Jonathan Franzen - Purity

She continued to feel blessed on subsequent evenings, on the back veranda, as she learned more about Colleen’s crap childhood. The farm in Vermont was something between collective and cult, the land owned by her father, who fashioned himself as a cross between Henry David Thoreau, a many-wived biblical patriarch, and the psychologist Wilhelm Reich. His ongoing self-actualization took the form of leaving the farm in Colleen’s mother’s hands for months at a time, returning with younger women who helped him channel his orgone energy into the farm’s rocky soil, to make it more fecund, and randomly knocking up Colleen’s mother. Colleen was homeschooled until she turned sixteen and ran away, first to Boston and then to Hamburg, in Germany, where she worked as an au pair. Then she attended Wellesley on a full scholarship and graduated when she was still just twenty-two. The irony of her position now, performing a role similar to her mother’s at a patriarchal place, wasn’t lost on her. She seemed almost to revel in the crappiness of it.

Pip, for her part, felt she was finally finding a friend who could understand her own strange childhood. She was attracted to Colleen’s cigarette-smelling darkness, and now she didn’t have to worry about where she sat at dinner, because Colleen saved the place next to hers. She could tell that Colleen liked her sarcasm, and she played it up for her. Colleen invited her to her room, which was sweet and low-ceilinged, to dish and drink beer and watch TV shows streamed over the private fiber-optic line that Andreas had obtained in a deal to upgrade Bolivian army comms. If Colleen had been a boy, Pip would have slept with him. As it was, she was going to bed long after midnight, waking up late and somewhat hungover, and blowing off her morning hikes.

Then one night, after returning from a hike so long that she’d done the last part of it by feel in the dark, she went to the dining room and saw that her usual place beside Colleen had been taken by Andreas Wolf. Her heart jumped at the sight of him. He was listening seriously to another woman at the table, listening and nodding, and Pip immediately got what Annagret’s boyfriend had meant about his charisma. It was partly a matter of his still-boyish German good looks, but there was an ineffable something else, a glow of charged fame particles, or a self-confidence so calm and mighty it altered the geometry of the dining room, drawing every sight line to itself. No wonder Colleen didn’t care whether he was an asshole. Pip wanted to keep looking at him herself.

Colleen was slouched low in her chair, her face averted from Andreas, and was tapping a finger on the table, her food untouched. Pip was hurt that she hadn’t saved the place to her other side for her. She took the only available seat, beside her roommate Flor. A bowl of beef stew was being handed around the table, along with the usual yuca and potatoes and onion and tomatoes. Pip had basically thrown in the towel on vegetarianism. At least the beef in Bolivia was grass-fed.

“So Dear Leader is back,” she said.

“Why do you call him that?” Flor said sharply. “This isn’t North Korea.”

“She does it because Colleen does it,” a person named Willow said.

Pip felt slapped in the face. “It’s good to see we’re evolved past eighth grade.”

“You can bet Colleen would never say ‘Dear Leader’ to his face,” Willow said.

“I bet you’d be wrong,” Pip said. “I bet he’d just laugh. I was insulting in my emails, and it wasn’t like my invitation was retracted.”

Flor did some private, not-nice eye-widening, and Pip saw that she wasn’t doing herself any favors by continuing to mention her email correspondence with Andreas.

“Why even stay here if you’re just going to be negative?” Willow said.

“What does it say about this place that a little bit of humor is so threatening?”

“It’s not threatening. It’s boring. 30 Rock already did North Korea. The laughs have been had.”

Never having seen 30 Rock , Pip was rejoinderless and squished. All through dinner, fame and charisma rays from the direction of Andreas warmed the back of her neck. She knew she ought to hurry and go back to her room, to return Colleen’s snub and not appear needy, but she also wanted to meet Andreas, and so she lingered at the table, eating two lime-flavored custards, after the others had left. Behind her, Andreas and Colleen were speaking German. This finally made her feel so excluded and irrelevant that she pushed away from her table and headed for the door.

“Pip Tyler,” Andreas said.

She turned back. Colleen was looking aside again, tapping her finger, but Andreas’s blue eyes were on her. “Come sit down with us,” he said. “We haven’t met.”

“I’ll be on the veranda,” Colleen said, standing up.

“No, stay with us,” Andreas said.

“Need to smoke.”

Colleen left the room without a glance at Pip. Andreas beckoned to her. “Will you have an espresso with me?”

“I didn’t even know there was espresso here.”

“All you have to do is ask. Teresa!”

Pedro’s wife, Teresa, stuck her head out of the kitchen, and Andreas raised two fingers. Pip sat down in the chair farthest from him at his table. The nerve she’d had in writing emails to him was so far gone that she didn’t even want to shake his hand. She just hunched her shoulders and waited to be spoken to.

“Colleen tells me you’ve been enjoying yourself here.”

She nodded.

“Did I not tell you it’s the most beautiful place?”

“No, you definitely told me.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. Making the Argentinean capital look like nineteen-seventies East Berlin — they needed a lot of advice.”

“It’s cool that they’re making a movie about you.”

“Very strange but, yes, very cool. Also very dull. You stand around for ten hours waiting for twenty minutes of action, and even then you don’t see it directly. You’re at the back of a crowd in a trailer, trying to see a monitor.”

“Still and all,” Pip said.

“Still and all, intensely gratifying to the ego.”

“I’m guessing it’s in pretty good shape, your ego.”

“No complaints.”

Pedro’s wife came out with two espressos, and Andreas told her in Spanish that she was looking very well. Teresa, normally the picture of long-suffering, appeared inordinately grateful for the compliment, and Pip caught a glimpse of how the world must seem to Andreas: like one of those stadium crowds where every person had a colored board that they could flip in concert with everyone else and form messages. The message he was forever getting was that he was special and great. He walked into the stadium, and suddenly the sea of random bodies became the words WE LOVE YOU, MAN. Pip felt a prickle of resentment.

“So what’s Toni Field like?” she said.

“Lovely. Talented.”

“She’s playing your mom, right?”

“Yes.”

“Was your mom as hot as Toni Field?”

Andreas smiled. “I knew I was going to like you.”

Pip was trying to stay mindful of asshole , of stringing along . “What’s that mean?”

“You ask good questions. You’re more angry than careful.”

She didn’t know what to say to this.

“I’m tired,” he said. “We’ll do your entry interview in the morning.” He drained his espresso cup. “Unless you feel you’ve had your vacation and just want to go home.”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Come to the barn in the morning.”

When he was gone, Pip went out to the veranda and sat down by Colleen, who was staring at the dark river. The night was warm, and so many frogs were chirping that the wall of their sound was seamless.