Jonathan Franzen - Purity

He would have loved not to believe in his theory, would have loved to lump it with the mumbo-jumbo of contemporary physics and dismiss it, but the thing he loved most about himself was his refusal to lie to himself, and no matter how busy he got and how much he traveled, there always seemed to come another night when he found himself alone at home, in the grip of a homicidal rage that he had no other way of explaining.

On one such night, Annagret returned from his mother’s with an especially earnest look on her face. He was sitting on the sofa, not even pretending to be reading something. It was all he could do not to punch a wall; it was that bad.

“I thought you were coming home at nine,” he managed to say.

“We got to talking about things,” Annagret said. “I asked her about the fifties, what the country was like then. She told me all sorts of interesting things. But then — this is very strange. It’s important. Do you mind talking to me now?”

He could feel her looking at him, and he willed his lips to curl upward, to smile. “Of course not.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Not hungry.”

“I’ll make us some noodles later.” She sat down on the sofa by him. “Your mother was talking about your father’s career, how brilliant he was, how busy he was. And then suddenly she stopped and said, ‘I had a lover.’”

The rage inside him was titanic. How to keep from exploding? What a relief exploding was. How excellent it must have been for him to crush a man’s skull with a shovel. If only he could recall — reexperience — the relief of doing that! He couldn’t recall it. But the thought of it slightly calmed him; gave him something to hold on to.

“That’s interesting,” he murmured.

“I know. I couldn’t believe she was telling me. You said she’s always claimed it never happened. I was too afraid to ask her to say more about it, and she didn’t. Just ‘I had a lover.’ And then she changed the subject. But then she kept looking at me, I don’t know, like she wanted to make sure I’d noticed what she’d said.”

“Mm.”

“But listen. Andreas. I know we can’t tell anyone our secret. I know that. But I see her so often, she’s in her seventies, she is your mother. I had an impulse to tell her, and the impulse felt right. She would never tell anyone else, I’m sure of it. Do you think it’s all right if I tell her?”

He didn’t think so, not one bit. That Annagret could even imagine telling Katya! Previously unguessed vistas of female closeness opened up to his mind’s eye. Katya having her way with him by way of pliant Annagret. Annagret so credulous, so earnest, so ready to betray him. Coming home at ten thirty when she’d promised to be home by nine — so many hours with Katya. Talking, talking, talking. Cunts, cunts, cunts. He was out of his mind.

“Are you out of your mind?” he said.

“No, I’m not,” she said, immediately on guard. “And she isn’t, either. I actually think she’s better. I know she was difficult when you were little, but that was a long time ago.”

She knew? Difficult? She didn’t know. Nobody could know what having Katya as a mother had been like. What it was like to be psychically fucked with, day after day, and to be not only too young and weak to fight it but unable even to be angry, because she’d seduced him into wanting it. Annagret had wanted it from her stepfather for a week or two, a month at most. Andreas had wanted it throughout his childhood. And yet again he was trapped, because, unlike Annagret, he hadn’t been physically raped. He had to live with the possibility that there had never been anything so monstrous about Katya. Her version of reality was seamless, especially in old age, her youthful peccadilloes now forgotten or rendered harmless by a nice French word like lover . She’d always insisted that the disturbance was in him, not her; that it was sick of him not to believe she was a good and loving mother. And indeed it was he who’d been sitting for hours in a jealous rage, waiting for the ladies to finish with their cozy chat.

“It can be a relief to confess things,” Annagret said. “Sometimes I think you forget that you got to confess to your father. I don’t get to confess to anyone .”

COULD KILL HER WITH BARE HANDS RIGHT NOW

“Once you start confessing,” he said chalkily.

“What?”

“Where does it stop?”

“I’m saying we tell one person. Your own mother. Don’t you want to? Your father was very understanding, and you felt better. I bet your mother would be all the more understanding, because she knows what it’s like to make mistakes.”

Suddenly his mind changed temperature, as minds will do. In a cooler state, he imagined his mother knowing what they’d done. Katya was truly the last person in the world he had reason to be ashamed in front of, Katya who to him was vileness personified, and yet he imagined himself ashamed of being a killer. Ashamed of everything, every particle of himself, right up to this moment. Strangle his sweet judo girl to silence her? What was wrong with him?

Without looking at her face, he rotated toward her and buried his own face in her chest. He swung his legs up onto her lap and hung his arms around her neck. He looked like that stupid picture of John Lennon in Yoko’s arms but who cared. He needed to be held. She was better than good, because she hadn’t always been good. Had known badness and chosen goodness.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking his hair, babying him. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Shh.”

“Are you all right?”

“Shh, shh.”

“What is it?”

“We can’t tell her,” he said.

“We can, though. We should.”

“Please, no. We can’t.”

He began to cry. The Killer stirred in him again, sensing opportunity in his tears, his regression. The Killer liked regression. The Killer liked it when he was four and Annagret fifteen. Blindly, with his eyes squeezed shut, he sought her lips with his. For a moment, hers were open and available, but then, as if she were prey, instinctively sensing a Killer she couldn’t see, she averted her face. “We have to finish discussing this,” she said.

Discuss, discuss, discuss. Talk, talk, talk. He hated her. Needed her, hated her, needed her, hated her. Eyes still shut, he tried to kiss her again.

“I’m serious,” she said, trying to stand up. “Get off my lap.”

He got off her lap and opened his eyes. “Go to a priest,” he said.

“What?”

“If you want to confess. Find a Catholic church, go to the confessional, say what you have to say. You’ll feel better.”

“I’m not Catholic.”

“I can’t stop you from seeing her, but I don’t like it.”

“She worships you! You’re practically her Jesus.”

“She worships what she sees in a mirror. We’re just useful objects to her. The more you tell her, the more she can use us.”

“I’m sorry, but I think you’re very wrong.”

“Fine. I’m wrong. But I can’t keep living with you if you tell her what we did.”

Her face went red. “Then maybe we shouldn’t live together!”

“Maybe not. Maybe you should live with her instead.”

“I’m trying to have a close relationship with your mother, because you can’t do it. I’m doing you a big favor, and now you’re jealous!”

“I’m not jealous.”

“I think you are.”

“Not true. Not true.”

Everything she said was accurate, every word of his a lie. And yet he was a well-paid transitional-justice consultant, and everywhere he went people were happy to see him. They fawned over his honesty and openness, they laughed at his irreverent humor, they took flattering pictures of him. He was trapped from all sides.