The Philosopher's Apprentice (38 page)

 

ALTHOUGH THE B-DECK
corridor presided over by Dagmar Röhrig had been designated the reception area, anyone seeking an audience with Dr. Sabacthani was in fact received by two Valkyries who regarded most supplicants with the same caliber of suspicion Omar the Doberman had accorded all visitors to Casa de los Huesos. They were a redoubtable pair, the imposing corporal evoking the bronze Themis who'd once graced the fallen city, the lithe sergeant suggesting Alonso the Conquistador following a sex-change operation. A simple nod from Lieutenant Kristowski was sufficient to
make the guards step aside—she outranked them both—whereupon Dagmar abandoned her desk, guided us along a glass-walled promenade offering spectacular views of a calm North Atlantic sea, and ushered us into the Louis XIV parlor suite that now functioned as Londa's command-and-control center.

True to her solidarity with the downtrodden, she'd peeled away the suite's opulent trappings, so it was up to my imagination to supply the brocade draperies, Persian carpets, gilt-framed mirrors, and Fragonard reproductions that had doubtless once appointed the place. Although her surroundings were spare, Londa herself had opted for elegance that evening, her lips daubed with magenta, her exquisite skin wrapped in a strapless green taffeta evening gown. After gesturing Dagmar and Lieutenant Kristowski away, she gave me the sort of deep, aqueous kiss at which undines are adept, then sidled toward a serving table where a samovar stood heating over an open flame.

“Ever drunk your nectar warm, darling?” she asked, indicating the great silver urn. “Dagmar recommends the experience, so I thought we'd try it.” She worked the stopcock, filling a black ceramic mug with a steaming measure of Proserpine. “Naturally I hoped we'd get together before now, but it's been pure madness around here, with more chaos to come.”

“I heard your first two broadcasts. I guess you think you're being unbelievably brilliant inflicting poetic justice on the Phyllistines—”

“Not brilliant necessarily. Clever, I suppose. Droll.”

“But paying them starvation wages, that's
cruel.
”

She presented me with eight savory ounces of equanimity. “At the risk of sounding rather too forward, I'll get right to the point. I would like to formalize our bond.”

My heart seemed to rotate on its axis. Formalize our bond? What was she suggesting? That we march straight into Captain Pittinger's cabin and demand that he marry us? A bizarre nup
tial tableau flashed through my mind, at once beguiling and repulsive, Londa and myself standing before the master of the
Redux,
the vatling in her evening gown, her groom wearing a three-piece Italian suit that had once belonged to a plutocrat, Dagmar and Lieutenant Kristowski getting ready to pelt us with rice. Did such a union make sense at any level? Would marrying Londa give me some sort of psychological leverage, a kind of Splanx-like power by which I might convince her to shut down Operation PG?

“My most precious and impossible undine,” I sighed. “My infinitely exasperating sylph.”

Londa stared at me as if I'd started speaking Chinese. “I'm wild about you, too, Mason, but that's another day's conversation. Right now we have to fix the Phyllistines.”

“You said this was about our
bond.
”

“Correct. Ambrose and Sabacthani, united against the misogynists and theocrats.” She turned the stopcock and filled a second mug. “Ah,
now
I get it—you're referring to
another
sort of bond: Sythia and Thales, rolling around on their secret beach.” Her tone was wistful, as if our lovemaking had occurred in some mythic realm beyond time and space. “Believe me, Mason, I get goose bumps just thinking about that day, and if it gave you further proof of my good intentions, so much the better.”

My overwhelming impulse just then was to bounce the ceramic mug off her skull. “Are you saying that because you fucked me, I'm now supposed to go along with this hijacking crap?”

“I suggest we not dwell on those aspects of Operation PG you find objectionable. Let's focus on the greater good.”

“May I once again quote you to yourself? ‘There are no greater goods.'”

“That's Joan of Arc's line.”

“Written by Londa Sabacthani.”

“Your nectar's cooled off by now. Try some. You'll feel much better.”

I took a protracted swallow. “Shall I tell you the truth? For a minute there, I imagined you wanted Captain Pittinger to marry us.”

The perplexity that came to Londa's face was even deeper than before, as if the issue of my lips had changed from Chinese to bumblebees. She sipped some nectar, then marched to the writing desk: a typical piece of
Redux
furniture, so graceful it seemed intended solely for penning sestinas and would turn to sawdust the instant anybody used it for paying a bill. Sliding open the top drawer, she removed her fanciful account of her nonexistent preadolescence. “I saved only two mementos from Faustino—
Coral Idolatry
and this quaint and curious volume.” She deposited
The Book of Londa
in my hands, its brown leather binding scuffed like an old shoe. “I've been using it to scribble down anecdotes from my life. At some point in the story, fiction turns to fact. Note the most recent entry.”

As the mumquat molecules navigated my bloodstream, I did as Londa instructed. The specified page contained a mere sixty words, rendered in a script so ragged I wondered if she'd composed it under Proserpine's influence.

She reached into the drawer again and retrieved a fountain pen: a genuine Montblanc, quite possibly the only aristocratic gewgaw she'd allowed herself after stripping the suite of its elitism. “I need your blessing,” she said, pressing the pen into my palm. “It would make all the difference.”

The nectar bathed my brain, bestowing a simulated serenity, but I was too distressed to enjoy it. “I can't.”

“Of course you can.”

“No,” I said, regarding the fancy pen as I would a rattlesnake.

“Always the philosopher. Always the contrarian. Very well, Socrates—think it over. Think it over a whole fucking bunch. The evening's young.”

“I've already thought it over.”

“All I want is your goddamn signature.”

I threw the pen across the room.

“I'm supposed to
beg
you—is that it?” she said.

“No, you're supposed to bring the ship about, steam back to Brigantine, and set the hostages free. If Donya were here, she'd tell you the same thing. Yolly, too. Even Edwina.”

Londa's eyes grew shadowed and narrow, like visor slots in a knight's helmet. She gulped some nectar, snatched her journal away, and unleashed a diatribe of vast scope and epic sweep. Left to their own devices, she insisted, Ralph Gittikac and his compatriots would turn the planet into a toxic waste dump. If Enoch Anthem and his brethren retained their stranglehold on the zeitgeist, life would become even more wretched for those Americans who'd made the mistake of being born poor, unhealthy, gay, pigmented, or female. Once Pielmeister and his kind finished bringing Corporate Christi into being, a dark age would descend upon the human spirit, unredeemable by any imaginable renaissance.

“I forget, Londa, what sorts of weapons did the disciples bring to the Sermon on the Mount? As I recall, Mark says Browning machine guns, but Matthew reports AK-47s.”

“Don't become my enemy, Mason. I have enemies enough.”

In a quick, unbroken gesture, I tore the last page from
The Book of Londa
and jammed it into the flame beneath the samovar. Londa shuddered but did not move. I pulled my hand away and released the burning page. Buoyed by a draft, it turned into a lamina of ash, then floated to the floor and consumed itself.

I said, “John writes that the Good Samaritan acquired his leg
endary benevolence only after Jesus handcuffed him to a fig tree under the scorching sun.”

“Have it your own way. We won't be lovers. We won't be friends. We won't be fellow warriors in the great crusade.”

“In Luke's version, however, the conversion takes a bit longer.”

“Kindly leave my office before I count to ten. One…two…”

I strode toward the door. “First Jesus locks the Samaritan in a dungeon for six months, then lays into him with a horsewhip.”

“Three…four…”

“Until finally the Samaritan becomes a man of compassion.”

“Five…six…”

I was gone before she got to seven.

 

NOW THAT THE GREAT SCHISM
had occurred, a rift as wrenching for me as it was doubtless inevitable from the plenary perspective enjoyed by Isis, Horus, Thoth, and the rest of my antique pantheon, I assumed that Londa would exact a swift revenge. I imagined her canceling my room-service privileges and requiring me to join the Phyllistines in waiting on our first-class passengers. And yet I retained my pampered status—though apparently Londa did tell the security force I was no longer to be trusted.

“It's none of my business, sir, but I gather that you and Dr. Sabacthani had quite a falling-out,” Lieutenant Kristowski said.

“True,” I said.

“What did you do to offend her?”

“I quoted her to herself.”

“I used to do that to my boyfriend,” Lieutenant Kristowski said. “It's why we broke up. I'm sure Dr. Sabacthani doesn't hate you. Do you hate her?”

“No.”

“If I had to take a guess, sir, I'd say you're in love with her.”

“That may be the case.”

“You philosophers like to make things complicated, don't you? If
you ever need a break from your brain, drop by our shooting range on C deck. I'll teach you how to fire a Galil.”

Throughout the second week of the voyage, as the ship oscillated aimlessly between the thirty-third and thirty-fifth parallels, I undertook a kind of anthropological study, systematically analyzing the behaviors of victims and oppressors alike as they played out their parts within the privileged precincts of A and B decks. Besides the three dozen former third-class passengers, our local elite included nineteen stewards, twenty-one scullerymen, and—when they weren't on duty shoveling coal in the boiler rooms—fifteen stokers. As far as I could tell, our entire population of parvenus had already gotten the hang of arrogance. Before making a particular demand, the first-class passenger usually invoked the captive plutocrat's name: an easily obtained datum since, pursuant to a directive from Major Powers, the Phyllistines had all signed their pajama pockets with indelible Sharpie pens.

“Albert, old sport, at four o'clock I shall require a repast of oysters and beer on the first-class promenade.”

“Enoch, this martini glass appears to be empty, a situation I expect you to remedy without delay.”

“Quentin, would you kindly visit the library and scare me up a Tom Clancy novel?”

“Donald, be a dear and retrieve your wife's cardigan from my stateroom.”

“Felix, my man, it has come to our attention that fresh croissants are now available in the Café Parisien. Bring me a dozen in five minutes flat, and I'll reward you with a lucre.”

I wondered what a devout Fabian like George Bernard Shaw would have made of Londa's deranged experiment in social engineering. He probably would not have approved. It was one thing to argue, per
Pygmalion,
that the class system was arbitrary and unnatural, quite another to demonstrate that, given the opportunity, the working poor of America, the United Kingdom, and Europe would
happily turn themselves into callous egomaniacs every bit as tyrannical as Henry Higgins.

Owing to both my personal investigations and my daily conversations with Marnie Kristowski, I had a pretty good idea what was happening in the Phyllistines' heads. As in their previous lives, the subject of money rarely left their thoughts, but the focus of the obsession had changed, from piling up mountains of wealth to figuring out whether they had enough ready cash to buy toothpaste from the pharmacy and toilet paper from the commissary. For the brute truth was that five lucres a day—thirty-five lucres a week—did not go very far aboard the
Redux.
In accordance with Londa's latest fiat, a loaf of bread now cost thirty lucres, a quart of milk forty, and a box of raisins eighty. I shuddered to imagine the consequences if she ever repealed universal health insurance. No doubt she would start charging the same outrageous prices as the druggist in a certain famous moral dilemma.

It was alternately painful and amusing to watch our hostages laboring in the Grand Saloon and its adjacent kitchen, where their duties included arranging the place settings, taking the orders, serving the food, busing the tables, and doing the dishes. Our first-class passengers showed their inferiors no mercy. They addressed the plutocrats as “garçon” and “Jeeves,” required them to memorize long wine lists, sent back half the entrées, and left worthless tips in the form of dollars, pounds, and euros. At the end of each meal, the more spiteful parvenus heated their plates over the dinner candles, thus guaranteeing that the Phyllistines would have to spend hours scraping away baked-in bits of poached salmon and encrusted morsels of kidney pie.

When it came to maintaining their staterooms, our first-class passengers held their servants to the highest standards. Every day, whether the task needed doing or not, the plutocrat responsible for a given suite was expected to vacuum the carpet, dust the furniture, disinfect the toilet, launder the linen, wash the portholes,
clean the curtains, make the beds, and, after stripping the wardrobe of its jackets and pants—most of which had once belonged to the plutocrats themselves—brush each garment with a lint remover. Our parvenus soon became sticklers for detail, and God help the G-deck passenger who neglected to turn down the sheets or leave a chocolate on the pillow.