Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“A double whammy,” Probst said.

“You got it. Someone has studied the political dynamics of eastern Missouri and seen an opportunity to form a coalition. That someone is Jammu. In the history of St. Louis there’s never been a phenomenon like her, nothing even close. She’s masterly.”

There was another silence — Hutchinson had a newsman’s flair for the dramatic — which Probst allowed to lengthen before he spoke.

“What I’d like to do now,” he said, “is hear some other opinions on whether it’s worth our while to try to block action in the legislature, or whether, as Jim has implied, we should concentrate on the inevitable election. I for my part—”

“Don’t you think—”

The small voice checked him. It was Buzz. “Don’t you think,” he asked the rim of the table, “that we should determine if a merger would be so bad in the first place?” He retracted his head, and coughed a little.

“Good point,” Probst said. He found his eyes drawn helplessly towards Hutchinson for more information. “I should think it depends on how—”

“What you can depend on,” the General boomed, “is that the wording and effect of the referendum will, like every other action in the city since July, further the aims and power of one group, the group led by the Queen of the Blacks, the King of Toasters and the Princess of Darkness (and I mean she’s a slut, Buzz boy, and we all know it).”

Here the General stood up. He hooked his thumbs in his black suspenders. “This group makes me damn impatient,” he confided, “and so help me, I ain’t gonna stay muzzled one second longer.” He snapped the suspenders magnificently. “For two whole hours we been ignoring the main fact, and the main fact is motives. It’s all very nice to talk about what’s happening, and how it’s happening, and through the agency of who, whom, whomever, and God knows what else it’s happening, but what counts, ladies and gentlemen, is the whys and the wherefores .”

He began to pace, circling close behind the ring of heads, each of which nodded forward at his approach like a daisy in a shower. “I see before me a group of human beans that’s refusing to come to grips with the fact that there’s a conspiracy here in St. Louis, dedicated to anarchy and socialistic propositions and the overthrow of the government and the values we all cherish deeply. I defy any man among you to prove it ain’t so. The very fact of Jammu’s sponsorship of this merger referendum faggotry is proof to me it stinks, proof enough.”

He had stopped at the rear window, laid his hands on the model of the Arch, and lifted it from the sill. He turned with it and held it at arm’s length like a man warding off a vampire with a cross. One of the tiny plastic trees at the base of the Arch shook loose, rolled across the plaster river and fell to the carpeting. The model was old and fragile. Probst was relieved when the General set it down again.

“Now, some of you still seem to need reasons to oppose this merger, and for your convenience and peace of mind I’ll list me the many reasons and defy any man among you to contravene a one of ’em.” He winked at Probst. Probst winked back involuntarily. “First thing, it’s a power play and nothing but. We already seen from the municipalization of Hammaker that she has no respect for the sanctity of corporate structure. Your way of life and that of your workers ain’t no concern of hers. The only reason she gives a damn about anybody’s way of life is votes. ’Course, the way she’s drawn the lines, you may see the merger as making sense, but that don’t make it right. I can’t stop thinking about Adolf Hitler. The way he drew the lines, total war made sense. OK, number two, it violates the spirit of St. Louis. I think you know what I’m talking about. Let me ask you this, Martin. How many times you reckon you been lied to, outright lied to, in the last four months?”

“More times than I’d care to count.”

“And before that? Pick a year. 1979. How many times in a whole year in 1979 did a man you trusted lie to you?”

Probst believed he hadn’t been lied to at all in 1979.

“Right. What’s it tell you about the spirit of these developments? What’s it tell you about the quality of the city’s new leadership, this Urban Hope, when all them fellers are too yeller to show their faces here tonight? If they had a good case for the merger, or even just a honorable case, they’d be arguing it here right now. But they ain’t. And then there’s a practical case against it, number three.” Norris was completing his circuit, reading over shoulders. He stopped at the chair of Billerica and bathed him in pity and contempt. Billerica grinned bizarrely, a dental demonstration, which seemed to throw the General. He looked at a picture on the wall, of Probst and former senator Symington shaking hands in Washington.

“Number three,” he repeated. “S’posedly it’s now to the county’s advantage to take on the burden of the city, because s’posedly the city’s going to be making more money and the county s’posedly less, and this is s’posedly the county’s last chance ever to claim its fair share. All righty. Now let’s forget the good chance this is all a flash in the pan. Let’s forget that the reason the merger looks good now is that you all are projecting these rates. If the businesses keep moving to the city. If the real estate keeps falling in the county. Forget that these rates of change are based on one single solitary bit of do-daddling, namely Ripley and Murphy’s move. Forget that if the trend stops in March — and, my boys, it will, it will — then the county will get plain swindled in a merger and only Jammu will come out on top. Let’s us forget all this and let me ask: What the hell difference will it make to West County if we merge? Are the powers of economics so miserly and our hearts so weak and faithless that only one half the region can be on top at a time? Listen to me. Look at Martin, sitting there like the Mona Lisa smiling. Ain’t he the pitcher of the average man, the common man? Our fellow man? He’s centrally located, Martin is, he’s the man to watch, and so I ask you as a fellow man here, Martin: if there isn’t any merger, are you going to move out of — excuse me, uh—”

“Webster Groves.”

“Out of Webster Groves? You going to start hurting for contracts? How much would a cut in county services really mean to you?”

“He may be ordinary,” Billerica interposed, “but Webster Groves hisn’t Valley Park. The close-in suburbs are hnot the problem.”

“Neither are the outlying areas,” Norris said. “I mean yes they is. But merging ain’t going to help them much more than not merging is. The only folks really hurting is the speculators and the live-dangerous real-estate men, no offense, Lee and Jerry, I don’t mean you. You understand us, Ross? We’re saying merger is bad . The status quo is good .”

“Hexactly my point, General. That’s hexactly what I’m saying.”

Fellow Man was thinking about his visit in December to Wesley, and Wesley’s gall in taking him for a man of average moral means, of ordinary scruples, in even suggesting he join the fellowship of the syndicate. Fellow Man needed this parable, this clear-cut arrangement of right and wrong, to cinch his decision: the merger deserved opposition. It was the right thing to do. He owed it to the loyal men around him.

“How do we stop it?” Fellow Man asked.

Hutchinson tried to give him an answer. He said he didn’t share the group’s abhorrence of the merger. His view was that once a good thing, always a good thing. But he was willing to act as a consultant for as long as he was welcome. Assuming the wisdom of writing off the legislative action as a foregone conclusion, he suggested that the city voters also be written off. The 1962 consolidation scheme had failed in the city too, of course, but by a smaller margin than in the county, and circumstances had changed a great deal; even the mayor hadn’t supported the scheme in 1962. It would be a far wiser allocation of resources to focus on defeating the referendum in the county, and that (if you asked Hutchinson’s opinion) was do-able, if not exactly easy.