The Marriage Plot (49 page)

Since he had no good news to impart about the prospect of dialysis, Mitchell sat on the bed and, without asking, began massaging the agronomist’s back. He rubbed his shoulders, his neck, and his head. After fifteen minutes, when he was finished, Mitchell asked, “Is there anything I can get for you?”

The agronomist seemed to think this over. “I want to shit,” he said.

Mitchell was taken aback. Before he could do or say anything, however, a smiling young Indian man appeared before them. It was the barber. He held up a shaving mug, brush, and straight razor.

“Going to shave!” he announced in a jovial tone.

Without further preliminaries he began lathering the agronomist’s cheeks.

The agronomist didn’t have the energy to resist. “I have to shit,” he said again, a little more urgent.

“Shave, shave,” the barber repeated, using his only English.

Mitchell didn’t know where the bedpans were kept. He was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t find one soon, and he was afraid of what would happen if he did. He turned away, looking for help.

All the other volunteers were busy. There were no nuns nearby.

By the time Mitchell turned back, the agronomist had forgotten all about him. Both his cheeks were lathered now. He shut his eyes, grimacing, as he said in desperation, in anger, in relief, “I’m shitting!”

The barber, oblivious, began to shave his cheeks.

And Mitchell began to move. Already knowing that he would regret this moment for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life, and yet unable to resist the sweet impulse that ran through his every nerve, Mitchell headed to the front of the home, right past Matthew 25:40, and up the steps to the bright, fallen world above.

The street was thick with pilgrims. Inside the Kali temple, where they were still killing goats, he heard cymbals clashing. They built to crescendos and then went silent. Mitchell headed toward the bus stop, going against the flow of pedestrians. He looked behind him to see if he was being followed, if the beekeeper was pursuing him to bring him back. But no one had seen him leave.

The sooty bus that arrived was even more crowded than usual. Mitchell had to climb up on the back bumper with a squad of young men and hang on for dear life. A few minutes later, when the bus paused in traffic, he clambered up to the luggage rack. The passengers there, also young, smiled at him, amused to see a foreigner riding on the roof. As the bus rumbled toward the central district, Mitchell surveyed the city passing below. Bands of street urchins were begging on corners. Stray dogs with ugly snouts picked over garbage or slept on their sides in the midday sun. In the outlying districts, the storefronts and habitations were humble, but as they neared the center of town the apartment buildings grew grander. Their plaster facades were flaking off, the iron grilles on the balconies broken or missing. Mitchell was high enough to see into living rooms. A few were furnished with velvet drapes and ornately carved furniture. But most were bare, nothing in them but a mat on the floor where an entire family sat, eating their lunch.

He got off near the Indian Railways office. In the underlit interior, presided over by a black-and-white portrait of Gandhi, Mitchell waited in line to buy his ticket. The line moved slowly, giving him plenty of time to scan the departures board and decide where he was going. South to Madras? Up to the Hill Country in Darjeeling? Why not all the way up to Nepal?

The man behind him was saying to his wife, “As I explained before, if we travel by bus we must make three deviations. Much better to travel by train.”

There was a train leaving for Benares at 8:24 that evening from Howrah Station. It arrived at the holy city on the Ganges the next day at noon. A second-class ticket with a couchette would cost Mitchell about eight dollars.

The speed with which he left the railways office and went about buying provisions for his trip was like that of someone making a getaway. He bought bottled water, mandarins, a chocolate bar, a package of biscuits, and a hunk of strangely crumbly cheese. He still hadn’t had lunch, so he stopped at a restaurant for a bowl of vegetable curry and
parathi
. After that, he managed to find a
Herald Tribune
and went into a café to read it. Still with time to kill, he took a valedictory stroll around the neighborhood, stopping to sit by a lime green
bagh
that reflected the clouds passing over his head. It was after four by the time he got back to the Guest House.

Packing up took a minute and a half. He threw his extra T-shirt and shorts into his duffel bag, along with his toiletry case, his pocket New Testament, and his journal. While he was doing this, Rüdiger came into the lodge, carrying a roll of something under one arm.

“Today,” he announced with satisfaction, “I find the leather ghetto. There is a ghetto for
everything
in this city. I am walking and I find this ghetto and I have the idea to make myself a super leather pouch to carry my passport.”

“A pouch for your passport,” Mitchell said.

“Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world that you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and
see
you are a person. No! They have to look at a little photograph of you.
Then
they believe you exist.” He showed Mitchell the roll of tanned leather. “Maybe I make you one too.”

“Too late. I’m leaving,” Mitchell said.

“So, you are feeling frisky, eh? Where are you going?”

“Benares.”

“You should stay at the Yogi Lodge there. Best place.”

“O.K. I will.”

With a sense of formality, Rüdiger extended his hand.

“When I first see you,” he said, “I think to myself, ‘I don’t know about this one. But he is open.’”

He looked into Mitchell’s eyes as if validating him and wishing him well. Mitchell turned and left.

He was crossing the courtyard when he ran into Mike.

“You checking out?” Mike said, noticing the duffel bag.

“Decided to do some traveling,” Mitchell said. “But hey, before I go, do you remember that lassi shop you told me about? With the bhang lassi? Can you show me where it is?”

Mike was happy to oblige. They went out the front gate and across Sudder Street, past the chai stand on the other side, and into the warren of narrower streets beyond. As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, “Baksheesh! Baksheesh!”

Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar’s dirty hand.

Mike said, “I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it’s hopeless. It never stops.”

“Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you,” Mitchell said.

“Yeah, well,” Mike said, “obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.”

The lassi shop turned out not to be a shop at all but a cart parked against a pockmarked wall. Three pitchers sat on its top, towels over the mouths to keep out flies.

The vendor explained what was in each, pointing. “Salt lassi. Sweet lassi. Bhang lassi.”

“We’re here for the bhang lassi,” Mike said.

This provoked merriment from the two men loafing against the wall, the vendor’s friends, presumably.

“Bhang lassi!” they cried out. “Bhang!”

The vendor poured two tall glasses. The bhang lassi was a greenish brown. There were visible chunks in it.

“This stuff will get you fucked up,” Mike said, lifting the glass to his mouth.

Mitchell took a sip. It tasted like pond scum. “Speaking of fucked up,” he said. “Can I see that picture of that girl you met in Thailand?”

Mike grinned lecherously, fishing it out of his wallet. He handed it to Mitchell. Without looking at it, Mitchell promptly tore it in half and threw it on the ground.

“Hey!”

“All gone,” Mitchell said.

“You ripped my photo! Why did you do that?”

“I’m helping you out. It’s pathetic.”

“Screw you!” Mike said, his teeth bared, rat-like. “Fucking Jesus freak!”

“Let’s see, what’s worse? Being a Jesus freak or buying underage prostitutes?”

“Ooooh, here comes a beggar,” Mike said derisively. “I think I’ll give him some money. I’m so holy! I’m going to save the world!”

“Ooooh, here comes a Thai bar girl. I think she likes me! I’m going to marry her! I’m going to take her home to cook and clean for me. I can’t get a woman in my own country because I’m a fat, unemployed slob. So I’ll get a Thai girl.”

“You know what? Fuck you
and
Mother Teresa! So long, asshole. Have fun with your nuns. I hope they jerk you off, because you need it.”

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 that I’ve written here to the power of the Bengali smoothie. I really only meant to write you a short note. It could have been a postcard. I just wanted to say one thing.

Don’t marry that guy.

Don’t do it, Mad. Just don’t.

By the time he got downstairs, evening had fallen. Crowds of people were walking down the center of the street, the yellow bulbs strung over their heads like lights at a carnival. Music vendors were tooting their wooden flutes and plastic trombones, trying to entice customers, and the restaurants were open.

Mitchell walked beneath the vast trees, his mind humming. The air felt soft against his face. In a sense, the bhang was superfluous. The amount of sensations bombarding Mitchell as he reached the corner—the incessant honking of the taxis, the chugging of the truck engines, the shouts of the ant-like men pushing carts piled with turnips or scrap metal—would have made Mitchell dizzy even if he were completely straight in the middle of the day. This was like a contact buzz on top of a buzz. Mitchell was so absorbed that he forgot where he was going. He might have stayed on the corner all night, watching the traffic move another three feet forward. But suddenly, swooping in from his peripheral vision, a rickshaw stopped beside him. The rickshaw wallah, a gaunt dark man with a green towel wrapped around his head, beckoned to Mitchell, gesturing toward the empty seat. Mitchell looked back at the impenetrable wall of traffic. He looked at the seat. And the next thing he knew he was climbing up into it.