The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [170]
This little interchange of ideas with Mike had put Mitchell in a terrific mood. After finishing the bhang lassi, he returned once again to the Salvation Army. The veranda was closed but the library was still open. In the back corner, sitting on the floor and using the Francis Schaeffer as a writing surface, he began filling up a new aerogram.
Dear Madeleine,
In the words of Dustin Hoffman, let me say it loud and clear:
Don’t marry that guy!!! He’s no good for you.
Thank you for your nice long letter. I got it in Athens about a month ago. I’m sorry I haven’t written back until now. I’ve been doing my best to keep you out of my thoughts.
I just drank a bhang lassi. A lassi, in case you’ve never had one, is a cool and refreshing Indian drink made from yogurt. Bhang is weed. I ordered this drink from a street vendor, five minutes ago, which is just another of the many wonders of the subcontinent.
Now here’s the thing. When we used to talk about marriage (I mean in the abstract) you had a theory that people got married in one of three stages. Stage One are the traditional people who marry their college sweethearts, usually the summer after graduation. People in Stage Two get married around 28. And then there are the people in Stage Three who get married in a final wave, with a sense of desperation, around 36, 37, or even 39.
You said you would never get married straight out of college. You planned to wait until your “career” was settled and get married in your thirties. Secretly, I always thought you were a Stage Two, but when I saw you, at graduation, I realized you were decidedly, and incorrigibly, Stage One. Then came your letter. The more I read it, the more aware I became of what you weren’t saying. Underneath your tiny handwriting is a repressed wish. Maybe that’s what your tiny handwriting has been doing all your life, trying to keep your crazy wishes from exploding your life.
How do I know this? Let’s just say that during my travels I’ve become acquainted with interior states that collapse the distance between people. Sometimes, despite how far apart we are physically, I have drawn very close to you, right up into your innermost chamber. I can feel what you’re feeling. From here.
I’ve got to make this quick. I’ve got a night train to catch and I just noticed that my vision is getting a little sparkly around the edges.
Now, it wouldn’t be fair of me to tell you all this without giving you something else to think about. An offer, you could call it. The nature of this offer, however, isn’t something a young gentleman (even one like me, who’s given up wearing underwear) could very well entrust to a letter. This is something I’ll have to tell you in person.
When that will be I’m not sure. I’ve been in India three weeks and all I’ve seen is Calcutta. I want to see the Ganges and that’s where I’m headed next. I want to visit New Delhi and Goa (where they have the incorruptible corpse of St. Francis Xavier on display in a cathedral). I’m keen on visiting Rajasthan and Kashmir. Larry is still planning to meet me in March (wait until I tell you about Larry!) to do our internship with Prof. Hughes. In short, I’m writing this letter because, if you are indeed a Stage One, there may not be enough time for me to personally disrupt the proceedings. I’m too far away to speed across the Bay Bridge in my sportscar and crash the ceremony (and I would never jam the door with a crucifix).
I don’t know if this letter will reach you. I’ll have to trust to faith, in other words, which is something I’ve been trying to do lately with limited success.
This bhang lassi is pretty strong, actually. I’ve been looking for the ultimate reality but right now there are a few mundane realities I’d settle for. I’m not saying anything. But there is an English graduate program at Princeton. And Yale and Harvard have divinity schools. There are crappy little apartments in New Jersey and New Haven where two studious people could be studious together.
But nothing of that. Not yet. Not now. Please attribute anything untoward