Jonathan Franzen - Purity

For no apparent reason, he snapped out of his dream and into a state of chill clarity. Had he heard something? There was nothing but the trickle and patter of light rain. It seemed to him as if a lot of time had passed. He stood up and grasped the handle of the shovel. He was having a new bad thought — that, for all his care in planning, all his anxiety, he’d somehow neglected to consider what he would do if Annagret and her stepfather simply didn’t show up; he’d been so obsessed with logistics that he hadn’t noticed this enormous blind spot, and now, because the weekend was coming and his parents might be out here, he was facing the task of refilling the hole he’d dug for nothing — when he heard a low voice outside the kitchen window.

A girl’s voice. Annagret.

Where was the bike? How could he not have heard the bike? Had they walked it down the driveway? The bike was essential.

He heard a male voice, somewhat louder. They were going around behind the house. It was all happening so quickly. He was shaking so much that he could hardly stand. He didn’t dare touch the doorknob for fear of making a sound.

“The key’s on a hook,” he heard Annagret say.

He heard her feet on the steps. And then: a floor-shaking thud, a loud grunt.

He grabbed the doorknob and turned it the wrong way and then the right way. As he ran out, he thought he didn’t have the shovel, but he did. It was in his hands, and he brought the convex side of its blade down hard on the dark shape looming up in front of him. The body collapsed on the steps. He was a murderer now.

Pausing to make sure of where the body’s head was, he raised the shovel over his shoulder and hit the head so hard he heard the skull crack. Everything so far fully within the bounds of planned logistics. Annagret was somewhere to his left, making the worst sound he’d ever heard, a moan-keen-retch-strangulation sound. Without looking in her direction, he scrambled down past the body, dropped the shovel, and pulled the body off the steps by its feet. Its head was on its side now. He picked up the shovel and hit the head on the temple as hard as he could, to make sure. At the second crack of skull, Annagret gave a terrible cry.

“It’s over,” he said, breathing hard. “There won’t be any more of it.”

He dimly saw her moving on the porch, coming to the railing. Then he heard the strangely childish and almost dear sounds of her throwing up. He didn’t feel sick himself. More like postorgasmic; immensely weary and even more immensely sad. He wasn’t going to throw up, but he began to cry, making his own childish sounds. He dropped the shovel, sank to his knees, and sobbed. His mind was empty, but not of sadness.

The drizzle was so fine it was almost a mist. When he’d cried himself dry, he felt so tired that his first thought was that he and Annagret should go to the police and turn themselves in. He didn’t see how he could do what still had to be done. Killing had brought no relief at all — what had he been thinking? The relief would be to turn himself in at the police station.

Annagret had been still while he cried, but now she came down from the porch and crouched by him. At the touch of her hand on his shoulder, he sobbed again.

“Shh, shh,” she said.

She put her face to his wet cheek. The feel of her skin, the mercy of her warm proximity: his weariness evaporated.

“I must smell like vomit,” she said.

“No.”

“Is he dead?”

“He must be.”

“This is the real bad dream. Right now. Before wasn’t so bad. This is the real bad.”

“I know.”

She began to cry voicelessly, huffingly, and he took her in his arms. He could feel her tension escaping in the form of whole-body tremors. Her tension must have been unspeakably bad, and there was nothing he could do with his compassion except to hold her until the tremors subsided. When they finally did, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and pressed her face to his. She opened her mouth against his cheek, a kind of kiss. They were partners, and it would have been natural to go inside the house and seal their partnership, and this was how he knew for certain that his love for her was pure: he pulled away and stood up.

“Don’t you like me?” she whispered.

“Actually, I love you.”

“I want to come and see you. I don’t care if they catch us.”

“I want to see you, too. But it’s not right. Not safe. Not for a long time.”

In the darkness, at his feet, she seemed to slump. “Then I’m completely alone.”

“You can think of me thinking of you, because that’s what I’ll be doing whenever you think of me.”

She made a little snorting sound, possibly mirthful. “I barely even know you.”

“Safe to say I don’t make a habit of killing people.”

“It’s a terrible thing,” she said, “but I guess I should thank you. Thank you for killing him.” She made another possibly mirthful sound. “Just hearing myself say that makes me all the more sure that I’m the bad one. I made him want me, and then I made you do this.”

Andreas was aware that time was passing. “What happened with the motorcycle?”

She didn’t answer.

“Is the motorcycle here?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “He was doing maintenance after dinner. He didn’t have it put back together when I went to meet him — he needed some new part. He said we should go out some other night.”

Not very ardent of him, Andreas thought.

“I thought maybe he’d gotten suspicious,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, but I said I really wanted it to be tonight.”

Andreas again suppressed the thought of how she’d persuaded the stepfather.

“So we took the train,” she said.

“Not good.”

“I’m sorry!”

“No, it was the right thing to do, but it makes things harder for us.”

“We didn’t sit together. I said it was safer not to.”

Soon other riders on the train would be seeing the missing man’s picture in the newspaper, maybe even on television. The entire plan had hinged on the motorcycle. But Andreas needed to keep her morale up. “You’re very smart,” he said. “You did the right thing. I’m just worried that even the earliest train won’t get you home in time.”

“My mother goes straight to bed when she comes home. I left my bedroom door closed.”

“You thought of that.”

“Just to be safe.”

“You’re very, very smart.”

“Not smart enough. They’re going to catch us. I’m sure of it. We shouldn’t have taken the train, I hate trains, people stare at me, they’ll remember me. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Just keep being smart. The hardest part is behind you.”

She clutched his arms and pulled herself to her feet. “Please kiss me,” she said. “Just once, so I can remember it.”

He kissed her forehead.

“No, on the mouth,” she said. “We’re going to be in jail forever. I want to have kissed you. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. It’s the only way I got through the week.”

He was afraid of where a kiss might lead — time was continuing to pass — but he needn’t have been. Annagret kept her lips solemnly closed. She must have been seeking the same thing he was. A cleaner way, an escape from the filth. For his part, the darkness of the night was a blessing: if he could have seen the look in her eyes more clearly, he might not have been able to let go of her.

While she waited in the driveway, away from the body, he went inside the house. The kitchen felt steeped in the evil of his lying in ambush there, the evil contrast between a world in which Horst had been alive and the world where he was dead, but he forced himself to put his head under the faucet and gulp down water. Then he went to the front porch and put his socks and boots back on. He found the flashlight in one of the boots.