The Marriage Plot

by Jeffrey Eugenides

  While Mitchell was finishing up, Rüdiger appeared on the veranda. He sat down and ordered a pot of tea for himself.

  After it arrived, he said, “So tell me something. Why do you come to India?”

  “I wanted to go somewhere different from America,” Mitchell answered. “And I wanted to volunteer for Mother Teresa.”

  “So you come here to do good works.”

  “To try, at least.”

  “It’s interesting about good works. I am German so of course I know all about Martin Luther. The problem is, no matter how much we try to be good, we cannot be good enough. So Luther says you must be justified by faith. But, hey, read some Nietzsche if you want to know about this idea. Nietzsche thought Martin Luther was just making it easy on everybody. Don’t worry if you can’t do good works, people. Just believe. Have faith. Faith will justify you! Right? Maybe, maybe not. Nietzsche wasn’t against Christianity, as everybody thinks. Nietzsche just thought there was only one Christian and that was Christ. After him, it was finished.”

  He’d worked himself up into a reverie. He was staring up at the ceiling, smiling, his face shining. “It would be nice to be a Christian like that. The first Christian. Before the whole thing went kaput.”

  “Is that what you want to be?”

  “I am just a traveler. I travel, I carry everything I need with me, and I don’t have problems. I don’t have a job unless I need it. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have children.”

  “You don’t have shoes,” Mitchell pointed out.

  “I used to have shoes. But then I realize it is much better without them. I go all over without shoes. Even in New York.”

  “You went barefoot in New York?”

  “It is wonderful barefoot in New York. It is like walking on one big giant tomb!”

  The next day was Monday. Mitchell wanted to post his letter first thing, and so he was late getting to Kalighat. A volunteer he’d never seen before already had the medicine cart out. The Irish doctor had returned to Dublin and in her place was a new doctor who spoke only Italian.

  Deprived of his usual morning activity, Mitchell spent the next hour floating around the ward, seeing what he could do. In a bed on the top row was a young boy of eight or nine, holding a jack-in-the-box. Mitchell had never seen a child at Kalighat before, and he climbed up to sit with him. The boy, whose head was shaved and who had dark circles under his eyes, handed the jack-in-the-box to Mitchell. Mitchell saw at once that the toy was broken. The lid wouldn’t snap shut, keeping the puppet inside. Holding it down with his finger, Mitchell motioned for the boy to turn the crank, and at the appropriate moment, Mitchell released the lid, letting Jack jump out. The boy loved this. He made Mitchell do it over and over again.

  By this time it was after ten o’clock. Too early to serve lunch. Too early to leave. Most of the other volunteers were bathing the patients, or stripping the dirty linens off their beds, or wiping down the rubber mats protecting the mattresses—doing, that is, the dirty, smelly jobs that Mitchell should have been doing also. For a moment, he resolved to start right now, right this minute. But then he saw the beekeeper coming his way, his arms full of soiled linens, and with an involuntary reflex Mitchell backed through the arch and climbed the stairs straight to the roof.

  He told himself he was just going up to the roof for a minute or two, to get away from the disinfectant smell of the ward. He had come back today for a reason, and that reason was to get over his squeamishness, but before doing that, he needed a little air.

  On the roof, two female volunteers were hanging wet laundry on the line. One of them, who sounded American, was saying, “I told Mother I was thinking of taking a vacation. Maybe go to Thailand and lie on the beach for a week or two. I’ve been here almost six months.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said the only thing important in life is charity.”

  “That’s why she’s a saint,” the other woman said.

  “Can’t I become a saint and go to the beach, too?” the American woman said, and they both started laughing.

  While they were talking, Mitchell went to the far end of the roof. Peering over the edge, he was surprised to find himself looking down into the inner courtyard of the Kali temple next door. On a stone altar, six goats’ heads, freshly slaughtered, were neatly lined up, their shaggy necks bright with blood. Mitchell tried his best to be ecumenical, but when it came to animal sacrifice he had to draw the line. He stared down at the goats’ heads awhile longer, and then, with sudden resolve, he went back down the stairs and found the beekeeper.

  “I’m back,” he said.

  “Good man,” the beekeeper said. “Just in time. I need a hand.”

  He led Mitchell to a bed in the middle of the room. Lying on it was a man who, even among the other old men at Kalighat, was especially emaciated. Wrapped in his sheet he looked as ancient and brown-skinned as an Egyptian mummy, a resemblance that his sunken cheeks and curving, blade-like nose emphasized. Unlike a mummy, however, the man had his eyes wide open. They were blue and terrified and seemed to be staring up at something only he could see. The incessant quaking of his limbs added to the impression of extreme terror on his face.

  “This gentleman needs a bath,” the beekeeper said in his deep voice. “Somebody’s got the stretcher, so we’ll have to carry him.”

  It was unclear how they were going to manage this. Mitchell went down to the foot of the bed, waiting while the beekeeper pulled off the old man’s sheet. Thus exposed, the man looked even more skeletal. The beekeeper grabbed him under his arms, Mitchell took hold of his ankles, and in this indelicate fashion, they lifted him off the mattress and into the aisle.

  They soon realized they should have waited for the stretcher. The old man was heavier than they’d expected, and unwieldy. He sagged between them like an animal carcass. They tried to be as careful as possible, but once they were moving down the aisle there was nowhere to set the old man down. The best thing seemed to be to get him to the lavatory as soon as possible, and in their haste, they began to treat the old man less like a person they were carrying and more like an object. That he didn’t seem aware of what was happening only encouraged this. Twice, they bumped him against other beds, fairly hard. Mitchell changed his grip on the old man’s ankles, nearly dropping him, and they staggered through the women’s ward and into the bathroom in back.

  A yellow stone room, with a slab at one end, on which they set the old man down, the bathroom was lit by misty light filtering through a single stone lattice window. Brass spigots protruded from the walls, and a big, abattoir-like drain was sunk in the middle of the floor.

  Neither Mitchell nor the beekeeper acknowledged what a lousy job they’d done carrying the old man. He was lying on his back now, his limbs still shaking violently and his eyes wide open, as if screening an endless horror. Slowly they pulled his hospital gown over his head. Underneath, a soggy bandage covered the old man’s groin.

  Mitchell wasn’t frightened anymore. He was ready for whatever he had to do. This was it. This was what he’d come for.

  With safety scissors the beekeeper snipped the adhesive tape. The pus-stained swaddling came apart in two pieces, revealing the source of the old man’s agony.

  A tumor the size of a grapefruit had invaded his scrotum. At first, the sheer size of the growth made it difficult to identify as a tumor; it looked more like a pink balloon. The tumor was so big that it had stretched the normally wrinkled skin of the scrotum as taut as a drum. At the top of the bulge, like the tied-off neck of the balloon, the man’s shriveled penis hung to one side.

  As the bandage fell away, the old man moved his palsied hands to cover himself. It was the first sign that he knew they were there.

  The beekeeper turned on the spigot, testing the water’s temperature. He filled a bucket. Holding it aloft, he began pouring it slowly, ceremonially, over the old man.

  “This is the body of Christ,” the beekeeper said.

  He filled an
other bucket and repeated the process, intoning:

  “This is the body of Christ.”

  “This is the body of Christ.”

  “This is the body of Christ.”

  Mitchell filled a bucket himself and began pouring it over the old man. He wondered if the falling water increased the old man’s pain. There was no way to tell.

  They lathered the old man with antiseptic soap, using their bare hands. They washed his feet, his legs, his backside, his chest, his arms, his neck. Not for a moment did Mitchell believe that the cancerous body on the slab was the body of Christ. He bathed the man as gently as possible, scrubbing around the base of the tumor, which was venemously reddened and seeping blood. He was trying to make the man feel less ashamed, to let him know, in his last days, that he wasn’t alone, not entirely, and that the two strange figures bathing him, however clumsy and inexpert, were nevertheless trying to do their best for him.

  Once they’d rinsed the man and dried him off, the beekeeper fashioned a new bandage. They dressed him in clean bedclothes and carried him back to the men’s ward. When they deposited him in his bed, the old man was still staring up blindly, shuddering with pain, as though they’d never been there at all.

  “O.K., thanks a lot,” the beekeeper said. “Hey, take these towels to the laundry, will you?”

  Mitchell took the towels, worrying only a little about what was on them. All in all, he felt proud about what had just happened. As he bent over the laundry basket, his cross swung away from his chest, casting a shadow on the wall.

  He was on his way to check on the little boy again when he saw the agronomist. The small, intense man was sitting up in bed, his complexion considerably more jaundiced than on the previous Friday, the yellow leaking even into the whites of his eyes, which were a disturbing orange color.

  “Hello,” Mitchell said.

  The agronomist looked at him sharply but said nothing.

  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.