The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [51]
All the other offices were empty. The Buddhists had left for summer vacation. The Islamicists were down in D.C., giving the State Department insight into the “frame of reference” of Abu Nidal, who had just remotely detonated a car bomb inside the French embassy in West Beirut. Only the door at the end of the hall was open, and inside it, wearing a necktie despite the sultry weather, was Richter.
Richter’s office wasn’t the bare cell of an absentee professor, inhabited only during office hours. Neither was it the homey den of a department chair, with lithographs and a Shaker rug. Richter’s office was formal, almost Viennese. There were glass-fronted bookcases full of leather-bound theology books, an ivory-handled magnifying glass, a brass inkstand. The desk was massive, a bulwark against the creeping ignorance and imprecision of the world. Behind it, Richter was writing notes with a fountain pen.
Mitchell stepped in and said, “If I ever had an office, Professor Richter, this is the kind of office I’d have.”
Richter did an amazing thing: he smiled. “You just might get the chance,” he said.
“I brought you an iced coffee.”
Richter stared across the desk at the offering, mildly surprised, but tolerant. “Thank you,” he said. He opened a manila folder and took out a sheaf of papers. Mitchell recognized it as his take-home exam. It appeared to have writing all over it, in an elegant hand.
“Have a seat,” Richter said.
Mitchell complied.
“I’ve taught at this college for twenty-two years,” Richter began. “In all of that time, only once have I received a paper that displays the depth of insight and philosophical acumen that yours does.” He paused. “The last student of whom I could say this is now the dean of Princeton Theological Seminary.”
Richter stopped, as though waiting for his words to sink in. They didn’t, particularly. Mitchell was pleased to have done well. He was used to doing well in school, but he still enjoyed it. Beyond that, his mind didn’t travel.
“You are a graduating senior this year, is that correct?”
“One week left, Professor.”
“Have you ever given serious thought to pursuing a career in scholarship?”
“Not serious thought, no.”
“What are you planning to do with your life?” Richter said.
Mitchell smiled. “Is my father hiding under your desk?” he said.
Richter’s brow furrowed. He was no longer smiling. He folded his hands, taking a new direction. “I sense from your exam that you are personally engaged with matters of religious belief. Am I right?”
“I guess you could say that,” Mitchell said.
“Your surname is Greek. Were you raised in the Orthodox tradition?”
“Baptized. That was about it.”
“And now?”
“Now?” Mitchell took a moment. He was accustomed to keeping quiet about his spiritual investigations. It felt odd to talk about them.
But Richter’s expression was nonjudgmental. He was bent forward in his chair, hands clasped on the desk. He was looking away, presenting only his ear. Under this encouragement, Mitchell opened up. He explained that he had arrived at college without knowing much about religion, and how, from reading English literature, he’d begun to realize how ignorant he was. The world had been formed by beliefs he knew nothing about. “That was the beginning,” he said, “realizing how stupid I was.”
“Yes, yes.” Richter nodded quickly. The head-bowing suggested personal experience with thought-tormented states. Richter’s head remained low, listening. “I don’t know, one day I was just sitting there,” Mitchell went on, “and it hit me that almost every writer I was reading for my classes had believed in God. Milton, for starters. And George Herbert.” Did Professor Richter know George Herbert? Professor Richter did. “And Tolstoy. I realize Tolstoy got a little excessive, near the end. Rejecting Anna Karenina. But how many writers turn against their own genius? Maybe it was Tolstoy’s obsession with truth that made him so great in the first place. The