The Heat of the Sun

‘Does anyone listen to a weak woman?’
    ‘When she controls her weak husband? Maybe,’ I said.
    She shook her head. ‘When have I ever controlled that big mewling baby? Don’t think I wouldn’t have – I’m a Manville, aren’t I? I could have been a senator
like that .’ She snapped her fingers. ‘And why just a senator? I could have been president. But no, my duty was to preside over parties for campaign donors; my duty, to smile at
VIP receptions and dance in the arms of fat foreign diplomats who reeked of garlic, and to assure them what fine fellows they were. Control him! Do you think he gave me a moment’s thought? I
covered up his every mistake, I supported his every decision, I worked for him like a slave, and he rewarded me by carousing with his whores. Do you think I let him know he was killing me? Think of
it: everything I’d worked for, everything I’d lived for, a lifetime of duty and sacrifice – all of it, to be ruined by a half-caste bastard, son of a slant-eyed whore! Yes, I told
my husband what to say to Truman: I told him what to say about the first attack and I’ve written his memo about the second one too. We’ll save ourselves, I said. We’ll root out
the cancer that’s gnawed at us all these years. But he had to spoil it. He had to be weak, weak to the last.’
    Desperately, I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘Oh? I thought you’d met our friend Mr Mendoza. The sniper.’
    The senator stood. ‘Ben, Ben!’ He clutched the back of his big leathery chair. ‘That son of mine’s a foolish boy. Always has been, always will be. He thought he was so
clever! Of course we knew what he was up to at Los Alamos. I only wanted to warn him off, then cover the traces. Naturally, my wife wanted him punished. How she longed to stand over him in his
cell, gloating at his disgrace!’
    I said hotly, ‘You know that isn’t true.’
    ‘Who are you to tell me what’s true? She’s my wife. He’s my son. She never loved him. Everything that was real about the boy, everything that wasn’t just an act,
was a source of shame to her.’
    ‘So you sent him back to Nagasaki.’ Kate Pinkerton’s voice choked. Horrified, I knew she was broken now: something in her had smashed, and would never be repaired.
‘Nagasaki!’ she repeated, expelling a sharp breath, as if the name contained all the sorrow of the world.
    Fearfully, I would have asked her what she meant, but a telephone rang – the white – and she answered it, switching suddenly into calm, official tones; I thought she would pass the
receiver to her husband, but she made no move to do so and he seemed not to expect it. He only stumbled towards the windows. I went to him. The evening was purple, with clouds fine as mist hanging
in tattered scrims.
    The senator spoke as if he could see the view, even pointing with the dagger. ‘Now, take,’ he said, ‘the Library of Congress,’ or ‘Consider Capitol Hill,’ or
‘See that statue, Sharpless? Can you tell me who that is?’ But more important than the sights was what they symbolized. Respectfully, I listened as he spoke of Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness as if he really believed in them, but all the time I strained to hear Kate Pinkerton at the telephone.
    Yes, they must come, she said. Yes, he was here.
    Now I understood: I was too late. Until the last, the machine would grind on; Senator Pinkerton would command and be obeyed; there would be important calls; the guard at the door would imagine
himself charged with a sacred trust; but the trust, like the senator’s, was no more than a shell. The senator was a traitor, and the time had come to take him. We had all been traitors.
    Kate Pinkerton replaced the receiver.
    ‘Bitch. You bitch,’ I said, but shame filled me as soon as I spat the words. All she did was look at me with implacable eyes. What else was there to be done? Nothing. We heard a
siren, far away.
    ‘They’re coming, aren’t they?’ said the senator. He was staggering towards his wife.
    ‘It’s over, Ben. You’ve destroyed us, and for nothing.’
    ‘Not nothing. There’s my son, in Nagasaki.’
    She shivered, as if feverish, and murmured: ‘How I longed to see that place wiped from the earth – longed for it, all these years! Now, a rain of ruin from the air, the like of
which has never —’
    The senator clung to his wife; the dagger, still in his hand, glimmered against her crumpled blouse. For