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...
“Yeah, you know what? Fuck that. I don’t care what your story is. If you feel like going and boning some other woman, it’s a free country. If it makes you feel better about yourself, I don’t fucking care.”
His father looked at him in horror.
“I’m out of here anyway,” Clem said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this tonight, but you might as well know it. I quit school. I already sent a letter to the draft board. I’m going to Vietnam.”
He dropped the snow shovels and stalked away.
“Clem,” his father shouted. “Come back here.”
Clem raised his arm and gave him the middle finger as he went into the church. The entry hall was empty. Laura Dobrinsky had left two butts and a mess of ashes on the floor. He paused to consider where else to look for Becky, and the door behind him burst open.
“Don’t you walk away from me.”
He ran up a flight of stairs. He still hadn’t checked the parlor or the sanctuary. He was halfway down the hallway when his father caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Why are you walking away from me?”
“Take your hands off me. I’m looking for Becky.”
“She’s at the Haefles’ with your mother.”
“No, she’s not. Becky is sick of you, too.”
His father glanced at Ambrose’s open door, unlocked his own office, and lowered his voice. “If you have something to say to me, you could pay me the courtesy of not walking away before I can answer.”
“Courtesy?” Clem followed him into the office. “You mean, like the courtesy of leaving Mom at the Haefles’ while you entertain your little lady friend?”
His father turned on the light and closed the door. “If you would calm down, I would be happy to explain what happened tonight.”
“Yeah, but look me in the eye, Dad. Look me in the eye and see if I believe a word of it.”
“That’s enough.” The old man was angry now, too. “You were out of line at Thanksgiving, and you’re very much out of line now.”
“Because I’m so fucking sick of you.”
“And I am sick of your disrespect.”
“Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son?”
“I said that’s enough!”
Clem would have welcomed a fight. He hadn’t thrown a punch since junior high. “You want to hit me? You want to try me?”
“No, Clem.”
“Mister Nonviolence?”
There was Christian forbearance in the way his father shook his head. Clem would have loved to at least shove him against the wall, but this would merely have fed his Christian victimhood. The only thing Clem could hit him with was words.
“Did you even hear what I said in the parking lot? I quit school.”
“I heard that you were very angry and trying to provoke me.”
“I wasn’t being provoking. I was conveying a fact.”
His father sank into his swivel chair. A blank sheet of paper was in his typewriter. He rolled it out and smoothed it. “I’m sorry we got off on such a wrong foot. Tomorrow I hope we can be more civil to each other.”
“I wrote to the draft board, Dad. I mailed the letter this morning.”
The old man nodded to himself, as if he knew better. “You can threaten me all you want, but you’re not going to Vietnam.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“We have our differences, but I know who you are. You can’t seriously expect me to believe you intend to be a soldier. It makes no sense.”
The complacency of his father’s certainty—that no son of his could be anything but a replica of himself—inflamed the bully in Clem.
“I know it’s hard for you to imagine,” he said, “but some people actually pay a price for what they believe in. You and your little parishioner can go and be the nice white people at Theo Crenshaw’s church. You can pull some weeds in Englewood and feel good about yourself. You can march in your marches and brag about it to your all-white congregation. But when it’s time to put your money where your mouth is, you don’t see any problem with me being in college and letting some Black kid fight for me in Vietnam. Or some poor white kid from Appalachia. Or some poor Navajo, like Keith Durochie’s son. Do you think you’re better than Keith? Do you think my life is worth more than Tommy Durochie’s? Do you think it’s right that I get to be in college while Navajo boys are dying? Is that what you’re saying makes sense to you?”
It satisfied the bully to see his father’s confusion, as it dawned on him that Clem was serious.
“No American boy should be in Vietnam,” he said quietly. “I thought you and I agreed on that.”
“I do agree. It’s a shitty war. But that doesn’t—”
“It’s an immoral war. All war is immoral, but this one especially. Whoever fights in it partakes of the immorality. I’m surprised I have to explain that to you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not the same as you. Dad. In case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t have the luxury of being born a Mennonite. I don’t believe in a metaphysical deity whose commandments I have to obey. I have to follow my own personal ethics, and I don’t know if you remember, but my lottery number was nineteen.”
“Of course I remember. And you’re right—it was an immense relief, for your mother and me, that you had a student deferment. I seem to recall you feeling the same way.”
“Only because I hadn’t given it any thought.”
“And now you’ve thought about it. Fine. I understand why student deferments seem unfair to you—you raise a legitimate point. I also understand feeling obliged to serve your country, because of your lottery number. But to go and serve in that war, it makes no sense.”
“Maybe not to you. To me there’s no alternative.”
“You already waited a year—why not wait one more semester? Most of our troops are already home. Six months from now, I doubt they’ll even be taking new recruits.”
“That’s exactly why I’m doing it now.”
“Why? To make a point? You could do that by giving up your deferment and conscientiously objecting. The son of a CO, from a family of pastors—you’d have a very strong case.”
“Right. That’s what you did. But you know what? The man who took your place in 1944 was probably white and middle-class. That’s a moral luxury I don’t have.”
“Luxury?” His father banged the arm of his chair. “It wasn’t a moral luxury. It was a moral choice, and the fact that most Americans supported the war made it harder, not easier. They called us traitors. They called us cowards, they tried to run our parents out of town—some of us even went to prison. Every one of us paid a price.”
Recalling the pride he’d once taken in his father’s principles, Clem felt the reins of his argument going slack in his hands. He gave them a savage tug. “Yeah, luckily for you, plenty of other people were willing to fight the Fascists.”
“That was their own moral choice. I grant that, under the circumstances, their choice was defensible. But Vietnam? There’s no defense whatsoever for our involvement there. It’s senseless slaughter. The boys we’re killing are even younger than you are.”
“They’re killing other Vietnamese, Dad. You can sentimentalize it all you want, but the North Vietnamese are the aggressors. They signed up to kill, and they’re killing.”
His father made a sour face. “Since when do you parrot Lyndon Johnson?”
“LBJ was a fraud. He signed the Civil Rights Act with one hand and sent ghetto boys to Vietnam with the other. This is what I’m talking about—moral hypocrisy.”
His father sighed as if it were pointless to keep arguing. “And you don’t care how I might feel as your father. You don’t care how your mother might feel about it.”
“Since when do you care about Mom’s feelings?”
“I care about them very much.”
“Bullshit. She’s loyal to you, and you treat her like garbage. Do you think I can’t see it? Do you think Becky can’t see it? How cold you are to Mom? It’s like you wish she didn’t exist.”