The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [165]
On Sunday, he went into the streets even earlier, and stayed out most of the day, getting back to the Guest House in time for afternoon tea. On the veranda, beside a potted plant, he took a fresh blue aerogram out of his backpack and began writing a letter home. Partly because he used his aerograms as an extension of his own journal, and was therefore writing more to himself than to his family, and partly because of the influence of Merton’s Gethsemani journals, Mitchell’s letters from India were documents of utter strangeness. Mitchell wrote down all kinds of things to see if they might be true. Once written down, he forgot about them. He took the letters to the post office and mailed them without any thought of what impression they would make on his mystified parents back in Detroit. He opened this one with a detailed description of the man with the staph infection that was eating away his cheek. This led to an anecdote about a leper Mitchell had seen begging in the street the day before. From there Mitchell moved into a discussion of misunderstandings people had about leprosy, and how it wasn’t really “that contagious.” Next, he scribbled a postcard to Larry, in Athens, giving the return address of the Salvation Army. He took Madeleine’s letter out of his backpack, thought about what to reply, and put it back again.
While Mitchell was finishing up, Rüdiger appeared on the veranda. He sat down and ordered a pot of tea for himself.
After it arrived, he said, “So tell me something. Why do you come to India?”
“I wanted to go somewhere different from America,” Mitchell answered. “And I wanted to volunteer for Mother Teresa.”
“So you come here to do good works.”
“To try, at least.”
“It’s interesting about good works. I am German so of course I know all about Martin Luther. The problem is, no matter how much we try to be good, we cannot be good enough. So Luther says you must be justified by faith. But, hey, read some Nietzsche if you want to know about this idea. Nietzsche thought Martin Luther was just making it easy on everybody. Don’t worry if you can’t do good works, people. Just believe. Have faith. Faith will justify you! Right? Maybe, maybe not. Nietzsche wasn’t against Christianity, as everybody thinks. Nietzsche just thought there was only one Christian and that was Christ. After him, it was finished.”
He’d worked himself up into a reverie. He was staring up at the ceiling, smiling, his face shining. “It would be nice to be a Christian like that. The first Christian. Before the whole thing went kaput.”
“Is that what you want to be?”
“I am just a traveler. I travel, I carry everything I need with me, and I don’t have problems. I don’t have a job unless I need it. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have children.”
“You don’t have shoes,” Mitchell pointed out.
“I used to have shoes. But then I realize it is much better without them. I go all over without shoes. Even in New York.”
“You went barefoot in New York?”
“It is wonderful barefoot in New York. It is like walking on one big giant tomb!”
The next day was Monday. Mitchell wanted to post his letter first thing, and so he was late getting to Kalighat. A volunteer he’d never seen before already had the medicine cart out. The Irish doctor had returned to Dublin and in her place was a new doctor who spoke only Italian.
Deprived of his usual morning activity, Mitchell spent the next hour floating around the ward, seeing what he could do. In a bed on the top row was a young boy of eight or