The Philosopher's Apprentice (5 page)

 

AFTER LONDA TOOK LEAVE OF US
,
loping into the jungle with the fretful gait of a gazelle who'd lingered too long at the lions' watering hole, Edwina rose and approached the pond. She stared into its depths, counting the local population.

“Apparently this was her first carp attack,” she said. “Give me your verdict, Mason. As a professional ethicist, would you say Londa is a full-blown sociopath?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm not a professional ethicist. In my opinion, nobody is.”

“Cruelty to animals is a strong predictor of future criminality,” Edwina said. “Most serial killers got started by torturing their pets.”

We drank a final glass of wine, then talked about my contract. Once it was clear that I understood the terms—beginning on Monday, I would tutor Londa every weekday morning over the next ten months, two hours per session—the conversation turned to my living accommodations. Although Dr. Charnock would be happy to offer me his hospitality, Edwina explained, I would instead occupy a cottage on the very lagoon where Londa had fractured her skull. I was about to contradict this assessment, noting that Charnock did not seem like a person who cherished guests—I doubted he felt comfortable hosting himself, much less intruders from the main
land—when Javier returned waving a cashier's check for twenty-five thousand dollars and explained that I could expect an identical payment every three months. I decided that I would order myself a laptop and also start sending regular grants from the Ambrose Arts Foundation to my sister Delia in New York, so she could spend more time attending auditions and less time waiting tables.

As dusk came to Isla de Sangre, Javier dropped me off at Charnock's A-frame. The biologist was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was in his laboratory, concocting our Jewish starfish. Beguiled by the sound of the surf, I pulled off my shoes and socks and walked down to the beach. The tide was going out. Again and again the sea threw itself upon the shore and glided away, losing ground with each cycle, a liquid Sisyphus.

“‘Pale beds of blowing rushes,'” I muttered, “‘where no leaf blooms or blushes, save this whereout she crushes for dead men deadly wine.'”

I took the mumquat from my shirt pocket, then knelt beside a tide pool and washed the skin clean. Rising, I popped the fruit into my mouth. The flesh fell away from the pit and melted into a thick, sweet syrup that rolled across my tongue and, trickling downward, caressed my gullet with a viscous warmth. I wrapped my tongue around the stippled stone and spit it out.

Barefoot, I waded into the surf, and as the mumquat took charge of my mind, I looked up and saw that Orion and Canis Major had left their dark niches and were now romping together across the sky. Even as the hunter and his dog gamboled through the celestial meadow, my monarch butterfly fluttered into view, and behind this regal creature flew ten thousand more, their wings beating so vigorously I could feel the wind against my cheeks. Soon every heavenly body above Isla de Sangre had transmuted into a radiant insect, flitting and floating and pollinating the night with countless new stars, and for the moment I was master of them all, an immortal being, a god who answered only to himself.

PLATO HAD HIS REPUBLIC
,
Francis Bacon his New Atlantis, Candide his El Dorado, and I my private cottage in the jungle, an easy walk to Edwina's estate. Among the amenities of this pocket utopia, two delighted me in particular: a sturdy wooden deck overlooking the algae-coated expanse of Laguna Zafira, and a home entertainment center complete with a CD collection featuring the sorts of orchestral music that would incline even the most stringent interstellar cultural commission to rank Earth a civilized planet. On the night before I was scheduled to give my pupil her first lesson, I settled into the chaise longue, uncapped a beer, and made ready to let Ralph Vaughan Williams liberate me from the prison of my skin.

Although “Sinfonia Antarctica” sounded as sublime as ever, its pleasures were insufficient to keep me from brooding. Who was this lost young woman whose broken moral compass I was expected to repair? Would I need to teach Londa Sabacthani every ethical principle since “Don't eat of the tree,” or merely help her recover certain previously assimilated rules that the amnesia had obscured? How might I follow in the footsteps of Sinuhe's father, finding and extracting the secret splinter that had paralyzed her conscience?

“Sinfonia Antarctica” yielded to the “The Lark Ascending,” a composition through which Williams, during my worst bout of junior-year depression at Villanova, had single-handedly persuaded me that the world was not in fact a festering cesspool of such primordial meaninglessness that even suicide would seem like a gesture of assent. I drank one beer per movement, falling asleep in my chair.

Shortly before dawn I awoke to find my bladder distended and, less predictably, my mind ablaze with a bright idea. What Londa needed, I decided, was to participate directly and viscerally in the sorts of ethical dilemmas devised by Plato and Kohlberg. Instead of simply
pondering
morality with her intellect, she must
perform
morality with her hands and feet and organs of speech. To wit, I would turn the Riddle of the Borrowed Ax and the Fable of the Stolen Radium into drama improvisations, placing my student at the center of both crises.

Somewhere in the void, the spirit of John Dewey, America's greatest philosopher and a tireless champion of learning by doing, looked down on Laguna Zafira and smiled.

 

LATER THAT MORNING
I jogged to the manor, flying past a dozen languid iguanas sunning themselves along the forest trail. As I mounted the steps to the veranda, Edwina came gliding toward me, her chronically disaffected ginger cat curled around her neck like a yoke. The beast hissed at me. I hissed back. Edwina explained that her daughter's rehabilitation would occur amid the estate's vast book collection, then guided me down the hall, through a set of French doors, and into the library. Scanning my new classroom, I felt a surge of optimism: the ranks of handsome hardcovers, the globe as big as a wrecking ball, the pair of corpulent armchairs by the hearth—it all seemed conducive to moral discourse of the highest order.

The one anomalous feature was a department-store mannequin,
its tawny plastic flesh dressed in the incised breastplate, morion helmet, and leather hip boots of a Spanish conquistador. Armed with sword and musket, this vigilant agent of the Inquisition stood guard beside the philosophy section, as if charged with making sure nobody checked out a work by David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, or any other heretic.

“We call him Alonso,” Edwina said. “He came with the mansion. Javier likes to make up stories about him. Evidently it was Alonso who convinced Ponce de León to quit the governorship of Puerto Rico and go seek the fabled island of Bimini and its legendary Fountain of Youth. In 1514, Ponce and Alonso stumbled upon a great landmass, which they called
Pascua Florida,
flowery Easter, because it was Easter Sunday.”

Before Edwina could continue Alonso's biography, Londa floated into the room wearing white shorts and a red polo shirt. Her mother and I wished her good morning. Ignoring us, she approached the hearth and flopped into an armchair. She stared into space, saying nothing.

“Ponce and Alonso then embarked on a series of exploits,” Edwina said. “Conquering the Florida Indians, quelling Taíno rebellions back in Puerto Rico, and making pathetic attempts to circumnavigate their newly discovered island, not realizing it was a peninsula.” She drew me to her side and continued in a whisper. “I would say you've succeeded with Londa when she can see the irony in a gang of adventurers seeking eternal youth while leaving corpses wherever they went.”

Edwina slipped out of the room, closing the French doors behind her. I settled into the vacant armchair and faced the dormant fireplace—a peculiar installation here in the tropics, as incongruous as a pinball machine in a funeral parlor.

“Mother doesn't know jack shit about Ponce de León,” Londa said abruptly. “He discovered Florida in 1513, not 1514.”

“I'm sure you're right,” I said.

“It's in the fucking
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
And he never massacred the Indians. They kicked his Castilian ass.”

“I'm sure they did. Ready for your lesson?”

“No.”

“This morning we're going to try something called a theater game. You and I will play roles, like the actors and actresses you see on television.”

“Mother doesn't like me to watch television, but I do it anyway. The comedians make me laugh. So do the soap operas and the tornados and the children who've fallen down mine shafts.”

“Do you remember the story of Alice and Jerome and the borrowed ax?”

Londa tugged absently at her auburn hair. “How could I forget?” Issuing as they did from her infinitely absorbent brain, her words had a double meaning: the story was memorable, and she couldn't have forgotten it if she'd wanted to.

“I'll take the part of Jerome,” I told her, “and you'll be Alice.”

“Alice Walker is best known for
The Color Purple,
published in 1982. Mother tells me you're from Boston.”

“Correct. Shall we start the game?”

“Boston is the capital of Massachusetts.” From her skirt pocket she retrieved a matchbook and a blue pack of Dunhill cigarettes. “During the Boston Tea Party, the colonists dumped three hundred and forty-two crates of cargo into the harbor.”

“Londa, are you listening?”

“Our planet has a solid inner core, a molten outer core, a warm rocky mantle, and a thin cool crust. On December seventeenth, 1903, the Wright Brothers made four flights in their propeller-driven glider.”

“Londa, I need your attention.”

With a flick of her wrist she prompted a single cigarette to emerge from the pack. “The filter tip goes in my mouth.” She wrapped her
lips around the cigarette and slid it free. “The other end receives the match. I'm seventeen years old, and I have many skills. I can bake a cake, drive a nail, unclog a drain, and build a castle out of sand.”

“Does your mother let you smoke?”

“Yeah, but she's not too fucking wild about it.” She struck a match, lit her Dunhill, and launched into a deft impersonation of Edwina. “‘Sweetheart, we know that tobacco is bad for our health.'” She removed the cigarette and coughed. “I'm afraid Mother's opinions don't carry a whole lot of weight in my book. Neither do yours, as a matter of fact.”

I stared at a fire poker, standing in its rack like an arrow in a quiver. During a postwar meeting of the Moral Science Club at King's College, Wittgenstein had reportedly brandished such an implement in Karl Popper's face when the latter refused to admit there were no genuine philosophical problems, only linguistic puzzles. My urge to similarly threaten Londa just then was not negligible.

“You're suffering from a serious dysfunction,” I told her. “It behooves you to cooperate.”

“I'm well aware of my serious dysfunction. Know something else, Socrates? I'm just as fucking moral as you. Rule one: thou shalt have no other fucking gods before me. Rule seven: thou shalt not commit fucking adultery. I can recite all ten. Can you?”

“Your mother tells me you set fire to a rug. You've thrown rocks through Dr. Charnock's windows. That doesn't sound like moral behavior to me.”

“Me neither.”

“On Saturday you almost killed a fish for no reason.”

“If you're worried I might break your windows, I promise I won't.” She parked the cigarette in her mouth and stretched out her bare arm, poking the flesh with her thumb. “It's so strange being wrapped up in this stuff.” The cigarette bobbed up and down as she
spoke. “Epidermis, dermis, fascia. I'm always leaking. Blood, sweat, saliva, mucus.”

“But never tears.”

Our eyes met. Her irises were two different shades of green. She seemed about to waft out yet another datum but instead offered a faltering smile and a snort of begrudging assent.

I climbed free of the armchair and, taking Londa's hand, led her to a mahogany reading table, where I seized a convenient duster, a bouquet of white feathers sprouting from the handle. “Let's imagine this is the ax.” I waved the duster in Londa's face. “Good morning, Alice,” I began in a smarmy voice. “How lovely to see you today.”

Five seconds elapsed. Ten. Fifteen. Londa took a long drag on her cigarette, then flicked the ember into an inverted crab shell that evidently now functioned as an ashtray.

“Say something, Londa.”

“The age of once-living matter can be determined by measuring its radioactive carbon-14.”

“Say something
Alice
would say. You're Alice, remember?”

“In 1959, Los Angeles defeated Chicago to win the World Series.”

“Londa, say the following: ‘Good morning, Jerome. Thank you for bringing me your ax.'”

“You're not Jerome,” she noted, blowing smoke through her nostrils. “You're Mason Ambrose. A mason jar has a wide mouth and an airtight screw top.”

“‘Good morning, Jerome.' Say it, Londa.”

“The Freemasons are known for their charitable work and secret rites.”

“Say it.”

“Why the fuck should I?”

“Because I'm the teacher and you're the pupil. ‘Good morning, Jerome.'”

Londa closed her eyes. She grunted and gritted her teeth. “Good morning,
Jerome.
” She sounded like a microchip. “Thank you for bringing me your ax. This is bullshit, Mason.”

“Happy to oblige, Alice. I sharpened the blade this morning—but I forget why you want to borrow it.”

“I forget, too.”

“Perhaps you intend to remove a dead limb from a beech tree?”

“A beech tree, sure, whatever you say, except this is the fucking tropics, and there aren't any fucking beech trees around here.”

“How sad. There are plenty of beech trees back in Boston.”

“Boston cream pie has chocolate icing on top and a custard filling between the layers.”

“True enough, but you're wrong about the Boston Tea Party. Three hundred and forty-
one
crates went into the water, not three hundred and forty-two.”

“No, three hundred forty-two.”

“Sorry. Not true.”

Londa cringed and sucked in a deep breath. “The
Encyclopaedia Britannica
says so.”

“An ancestor of mine was
there,
Londa. He counted the crates. The encyclopedia is in error.”

Her body contracted as if she were a passenger on a plummeting elevator. “You're lying!”

“Books are often in error.”

“Like holy fuck they are!”

“Three hundred forty-one,” I insisted.

“Forty-two!”

“Forty-one!”

Londa drifted toward Alonso and, tugging on his boot cuff, dropped her cigarette butt into the cavity. She headed for the ancient-history section. I dogged her steps, the duster tucked under my arm. She sprawled across a russet leather couch, rolled onto her back, and pulled her hair over her face like a veil.

“Was this a
favorite
beech tree of yours?” I asked, joining her on the couch. Her sandals brushed my thigh.

For an entire minute, she made no sound, then at last she swept the hair from her eyes and muttered, “You want me to
pretend
I'm Alice, is that it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Would you like to hear my poem? ‘The French say
merde.
We say turd.'”

I stroked the back of her hand. “You know, Alice, I'd bet money we're talking about one of your
favorite
beech trees.”

A pensive frown furrowed her brow, and she assumed a sitting position, scratching her bare ankle with the opposite toenail. “When I was a little girl in Vermont,” she said slowly, precisely, “my father suspended…an old tire…from the lowest branch. I spent many a goddamn joyful hour swinging back and forth.”

“Then you must do everything you can to save the tree's life.” I set the feather duster in her palm and wrapped her fingers around the handle. “However, I expect you to return my ax when I need it again. Can you promise me that?”

“Sure thing,” she grumbled.

“The instant I ask for my ax back, you'll give it to me.”

“I fucking heard you the first time. I'll guard your fucking ax with my fucking life.”

Not a breakthrough, exactly. No sea change in my nihilistic nereid. And yet my spirits rose: I could see the photon at the end of the tunnel. “Londa, you're doing great. I would even venture to say you're having fun.”

“Fun? Right, Socrates. Fun on a bun.” She waved the feather duster about like a pom-pom, then condescended to add, “This is slightly less barfomatic than I was expecting.”

“You've got a real talent for improvisation.”

“Let's just get it the fuck over with.”