Purity

by Jonathan Franzen

  “How so?”

  “If I were in charge of your image management? I’d hire some fat people, some ugly people. I wouldn’t set up camp in the most beautiful valley on earth. It gives me the creeps, all this beauty. It makes me not like you.”

  Andreas stiffened. “Well, we can’t have that, can we.”

  “Well, or maybe we can. Maybe not liking you is the way I can be helpful. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who’d be creeped out by the scene here. Didn’t you tell me you wanted me to help you understand how the world sees you? I can be your personal disliker. I have some real skills in that line.”

  “It’s funny,” he said. “The more you dislike me, the more I like you.”

  “I got that from my last boss, too.”

  “There are no bosses here.”

  “Oh, please.”

  He laughed. “You’re right—I’m the boss.”

  “Well, and as long as we’re being honest, I never paid much attention to your Project. What the world thinks of it is your problem, not mine. I mean, it’s nice you wanted me here. But the main reason I came is because Annagret said you could help me answer my questions.”

  “You don’t admire the Project even a little bit?”

  “Maybe I don’t understand it yet. I’m sure it’s very admirable. But some of your leaks are so small, it’s almost like those revenge-on-the-cheating-boyfriend websites.”

  “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? We were just discussing a new upload—Australian government emails on the subject of endangered species. Wallabies, parrots. How to pretend to care about protecting them while they sell them out to the ranchers and hunters and mining interests. This is not a trivial leak. But the only way we get it, the only way we remain relevant, is by delivering the goods every day. We have to do the small things to get the big things.”

  “I agree that it’s too bad about the endangered animals of Australia,” Pip said. “But I’m still smelling something else.”

  “Ah, this nose of yours. What exactly is it telling you?”

  She thought before she answered. She didn’t really want to be his personal disliker—she could see what a tiring and alienating job it would be. She’d come to Bolivia willing to admire the Project; it was mainly the chokingly high admiration levels of the other interns that made her hostile. And yet her hostility did help her stand out from the crowd. It could be a way to gratify her own miserable little ego and be liked by him.

  “There was this place,” she said. “This dairy called Moonglow Dairy, near where I lived when I was growing up. I guess it was a real dairy, because they had a lot of cows, but their real money didn’t come from selling milk. It came from selling high-quality manure to organic farmers. It was a shit factory pretending to be a milk factory.”

  Andreas smiled. “I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

  “Well, you say you’re about citizen journalism. You’re supposedly in the business of leaks. But isn’t your real business—”

  “Cow manure?”

  “I was going to say fame and adulation. The product is you.”

  In the tropics, there was a specific minute in the morning when the sun’s warmth stopped being pleasant and turned fierce. But this minute hadn’t arrived yet. The perspiration popping out on Andreas’s face had come from something else.

  “Annagret was right,” he said. “You really are the person I wanted here. You have courage and integrity.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “Not true.”

  “Not to Colleen?”

  “Yes, all right.” He nodded slowly, his eyes on the ground. “Maybe to Colleen. Does that make it easier for you to believe me?”

  “No. It makes me want to go pack my suitcase. Colleen is totally unhappy.”

  “She’s been here too long. It’s time for her to move on.”

  “And now you need a new Colleen? To exploit and string along? Is that the idea?”

  “I feel bad for her. But I didn’t do anything to her. She wants something I’ve always been very clear about not being able to give her.”

  “That’s not how she tells it.”

  He raised his eyes and looked at her. “Pip,” he said. “Why don’t you like me?”

  “It’s a fair question.”

  “Is it because of Colleen?”

  “No.” She could feel her self-control slipping away. “I think I’m just generally hostile these days, especially with men. It’s a problem I’m having. Couldn’t you tell from my emails?”

  “Tone is hard to judge in emails.”

  “I was fairly happy here until last night. And now suddenly it’s like I’m back in all the shit I tried to run away from. I’m still an angry person with poor impulse control. I’m sure it’s great what you’re doing for the wallabies and parrots—right on, Sunlight Project. But I’m thinking I should go and pack my suitcase.”

  She stood up to leave before she had a full-on outburst.

  “I can’t stop you,” Andreas said. “All I can do is offer you the truth. Will you sit down again and let me tell you the truth?”

  “Unless the truth is very long, I might stay standing up.”

  “Sit down,” he said in a much different voice.

  She sat down. She was unused to being commanded. She had to admit that it was kind of a relief.

  “Here are two true things about fame,” he said. “One is that it’s very lonely. The other is that the people around you constantly project themselves onto you. This is part of why it’s so lonely. It’s as if you’re not even there as a person. You’re merely an object that people project their idealism onto, or their anger, or what have you. And of course you can’t complain, can’t even talk about it, because you’re the one who wanted to be famous. If you try to talk about it anyway, some angry young woman in Oakland, California, will accuse you of self-pity.”

  “I was just calling it like I saw it.”

  “Everything conspires to make the famous person ever more alone.”

  She was disappointed that his truth had to do with him, not her. “What about Toni Field?” she said. “Do you feel lonely with her? Isn’t that why famous people marry each other? To have someone to talk to about the terrible pain of being famous?”

  “Toni’s an actress. Sleeping with her is a mutually flattering transaction.”

  “Wow. Does she know that’s how you think about it?”

  “We both know the terms of the transaction. Those have been the terms for me with everyone since Annagret. Things were different with Annagret because I was nobody when I met her. It’s the reason I trust her. It’s the reason I trusted her when she told me we should invite you here.”

  “I didn’t trust her at all.”

  “I know. But she saw something special in you. Not just talent but something else.”

  “What does that even mean? The more you try to tell me the truth, the weirder this gets.”

  “I’m simply asking you to give me a chance. I want you to keep being yourself. Don’t project. Try to see me as a person trying to run a business, not some famous older man you’re angry with. Take advantage of the opportunity. Give Willow a chance to teach you some research skills.”

  “I’m really questioning this Willow idea.”

  Andreas took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. She didn’t dare do anything with her hands except leave them completely limp. His eyes were beautifully blue. Even subtracting the vision-distorting effects of his charisma, he was a good-looking man.

  “Do you want some more truth?” he said.

  She looked aside. “I don’t know.”

  “The truth is that Willow will be extremely nice to you if I tell her to be. Not fake nice. Genuinely nice. All I have to do is press a button.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Pip said, pulling her hands away.

  “What am I supposed to do? Pretend it’s not true? Deny my own power? She projects like crazy onto me. There’s not
hing I can do about it.”

  “Whoa.”

  “You came here for truth, didn’t you? I think you’re strong enough to hear it undiluted.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Anyway,” he said, standing up. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  The sun had turned fierce. Pip fell over onto her side as if pushed by the force of its heat, her head swimming. She felt as if, for a moment, she’d had her skull opened up and her brains given a vigorous stir with a wooden spoon. She was still a long way from submitting to him, a long way from being his for the taking, but for a moment he’d been deep enough inside her head that she could feel how it could happen—how Willow might change her feelings like an octopus changing color, just because he told her to, and how Colleen could be trapped in a scene she hated by a wish for a thing she knew she’d never get from a person she thought was an asshole. For a moment, an appalling divide had opened up in Pip. On one side was her good sense and skepticism. On the other was a whole-body susceptibility different in category from any she’d experienced. Even at the height of her preoccupation with Stephen, she hadn’t wanted to be his object; hadn’t fantasized about submitting and obeying. But these were the terms of the susceptibility that Andreas, his fame and confidence, had revealed in her. She understood better why Annagret had been so contemptuous of Stephen’s weakness.

  She forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. Every color around her was both itself and blazing white. In the forest beyond the river, the chainsaw was moaning. How could she have imagined that she had any idea where she was? She had no idea. The place was a cult the more diabolical for pretending not to be one.

  She stood up and returned to the barn, appropriated the nearest free tablet, and took it down into the riverside shade. Every second day since her arrival, she’d sent a cheerful email to her mother at her neighbor Linda’s address. Linda had written back a few times, reporting that her mother was “kinda low” but “hangin’ in there.” Pip had concocted the fiction that it was impossible to make phone calls from Los Volcanes—what was the point of being here if she had to call her mother every day?—and she hesitated now before activating TSP’s equivalent of Skype. To break down and call her mother was almost to admit that she couldn’t survive here, that she was already on her way out. But the situation seemed to qualify as urgent. She didn’t like having her brains stirred with a wooden spoon.

  “Pussycat? Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Pip said. “Pedro had to go into town for supplies. I’m calling from a pay phone there. Here, I mean. Here in town.”

  “Oh, I can’t believe I’m hearing your dear voice. I thought it could be months and months before I did.”

  “No, well, here it is.”

  “Dearheart, how are you? Are you really all right?”

  “I’m great. You can’t imagine how beautiful everything is, I made a friend, Colleen, I told you about her, she’s really smart and funny—she has a law degree from Yale. Everyone here is well educated. Everyone has parents they’re in touch with.”

  “Do you know when you’re coming home yet?”

  “Mom, I just got here.”

  There ensued a silence in which she imagined her mother remembering her purpose in coming to Bolivia, the angry things she’d said before leaving with her suitcase.

  “So anyway,” Pip said, “Andreas came back last night. Andreas Wolf. I finally got to meet him. He’s actually really nice.”

  Her mother said nothing, and so Pip chattered on about the movie in Buenos Aires, about Toni Field and other Wolf women, hoping to imply that he wasn’t preying on the interns. That she wanted to imply this, when the whole reason she’d called her mother was that she was afraid of being preyed on, was a good illustration of their relationship.

  “So anyway,” she said.

  “Purity,” her mother said. “He’s a lawbreaker. Linda printed out an article for me to read. He’s in very serious trouble with the law. His fans don’t seem to care about that—they think he’s a hero. But if you break the law, just by helping him, you might never be able to come home. You need to think about this.”

  “I haven’t seen any reports of interns returning in handcuffs.”

  “Violating federal law is not a joke.”

  “Mom, everyone here is seriously rich and well educated. I really don’t think—”

  “Maybe their families can afford expensive lawyers. I’m not going to have a good night’s sleep until you’re safely back home.”

  “Well, at least now you’ve got some reason for not sleeping.”

  This was a moderately cruel thing to say, but Pip could now see, as she should have seen before she made the mistake of calling, that her mother had nothing helpful to offer.

  “Whoops,” she said. “Pedro’s waving to me—gotta go.”

  She was heading up to the barn when Willow came out of it. She was wearing a polka-dot jumper in which she looked oppressively fantastic.

  “Hey Willow how’s it going.”

  “Pip, I need to talk to you.”

  “Oh, Christ, let me guess. You want to apologize.”

  Willow frowned. “For what?”

  “I don’t know—for being mean to me last night?”

  “I wasn’t being mean. I was being honest.”

  “Jesus. Fuck me.”

  “Seriously,” Willow said. “What did I say to you that wasn’t honest?”

  Pip sighed. “I don’t even remember. I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Andreas just told me that he wants us to work together. I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Yeah, I bet you do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He told you to like me, and now you like me. How am I not supposed to find that creepy?”

  “I already wanted to like you,” Willow said. “We all did. It’s just that your hostility is kind of hard to take.”

  “It’s who I am. It’s what I live and breathe.”

  “Well, then, explain it to me. If I understand better where it’s coming from, it won’t bother me anymore. Do you want to go for a walk now and tell me about it?”

  “Willow.” Pip waved a hand in front of her eyes. “Hello? You’re totally creeping me out. You’re fucking with my head. You were mean to me last night—my senses did not deceive me. And now you want to be my friend? Because Andreas told you to?”

  Willow laughed. “He told me to remember that you’re funny—that that’s the way your mind works. And he’s right. You’re really funny.”

  Pip broke away and marched up toward the barn. Willow ran after her and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Let go of me,” Pip said. “You’re worse than Annagret.”

  “No,” Willow said. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. We have to find a way to like each other.”

  “I’m never going to like you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do want to know. I want you to be honest. That’s the only way this works. Come sit with me and tell me everything you hate about me. I already told you I don’t like your hostility.”

  To Pip there seemed to be only two choices, either pack her bag or do what Willow asked. If she hadn’t called her mother, she might have imagined there was something to go home to. But she’d come here hoping to get information, she hadn’t got it yet, and according to both Colleen and Andreas she had courage. So she sat down with Willow in the shade of a flowering tree.

  “I hate that you’re way prettier than I am,” she said. “I hate that there were always these alpha girls and you’re one of them and I’m not. I hate that you went to Stanford. I hate that you don’t have to worry about money. I hate that you’ll never really get how privileged you are. I hate that you love the Project and aren’t bothered by how weird this place is. I hate that you don’t have to be snarky. I hate that you can’t imagine what it’s like to be poor and owe money, and have a depressive sin
gle parent, and be so angry and weird that you can’t even have a boyfriend—oh, never mind.” Pip shook her head with disgust. “This is obviously all just my own self-pity.”

  But Willow’s face had become a purplish-red prune of hurt. “No,” she said. “No. You’re only saying what I’ve always known people think about me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and began to cry. Pip was horrified.

  “I didn’t ask to be pretty,” Willow snuffled. “I didn’t ask to be privileged.”

  “No, I know,” Pip said consolingly. “Of course not.”

  “What can I do to make up for it? What can I possibly ever do?”

  “Well. Actually. Do you happen to have a hundred and thirty thousand dollars you can spare?”

  Willow smiled while continuing to cry. “That’s funny. You really are funny.”

  “I take it that’s a no.”

  “I suffer, too, you know. Believe me, I suffer.” Willow took Pip’s hands and rubbed her palms with her thumbs. It seemed to be a Sunlight Project thing, this invasive grabbing of hands. “But can I be really honest with you?”

  “Seems only fair.”

  “There’s another reason I sort of hate you. It’s because he likes you.”

  “He seems to like you, too.”

  Willow shook her head. “The way he talked to me about you—I could tell. Even before that, I could tell. You obviously didn’t care about the Project. And then, when we heard he writes you emails … It’s going to be a little hard to work with you, knowing how much he likes you.”

  A complex fear was stealing over Pip, the fear that Andreas really did specially like her, along with the fear of being disliked for it; of having to apologize for it, especially to Colleen. “OK,” she said. “Now I’m starting to feel guilty.”

  “It’s no fun, is it?”

  Willow smiled and leaned forward and gave her a sisterly hug. Pip had the corrupt sensation of being bought off with the prospect of the friendship of an alpha girl, the promise of social acceptance. But she was no longer distrusting Willow. This seemed like a step forward.

  In the evening, on the veranda, Pip told Colleen almost everything the day had brought.