Boll, a German scientist who was the star of the Manhattan Project, is lecturing at a New York university on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan. The speech has become part of his summer routine, self-justifying what was done near the end of World War II. The scientific triumph of his career, in fact, has been paralyzing his life, silently troubling his conscience. He has been haunted with visions of the devastation of the Japanese city, Hiroshima. “Dreams have become nightmares,” he concedes. Then when his wife, an Austrian Jew whose parents were victims of the Nazi death camps, falls seriously ill, she designs a salvation journey for her husband, bringing together Boll and Amai, a woman from Hiroshima who lost her face to the world’s first atomic blast.
Following his speech, Amai, wearing a face reconstructed by the skilled hands of an American surgeon, approaches Boll. Now 56 and a documentary filmmaker, she wants to interview him about his role in making the bomb. Boll looks to Amai to redeem himself for what he has done. And when Amai sees through Boll’s façade to his inner depressed state, she recognizes a shadowy reflection of the despair and exhaustion that possessed the Japanese after the war, and begins to comprehend the price he has paid for victory.
Boll’s wife ______.