Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“And freedom.”

“A code word for wealth and decadence. Believe me. What the majority of Russians think is great about America is McDonald’s and VCRs. Only politicians and anchormen are stupid or dishonest enough to act otherwise. Prime ministers come to Washington, we tell ’em, Welcome to the land of the free. The prime ministers say, Give us more money. I swear we must be the world’s laughingstock. What are you smiling at?”

“You remind me of a cynical man I knew.”

“Cynical, huh? You think it’s cynical to recognize that all human beings, myself included, want to gratify their senses without having to take responsibility for it? How about calling me Christian instead, or honest, or realistic? Because what I see on the other side is pure sentimentality and wishful thinking. This idea that human beings are essentially good and selfless. That you can cure sorrow and loneliness and envy and gluttony and lust and deceit and rage and pride with full employment and good psychologists. You know what my favorite modern-day fable is?”

“What.”

“Chappaquiddick. The perfect liberal sees what a human being really is all about, and he takes off running. Spends the rest of his life denying that what he saw has any meaning. Telling everybody else what’s wrong with them. Listen, liberalism’s so dishonest it won’t even admit that everything good about it, the supposed compassion at the center of it — which is irrational , mind you, just like all religion is — comes straight from the two-thousand-year tradition of Christianity. But at least it’s got that compassion. It’s innocent, same as a six-year-old. But God’s got a soft spot in His heart for all the innocents of the world. And so the thing I hate most is the conservative politician. The conservative side is just pure cynical economic self-interest. Granted it’s pretty realistic about human greed, so it’s fairly grownup, you know, like about the level of a smart-assed thirteen-year-old. But it’s even more to blame than liberalism for supplanting God with the pursuit of wealth. And I find that unforgivable.”

“And that’s why you live in this crummy building. With angry middle-class women.”

“You got it.”

“I guess you’re pretty admirable.”

“You said that. I didn’t. ’Cause of course it’s a danger everybody runs if they try to do some good. The idea that if you know you’re doing good, it doesn’t really count. But I say, what’s the alternative — being a jerk just so you know you’re not guilty of pridefulness?”

“Not a bad alternative. You should try it.”

“You’re a little bit of a cynic yourself. What’d you come here for?”

In the courtyard, outside the open window, a hush fell as the volleyball went thump, thump. Pieces of orange peel lay white side up on Stites’s cleaned plate. Renée smiled. “No reason at all.”

“Nobody comes for no reason,” he said.

“I came because I was bored.”

The light in the room had become personal, making facial expressions more ambiguous and eye contact less sure. “Are you married?” Stites said.

“No.”

“Got a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“No kids, I guess.”

She shook her head.

“You want kids?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like what happens to women when they have them.”

“What happens to them?”

“They just become women.”

“You mean: they grow up.”

Thump, thump went the volleyball. Sneakered feet scraped and fell on the hard dirt. The carpet pattern began to rearrange itself as Renée stared at it. “Do you want to sleep with me?” she said.

“Ha.” Stites smiled, apparently more amused than anything else. “I guess not.”

“Because you’re afraid I’ll tell somebody,” she said in a cruel voice. “Or you’re afraid you’ll go to hell. Or you’re afraid it’ll hurt your faith. Or I’m not attractive enough.”

“A person’s lost if he tries to find reasons to say no. He just has to say no, straight from the heart.”

“Why.”

“Because if you do, you can feel your love of God grow.”

“What if you don’t love God at all? What if you don’t believe there is a God?”

“Then you have to look.”

“Why.”

“Because, just from sitting here with you, I think you’d be happy if you did. Because I think you’re a real person, and I feel love for you, and your happiness would make me happy.”

“You feel love for me.”

“A Christian love.”

“That’s all?”

“I’m no more perfect than you are.”

She slid closer to him. “You could make me happy very quickly.”

The only thing giving expression to his face was the pair of lambent rectangles on his glasses, reflections of incandescence from the doorway. He crossed his arms. “Tell me what you feel like after you’ve had sex.”

“I feel good.” She sat up straighter, proud. “I feel like I know something about myself. Like I have a base line, and I know what the very bottom of me is like. Like I know that good and evil don’t have anything to do with it. Like I’m an animal, in a good way.”

The rectangles on Stites’s glasses seemed to take on wistfulness. “I guess you’re probably lucky,” he said.

“I don’t think I’m any different than any woman. I mean, any woman who hasn’t had her mind fucked up by male religion.”

“Them’s fightin’ words.”

She moved even closer. “Fight me.”

“You play fair and scoot back a little, I’ll fight you.”

She retreated. “Well?”

He joined his hands on his shins, above the argyle socks. “Well, I suppose it comes down to why God made sex such a great pleasure. You obviously consider this irrelevant, but what happens if you conceive a child in the course of making yourself feel good?”

“Funny you should ask.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it’s funny you should ask.”

“Well, what’s the answer?”

“You know what my answer is. If I’m in a halfway decent shape emotionally and financially, I have the baby. Otherwise I have an abortion.”

“But what about the potentiality you destroy with an abortion?”

“I don’t know. What about the potentialities I destroyed when I broke up with a high-school boyfriend? We could have had eight kids by now. Am I an eight-time murderer?”

“Right. But have you ever known anybody who was conceived out of wedlock?”

“Well, me, for one.”

“You?”

“Yeah, I’m sure I’m the perfect example. I’m sure I would have been aborted, if it had been more convenient for my mother.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Completely indifferent,” she said. Her eyes fell on the fragment of scripture on the wall; she found the typeface ugly. “My life began at five. If anything had happened earlier — no loss to me. There was no me.”

“But no way you love yourself, if you’re so indifferent. No way you love the world. You must hate it. You must hate life.”

“I love myself, I hate myself. It adds up to zero.”

A long, long volley developed in the courtyard, the stillness and suspense around it growing deeper the longer it went on. Then the players groaned. Stites spoke quietly. “You don’t know how much it grieves me to hear you say that.”

“I can be fun to sleep with.”

“You think you have the right to throw your life away.”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”

“I think you’re very unhappy. I think you must have been very hurt by something.”

Renée raised her face to the pitted ceiling, leaning back on her hands, the image of a person enjoying weather at the beach. She was smiling and continued to smile, but after a while her breathing become rough, like a water pump that at first only brings up air, “I—” Her breathing turned to shudders. “I am hurt about somebody. I’m terribly hurt. I’m so hurt I want to die.”