Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

“That sounds horrible.”

“Yeah, I don’t particularly like it in him.”

“But you’re still friends with him, even though you’re a feminist.”

“You don’t stop being loyal to a friend just because they’re not perfect.”

“No, but you try to help them be a better person. You explain why what they’re doing is wrong.”

“Is that what you did with Eliza?”

“OK, you have a point there.”

The next time she spoke to Walter, he finally asked her out on an actual movie-and-a-dinner date. The movie (this was very Walter) turned out to be a free one, a black-and-white Greek-language thing called The Fiend of Athens . While they sat in the Art Department cinema, surrounded by empty seats, waiting for the movie to start, Patty described her plan for the summer, which was to stay with Cathy Schmidt at her parents’ house in the suburbs, continue physical therapy, and prepare for a comeback next season. Out of the blue, in the empty cinema, Walter asked her if she might instead want to live in the room being vacated by Richard, who was moving to New York City.

“Richard’s leaving?”

“Yeah,” Walter said, “New York is where all the interesting music is happening. He and Herrera want to reconstitute the band and try to make it there. And I’ve still got three months on the lease.”

“Wow.” Patty composed her face carefully. “And I would live in his room.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be his room anymore,” Walter said. “It would be yours. It’s an easy walk to the gym. I’m thinking it would be a lot easier than commuting all the way from Edina.”

“And so you’re asking me to live with you.”

Walter blushed and avoided her eyes. “You’d have your own room, obviously. But, yes, if you ever wanted to have dinner and hang out, that would be great, too. I think I’m somebody you can trust to be respectful of your space but also be there if you wanted company.”

Patty peered into his face, struggling to understand. She felt a combination of (a) offended, and (b) very sorry to hear that Richard was leaving. She almost suggested to Walter that he had better kiss her first, if he was going to be asking her to live with him, but she was so offended that she didn’t feel like being kissed at that moment. And then the cinema lights went down.

As the autobiographer remembers it, the plot of The Fiend of Athens concerned a mild-mannered Athenian accountant with horn-rimmed glasses who is walking to work one morning when he sees his own picture on the front page of a newspaper, with the headline FIEND OF ATHENS STILL AT LARGE. Athenians in the street immediately start pointing at him and chasing him, and he’s on the brink of being apprehended when he’s rescued by a gang of terrorists or criminals who mistake him for their fiendish leader. The gang has a bold plan to do something like blow up the Parthenon, and the hero keeps trying to explain to them that he’s just a mild-mannered accountant, not the Fiend, but the gang is so counting on his help, and the rest of the city is so intent on killing him, that there finally comes an amazing moment when he whips off his glasses and becomes their fearless leader —the Fiend of Athens! He says, “OK, men, this is how the plan is going to work.”

Patty watched the movie seeing Walter in the accountant and imagining him whipping his glasses off like that. Afterward, over dinner at Vescio’s, Walter interpreted the movie as a parable of Communism in postwar Greece and explained to Patty how the United States, in need of NATO partners in southeast Europe, had long sponsored political repression over there. The accountant, he said, was an Everyman figure who comes to accept his responsibility to join in the violent struggle against right-wing repression.

Patty was drinking wine. “I don’t agree with that at all,” she said. “I think it’s about how the main character never had a real life, because he was so responsible and timid, and he had no idea what he was actually capable of. He never really got to be alive until he was mistaken for the Fiend. Even though he only lived a few days after that, it was OK for him to die because he’d finally really done something with his life, and realized his potential.”

Walter seemed astonished by this. “That was a totally pointless way to die, though,” he said. “He didn’t accomplish anything.”

“But then why did he do it?”

“Because he felt solidarity with the gang that saved his life. He realized that he had a responsibility to them. They were the underdogs, and they needed him, and he was loyal to them. He died for his loyalty.”

“God,” Patty marveled. “You really are quite amazingly worthy.”

“That’s not how it feels,” Walter said. “I feel like the stupidest person on earth sometimes. I wish I could cheat. I wish I could be totally self-focused like Richard, and try to be some kind of artist. And it’s not because I’m worthy that I can’t. I just don’t have the constitution for it.”

“But the accountant didn’t think he had the constitution for it, either. He surprised himself!”

“Yes, but it wasn’t a realistic movie. The picture in the newspaper didn’t just look like the actor, it was him . And if he’d just given himself up to the authorities, he could have straightened everything out eventually. The mistake he made was to start running. That’s why I’m saying it was a parable. It wasn’t a realistic story.”

It felt strange to Patty to be drinking wine with Walter, since he was a teetotaler, but she was in a fiendish mood and had quickly put away quite a lot. “Take your glasses off,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I won’t be able to see you.”

“That’s OK. It’s just me. Just Patty. Take them off.”

“But I love seeing you! I love looking at you!”

Their eyes met.

“Is that why you want me to live with you?” Patty said.

He blushed. “Yes.”

“Well, so, maybe we should go look at your apartment, so I can decide.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not tired?”

“No. I’m not tired.”

“How’s your knee feeling?”

“My knee is feeling just fine, thank you.”

For once, she was thinking of Walter only. If you’d asked her, as she crutched her way down 4th Street through the soft and conducive May air, whether she was half-hoping to run into Richard at the apartment, she would have answered no. She wanted sex now , and if Walter had had one ounce of sense he would have turned away from the door of his apartment as soon as he heard TV noise on the other side of it—would have taken her somewhere else, anywhere else, back to her own room, anywhere. But Walter believed in true love and was apparently fearful of laying a hand on Patty before he was sure his was reciprocated. He led her right on into the apartment, where Richard was sitting in the living room with his bare feet up on the coffee table, a guitar across his lap, and a spiral notebook beside him on the sofa. He was watching a war movie and working on a jumbo Pepsi and spitting tobacco juice into a 28-ounce tomato can. The room was otherwise neat and uncluttered.

“I thought you were at a show,” Walter said.

“Show sucked,” Richard said.

“You remember Patty, right?”

Patty shyly crutched herself into better view. “Hi, Richard.”

“Patty who is not considered tall,” Richard said.

“That’s me.”

“And yet you are quite tall. I’m glad to see Walter finally lured you over here. I was beginning to fear it would never happen.”

“Patty’s thinking of living here this summer,” Walter said.

Richard raised his eyebrows. “Really.”