Jonathan Franzen - Purity

Naturally, this turned out to have been a lie. At her flat, while she was setting out the prepared foods she’d bought at the Galeria, Andreas asked her, dully, about her will.

“I didn’t invite you here to talk about my will,” she said. “That’s my own business.”

He sighed. “I only asked because you mentioned it when you called me.”

“The two things were not related. I’m sorry if you thought they were.”

The narcotic was working. He didn’t argue.

“You look so tired,” she said.

“Life in the computer age.”

When they sat down to eat, her little dog came over to her. She smiled at Andreas. “We go through the same charade at every meal.”

“Which charade is that?”

“The charade of withholding and discipline.”

“I remember it well.”

“Lessing,” she said to the dog. “Begging does not become you.”

The dog barked and put its paws on her linen-clad thigh.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “It’s as if I’m her pet, not the other way around.” She gave the dog a morsel of roast potato. “Be happy with that potato,” she told it. “That’s all you’re getting.”

“So,” Andreas said, “I’m not very hungry, and I have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes, all right. Silly me for thinking you might spend a few hours with your only parent.”

“You know you’d rather read about me than experience me in person. Why pretend?”

The dog had its paws on her thigh again. She gave it more potato.

“I’ll come to the point,” she said. “I’m concerned about Annagret.”

Dulled though he was, spent though he was, it occurred to him that if the lunch were a short one he might still have some free hours with his computer before Annagret came home. There was certainly nothing to like about the real world he was inhabiting.

“Andreas,” Katya said. “I think she might have to leave you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know how fond I’ve always been of her — almost as if she were my own daughter. In a sense, she’s been my daughter. She really doesn’t have another mother.”

“So — what? I’ve been sleeping with my sister?”

“Leave it to you to have a thought like that and say it out loud. You know that’s not what I meant. I meant that we’ve become very close.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“And I also know you better than anyone else in the world does.”

“So you like to say.”

“I never worry about what will happen to you. You’re a dominant person, born to dominate, and everyone can sense it. You can do whatever you want, and somehow the world will find a way to love you for it. You’ve been extraordinary since the day you were born.”

He pictured this extraordinary, dominant person forty-five minutes earlier, pants down, whacking away. “So you like to say,” he said.

“Well, Annagret isn’t like you. She’s bright but not brilliant. She admires you but isn’t like you. And I’m afraid — I can only assume — that she’s decided she doesn’t belong with a person so brilliant and dominant. There’s no other explanation. And—” Katya’s face hardened. “I hate to say this. But I think she’s right.”

“Do go on,” Andreas said.

“We’re speaking in confidence.”

“Of course.”

“Lessing—” She gave an entire pork cutlet to the dog, which scampered away with it. “Are you happy now?” she called after it mockingly.

“It’s becoming less of a mystery how you stay so trim,” Andreas said.

“Annagret confessed something to me.”

He felt light-headed.

“I promised her I wouldn’t tell you. I’m breaking that promise now, but I won’t apologize for it. Those that betray them do no treachery .” Katya was quoting something in English. “Besides which, I think she knew I would tell you. She said it was weighing on her conscience — but why tell me ? She knows very well that I’m your mother.”

He frowned.

“She isn’t right for you, Andreas. I thought I would be the last person ever to say that. But she’s not right, and I’m very angry with her now. In a sense, she betrayed me, too.”

“What exactly are we talking about?”

“I’m sure there are strains in your life with her. No couple can live for ten years without any strains at all. But look at you!” She sized him up with a fanatical blaze in her eyes. “She shouldn’t love anyone but you!”

There seemed to be no end to the ways his mother could disturb him. He kept thinking that he must have seen it all, that she’d finally exhausted her supply. But there was always more.

“Annagret thinks better of me than I deserve,” he said quietly. “I’m not an entirely well person.”

“I can only imagine what she was thinking, but she appears to be in some sort of relationship with a woman at her community center. I don’t know how far it’s gone, but obviously it’s far enough that she needed to confess it— to me . Well, I didn’t know what to say. I asked her if she thought she might be a lesbian. She said she didn’t think she was. It didn’t really make sense, what she was saying, but I gather that the woman is older and they have some sort of friendship-that’s-more-than-just-friendship. She kept using the phrase a special kind of closeness , whatever that means. And she wanted me — me! — to tell her what it meant.”

He knew the person in question. “The woman’s name is Gisela?”

“Andreas, I’ve been studying literature my entire life. I know a thing or two about human psychology. What I’m seeing is that Annagret isn’t right for you and she knows it. But I’m not the one to tell her that. In fact, I’m not sure I ever need to see her again.”

If Katya was to be believed (admittedly a big if), Annagret had given him an amazing gift, a deus ex machina, a way out of the trap. But he was wary of it. It seemed as if Annagret knew more about him than he’d realized, and was disgusted by him, and had consciously gone to someone else for what he wasn’t giving her. Would she feel guilty enough to keep her mouth shut after she was free of him?

“People have affairs all the time,” he said. “You had affairs and stayed married. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“If you were the one doing it,” Katya said, “it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything. You have the soul of an artist, beyond good and evil. But she’s too small for you. She knows it. She’s said it to me herself, how hard it is to live in your shadow.”

“I haven’t seen any sign of that.”

“She wouldn’t tell you. She did tell me. And she turned for comfort to this special friend of hers, and she told me about that, too. You’re gifted at math — you tell me what two plus two is.”

“This is so sick. That we’re having this conversation.”

“I’m sorry. I know how much you care about her. But I really don’t think I need to see her anymore. My loyalty is to you, not to the person who finds it necessary to betray you.”

He stood up and walked away from the table. If Katya was to be believed, Annagret blamed herself and still idealized him. The exit door was open wide. But all at once he felt terribly sorry for her. That she still revered him and considered herself small by comparison and had been so lonely that she crawled to Gisela: he felt restored to the sweet compassion he’d experienced in the church sanctuary on Siegfeldstraße, and with it to all the hope he’d invested in Annagret, to the innocence of his yearning to be a better person, before he’d descended into filth and doubt. His darling lost judo girl.

“Andreas,” his mother said softly.

He turned to her, struggling not to cry. “It was wrong of you to tell me.”