Crossroads
- Автор: Франзен Джонатан
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Crossroads». Краткое содержание книги:
Universally recognized as the leading novelist of his generation, Jonathan Franzen is often described as a teller of family stories. Only now, though, in *Crossroads* , has he given us a novel in which a family, in all the intricacy of its...
“Marion—”
“Shut up,” she said, unbuckling his belt. “You have no rights here.”
She unzipped him, and there it was. The beautiful and hateful thing. Interested in seventeen-year-olds, interested in home-wrecking forty-year-olds, apparently even somewhat interested in his wife. She lowered her face to it, and—good Lord. He hadn’t showered.
A noseful of Cottrell ought to have sobered her, but somehow everything was interchangeable. It was as if, instead of repulsing the assault she’d provoked from Bradley, she’d surrendered to it and were catching a whiff of the aftermath. Though the matter of the seventeen-year-old still had to be dealt with, the Cottrell matter seemed settled. Withholding her mouth would suffice as punishment. She pushed him onto his back and stretched out on top of him.
“With a kiss,” she said, “I forgive thee.”
“You don’t seem right.”
“I suggest taking the kiss while you can.”
“Marion?”
She kissed him, and everything was interchangeable. Not just he and the other man, not just she and the other woman, but past and present. They hadn’t made love in so long, it might as well have been twenty-five years. She in her younger body, he pulling off the coat she’d bought, the air as dry and thin as Arizona’s, the fading light a mountain light. And how easy it had been in Arizona. Along with a faulty mind and a believing heart, God had given her an oversexedness so scratchable that she could relieve it in a public library without attracting notice. And how easy it was again. Seizing on some incidental contact and running with it, she promptly convulsed. She opened her eyes and saw gleaming, in Russ’s eyes, a memory of that orgasmic girl. He’d liked that girl, oh, yes, he had. The gift she’d been given had made him feel powerful. Although she’d misplaced it in the swamp of motherhood, lost it altogether in the wasteland of anxious depression, her refinding of it made him powerful again. His thrusting abandon hurt around the edges, and she would pay for it later, but his excitement excited her. She urged him on, urged herself on. She heard an almost barking sound, an ongoing laugh of surprise, until further convulsing silenced her. He redoubled his efforts, but here, too, the past recurred. As in Arizona, once sated, she remembered her guilt.
When he’d finished, he rested his full weight on her, his scratchy cheek against her neck.
“Not so bad,” she said. “Right?”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Well. No rush.”
The only light remaining was from the bedside alarm clock, the only sound the passing of cars in the distance. He kissed her neck.
“To be with you like this—I’d forgotten.”
“I know,” she said.
“It’s such a simple gift.”
“Shh.”
The sound of a car passing was like a breaking wave of water. Guilt fluttered in her again.
“Turning and turning,” he said. “‘Till by turning and turning, we come round right.’ That’s how this feels. Like I’ve been turning and turning…”
The song was devotional, but she knew what he meant. To bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed. In the plain words of the song was a joy so deep that its roots were inextricable from sorrow’s, and the release of sorrow was even sweeter than the other kind of release. Sorrow was of the heart, and she gave herself to it. As she wept, she felt him hardening inside her. It made her cry harder. She was his again.
He brushed at her tears with his fingertips. “I never want to leave you.”
“That’s nice,” she said, sniffing. “But I should probably use the bathroom.”
“I’m no good for this world. We never should have left Indiana. We should have spent our whole life there, just the two of us and the kids, a community of believers…”
She moved beneath him, hinting at the bathroom, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“All I want is a family to provide for. A Lord to worship. And a wife who … Marion, I swear. If you’ll forgive me, simple gifts will be enough.”
“Shh.”
“You always know the right thing to do. How you knew we should—this is the last thing I would have imagined happening, but you were right. You’re always right. You were right about—”
“Shh. Just let me pee.”
Careful not to stub a toe, she felt her way to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. There was a magician’s trick to be performed, a snap of the fingers that would make Russ’s remorse disappear. His confessions had been piteously sincere, like a little boy’s, and it was time to make her own confession. The sparrow had told her it was time.
And yet: what if she didn’t? What exactly would be gained by dragging him through Bradley Grant, through Santa, through the abortion, through Rancho Los Amigos? She could clear her conscience by groveling in the dirt, but was it really a kindness to her husband? Now that Perry’s calamity had brought Russ back to her, might it not be better to simply love him and serve him? He was like a boy, and a boy needed structure in his life, and wasn’t remorse a kind of structure? She would never be simple, but she could give him the gift of thinking he’d wronged her more than she’d wronged him. Might this not be kinder than dumping her complexities on him?
It could have been Satan asking, but she didn’t think it was, because the temptation didn’t feel evil. It felt more like punishment. To not confess her sins to Russ—to renounce her chance to be chastised, maybe pitied, maybe even forgiven—would be to carry the burden for the remainder of her life. The unending burden of being alone with what she knew.
I need help here. Any kind of sign would be welcome.
She waited, shivering, on the toilet seat. If God was listening, He gave no indication of it, and while she waited something shifted in her. Although she could always ask Him again later, she’d made her decision.
Russ had peeled back the bedspread and pulled a sheet over himself. She joined him beneath it. “I have something to say to you, and I want you to listen.”
He put a hand on her breast. She gently removed it.
“So you know,” she said, “my father was manic-depressive—”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you knew he was a suicide. But I never told you about my own troubles. I never told you how disturbed I was when I was Perry’s age. I was afraid of scaring you away, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. Russ, honey, I couldn’t bear it. I loved you so much, I couldn’t bear it.”
“I knew you were a little crazy.”
“But it was more than a little. You had a right to know before you married me. I knew what the danger was, and I didn’t tell you. So I don’t want to hear about this being your fault.”
“It is my fault. I was the—”
“Shh. Just listen. You’re mixing up two different things. You feel bad about your … indiscretion. And even that, you shouldn’t feel bad about. I gave you my permission.”
“That doesn’t mean I had to use it.”
“You were hurt. I hurt you because you’d hurt me—these things happen in a marriage. My point is that you had bad luck. You’re embarrassed by what happened in Kitsillie, you feel guilty about it, and I understand that. But it’s enough. You don’t have to feel guilty about Perry, too. His troubles all come from me.”
“I knew very well what God wanted me to do.”
“Sweetie, I didn’t listen to Him, either. From now on, we’ll have to try to do better. That’s why I want us to pray together every day. I want us to change. I want us to be closer. I want us to experience the joy of God together.”
He shuddered.
“A terrible thing happened, but there can still be joy. I was looking at the birds outside—can’t we still take joy in Creation? Can’t we take joy in each other?”
He gave a cry of pain.
“Shh, shh.”
“I don’t deserve you!”
“Shh. I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.”