The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [35]
It was never much fun to be called a jerk. It was worse to be called a jerk by a girl you particularly liked, and it was especially painful when the girl happened to be the person you secretly wanted to marry.
After Madeleine had stormed out of the café, Mitchell had remained at the table, paralyzed with regret. They’d made up for all of twenty minutes. He was leaving Providence that night and, in a few months, the country. There was no telling when or if he would ever see her again.
Across the street, the bells began to chime nine o’clock. Mitchell had to get going. The commencement march started in forty-five minutes. His cap and gown were back at his apartment, where Larry was waiting for him. Instead of getting up, however, Mitchell moved his chair closer to the window. He pressed his nose nearly to the glass, taking his last look at College Hill, while silently repeating the following words:
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Mitchell had been reciting the Jesus Prayer for the past two weeks. He did this not only because it was the prayer Franny Glass repeated to herself in Franny and Zooey (though this was certainly a recommendation). Mitchell approved of Franny’s religious desperation, her withdrawal from life, and her disdain for “section men.” He found her book-length nervous breakdown, during which she never once moved from the couch, not only thrillingly dramatic but cathartic in a way Dostoyevsky was supposed to be but wasn’t, for him. (Tolstoy was a different matter.) Still, even though Mitchell was undergoing a similar crisis of meaning, it hadn’t been until he’d come across the Jesus Prayer in a book called The Orthodox Church that he’d decided to give it a try. The Jesus Prayer, it turned out, belonged to the religious tradition into which Mitchell had been obscurely baptized twenty-two years earlier. For this reason he felt entitled to say it. And so he’d been doing just that, while walking around campus, or during Quaker Meeting at the Meeting House near Moses Brown, or at moments like this when the inner tranquillity he’d been struggling to attain began to fray, to falter.
Mitchell liked the chant-like quality of the prayer. Franny said you didn’t even have to think about what you were saying; you just kept repeating the prayer until your heart took over and started repeating it for you. This was important because, whenever Mitchell stopped to think about the words of the Jesus Prayer, he didn’t much like them. “Lord Jesus” was a difficult opener. It had a Bible Belt ring. Likewise, asking for “mercy” felt lowly and serf-like. Having made it through “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” however, Mitchell was confronted with the final