Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

“None of this makes the merger a bad idea,” Jammu said.

“The thing is, we don’t know. Aren’t your convictions pretty intuitive, too? Taxes won’t fall. The city payroll won’t shrink, it might even expand. But you see this all somehow transmuting into an urban utopia. All of today’s sinecure holders out in droves tomorrow clearing weeds from railroad tracks on the South Side. The North Side blacks happily filling the pockets of the Rolf Ripleys. This is what I mean by unrealistic. And it’s far worse in the county. You’re trying to hook people intuitively yourself. With your vision of a united greater St. Louis.”

“What you’re saying is that we’re in conflict over the potential for positive change. You’re pessimistic. I’m optimistic.”

Probst didn’t like how this sounded. He’d thought it was the other way around. He sanguine and St. Louisan, she dour and tired. She (in the words of Barbara’s friend Lorri Wulkowicz) unconcealably Third World. At closer range everything she wore — her fine pearls, her fine dress, her fine makeup — seemed cheapened by her face and figure. She looked (Probst couldn’t have said exactly why) like she needed a bath. He watched her swallow a pill with her wine. “Antihistamine,” she explained, snapping her purse. The purse was a black clutch. Like someone determined to pay for the drinks, she kept it ready on her lap.

“Who are you?” Probst asked.

She coughed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for example, what’s your first name?”

“Colonel.” She smiled.

“No. What is it?”

“I don’t like my first name. It isn’t ‘me.’ I would have changed it if people hadn’t got used to calling me by my first initial, which is S. I don’t mind S. You can call me Ess. That’s what my mother calls me, that and Essie. Can I call you Martin?”

“Your mother,” he said conversationally. “Where is she?”

“She lives in Bombay. You can read all about it in the Post on Sunday. Everything you always wanted to know about my private life but were too bored to ask.”

He paused to admire how this blocked further questions. Then he said, “I’m not bored, and I don’t trust what I read in the paper. And anyway—”

“And anyway, I should be more polite. I’m sorry. Rough day.”

Another deft block. He tried an end run. “Why did you leave India? Does anyone ever ask you that?”

“Well, all the reporters do.”

He gave up. Soft light still bathed the tables, the piano still appealed to moods, but to him the room now had the ambience it must have had at 10:00 in the morning when the extra lights were on and the vacuum cleaner was run. Some tables, some chairs. He looked around Jammu to catch the waiter’s attention, and it was then that he noticed that the couple at the next table were speaking to each other but facing him and Jammu. Other faces at other tables, too. People were watching them. He hunched his shoulders and retracted his head.

“It was a typical midlife career change,” Jammu said. “I had the opportunity to come and work here, and I took it. I like this country — I’ve said as much to the reporters, only it sounded bad in print.”

Probst nodded. “How did it happen that you didn’t forfeit your U.S. citizenship by holding public office in India?”

“They bent the rule for me.”

“You mean they broke it.”

She looked at the piano. “Unwittingly, though. They could have revoked my passport, but my mother took care of the renewals. She never mentioned that I worked for the police service, and the INS never asked. Now I don’t hold office in India, so there’s nothing they can do.”

“Didn’t the Police Board wonder?”

“They said if I could prove my eligibility they wanted to have me. It was up to me.”

“But if the INS had been awake you wouldn’t have had citizenship in July.”

“I suppose not. Why are you asking me these questions?”

“I’m still trying to tell you what I have against the merger.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“How did you win the war on crime? What’s happened to all the muggers and heroin addicts? And the Mafia. I can’t believe they’re all in jail, and, pessimist that I am, I know they haven’t reformed. Are the crime figures for real?”

“They’re for real. And you know I’ve come under very close scrutiny because of it. We’ve had police chiefs from all the major cities here asking the same question. We’ve had the ACLU breathing down our necks. We’ve had the media looking for a scandal. And as you’ll have noticed, we’ve had no serious complaints. Why not? Mainly I’d say that for once the small size of St. Louis has worked in its favor. It simply isn’t large enough to produce an endless supply of places for crime to breed. What in other cities would be just a major rejuvenation here amounts to something nearly total. The North Side redevelopment currently covers about fourteen square miles. That’s one-fourth of the entire city. In a city like Philadelphia or Los Angeles or Chicago it would be about five percent. Here a large percentage of the city land has become so valuable that the owners themselves do most of the policing. On property worth a hundred fifty dollars a square foot, you don’t see much crime, apart from the white-collar variety. So the rate drops.”

“But the people who engage in it. Where are they now?”

“That really isn’t my concern. They’re spread much more evenly over the rest of the population in Missouri and Illinois. The crime rate has risen in places like University City and Webster Groves, but the local forces can easily handle the work. And if some poor families have moved to the county, then the county welfare apparatus now has a somewhat heavier caseload to process. This doesn’t sound nice. But you must admit it’s more efficient and more fair than having the entire region’s underside concentrated in the city. Doesn’t this make sense to you?”

It made sense. But Probst didn’t see where all the frightening black young men of North St. Louis had vanished to. He’d seen their faces. He knew that none of them had ended up in Webster Groves or in any of the other nice county towns. Where were they? Somehow the reality had gone underground.

“How come everyone likes you?” he asked.

“Not everyone does.”

“Most seem to. I’m talking about the fact that you’re the political linchpin in St. Louis now, and you only got here seven months ago. What have you done for both the black politicians and the Quentin Spiegelmans that they’re so willing to work for you?”

“They aren’t working for me. They just need me.”

“Why you?”

“You mean, what have I got that other people haven’t?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Ambition. Luck.”

“Loads of people have ambition. Are you saying you’re in the position you’re in just because you’re lucky?”

“No.”

“Where are your enemies? Where are the people whose toes you’ve stepped on? The people you’ve offended.”

“There are plenty—”

“There aren’t. You know there aren’t. There’s only the rightwing Republicans and some old women and they only hate you out of principle. And because they’re jealous. The thing is, Colonel—”

“Ess.”

“The thing is, I can understand why Ripley and Meisner get along with you now, given the decisions they’ve made, and I can see why the situation is stable now, why the only people against you are criminals or crackpots, and I can see how the war on crime and the war on blight work hand in hand now, I can even see the motives behind the union of Democrats and industrialists. We’re at point B. You hand it to me. It’s a fait accompli. It makes sense. But I don’t see how you got here from point A. I don’t understand what possessed so many of my acquaintances to desert Municipal Growth. I don’t understand how you knew enough and where you found the leverage to plan and execute this complete, this bizarre reversal of the city’s fortunes. I refuse to believe a total stranger, no matter how lucky and ambitious, can come to an American city and change its face in less than a year. I don’t know what I expect you to say in reply, but I find there’s a huge gap between the person I’m sitting here with and the person who’s done all the things she’s done. I wonder how you see yourself.”