Purity

by Jonathan Franzen

  She hurried outside and crossed the pasture so briskly that the goats scattered. Andreas must have heard her coming, but he didn’t turn around until she reached him and saw that he’d been crying. It reminded her of something; of Stephen crying on their front porch in Oakland.

  He patted the grass. “Sit down.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just sit down. I got bad news.”

  Mindful of their visibility, she sat down at some distance from him.

  “My mother is sick,” he said. “Kidney cancer. I just found out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Pip said. “I didn’t know you were even in touch with her.”

  “She doesn’t hear from me. But I still hear from her.”

  “Should I leave you alone?”

  “Was there something you wanted?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “I’d much rather hear about you than think about her.”

  “Is it bad, her cancer? What stage is it?”

  He shrugged. “She wants to come and see me. Does that sound good? It’s not as if I can travel to her. That’s some small blessing. I’m spared that decision.”

  “I feel like hugging you. But I don’t want to be seen doing it.”

  “That’s good. You’ve been very good, by the way.”

  “Thank you. Although … Are you mad at me?”

  “Certainly not.”

  She nodded, wondering whether to believe him.

  “I’ve spent most of my life hating her,” he said. “I told you some of the reasons I hate her. But now I get this email and I remember that they weren’t the real reasons, or not the whole reason. They’re half the reason. The other half is that I can never stop loving her, in spite of all those other reasons. I forget about this, for years at a time. But then I get this email…”

  He expelled air, either a laugh or a sob. Pip didn’t dare look to see which it was. “Maybe the love is more important than the hate,” she said.

  “I’m sure for you it would be.”

  “Well, anyway. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you need to talk to me privately? Should we make some arrangement?”

  “No. Either I’m a terrible spy or you were just being paranoid.”

  “Then what did you want?”

  She turned to him and showed him, with the look on her face, what she wanted.

  His eyes, which were bloodshot, widened. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  She looked down at the ground and spoke in a low voice. “I feel really bad about what happened the other time. I think it could be better. I mean, if that’s at all interesting to you.”

  “It is. Absolutely. I’d hardly dared hope.”

  “I’m sorry. You asked what I wanted, but I shouldn’t have answered. Not now.”

  “No, it’s fine.” He sprang to his feet, his grief apparently forgotten. “I have to go to town next week, to see her. I was dreading that, but now I’m not. Let me think about how to get you there with me. How does that sound?”

  Pip struggled to find breath to answer. “Sounds good,” she said.

  One of the insaner things about the Project was that private electronic communication was impossible. The internal network was designed so that all chats and emails were viewable by anyone on the network, because everything was viewable to the tech boys and it wasn’t fair to give them an advantage. If a girl wanted to hook up with a boy (and it happened quite a bit, though the boys were physically a less prepossessing lot), she arranged it either openly on the network or in person. And so it was that Andreas pressed a handwritten note into Pip’s hand when she was leaving the main building the following night.

  Be happy: your spying days may be over. No plausible story is available. You’re coming with me because I’m meeting potential investors and you’re the intern whose judgement I most trust. But think carefully about whether you’re ready for the others to see you differently. I’ll accept whatever you decide. Please burn this.—A.

  On the veranda, above the dark river, Pip burned the note with a lighter that Colleen had left behind. She missed Colleen and wondered if she herself was in for three years of being strung along, but she also felt victorious and capable. She’d gone deeper into the dark river than Colleen had, deeper than just her knees, and she was pretty sure she’d already gone farther with Andreas. It was all very strange and would have felt even stranger if her life hadn’t been so strange to begin with. To her the strangest thought of all was that she might be extraordinarily appealing. It went against everything she believed in—or at least against everything she wanted to believe in; because, deep down, in her most honest heart, maybe every person considered herself extraordinarily appealing. Maybe this was just a human thing.

  “Do I get to meet your mother?” she asked Andreas a week later, when Pedro was driving them up the steep road out of the valley.

  “Do you want to? Annagret was the only woman of mine who ever did. My mother was very kind to her, until she wasn’t.”

  Pip was too disturbed by the phrase woman of mine to answer. Did the phrase now apply to her? It sounded like it did.

  “She’s very seductive,” Andreas said. “You’d probably like her. Annagret liked her a lot—until she didn’t.”

  Pip rolled down her window, put her face to the cool early-morning air, and whispered, “Am I your woman.” She didn’t think Andreas could hear her, but it was possible he had.

  “You’re my confidante,” he said. “I’d be interested in what your good sense has to say about her.”

  He put his hand on her upper thigh and left it there. Pretty much every thought she’d had in the last week had led back to one thing. She was experiencing stronger symptoms of being in love, a queasiness more persistent, a heart more racing, than she remembered having had with Stephen. But the symptoms were ambiguous. A condemned person walking to the gallows had many of the same ones. When Andreas’s hand crept, thrillingly, to the inside of her thigh, she had neither the courage nor even the inclination to place a corresponding hand on his leg. The rightness of the phrase preyed upon was becoming evident. The feelings of prey in the grip of a wolf’s teeth were hard to distinguish from being in love.

  Her Spanish was enough improved that she followed everything Andreas said to Pedro. Pedro was to be at the Cortez at six o’clock the next morning. Andreas would probably be waiting for him, but if he wasn’t, Pedro was to proceed to the airport with a sign that said KATYA WOLF and bring her to the hotel.

  Evidently Andreas intended to spend all day and all night and possibly the next morning with Pip alone. How absurd that they first had to sit together in the back seat for three hours while Pedro braked for speed bumps. What a torture, these rompemuelles.

  I am in love, she decided. I’m the least beautiful girl at Los Volcanes, but I’m funny and brave and honest and he chose me. He can break my heart later—I don’t care.

  At the Cortez, he instructed her to wait in the lobby for fifteen minutes before joining him in his room. She watched damp-haired, morning-faced travelers surrendering room keys. It seemed to be no time of day in no place on earth. A Latin businessman idling by the reception desk was looking intently at her chest. She rolled her eyes; he smiled. He was an insect compared to the man who was waiting for her.

  She found him sitting with his tablet at the desk in his room. A tray of sandwiches and cut-up fruit was on the bed. “Have some food,” he said.

  “Do I seem hungry?”

  “Your stomach seems sensitive. It’s important that you eat.”

  She hazarded some papaya, which according to her mother was soothing to the stomach.

  “What would you like to do today?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Is there a particular church or museum I’m supposed to see?”

  “I don’t love being seen in public. But, yes, the old town center is worth seeing.”

  “You could wear sunglasses and a funny hat.”

  “Is that what you want?”<
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  The papaya made her burp. She felt that she had to stop being prey, to somehow take the initiative. She was still disinclined to touch him, but she walked over behind him and forced herself to put her hands on his shoulders. She ran them down onto his chest. It had to be done.

  He took hold of her wrists so she couldn’t get away.

  “I thought you never laid a hand on interns,” she said. “I thought it was bad press.”

  “Serially bedding them would be bad press,” he said. “Falling in love with one of them is a very different story.”

  Her knees quaked. “Did you actually just say that?”

  “I did.”

  The wooden spoon, the wooden spoon.

  “OK, then,” she said, sinking to the floor.

  He let go of her wrists, extricated himself from the desk, and kneeled in front of her.

  “Pip,” he said. “I know I’m old. Probably as old as your father. But I have a young heart—I don’t have much experience with real love. Probably not much more than you do. This is new and frightening for me, too.”

  The wooden spoon. Her brain was churning. It was more a father than a lover to whom she now pressed herself in her fear; more a father whom she clutched for safety. And yet, the night before, she’d trimmed her personal hair for him with a razor. She was massively confused. He held her tightly, stroking her head.

  “Do you like me at all?” he said.

  She nodded because she knew he wanted her to.

  “A lot?” he said. “Or just a little?”

  “Quite a lot,” she said for the same reason.

  “I like you, too.”

  She nodded again. But even though he’d made her do it, she felt bad about lying to him. If he truly was falling in love with her, it was a mean thing to do. To make up for it, she tried to say something both honest and nice. “I really liked the way you made me feel the other time. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m fairly obsessed with it. I want you to do it again.”

  His body tensed at this. She worried that she’d said the wrong thing—that he’d seen through her attempt to turn their talk away from love, and was hurt. And so she kissed him. Urgently, forwardly, offering him her tongue, opening herself to him, and he responded in kind. But the sensible side of her was still semi-functioning. A laugh came out of her before she could stifle it.

  “What?” he said, smiling.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m just wondering if we’re both trying to do what neither of us actually wants.”

  He seemed alarmed. “What do you mean?”

  “No, just the kissing part,” she hastened to say. “You didn’t seem so into the smooching last time. You were honest about that. And, honestly, it’s fine with me too if we skip it.”

  It happened again. Again, for a second, for less than a second, before he could turn his face away, she saw a wholly different person, a crazy person.

  “You’re a remarkable woman,” he said, face averted.

  “Thank you.”

  He stood up and walked away from her. “I mean it,” he said. “I’ve never felt so off balance in my life. You make me feel smaller, in a good way. I’m supposed to be the great teller of truth, and you keep cutting me down. I hate it, but I love it. I love you.” He turned back to her and said it again. “I love you.”

  She blushed. “Thank you.”

  “That’s it?” he said wildly. “Thank you? Who made you this way? Where did you come from?”

  “The San Lorenzo Valley. It’s quite the humble, democratic place.”

  He strode back over to her and yanked her to her feet. “You’re driving me crazy!”

  “All is not so well inside my own head, either.”

  “So what are we? How do we do this? What is the way we’re going to be together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Take off your fucking clothes—does that work?”

  “It has some promise.”

  “So do it. Slowly. I want to watch you. Take your panties off last.”

  “OK. I can do that.”

  She liked taking orders from him. Liked it more than anything else about him. But as she did as she’d been told, unbuttoning one button of her shirt, and then a second button, she wasn’t sure that she liked that she liked it. She wished she could unhear what Stephen had said to her, in his bedroom, about needing a father. A dread began to build in her as she undid a fourth button, and then the last. She beheld an emotional vista in which she was angry at her missing father, at all older men, and provoked and punished this father-aged man, drove him wild, induced him to offer himself as the person missing from her life; and her body responded to the offer; but it was icky to respond to him that way. She let her bra fall to the floor.

  “My God you’re beautiful,” he said, staring.

  “I think you mean I’m young.”

  “No. The inside of you is even more beautiful than the outside.”

  “Keep talking,” she said. “It’s helping.”

  When she was finally fully naked, he dropped to his knees and pressed his face to her crotch. “You shaved for me,” he murmured gratefully.

  “Who said it was for you?” she said with a faltering laugh. Being so liked by him, she was liking herself quite a lot, but it deepened her sense of dread to hear herself continuing to provoke him, and to feel the effect her provocation had. His hands were trembling on her butt. He was kissing her, inhaling her, and she could feel how it would all happen again, the same as last time, except that this time she would have to submit to the whole deal; there would be no going back on her word.

  All at once, at the prospect of being fucked by him, she experienced a different kind of climax. The lack of friction with which she’d arrived at this moment, the speed and directness with which he’d arranged an assignation with her, the ease with which he’d got her standing naked in a hotel room, combined with a complex of misgivings—father, killer, spoon-wielder, fugitive, crazy person—to produce a simple thought: she didn’t want to be his woman.

  In the sober light of this thought, what they were doing seemed ridiculous.

  “Um,” she said, stepping away from him. “I think I need a small time-out.”

  He slumped. “Now what.”

  “No, seriously, I’ve been looking forward to this for a month and a half. I’ve been touching myself every night, thinking about it. Imagining I’m you. But now—I don’t know. I’m wondering if touching myself might be enough.”

  He slumped further. She picked up her bra and put it on. She put on her jeans, not bothering with the underpants, which were still right in front of him.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “So what would you like to do instead?” His voice was strained with self-control. “Visit the picturesque town center?”

  “Honestly I hadn’t thought past going to bed with you.”

  “It’s still an option.”

  “Maybe if you order me to. I like it when you give orders. I think I may have a slave personality.”

  “That’s not an order I can give. I don’t want it if you don’t want it. You said you wanted it.”

  “I know.”

  He sighed heavily. “What changed your mind?”

  “It just suddenly didn’t feel right to me.”

  “Am I too old for you?”

  “God, no. I like your age. If anything, maybe a little too much. Plus you’ve got that ageless German male thing going. You’ve got those blue eyes.”

  He bowed his head. “So you just don’t like who I am.”

  She felt terribly sorry. She kneeled by him and petted his shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Everybody likes you,” she said. “Millions of people like you.”

  “They like a lie. You’re the person I showed my true self to.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She hugged his head to her chest and rocked him a little. Her heart was reengaging with him, and she won
dered if a mercy fuck was in the offing. She’d never done one, but she now saw how it happened. An ulterior part of her was further considering that, at some later date, she might take retrospective satisfaction in having fucked the famous outlaw hero, and that this was her chance to do it, and that, conversely, this future self of hers would writhe with remorse if all she’d done was lead him on and chicken out. Chicken out twice.

  He had his face between her breasts, his hands down the back of her jeans. The fact that she’d chickened out twice seemed significant. She thought of what her mother had said before she left Felton with her suitcase. “I know you’re very angry with me, pussycat, and you have a right to be. I worry about you in the jungle, on a different continent. I worry about you with Andreas Wolf. But the one thing I never worry about is your good moral sense. You’ve always been a loving person, with a clear sense of right and wrong. I know you better than you know yourself. And that’s what I know about you.” Pip, who could see nothing but the mess her bad behavior made of every relationship in her life, had felt quite sure, in the moment, that her mother knew nothing at all about her. But to have recoiled from Andreas twice, when everything argued for submitting—didn’t this mean something? Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she did have a clear moral sense. She could remember having loved Ramón and even Dreyfuss pureheartedly. What had ruined things in Oakland was her lust for Stephen, her anger at an older man.

  She kissed the curly top of Andreas’s head and untangled herself from him. “It’s just not going to happen,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  She put on her shirt and went down to the lobby. Her decision seemed irrevocable, not even in her power, and she was prepared to sit in the lobby all day and all night if she had to. But Pedro was back with the Land Cruiser in less than an hour. She couldn’t face sitting in the front with him; her body felt prickly and contaminating. She lay down in the back and waited to be overwhelmed with shame and guilt and second-guessing.