Jonathan Franzen - Purity

And then one night, in the notably roomy flat, Horst came tapping on her bedroom door before she’d turned her light out. “Are you decent?” he said playfully.

“I’m in my pajamas,” she said.

He came in and pulled up a chair by her bed. He had a very large head — Annagret couldn’t explain it to Andreas, but the largeness of Horst’s head seemed to her the reason that everything always worked out to his advantage. Oh, he has such a splendid head, let’s just give him what he wants . Something like that. On this particular night, his large head was flushed from drinking.

“I’m sorry if I smell like beer,” he said.

“I wouldn’t be able to smell it if I could have one myself.”

“You sound like you know quite a bit about beer drinking.”

“Oh, it’s just what they say.”

“You could have a beer if you stopped training, but you won’t stop training, so you can’t have a beer.”

She liked the joking way they had together. “But you train, and you drink beer.”

“I only drank so much tonight because I have something serious to say to you.”

She looked at his large head and saw that something, indeed, was different in his face tonight. A kind of ill-controlled anguish in his eyes. Also, his hands were shaking.

“What is it?” she said, worried.

“Can you keep a secret?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you have to, because you’re the only person I can tell, and if you don’t keep the secret we’re all in trouble.”

She thought about this. “Why do you have to tell me?”

“Because it concerns you. It’s about your mother. Will you keep a secret?”

“I can try.”

Horst took a large breath that came out again beer-smelling. “Your mother is a drug addict,” he said. “I married a drug addict. She steals narcotics from the hospital and uses them when she’s there and also when she’s home. Did you know that?”

“No,” Annagret said. But she was inclined to believe it. More and more often lately, there was something dulled about her mother.

“She’s very expert at pilfering,” Horst said. “No one at the hospital suspects.”

“We need to talk to her about it and tell her to stop.”

“Addicts don’t stop without treatment. If she asks for treatment, the authorities will know she was stealing.”

“But they’ll be happy that she’s honest and trying to get better.”

“Well, unfortunately, there’s another matter. An even bigger secret. Not even your mother knows this secret. Can I tell it to you?”

He was one of her best friends, and so, after a hesitation, she said yes.

“I took an oath that I would never tell anyone,” Horst said. “I’m breaking that oath by telling you. For some years now, I’ve worked informally for the Ministry for State Security. I’m a well-trusted unofficial collaborator. There’s an officer I meet with from time to time. I pass along information about my workers and especially about my superiors. This is necessary because the power plant is vital to our national security. I’m very fortunate to have a good relationship with the ministry. You and your mother are very fortunate that I do. But do you understand what this means?”

“No.”

“We owe our privileges to the ministry. How do you think my officer will feel if he learns that my wife is a thief and a drug addict? He’ll think I’m not trustworthy. We could lose this flat, and I could lose my position.”

“But you could just tell the officer the truth about Mother. It’s not your fault.”

“If I tell him, your mother will lose her job. She’ll probably go to prison. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.”

“So we have to keep everything secret.”

“But now I wish I didn’t know! Why did I have to know?”

“Because you need to help me keep the secret. Your mother betrayed us by breaking the law. You and I are the family now. She is the threat to it. We need to make sure she doesn’t destroy it.”

“We have to try to help her.”

“You matter more to me than she does now. You are the woman in my life. See here.” He put a hand on her belly and splayed his fingers. “You’ve become a woman.”

The hand on her belly frightened her, but not as much as what he’d told her.

“A very beautiful woman,” he added huskily.

“I’m feeling ticklish.”

He closed his eyes and didn’t take away his hand. “Everything has to be secret,” he said. “I can protect you, but you have to trust me.”

“Can’t we just tell Mother?”

“No. One thing will lead to another, and she’ll end up in jail. We’re safer if she steals and takes drugs — she’s very good at not getting caught.”

“But if you tell her you work for the ministry, she’ll understand why she has to stop.”

“I don’t trust her. She’s betrayed us already. I have to trust you instead.”

She felt she might cry soon; her breaths were coming faster.

“You shouldn’t put your hand on me,” she said. “It feels wrong.”

“Maybe, yes, wrong, a little bit, considering our age difference.” He nodded his big head. “But look how much I trust you. We can do something that’s maybe a little bit wrong because I know you won’t tell anyone.”

“I might tell someone.”

“No. You’d have to expose our secrets, and you can’t do that.”

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t told me anything.”

“But I did. I had to. And now we have secrets together. Just you and me. Can I trust you?”

Her eyes filled. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me a secret of your own. Then I’ll know I can trust you.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

“Then show me something secret. What’s the most secret thing you can show me?”

The hand on her belly inched southward, and her heart began to hammer.

“Is it this?” he said. “Is this your most secret thing?”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered, very frightened and confused.

“It’s all right. You don’t have to show me. It’s enough that you let me feel it.” Through his hand, she could feel his whole body relax. “I trust you now.”

For Annagret, the terrible thing was that she’d liked what followed, at least for a while. For a while, it was merely like a closer form of friendship. They still joked together, she still told him everything about her days at school, they still went riding together and trained at the sports club. It was ordinary life but with a secret, an extremely grown-up secret thing that happened after she’d put on her pajamas and gone to bed. While he touched her, he kept saying how beautiful she was, what perfect beauty. And because, for a while, he didn’t touch her with any part of himself except his hand, she felt as if she herself were to blame, as if the whole thing had actually been her idea, as if she’d done this to them with her beauty and the only way to make it stop was to submit to it and experience release. She hated her body for wanting release even more than she hated it for its supposed beauty, but somehow the hatred made it all the more urgent. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to need her. She was very bad. And maybe it made sense that she was very bad, being the daughter of a drug addict. She’d casually asked her mother if she was ever tempted to take the drugs she gave her patients. Every once in a while, yes, her mother had answered smoothly, if a little bit of something at the hospital was left unused, she or one of the other nurses might take it to calm their nerves, but it didn’t mean the person was an addict. Annagret hadn’t said anything about anyone being an addict.

For Andreas the terrible thing was how much the stepfather’s pussycentrism reminded him of his own. He felt only somewhat less implicated when Annagret went on to tell him that her weeks of being touched had been merely a prelude to Horst’s unzipping of his pants. It was bound to happen sometime, and yet it broke the spell that she’d been under; it introduced a third party to their secret. She didn’t like this third party. She realized that it must have been spying on the two of them all along, biding its time, manipulating them like a case officer. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want it near her, and when it tried to assert its authority she became afraid of being at home at night. But what could she do? The pecker knew her secrets. It knew that, if only for a while, she’d looked forward to being tampered with. She’d half-wittingly become its unofficial collaborator; she’d tacitly sworn an oath. She wondered if her mother took narcotics so as not to know which body the pecker really wanted. The pecker knew all about her mother’s pilferage, and the pecker was empowered by the ministry, and so she couldn’t go to the authorities. They’d put her mother in jail and leave her alone with the pecker. The same thing would happen if she told her mother, because her mother would accuse her husband, and the pecker would have her jailed. And maybe her mother deserved to be jailed, but not if it meant that Annagret remained at home and kept harming her.