the base; beside the stream, towering cottonwoods grow. In spring they burst into flamboyant yellow. The mesa, Robert thinks, is a place of wonder but also of geological violence. It has the aura of a spiritual place, as if created by the earth itself so that the humans who arrive here might be duly humbled.
Go or stay; the thought circles his mind like a hawk on the hunt.
When Robert was a boy, lonely, restless and in fragile health due to a long illness, he was brought to New Mexico by his school-teacher. It was then he realised that a human being can only be lonely inside a house. Outside, there are always companions—insects and reptiles and spiders, animals and plants and birds and the land itself. In New Mexico, all those years ago, his cosseted New York life (where he collected rock specimens in Central Park) faded and he discovered a different way of existing. He rode through mountains, hiked the slopes, slept rough. There was dirt under his nails, in his hair, on his skin. He felt connected to the soil and rock and all that lived and grew in the mountains; he felt connected to the weather. The mountains settled his anxiety; they allowed him to discover a less-troubled self. So that now, in times of personal discontent, it’s the mountains he seeks.
A government sedan sidles up alongside him.
Byron Adakai, Robert’s driver, leans out the window, his voice so gentle it could calm a charging bull. ‘Need a lift, sir?’
Robert ignores him—the thing to do with Adakai—and continues limping along the dirt road.
Bacher, trailing by a couple of yards, calls out. ‘Thanks, Byron, I could use a lift.’
Adakai hits the brakes. Like an exhausted boy-scout, Bacher climbs into the back of the car. Adakai then drives unhurriedly behind Robert. A mile on, a needle of pain now coursing up his back, Robert realises there’s no chance his two babysitters will let him advance solo. He halts, pushes back his hat, mops his face with a hanky. The car pulls up beside him and Robert slides in next to Bacher.
‘Base of the mountain, usual spot.’ Robert winds down his window. The air is pine-cool.
‘How’s your brother going, Byron?’ Bacher asks.
‘New Guinea suits him, sir.’
‘Wish you were with him?’
‘The army informed me that it’s beneficial for twins to have time apart and I’m finding out the truth of that.’
‘He over there with the code-talkers?’
‘Yes, sir. Although you didn’t hear it from me. Good news is those Japanese code-breakers still haven’t worked the Navajo out.’ Adakai glances back, grins. ‘It’s just a jumble of sounds to them.’
‘To be honest, Adakai, it’s a jumble of sounds to me,’ Bacher says. ‘Not you though, Robert? Adakai, how does Robert do in Navajo?’
‘He’s improving, sir, but he’s got a long way to go.’
‘He had to give a lecture in Holland once, so he learnt Dutch. One lecture—he ever tell you that?’
‘Never said, sir, but I can imagine. He’s a show pony.’
‘He learnt Sanskrit just so he could read that book—what’s its name?’
‘The Bhagavad Gita. Yes, sir, I heard that story. Like I said, show pony through and through.’
Bacher and Adakai laugh.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Robert murmurs, staring out at the dense forest.
Adakai parks the sedan beneath a monstrous Douglas fir. The three men climb out and set off on a trail guarded by giant pines: fissured grey-brown trunks, moss-covered, with conical crowns. Adakai keeps his distance. This pleases Robert. Surveillance is his personal hell, although he acknowledges it makes some feel safe. War changes a nation—its culture, its laws, its social organisation—but it also changes the desires of individuals. Freedom is redefined. Or perhaps, he thinks, rather than war changing a nation, it reveals what has been hidden. The early roots uncovered: a tribe, a troop, a sect. One way to describe the American journey.
The air chills as they trek through tall aspens. His hawkish thoughts settle—go or stay? White trunks scarred with black markings, each a tribute to the death of a branch. Populus tremuloides or quaking aspens they’re called because the leaves tremble with the breeze, making murmuring sounds, as if conversing with each other. In the fall, aspen leaves cause the mountains to shimmer: it’s as though gold fabric has been thrown across the land. But in winter the trees take on a holy aspect, their snowy whiteness a sacred symbol. The ancient people of this area knew that trees and mountains and sky are the true guides, humans merely janitors of the earth. Maybe they do speak, the trees; perhaps the language has been lost to humans? Or perhaps humans never knew it, only knew of it.
‘We need you to stay,’ Bacher says.
Robert glances at his friend. Bacher is no natural outdoors man but he can obviously read minds.
‘I’ve thrown everything at implosion,’ Robert says, ‘but the gamble is not paying off.’
‘You’re the only one who can comprehend the whole project— it’s a little planet in your hand. You’re the only one to control General Groves, stop him interfering in our work.’
‘Groves won’t interfere.’
Bacher snorts. ‘Without you, he will and you know it.’
The path turns rocky. Robert is forced into a different rhythm. Still in agony, but the movement is energising. ‘I’m no longer confident in my decisions.’
‘I am,’ Bacher replies.
‘I’ve lost my sharpness.’
‘Who hasn’t? Get more sleep.’
The two men climb over a fallen tree that blocks the path. A nutcracker, soft ashy grey body with black and white tail and wings, lands on the trunk and darts along, eyeing the men. Robert glances behind him. He can’t see Adakai, can’t tell if he is within hearing range.
‘I still have G-2 on my back,’ he murmurs.
Despite orders not to, he has told Bacher about the Mosh interrogations. Gregor Mosh—pedantic ex school-teacher, FBI trained, army G-2 security communist-hunter, nut! A man Robert could easily hate. His first interrogation by Mosh had been back at Berkeley, eighteen months ago. Robert got himself in a tangle when he gave Mosh the name of a man who might be a spy. Mosh asked for the source. Robert refused to provide a name. For that, Mosh pegged him as a Russian spook, shot off an official letter to Groves demanding Robert be sacked. Groves resisted, loyal to a point, but pressed Robert hard for the informant’s name, which he finally unhappily surrendered. Despite this, the surveillance continued. G-2 questioned Kitty to find out if she still had communist ties. She’d been a cardholder once upon a time. Robert then learnt that Adakai was reporting to Mosh. He complained to the General—I am trying to end the war!—who responded by suggesting that G-2 pressure would keep Robert honest. Damn military men, Robert thinks, and damn their strategies. This is why he should go. They won’t give him the space to think freely. Someone else, someone less hampered by birth and history, might have a chance. For Mosh, the war is not the Axis powers—Germany, Italy and Japan—against the Allies, not even fascism versus capitalism—it’s about capitalism in competition with communism. Before the war, Robert had proudly (and truthfully) claimed he knew nothing about politics; now he is a prime surveillance candidate, a potential government security risk.
‘G-2 have nothing,’ Bacher says, holding out the water flask Adakai has provided.
Robert takes it and swills. Adakai appears on the path. Stands there, hulking figure that he is, waves at Robert, then disappears among the trees. Robert continues walking.
How much time do I have, Robert thinks, how much time does anyone have to successfully complete the project? December now. We need a solution for how to implode plutonium by the end of the month, could squeeze that out to the end of January. But no later, or we’ll never get a second bomb produced in time to be useful.
But are deadlines the most important thing to consider here?
Time is a trick. It’s never linear. Life is not a narrative of cause and effect, climax and resolution; time is porous, malleable. The influences that string together our actions are multifarious and lie deep in the cells of our body. Perhaps, Robert thinks, the more important question is, what would it say about my character if I left the project now? And, following on from that, how might my leaving affect others?
Science is questions, evidence, experiments; but science is also curiosity and imagination. All useful contemplation includes the crossing of known boundaries into an unknown world; it must have dreaming. It must also have perseverance (although some might call it stubbornness). Maybe perseverance is the least appreciated aspect. Robert is a stayer but he likes to travel many paths, to know at least a little of everything he can. His constant delight is speculation. That speaks in favour of the current job, of him being able to help others. Because it is true that he can converse with almost all of the scientists about their particular theoretical or experimental problems.
Back to his puzzle: does leaving show strength of character or weakness? Do all the aspects of his past assist or damage the future?
When Robert works, there is seemingly no intrusion from the past into the present. But this, he knows, is illusory. The past shapes the present, creates the future. If thoughts are a trinity of past, present and future, losing the past means obscuring the future.
He has invested heavily in the Los Alamos laboratory; all his thought experiments have gone into it. We are, he thinks, on the verge of a new discovery that could change the world entirely. If he leaves now, all that time is wasted because he couldn’t persevere on a single path. And yet—and yet—is his own ambition deluding him? How can he separate duty from ego? Loyalty from desire? Integrity from false truth?
Bacher catches up to him. ‘You’re Aeneas, leading us to a new land, a new home, a new way of being.’
Robert scoffs. ‘You think too much of me,’ he says.
But he feels the glorious lure of belonging.
‘We all know atomic energy is the future,’ Bacher says. ‘It can be used for good or bad. We Americans will use it for good, of that I am confident.’
The two men, having reached Robert’s favourite lookout, walk to the edge. Across from them a swirl of leathery trees leans in to grip the canyon walls, while also tilting out to seek the sun. How is it possible to grow at that strange angle? How many generations has it taken to adapt? A lesson right there: sometimes we need adversity to flourish, but it takes time, and it takes agility, and it takes adjustment.
And then, finally, it comes to him, the message he’s been waiting for.
If I stay, I may fail, but if I go, I have failed.
To give up now would be cowardly; it would reveal a lack of perseverance which every successful scientific endeavour must have. He has not tested every possibility, not yet pushed himself and everyone working on the project to the limit. If he goes, he will never know what could have happened. The root of adversity, the Latin word advertere, means ‘to turn towards’. What he needs now is what the trees that grip the canyon walls have—courage to turn both inwards towards the problem and outwards towards the solution.
‘I’ll stay,’ he says.
Bacher grins. ‘But you can’t keep doubting yourself. Doubt the science, sure, but not yourself.’
Impossible, Robert thinks, doubt is his constant guide. Steady Bacher would not understand that. Robert glances at the canyon, its deep cut in the land. Thousands of years, captured in the soil. He watches a small fungus beetle, bright blue back with black dots, take a trail around his boot to a rotting log. Is momentarily subdued by the persistence of all life.
As the two men walk back along the trail, leaves scatter, tinkling like chimes. Halfway down, Adakai steps out from the forest and joins them.
4
Hiroko
Miyajima
Hiroko can hear the earth shifting and sighing. Falling snow covers the branches that form a thick canopy above. Everything jingles as the wind whips through the trees and the air is scented with earth and bark. She carries her younger daughter, Mitsue, on her back, and with elder daughter, Yumi, follows her husband’s grandmother up the steep forest path to the temple. They are delivering food rations to the two old monks who attend the Eternal Flame; neither can walk far. Hiroko has been making this journey, on the day after ration day, ever since she and the children came to live with Grandmother—when her husband, Kenzo, and his younger brother, Tomoki, were sent to war, and also when Kenzo’s grandfather fell ill—however, this is the first time the children have come with them.
Grandmother holds the cloth bag that contains rice balls for their lunch; Hiroko carries the rations they collected for the monks— one cake of bean curd, a cabbage, six carrots, half a pumpkin and a week’s supply of brown rice with soybeans mixed in. From their own provisions, Hiroko has added a jar of pickled plums.
‘Remember, this is a sacred forest,’ Grandmother says to the children. ‘It has been this way since the beginning of time. No trees have ever been cut down here. No animals have ever been killed.’
Mitsue squeezes her mother’s neck, whispers in her ear. ‘So the naughty monkey is safe?’
Hiroko nods. ‘Yes, she is safe.’
‘I can walk, Mother,’ Mitsue says softly. ‘I am four now. A big girl now.’
‘Yes, for a little while you can walk.’
Hiroko kneels. Mitsue slides from her back. Yumi and Grandmother stop to wait. ‘Many moons ago,’ Grandmother says, ‘Grand Master Kobo Daishi was travelling back from China, where he had been sent to study the ancient texts and he climbed this mountain, all the way to the top. There, he meditated and lit the fire we call the Eternal Flame. It has been burning for twelve hundred years. It is the monks’ task to look after it.’
‘Huh, a long time,’ Mitsue says, eyes wide.
Hiroko fastens the ties on her younger daughter’s jacket. She glances at Yumi, who has screwed up her face, and is gazing at her great-grandmother as if she doesn’t believe what she is being told. Yumi was born with a curious soul, but ever since she turned twelve she has become much more sceptical. Perhaps, Hiroko thinks, she is spending too much time with my father. Hiroko can guess what is coming next—more questions.
‘How can the monks feed the fire if they can’t cut down trees?’
‘Fallen wood is used,’ Grandmother replies.
‘Do the monks sit with the flame all night too?’ Yumi asks.
‘One monk is always attending the flame.’
‘I know it is the Eternal Flame, but do the monks ever get bored?’
Grandmother coughs. ‘The things you ask, Yumi. It is a sacred duty, the monks are never bored.’
‘Think how peaceful it would be,’ Hiroko says and laughs. ‘No one asking question after question.’
Halfway up the mountain, the path comes out from the trees. The early-morning light is bright, despite the snow still falling. Hiroko takes hold of Mitsue’s hand. Mitsue gives a little shout and points at the woodpecker flying overhead. They hear its shrill whistle— pyo, pyo, pyo, pyo, pyo.
‘Listen to what the birds and animals tell you,’ Grandmother says. ‘Listen to the trees and the plants. There are many things to learn in the sacred forest.’
The woodpecker’s wings are an olive green. It has a red cap on its head and there is a red slash at the side of its beak, and a black layer above, like a moustache. As it flies towards a tree, Yumi points at its belly.
‘How did he get that scar?’
Hiroko watches the bird flit from branch to branch, sees the nasty scar. ‘Woodpeckers are always fighting each other.’
‘Why?’ Yumi asks.
‘To protect their territory,’ Hiroko replies.
Yumi steps closer to the bird. ‘Mother,’ she says, quietly. ‘Is that what Father is doing too, protecting territory?’
Every week, Hiroko writes to Kenzo, and in the envelope she always adds a note from Yumi and a drawing from Mitsue. At the same time Grandmother writes to Tomoki. Then, together, the four go to the Post and Telecommunications Bureau, to send the letters. It’s been fourteen months now; so far Hiroko has received two replies from Kenzo, but Grandmother has not heard from Tomoki at all. The first letter from Kenzo arrived a week after he had left home, when he was still on Japanese soil. He said he was nervous about the journey ahead but intended to do his best for the Emperor. He mentioned that he and Tomoki were being sent to different places. The second letter arrived three weeks ago. There was a poem in the letter, composed by Kenzo:
White, the morning sky.
Yellow, the sun that rises.
The egret sees all.
Hiroko is not certain her own letters have reached Kenzo, as he made no mention of them. What he did say was that the weather was ‘unbearably hot’, although he did not disclose his location. The Emperor, Hiroko believes, must have decided to keep the location of some of his battalions secret as a war tactic; therefore, she does not resent not knowing exactly where Kenzo is, although she wishes it were otherwise. She saw no harm, however, in asking her father, Professor Takashi Koyama, to find out, through his academic group or his own research, a little about the ‘unbearably hot’ countries that Japanese troops have been sent to.
‘Yes, your father is protecting Japanese territory,’ Hiroko says to Yumi. ‘Perhaps he is extending it too. We must all do what we can to help win this war.’
The woodpecker darts up the trunk, finds a hole, one it must have already made, and dips its beak in and out, feeding on the insects inside.
All the while, snow falls lightly around them.
Grandmother steps from the path and places her hand on the roots of an enormous tree that lies rotting on the forest floor. ‘See how this old tree has fallen down. It fell in a storm three years ago.’ She points to the woodpecker’s tree. ‘It was only then that this young tree the woodpecker likes so much started sprouting. It had been waiting in the shade for years, waiting until there was enough light to grow tall. The forest is full of all kinds of trees. Akamatsu has a red bark, there, see? And the momi fir. So tall. A very grand tree. But it only grows here; we won’t see that one at the top of the mountain. Look there, how much protection the shirakashi can give—its branches grow wide and its leaves are like fingers. You can always rest under that tree and the ground will be dry. When you need to be soothed, sit near the sugi: its aroma helps you relax; it keeps our air healthy. Everyone loves the sugi. And see there, the shimpaku? It grows in precarious places, so it is prized by the bonsai masters. Also the aodamo and the kaede. Remember how last September the forest turned red and orange and yellow and the leaves of the kaede covered the forest paths? That was when we picked the kaki fruit before the birds ate them all up, but we had to wait until they ripened before we could eat them, remember?’
Mitsue grins. ‘I remember!’
Hiroko looks up at the sky. In the distance the clouds are darkening. ‘Come on now, we must keep going,’ she says. ‘If the weather worsens, we might have to turn back and then the monks will not have enough to eat this week.’
The oldest monk is there when they enter the temple. His face reminds Hiroko of the bark on the old kaede that grows in Grandmother’s yard. She bows to the monk and to the statue of Buddha, and then kneels before the Eternal Flame. Two logs burn in the hearth. Above hangs the black cauldron that holds the healing water. Hiroko gazes beyond the flame, to Buddha, pressing her hands together. Is Kenzo safe? Is Tomoki safe? Her father has told her, many times, no one is ‘safe’ in war, but Hiroko hopes her father—radical cynic that he is—is not right about Kenzo. She wants Kenzo and Tomoki to be protected, she wants Kenzo and Tomoki to come home. While nothing is certain, anything is possible. This is what Kenzo said before he left. Hiroko prays and smoky air swirls up from the flame.
After a time, the old monk lifts the cauldron lid, dips in the ladle, scoops up some of the healing water, pours it into a bowl and gives it to Grandmother. He pours another for Hiroko to share with the children. Hiroko helps Yumi, then Mitsue, sip from her bowl, then drinks her fill too. The monk hangs the ladle back next to the cauldron and leaves the temple. They follow him out and up the stairs onto the plateau, to the small rock shelter. Hiroko gives the ration parcel and the jar of pickled plums to the monk. Grandmother opens the cloth bag that holds the rice balls for their lunch and shares them out. They sit looking over the Seto Inland Sea.
Mitsue glances up at the monk. ‘We saw a bird.’
‘Ah, yes,’ the old monk says, as if he saw it too.
‘It has a scar,’ Mitsue adds.
The old monk turns to her. ‘A scar, little one, is a sign of experience.’
‘Our father has a scar on his face,’ Yumi says.
The monk laughs and glances at Grandmother. ‘Yes, I remember. He fell from a tree.’
Grandmother shakes her head. ‘He thought he was a monkey.’
‘A naughty monkey?’ Mitsue asks.
The monk is nodding. ‘You are right, little one—he thought he was a naughty monkey.’
Hiroko gazes across to the blue hills on the mainland that fold back, as if to infinity, each row of hills a shadow of the former. She counts seven shades of blue. Yumi uses a stick to draw the mountains in the dirt. The sky above is white mist. Seabirds ride the air currents. Below, fishing boats froth the water. In the distance, a patrol boat surges along the coast.
*This is an extract from To Sing of War by Catherine McKinnon published by HarperCollins
Catherine McKinnon is a Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted author. Her recent novel To Sing of War (2024 Fourth Estate) was released to critical acclaim, and Highly Commended in the HNSA ARA Historical Novel Award. Her novel Storyland (Fourth Estate, 2017) was shortlisted for the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award, the 2018 Barbara Jefferis Award, the 2018 Voss Literary Prize, longlisted for the 2018 Indie Book Award, and was named one of ABC TV’s The Book Club’s Five of the Best in 2017. Storyland is being adapted into a play for Merrigong Theatre, written by Catherine and Aunty Barb Nicholson. Catherine is one of the multi-authors of 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (Open Humanities Press, 2019) and also wrote The Nearly Happy Family (2008 Penguin). Catherine teaches creative writing at the University of Wollongong. Find more from Catherine at her website.