Jonathan Franzen - Purity

Food for thought. He picked up his pace a little; he raised his head and squared his shoulders. With every step he took, an increment of time passed. Knowing that the number of steps remaining to him was countably small made the pain of taking them more bearable. When the Land Cruiser came around the bend, he smiled at the sight of his old friend.

“Tom,” he said warmly, extending a hand through the passenger-side window.

Tom frowned at the hand more in surprise, it seemed, than anger. He was wearing the khaki shirt of a gringo journalist. Andreas had seen recent pictures of him, but in person the fact of his physical alteration, his thickness, his baldness, brought home how many years had passed.

“Oh, come on. Shake it.”

Tom shook it without looking at him.

“Why don’t you get out and walk with me? Pedro can go ahead with your things.”

Tom got out of the vehicle and put on sunglasses.

“It’s great to see you,” Andreas said. “Thanks for coming.”

“I didn’t do it as a favor.”

“I’m sure not. And yet — shall we walk?”

They walked, and he decided to plunge right in. The abatement of his mental pain was so liberating that he had the sense of being on the losing side in the final minutes of extra time — throw every man forward, anything goes. “Belated congratulations,” he said, “on having a daughter.”

Tom still hadn’t looked at him.

“I’ve known about her for more than a year,” Andreas said. “I suppose the honorable thing would have been to inform you right away.”

“And Brutus is an honorable man.”

“Well, I apologize. She’s impressive in many ways.”

“How did you find her?”

“Photo recognition. The software is so primitive, it had no business working. But, as you know, things have a way of working out for me.”

“You get away with murder.”

“Exactly!” He felt out of his body, weirdly buoyant. Tom truly was the only person in the world he had no secrets from. “You’ve done pretty well for yourself, too. Great story on the missing nuke. Do you have it up yet?”

“It’s been up for a week.”

“I gave it to you as a present. We should have been collaborating all along.”

On a giddy impulse, he punched Tom’s arm. He prattled away, proudly explicating the features of Los Volcanes, as he led Tom across the pasture and around to the main building’s veranda. His father, Katya’s husband, hadn’t lived to see what he’d built with the gift of freedom he’d given him, but if he’d lived, and had come to Los Volcanes, Andreas might have been similarly giddy with him, similarly performative, enumerating his achievements while knowing that nothing could change his father’s damning judgment of him.

On the veranda, Teresa brought them beer. A few stingless bees were hovering. Tom had been paternally silent for some minutes.

“So, what brings you to Bolivia?” Andreas said.

“You mean, apart from you hacking into my computers?” Tom’s voice sounded choked with self-control. “Apart from you messing with the head of a young woman who happens to be my daughter?”

“Admittedly a dark picture,” Andreas said. “But am I allowed to point out that no harm has come of any of that, and that you were the one who started it?”

Tom turned to him in disbelief. “ I started it?”

“We had a dinner date. Do you remember? In Berlin. You never showed up.”

“That’s why you did this to me?”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Given what you’re saying, can you blame me for not wanting to be?”

“Well, at any rate, the score is even now. I’m willing to start over, clean slate. I’m sure we have some new leaks that would interest you.”

“That’s not why I came here.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“I came here,” Tom said, not looking at him, “to threaten you. I will do a story on you. I will write it myself. And I will take the police to the grave site.”

The harshness in his voice was understandable, and yet it hurt Andreas. It seemed like a failure of Tom’s imagination to be unmoved by what he’d implicitly confessed — that he’d liked Tom more than Tom had liked him, and that his mental health was less than tiptop.

“Fine, then,” he said. “You came here to threaten me. I presume there’s an or else ?”

“It’s simple,” Tom said. “Two simple things. First, you never communicate with my daughter again, ever, under any circumstances. And second, you digitally shred everything you took from my computers. You keep no copies and you never speak of anything you saw there. If you do all that, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Andreas nodded. The Tom he remembered from Berlin had been softer and more forgiving, more motherly. His sternness now was making Andreas feel like a bad little boy.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” he said.

“Good. We’re done, then.”

“If that’s all you wanted, you could have just called me.”

“I believe this merited face time.”

He wondered what it might be that Tom was so intent on having shredded. He hadn’t actually looked at much of what he’d stolen. Once he’d ascertained that Leila Helou wasn’t pursuing a vendetta against him, he’d lost interest in the spyware, and for the past few weeks he’d been too disabled by fear and pain to be curious about the dirt he might have found on Tom’s home computer.

“I don’t care what you know about me,” Tom said, as if reading his thought. “But I do care what Pip knows. If she finds anything out from you, I will destroy you.”

“I take it you haven’t mentioned that you’re her father.”

“I’d rather she not know. I’d rather she not know about the money, either.”

“You don’t want your own daughter to know she has a billion dollars coming to her.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“She’s a sensible girl. I don’t think the money would ruin her.”

“I’m not going to interfere with Anabel. And you’re not going to, either.”

“So you care more about your ex-wife than you do about your daughter. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You were the same way in Berlin.”

“It’s just the way it is.”

“And where does that leave your girlfriend? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It has nothing to do with Leila.”

“Presumably you’ve told her who Pip is?”

“Yep.”

“Quite a shock, I’d guess.”

Tom turned and gave him a smile. It took Andreas a moment to recognize the cruelty in it. “You want to know something?” Tom said. “It’s been good for me and Leila. This famous sunlight of yours. It’s been good for us.”

Andreas closed his eyes. Creating darkness was that simple. He mentally sank into it, wishing it were a deeper darkness. “Say more,” he murmured.

“You sent us Pip.”

“I see.”

“It was hard on Leila. I finally had to tell her everything, including what you and I did in Berlin.”

“But you told her that a long time ago.”

“No. Only after I found out what you’d done to me.”

“You told her.”

“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe as long as you leave Pip alone. Leila’s a vault, the same as me. But, just so you know, you did us a favor.”

“I helped you…”

“She and I were stuck in something. It wasn’t such a bad thing. But we needed a push.”

“I helped you…”

“Don’t get me wrong — what you did to Pip is unforgivable. I didn’t come here to thank you. I’m simply giving credit where credit is due.”

The darkness into which Andreas was falling was so contourless that he had a sensation of spinning, and to spin was nauseating. Bad enough to have failed to ruin Tom’s life. But to have inadvertently made it happier …