The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [62]
The line began moving again. Through the elms, in the distance, Mitchell glimpsed the downtown skyline, and then the Van Wickel gates were looming straight ahead, and along with a thousand classmates Mitchell was carried through them.
People were making obligatory hooting noises, throwing up their caps. The crowd outside was dense and child-starved. From the mass of middle-aged faces, those of Mitchell’s own, particular parents emerged with arresting clarity. Deanie, in a blue blazer and London Fog raincoat, was beaming at the sight of his youngest son, having forgotten, apparently, that he’d never wanted Mitchell to go to college in the East and be ruined by liberals. Lillian was waving both hands in the attention-getting way of small people. Under the estranging power of the marijuana, not to mention four years at college, Mitchell was depressed by the tacky denim sun visor his mother was wearing and by his parents’ general lack of sophistication. But something was happening to him. The gates were doing something to him already, because as he raised his hand to wave back at his parents, Mitchell felt ten years old again, tearing up, choked with feeling for these two human beings who, like figures from myth, had possessed the ability throughout his life to blend into the background, to turn to stone or wood, only to come alive again, at key moments like this, to witness his hero’s journey. Lillian had a camera. She was taking pictures. That was why Mitchell didn’t have to bother.
Larry and he whirled on past the cheering crowd and down the slope of College Street. Mitchell kept an eye out for the Hannas, but didn’t see them. He didn’t see Madeleine, either.
At the bottom of the slope, the procession lost momentum, and the graduating class of 1982, drifting to the curbside, became onlookers themselves.
Mitchell took off his cap and wiped his forehead. He didn’t feel like celebrating, particularly. College had been easy. The idea that graduating was any kind of accomplishment seemed laughable to him. But he had enjoyed himself, thoroughly, and right now he was reverentially buzzed, and so he stood and applauded his classmates, trying to join in the jubilation of the day as best he could.
He wasn’t thinking religious thoughts, or reciting the Jesus Prayer, when he noticed Professor Richter marching down the hill toward him. It was the faculty brigade now, professors and assistant professors in full academic regalia, their doctoral hoods hemmed in velvet signifying their disciplines and lined with satin representing their alma maters, the crimson of Harvard, the green of Dartmouth, the light blue of Tufts.
It surprised Mitchell that Professor Richter would take part in such silly pageantry. He could have been at home reading Heidegger, but instead he was here, wasting his time to parade down a hill in honor of yet another commencement ceremony, and to parade with what appeared to be absolute exhilaration.
At the genuine endpoint of his college career, Mitchell was left with that startling sight: Herr Doktor Professor Richter prancing by, his face lit with a childlike joy it had never displayed in the seminar room for Religion and Alienation. As if Richter had found the cure for alienation. As if he’d beaten the odds of the age.
•
“Congratulations!” the taxi driver said.
Madeleine glanced up, momentarily confused, before she remembered what she was wearing.
“Thank you,” she said.
Since most streets around campus were blocked off, the driver was taking the long way around, going down Hope Street to Wickenden.
“You a med student?”
“Excuse me?”
The driver lifted his hands from the wheel. “We’re going to the hospital, right? So I thought maybe you