The Corrections

by Jonathan Franzen

  For a few minutes she brushed and flossed, a bit of oral housekeeping to pass the time. Then with a shudder of cresting exhaustion she went to her bed to lie and wait.

  Golden sunlight fell across the blankets in her windowless room.

  He nuzzled her palm with his warm velvet snout. He licked her eyelids with a tongue both sandpapery and slick. His breath was sweet and gingery.

  When she came awake the cool halogen lighting in the stateroom wasn’t artificial anymore. It was the cool light of sun from behind a momentary cloud.

  I’ve taken the medication, she told herself. I’ve taken the medication. I’ve taken the medication.

  Her new emotional flexibility received a bold challenge the next morning when she rose at seven and discovered Alfred curled up fast asleep in the shower stall.

  “Al, you’re lying in the shower,” she said. “This is not the place to sleep.”

  Having awakened him, she began to brush her teeth. Alfred opened undemented eyes and took stock. “Ugh, I am stiff stiff,” he said.

  “What on earth are you doing in there?” Enid gurgled through a fluoride foam, brushing merrily away.

  “Got all turned around in the night,” he said. “I had such dreams.”

  She found that in the arms of Asian she had new reserves of patience for the wrist-straining wiggle-waggle brushstroke her dentist recommended for the sides of her molars. She watched with low to medium interest as Alfred achieved full uprightness through a multi-stage process of propping, levering, hoisting, bracing, and controlled tipping. A lunatic dhoti of bunched and shredded diapers hung from his loins. “Look at this,” he said, shaking his head. “Would you look at this.”

  “I had the most wonderful night’s sleep,” she answered.

  “And how are our floaters this morning?” roving activities coordinator Suzy Ghosh asked the table in a voice like hair in a shampoo commercial.

  “We didn’t sink last night, if that’s what you mean,” said Sylvia Roth.

  The Norwegians quickly monopolized Suzy with a complicated inquiry regarding lap swimming in the larger of the Gunnar Myrdal’s pools.

  “Well, well, Signe,” Mr. Söderblad remarked to his wife at an indiscreet volume, “this is indeed a great surprise. The Nygrens have a lengthy question for Miss Ghosh this morning.”

  “Yes, Stig, they do always seem to have a lengthy question, don’t they? They are very thorough people, our Nygrens.”

  Ted Roth spun half a grapefruit like a potter, stripping out its flesh. “The story of carbon,” he said, “is the story of the planet. You’re familiar with the greenhouse effect?”

  “It’s triple tax-free,” Enid said.

  Alfred nodded. “I am familiar with the greenhouse effect.”

  “You have to actually physically clip the coupons, which sometimes I forget,” Enid said.

  “The earth was very hot four billion years ago,” said Dr. Roth. “The atmosphere was unbreathable. Methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide.”

  “Of course at our age income matters more than growth.”

  “Nature hadn’t learned to break down cellulose. When a tree fell, it lay on the ground and got buried by the next tree that fell. This was the Carboniferous. The earth a lush riot. And in the course of millions and millions of years of trees falling on trees, almost all the carbon got taken from the air and buried underground. And there it stayed until yesterday, geologically speaking.”

  “Lap swimming, Signe. Do you suppose that this is similar to lap dancing?”

  “Some people are disgusting,” said Mrs. Nygren.

  “What happens to a log that falls today is that funguses and microbes digest it, and all the carbon goes back into the sky. There can never be another Carboniferous. Ever. Because you can’t ask Nature to unlearn how to biodegrade cellulose.”

  “It’s called Orfic Midland now,” Enid said.

  “Mammals came along when the world cooled off. Frost on the pumpkin. Furry things in dens. But now we have a very clever mammal that’s taking all the carbon from underground and putting it back into the atmosphere.”

  “I think we own some Orfic Midland ourselves,” Sylvia said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Per Nygren said, “we, too, own Orfic Midland.”

  “Per would know,” said Mrs. Nygren.

  “I daresay he would,” said Mr. Söderblad.

  “Once we burn up all the coal and oil and gas,” said Dr. Roth, “we’ll have an antique atmosphere. A hot, nasty atmosphere that no one’s seen for three hundred million years. Once we’ve let the carbon genie out of its lithic bottle.”

  “Norway has superb retirement benefits, hm, but I also supplement my national coverage with a private fund. Per checks the price of each stock in the fund every morning. There are quite a number of American stocks. How many, Per?”

  “Forty-six at present,” Per Nygren said. “If I am not mistaken, ‘Orfic’ is an acronym for the Oak Ridge Fiduciary Investment Corporation. The stock has maintained its value quite well and pays a handsome dividend.”

  “Fascinating,” said Mr. Söderblad. “Where is my coffee?”

  “But, Stig, do you know,” said Signe Söderblad, “I am quite sure we also have this stock, Orfic Midland.”

  “We own a great many stocks. I can’t remember every name. At the same time, too, the print in the newspaper is very tiny.”

  “The moral of the story is don’t recycle plastic. Send your plastic to a landfill. Get that carbon underground.”

  “If it had been up to Al, we’d still have every penny in passbook savings.”

  “Bury it, bury it. Stopper the genie in the bottle.”

  “I happen to have an eye condition that makes it painful for me to read,” said Mr. Söderblad.

  “Oh, really?” said Mrs. Nygren acidly. “What is the medical name of this condition?”

  “I like a cool autumn day,” said Dr. Roth.

  “Then again,” said Mrs. Nygren, “I suppose that to learn the condition’s name would itself necessitate painful reading.”

  “This is a small planet.”

  “There is lazy eye, of course, but to have two lazy eyes at once—”

  “That is not really possible,” said Mr. Nygren. “The ‘lazy eye’ syndrome, or amblyopia, is a condition in which one eye assumes the work of the other. Therefore, if one eye is lazy, the other is by definition—”

  “Per, shut up,” said Mrs. Nygren.

  “Inga!”

  “Waiter, refill.”

  “Imagine the Uzbek upper middle class,” said Dr. Roth. “One of the families had the same Ford Stomper we have. In fact the only difference between our upper middle class and their upper middle class was that none of them, not even the richest family in town, had indoor plumbing.”

  “I am aware,” said Mr. Söderblad, “that as a nonreader I am morally inferior to all Norwegians. I accept this.”

  “Flies like around something four days dead. Bucket of ashes that you sprinkle in the hole. Even the little way you can see down into it is farther than you want to. And a glittering Ford Stomper parked in their driveway. And they’re videotaping us videotaping them.”

  “At the same time, in spite of my disability, I do manage to enjoy a pleasure or two in life.”

  “How empty, though, Stig, our pleasures must be,” said Signe Söderblad, “compared to those of the Nygrens.”

  “Yes, they do seem to experience the deep and lasting pleasures of the mind. At the same time, Signe, this is a very flattering dress you are wearing this morning. Even Mr. Nygren has been admiring this dress, in spite of the deep and lasting pleasures he finds elsewhere.”

  “Per, come along,” said Mrs. Nygren. “We are being insulted.”

  “Stig, did you hear? The Nygrens have been insulted and are leaving us.”

  “It is a great pity. They are such fun to be with.”

  “Our children are all easterners now,” Enid said. “Nobody seems to like the Midwest any
more.”

  “Biding my time here, fella,” said a familiar voice.

  “The cashier at the Du Pont executive dining room was an Uzbek girl. I’ve probably seen Uzbeks at the IKEA store in Plymouth Meeting. These aren’t extraterrestrials we’re talking about. Uzbeks wear bifocals. They fly on planes.”

  “We’re stopping in Philadelphia on the way home so we can eat at her new restaurant. It’s called the Generator?”

  “Enid, my gosh, that’s her place? Ted and I were there two weeks ago.”

  “It’s a small world,” Enid said.

  “We had a terrific dinner. Really memorably good.”

  “So in effect we’ve spent six thousand dollars to be reminded of what a pit toilet smells like.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Alfred said.

  “And are grateful for that pit toilet! In terms of the actual benefits of foreign travel. In terms of what TV and books can’t give you. In terms of what you can only experience firsthand. Take away the pit toilet and we’d feel like we’d wasted six thousand dollars.”

  “Shall we go rot our brains on the Sun Deck?”

  “Oh, Stig, let’s. I am intellectually exhausted.”

  “Thank God for poverty. Thank God for driving on the left side of the road. Thank God for Babel. Thank God for strange voltages and oddly shaped plugs.” Dr. Roth lowered his glasses and peered over them, observing the Swedish exodus. “I note in passing that every dress that woman owns is designed for quick removal.”

  “I’ve never seen Ted so eager to get to breakfast,” Sylvia said. “And lunch. And dinner.”

  “Stunning northern scenery,” Roth said. “Isn’t that what we’re here for?”

  Alfred lowered his eyes uncomfortably. A little fishbone of prudery was stuck in Enid’s throat as well. “Do you think he really has an eye problem?” she managed to say.

  “His eye is excellent in at least one respect.”

  “Ted, though, stop.”

  “That the Swedish bombshell is a stale cliché is itself a stale cliché.”

  “Please stop.”

  The retired vice president of Compliance pushed his glasses back up his nose and turned to Alfred. “I wonder if we’re depressed because there’s no frontier anymore. Because we can’t pretend anymore there’s a place no one’s been. I wonder if aggregate depression is on the rise, worldwide.”

  “I feel so wonderful this morning. Slept so well.”

  “Lab rats become listless in overcrowded conditions.”

  “You do, Enid, seem transformed. Just tell me this isn’t related to that doctor on the ‘D’ Deck. I hear stories.”

  “Stories?”

  “The so-called cyber frontier,” said Dr. Roth, “but where’s the wilderness?”

  “A drug called Aslan,” Sylvia said.

  “Aslan?”

  “The so-called space frontier,” said Dr. Roth, “but I like this earth. It’s a good planet. There’s a scarcity of atmospheric cyanide, sulfuric acid, ammonia. Which is a boast by no means every planet can make.”

  “Grandmother’s little helper, I think they call it.”

  “But even in your big quiet house you feel crowded if there’s a big quiet house at the antipodes and every point in between.”

  “All I ask is a little privacy,” Alfred said.

  “No beach between Greenland and the Falklands that isn’t threatened with development. No acre uncleared.”

  “Oh dear, what time is it?” Enid said. “We don’t want to miss that lecture.”

  “Sylvia’s different. She likes the hubbub at the docks.”

  “I do like the hubbub,” Sylvia said.

  “Gangways, portholes, stevedores. She likes the blast of the horn. To me this is a floating theme park.”

  “You have to put up with a certain amount of fantasy,” Alfred said. “It can’t be helped.”

  “Uzbekistan didn’t agree with my stomach,” Sylvia said.

  “I like all the waste up here,” said Dr. Roth. “Good to see such vast useless mileage.”

  “You romanticize poverty.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We’ve traveled in Bulgaria,” Alfred said. “I don’t know about Uzbekistan, but we’ve traveled in China. Everything, as far as you could see from the railroad—if it were up to me, I’d tear it all down. Tear it down and start over. The houses don’t have to be pretty, just make them solid. Get the plumbing indoors. A good concrete wall and a roof that doesn’t leak—that’s what these people need. Sewers. Look at the Germans, what they did to rebuild. There’s a model of a country.”

  “Wouldn’t want to eat a fish out of the Rhine, though. If I could even find a fish in it.”

  “That’s a lot of environmentalist nonsense.”

  “Alfred, you’re too smart a man to call it nonsense.”

  “I am in need of a bathroom.”

  “Al, when you’re done, why don’t you take a book outside and read for a while. Sylvia and I are going to the investment lecture. You just sit. In the sun. And relax relax relax.”

  He had good days and bad days. It was as if when he lay in bed for a night certain humors pooled in the right or wrong places, like marinade around a flank steak, and in the morning his nerve endings either had enough of what they needed or did not; as if his mental clarity might depend on something as simple as whether he’d lain on his side or on his back the night before; or as if, more disturbingly, he were a damaged transistor radio which after a vigorous shaking might function loud and clear or spew nothing but a static laced with unconnected phrases, the odd strain of music.

  Still, even the worst morning was better than the best night. In the morning every process quickened, speeding his meds to their destinations: the canary-yellow spansule for incontinence, the small pink Tums-like thing for the shakes, the white oblong to discourage nausea, the wan blue tablet to squelch hallucinations from the small pink Tums-like thing. In the morning the blood was crowded with commuters, the glucose peons, lactic and ureic sanitation workers, hemo-globinous deliverymen carrying loads of freshly brewed oxygen in their dented vans, the stern foremen like insulin, the enzymic middle managers and executive epinephrine, leukocyte cops and EMS workers, expensive consultants arriving in their pink and white and canary-yellow limos, everyone riding the aortal elevator and dispersing through the arteries. Before noon the rate of worker accidents was tiny. The world was newborn.

  He had energy. From the Kierkegaard Room he lopingly careened through a red-carpeted hallway that had previously vouchsafed him a comfort station but this morning seemed all business, no Μ or W in sight, just salons and boutiques and the Ingmar Bergman Cinema. The problem was that his nervous system could no longer be relied on for an accurate assessment of his need to go. At night his solution was to wear protection. By day his solution was to visit a bathroom hourly and always to carry his old black raincoat in case he had an accident to hide. The raincoat had the added virtue of offending Enid’s romantic sensibilities, and his hourly stops the added virtue of lending structure to his life. Simply holding things together—simply keeping the ocean of night terrors from breaching the last bulkhead—was his ambition now.

  Throngs of women were streaming toward the Longstocking Ballroom. A strong eddy in their current swept Alfred into a hallway lined with the staterooms of onboard lecturers and entertainers. At the end of this hall a men’s room beckoned.

  An officer in epaulets was using one of the two urinals. Afraid of failing to perform under scrutiny, Alfred entered a stall and slid the bolt and found himself face to face with an ordure-strafed toilet which fortunately said nothing, merely stank. He exited and tried the next stall, but here something did scurry on the floor—a mobile turd, ducking for cover—and he didn’t dare enter. In the meantime the officer had flushed, and as he turned from his urinal Alfred recognized his blue cheeks and rose-tinted eyeglasses, his pudenda-pink lips. Hanging from his still-open zipper was twelve inches or more of limp tan tubing.
A yellow grin opened between his blue cheeks. He said, “I left a little treasure in your bed, Mr. Lambert. To replace the one I took.”

  Alfred reeled out of the bathroom and fled up a staircase, higher and higher, up seven flights to the open air of the Sports Deck. Here he found a bench in hot sunlight. From the pocket of his raincoat he took a map of Canada’s maritime provinces and tried to fix himself within a grid, identify some landmarks.

  Three old men in Gore-Tex parkas were standing at the rail. Their voices were inaudible one moment and fully distinct the next. Apparently the wind had pockets in its fluid mass, small spaces of stillness through which a sentence or two might find a way.

  “Here’s a fellow with a map,” a man said. He came over to Alfred looking happy in the way of all men in the world except Alfred. “Excuse me, sir. What do you reckon we’re looking at up here on the left?”

  “That is the Gaspé Peninsula,” Alfred answered firmly. “There should be a large town coming up around the bend.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  The man returned to his companions. As if the ship’s location mattered to them greatly, as if only the quest for this information had brought them to the Sports Deck to begin with, all three immediately departed for a lower deck, leaving Alfred alone on top of the world.

  The protective sky was thinner in this country of northern water. Clouds ran in packs resembling furrows in a field, gliding along beneath the sky’s enclosing dome, which was noticeably low. One approached Ultima Thule here. Green objects had red coronas. In the forests that stretched west to the limit of visibility, as in the purposeless rushing of the clouds, as in the air’s supernal clarity, there was nothing local.

  Odd to glimpse infinity precisely in a finite curve, eternity precisely in the seasonal.