Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City

“Yes, land’s expensive downtown, the city’s cramped and can’t annex, but what really scares off the county wealth is crime. It’s a fear reinforced by racism. The city-county split is a form of discrimination. Elbow. What’s surprising is that the city doesn’t want reunification any more than the county does. The blacks are afraid of being outvoted in a more regional government, especially when they still don’t even have control of the city. It’s incredible, but St. Louis has never had a black mayor. But it’s only a matter of time before it gets one, another election or two, and then no one will ever get the county and city back together.

“The industries are already established in the county, so why move? Ouch. Greed. We have tapes where you’ll hear bank board members inform their friends that city land has suddenly become a red-hot commodity. This isn’t just courtesy. The banks have a vested interest in land prices, and in the city’s prosperity. They own the bulk of the civic bonds. Therefore the banks are already on our side.

“Maman can sell out in April for no less than thirty million. We’ll take a quarter of that in taxes, but she’ll still have fifty percent. Elbow! There’s a law called Missouri 353 that lets the city offer long-term tax abatements to anyone who’ll develop a blighted area. Blighted means anything—ten years ago they declared all of downtown blighted, so you can imagine. And our new tax plan will sweeten the deal. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?

“Of course, the police chief has no business dictating city tax policy. But how am I supposed to know that? I’m new here. And the penalty for my political activity is media exposure and personal popularity! It’s completely contradictory. The reason I can take liberties with my office is the very same reason no one’s afraid of me: I’m a woman, I’m foreign, I’m irrelevant. You know, the Kama Sutra enjoins you to linger.”

Bhandari rolled off. The sheet clung to his damp back and followed him, exposing her right shoulder and right arm. She let her hand remain between her legs. For the moment she was a refractory adolescent again, at home with the autoerotic. She stared at the ceiling, on which the bedside lamp cast a conic section of light pierced by odd spokes of shadow, projections of the crossbars of the lampshade.

Stirring in his sleep, Bhandari brushed her flank. She was filled with the unpleasant conviction that when in Maman’s house, when called upon, he made talkative and charming love.

But tomorrow Jammu would be free again, and the particles of her past, roused to flame by Bhandari, would grow cool and dim as she made her way back into the darkness, into her scheme, into the distance of St. Louis. Her shuddering came and went unnoticed.

Asha was due at 1:00. Jammu looked at her watch, her only clothing. It was 12:20. She trailed a hand along the floor, found underwear and swung her legs out of bed.

Someone knocked on the door.

She stumbled to her feet and ripped the sheet off Bhandari, who lay like a beached whale, flippers half buried in percale sand. She shoved his head. “ Up ” she said. “She’s here.”

He rose dreamily, gazing at her chest.

The knocking grew fierce and the doorknob rattled. This didn’t sound like Asha. Jammu could hardly turn her blouse right side out. She zipped up her skirt. Bhandari was tentatively knotting the belt of his robe. “Get the goddamned door,” she hissed, heading into the bathroom. After a moment she heard him shuffling to the door and unlocking it. There was a squeal, his. “What are you doing here?”

Jammu turned away from the sink. Singh was standing close to her in the bathroom doorway. He stared at her in blank distress, and she was pleased to see a man whom she was still capable of injuring straightforwardly. She rolled her shoulders, flaunting her dishevelment.

“Indira is dead,” he said. “Shot.”

“What?”

“They shot her.”

“Sikhs!” Bhandari said. He had come up behind Singh, and in an anti-Sikh fury he swung his fist at the younger man. With grace, almost delicacy, Singh threw him against the wall and choked him with his forearm. He let up, and Bhandari looked around vacantly. Then he ran to the phone by the bed.

“Operator. Operator.”

“I thought you’d want to know,” Singh said to Jammu.

“Romesh?” Bhandari’s voice shook. “Romesh, it’s you? Listen to me. Listen. All files, all files—you’re listening— all files marked C—C as in Chandigarh—all files marked C. Listen to me. All files—”

Something was mechanically wrong with Jammu’s mouth. A hard combination of tongue and palate held it open and kept air from reaching or escaping her lungs. She felt a bullet in her spine and couldn’t breathe.

“Barbie?”

“Hi. I was going to call you.”

“Are you in the middle of something?”

“No, I haven’t started yet. I have to bake a cake.”

“Listen, did the package come?”

“Yeah, on Monday.”

“You know, the receipt’s in the box.”

“She’ll like it, Audrey. She saw something similar the other day at Famous that she liked.”

“Oh good. Do you have any special plans for tonight?”

“Lu’s going over to a friend’s after dinner to spend the night.”

“On a week night?”

“It’s her birthday. Why would she want to stick around here?”

“I just thought. You used to do special things. I just thought – How are you feeling?”

“Well, I’m tired. My cold kept me awake last night. I could hear myself starting to snore—”

“Snore!”

“I’ve always snored when I’ve had a cold. It used to drive Martin crazy. That terrible infection I had, whenever it was, the three-month infection, I remember he’d wake me up in the middle of the night with this completely crazed look on his face and he’d say something like IF YOU DON’T STOP SNORING – Dot dot dot.”

“Then what?”

“Then he’d go sleep on the couch.”

“That’s funny ”

Dropping the receiver into its stirrup, disposing of Audrey for another couple of days, Barbara rested in a kitchen chair. It was the first of November, and she had a spice cake to bake before Luisa came home. Although she was going out after dinner, Luisa had a keen sense of responsibility for juvenile ritual (a willingness to use hotel swimming pools, to eat the chicken drumsticks) and she might insist on doing something traditional as soon as Martin came home, something like watching home movies of herself (there were no other home movies) or even (conceivably) playing Yahtzee. At the very least she would demand (and receive) a cocktail, and Martin would bring down the gift Barbara had bought for him to give (a typewriter) and add it to the boxes from relatives and to Barbara’s own more ordinary (more motherly) contributions (socks, sweaters, tropical-colored stationery, Swiss chocolate, a silk robe, the much-discussed set of birdsong recordings, hardcover Jane Austen and, for the hell of it, softcover Wallace Stevens) which Luisa, demanding a refill (and receiving it) would unwrap. Then the three of them would make formal conversation as if Luisa were the adult which the gifts at her feet, their ready enjoyability, indicated she had not yet become. Grandparents would have helped tonight. But Barbara’s parents had just left for a month’s vacation in Australia and New Zealand, and even before Martin’s mother died she never left Arizona for anything but funerals. Martin himself would not help tonight. He’d been on the outs with Luisa lately. On Monday night he’d come home deep in thought (about the Westhaven project, he said), and at the dinner table, still thinking, still off in his world of timetables and work crews, he’d begun to grill Luisa on what she wanted to major in at college. The grilling went on for ten minutes. “English? If somebody with a degree in English comes to me looking for a job, I just shake my head.” He cut a neat rhombus of veal. “Astronomy? What do you want to do that for?” He speared a bean. Luisa stared hopelessly at the candles. Barbara said: