Trinity by Louisa Hall

Author:Louisa Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

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:

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