The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [117]
Christmas was approaching. The streets around their hotel, a nondescript gray building to which Iannis referred them, were decorated with lights. The temperature alone reminded them that it was time to leave for Asia. After Iannis left to take care of his business, Larry and Mitchell went to a travel agent to buy their airplane tickets. Athens was famous for its cheap airfares, and so it proved: for less than five hundred dollars, they each got an open-ended ticket, Athens–Calcutta–Paris, on Air India, leaving the following night.
Iannis took them to a seafood restaurant that evening, and to three different bars, before dropping them back at the hotel. The next morning Mitchell and Larry went to the Plaka and bought new, smaller bags. Larry chose a gaily striped shoulder bag made from hemp; Mitchell a dark duffel bag. Back at their hotel, they transferred essential belongings into the new packs, trying to keep them as light as possible. They got rid of their sweaters, their pairs of long pants, their tennis shoes, their sleeping bags and pads, their books, even their shampoo. Mitchell culled his Saint Teresa, his Saint Augustine, his Thomas Merton, his Pynchon, relieving himself of everything but the thin paperback of Something Beautiful for God. Whatever they didn’t need, they put in their backpacks and carried to the post office, shipping it back to the States by slow boat. Coming onto the street again, they high-fived each other, feeling like real travelers for the first time, footloose and unencumbered.
Mitchell’s bright mood didn’t last long. Among the items he’d kept was Madeleine’s letter, and when they got back to their hotel, he locked himself in the bathroom to read it once again. This time through, it seemed more dire, more final, than before. Coming out of the bathroom, he lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.
Larry was smoking on the balcony. “We haven’t seen the Acropolis yet,” he said. “We have to see it.”
“I’ve seen it,” Mitchell muttered.
“We haven’t climbed it.”
“I don’t feel like it right now.”
“You come all the way to Athens and you’re not going to see the Acropolis?”
“I’ll meet you,” Mitchell said.
He waited until Larry was gone before allowing himself to cry. It was a combination of things, Madeleine’s letter, first and foremost, but also the aspects of his personality that had made her feel such a letter necessary, his awkwardness, his charm, his aggressiveness, his shyness, everything that made him almost but not quite the guy for her. The letter felt like a verdict on his entire life so far, sentencing him to end up here, lying on a bed, alone, in an Athenian hotel room, too weighed down by self-pity to go out and climb the goddamn Acropolis. The idea that he was on some kind of pilgrimage seemed ludicrous. The whole thing was such a joke! If only he wasn’t himself! If only he was somebody else, somebody different!
Mitchell sat up, wiping his eyes. Leaning sideways, he pulled the New Testament out of his back pocket. He opened it and took out the card the woman had given him. It said “Athens Bible Institute” at the top and showed the Greek flag with the cross in gold. Her number was written beneath this.
Mitchell dialed it from his room phone. The call didn’t go through the first two times (he had the prefix wrong), but on his third try it began ringing. To his amazement, the woman from the AmEx line, Janice P., her voice sounding very close, answered.
“Hello?”
“Hi. This is Mitchell. We met the other day at American Express.”
“Praise God!” Janice said. “I’ve been praying for you. And here you are calling. Praise the Lord!”
“I found your card, so.”
“Are you ready to accept the Lord into your heart?”
This was rather sudden. Mitchell looked up at the ceiling. There was a crack running its length.
“Yes,” he said.
“Praise the Lord!” Janice said again. She sounded truly happy, enthused. She began talking about Jesus