The Philosopher’s Apprentice

by James Morrow

  No artist’s brush, no photographer’s lens, no digital Da Vinci’s pixels could have captured the grandeur of Themisopolis in its glory days, though I could imagine Edmund Spenser’s quill rising to the occasion. Book One of The Faerie Queene is not long under way when the Red Cross Knight is obliged to enter “a stately palace built of squared brick, which cunningly was without mortar laid.” Our hero takes particular delight in the gleaming walls, “golden foil all over them displayed, that purest sky with brightness they dismayed.” Approaching the City of Justice for the first time, I gasped in astonishment at the flowering cherry trees flanking Avalon Lane, the billowing fountains of Hypatia Circle, and, in the distance, the luminous marble walls of Themisopolis proper. Only when I reached the main entrance, its bronze gates flashing in the sun like the doors to God’s private bank vault, did my awe turn to bewilderment. Here on the periphery of Quehannock State Park had arisen an institution consecrated to benevolence and the Beatitudes, yet it presented to the world a face as formidable as any maximum-security prison.

  I deposited the Subaru in Visitor Parking and proceeded on foot, inhaling the candied scent of the cherry blossoms. Observing my approach, a wiry woman with a buzz cut sauntered out of the sentry box holding an acrylic clipboard, her sturdy frame clothed in a black leather jacket studded with surly nodes of metal. From her shoulder holster poked the snoutish grip of an automatic pistol.

  “Godzilla,” I said.

  “Name?”

  “Mason Ambrose.”

  The guard consulted her clipboard, handed me a map, and thumbed a button on her remote control. Gradually the mammoth gates parted, clanking and creaking as they disclosed a lavish panorama of spires, gables, clock towers, and groves of sycamores and maples.

  It wasn’t really a city, of course. As I strolled down Shambhala Avenue, surveying the sunny piazzas, commodious bike paths, neo-Bauhaus buildings, pleasant manicured quadrangles, and knots of passersby—scientists in lab coats, engineers in button-down denim shirts, graduate students in turtleneck sweaters—Themisopolis struck me more as a genteel community college, or perhaps a meditation retreat for Westernized Buddhists who saw no incompatibility between higher consciousness and creature comforts. Reaching the Boudicca Street intersection, I started across Alethia Square, a flagstone courtyard featuring a bronze statue of Themis herself, blindfolded as always, sword held high, her famous balance scales connected to an electric motor, so that the two pans moved in a seesaw cycle, up, down, up, down, beneath the weight of invisible deliberations.

  A woman came zooming toward me on a Vespa. She jammed on the brakes, dismounted, and pulled off her helmet, unfurling a banner of auburn hair.

  “Londa!” I shouted.

  She looked almost the same as on that long-ago night when she’d kissed me following Proserpine’s immolation—older, of course, but not significantly older: barely a day over twenty-five.

  “Try again.”

  I immediately guessed my mistake. “Yolly!”

  “Bull’s-eye, Mason.”

  We shook hands, a ritual to which Yolly brought an improbable sensuality. “Nifty scooter,” I said.

  “I still prefer horses.”

  “Dear old Oyster.”

  “Believe it or not, he’s among the living, collecting his pension on a farm outside Leesburg. A touch of arthritis, but the cortisone keeps him on his feet.”

  I told Yolly that of all my Blood Island reveries, none enchanted me more than a girl mounted on a Chincoteague pony, galloping across the scrub.

  “Those were the days,” she said in a neutral tone, as if those days were neither good nor bad and what mattered were the days ahead.

  We proceeded to swap memories like two third-grade Sabacthanites exchanging Dame Quixote trading cards on a school playground. Donya’s little planetarium, Brock’s weird paintings, Charnock’s uncanny chimeras, the red coral, emerald moss, psychedelic blossoms, dour alligators, manic monkeys. Much to my surprise, Yolly had always thought of me not as some aloof intellectual but as “that cool young philosopher guy who understood Londa better than Londa did.”

  “Sometimes I thought I understood her, yes.”

  “She’s still the pick of the litter,” Yolly said. “It’s funny, we’re supposed to be carbon copies of each other, but Londa got all the best traits—the brains, the drive, the looks.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “If I weren’t married, I’d ask you to the senior prom.”

  “Hey, Mason, remember where you are,” she said breezily. “In Themisopolis we know nothing of senior proms, double-dating, June weddings, or any of that normalcy stuff.”

  At which juncture, as if to corroborate Yolly’s claim, two women strolled by hand in hand wearing silver-studded black leather, one partner hulking, the other merely zaftig, automatic pistols rolling on their considerable hips. Each looked as if she could ride, repair, and quite possibly dribble a motorcycle.

  “Our security force is second to none,” Yolly said, gesturing toward the passing daughters of Sappho. “When Jordan first got a load of them, she said they should be wearing metal brassieres and winged helmets, so we started calling them the Valkyries, which is better than what Enoch Anthem’s cyberflunkies call them—the Dyke Brigade. A misnomer, by the way. Anybody can sign up as long as she’s a woman and can shoot straight. About a third of our Valkyries are suburban housewives who couldn’t take it anymore.”

  I told Yolly I was gratified to learn that Jordan hadn’t dropped out of her life. She replied that in fact her legal guardian was on the payroll, coordinating the lobbying efforts of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Foundation out of an office in D.C.

  “The boss said to give you two choices,” Yolly informed me. “You can grab yourself some breakfast in the Vision Institute food court, or you can have coffee with her and Quetzie right now.”

  “For thirteen light-years I traveled across the vast emptiness of space, searching for the lost cult of the feathered iguana. Take me to your leader.”

  IN A GESTURE SO BLATANTLY ALLEGORICAL it would have embarrassed even Edmund Spenser, Londa had sited her headquarters atop the tallest building in Themisopolis, a graceful fieldstone tower known as Caedmon Hall. Hera in her heavenly palace. Ishtar in her Sumerian aerie. Yolly and I ascended via a glass elevator, the glimmering car shooting skyward like the Eighth Avenue Express roaring through a vertical subway tunnel. We disembarked into a stylish reception area appointed with live ferns and dead postimpressionists, presided over by Londa’s appointments secretary, Gertrude Lingard of the reedy voice and, I now learned, the equally reedy physique. Beyond lay a labyrinth of offices, the largest of which belonged to the sloe-eyed Dagmar Röhrig, who had famously turned down a Hollywood contract to become Londa’s manager. The beauteous Sabacthanite was too busy yelling at somebody over the phone to engage us in conversation, but she flashed us an efficient smile and waved toward the holy of holies. Yolly rolled back a frosted-glass door, and we proceeded across a semicircular space so thickly carpeted it was like walking on an immense sponge, the curved picture windows offering epic views of the surrounding farmlands, until we reached a terrace crowded with flowering plants, their fronds and vines fountaining from earthenware pots.

  The first time I ever saw Londa, she was emerging from the floral embrace of a tropical rain forest, and now once again she appeared before me wreathed in blossoms—tulips, lilacs, orchids, plus several hybrids I couldn’t identify—Quetzie perched on one shoulder, the opposite hand gripping a transparent watering can shaped like an alchemist’s alembic. Instead of a crown she wore a telephone headset, and before acknowledging my presence she spoke into the spindly microphone, telling her listener—an annoying person, to judge from her tone, a politician or lawyer or Phyllistine—that there was nothing more to discuss, then removed the headset and extended her hand. Our fingers connected, and the gesture instantly transmuted into a protracted hug.

  “It’s been an eternity,” she said.

  “Much to
o long, at any rate,” I said.

  “An eternity and then some,” she said, breaking our embrace. She was dressed all in white, as if intending to portray the False Florimell at a costume party. White cotton slacks, white silk blouse, white linen jacket, white silk scarf. Time had largely exempted her from its passage: a few creases around her mouth, some crow’s-feet stamped by a fledgling crow—that was all. To my bookseller’s sensibility, she suggested a leather-bound volume so skillfully crafted that years of affectionate thumbing had left only the faintest traces.

  “Believe me, dear,” I said, “the last thing you needed this past decade was a Darwinist Jiminy Cricket lodged in your ear, singing his advice.”

  “As a matter of fact, it was the first thing I needed.”

  Sensing that a quarrel might be brewing, Yolly stepped between us. She kissed my cheek, urged me to drop by more often, patted the iguana on the head, and reminded her sister to call Senator Kitto by three o’clock. Londa relaxed, as did her auxiliary conscience.

  “Quetzie is a handsome devil,” the iguana squawked.

  Diplomatic mission accomplished, Yolly excused herself and trotted off, explaining that she had a meeting with the Wollstonecraft Fund.

  “She sleeps with women,” Londa informed me. “Men, too. If there were a third sex, she’d sample it as well.”

  “I had a feeling.”

  “I sailed to Lesbos once, along with a ravenous save-the-whales lady named Loretta—pretty thrilling while it lasted, but I’m not really wired that way. Have you ever wanted to screw a man?”

  “Only Oscar Wilde, and he’s seeing somebody else.”

  “Quetzie is a handsome devil,” the iguana said.

  “I wish I could be more like Yolly,” Londa said. “She finds time for—I believe it’s called fun. Goes skiing in Vermont. Plays poker with the Valkyries. Follows her libido where it leads her. It’s strange, my little sister is really my big sister, somebody I can look up to. For two years now, she’s been working on a fantasy novel about a mystical book nobody can understand.”

  “If she needs a model, let me suggest anything by Heidegger.”

  “I’ve read the first chapter. Wonderful stuff, very erotic.” She stroked her iguana’s plumage. “Guess what, Quetzie? On his way over here, Mason started wondering if I’ll try coaxing him down to my secret beach.”

  “The last thing on my mind,” I said, though it was actually the second thing on my mind, the first being John Snow.

  She took my hand, massaging the palm, then guided me toward a coffee bar as elaborate as the one that kept Pieces of Mind afloat. “Don’t worry, we goody-goody altar girls aren’t into adultery, though it happens that my bedroom”—she gestured vaguely toward a dark alcove—“is twenty feet away.”

  “You sleep in your office?”

  “I sleep, eat, drink, scheme, and wrestle private demons here.”

  “You should get out more.”

  “Jordan tells me the same thing. You moralists all think alike.”

  “Cogito ergo sum,” Quetzie noted.

  “Until two weeks ago, I was dating a computer geek,” Londa said. “A sweet guy, very sincere, but he never understood the difference between a relationship and a flow chart. Before that I fell for a film professor at Georgetown. We broke up because I didn’t cry at the end of La Strada. Somewhere along the line I had a wild affair with a tennis instructor from Owings Mills. Opposites attract. They attract, and they stick together, and then nothing else happens. The verdict is in, Mason. I’m not cut out for romance.”

  Computer geek, Fellini scholar, tennis instructor: I loved every one of Londa’s suitors, for without their attentions she would probably have tracked me down in person and thrown my life into disarray. I also hated them. How dare they presume to know my vatling’s heart?

  I lifted a glass carafe from the burner and filled a mug bearing the Themisopolis logo, Lady Justice on a galloping horse, balance scales held high. When the brew touched my tongue, I shuddered to experience the familiar flavor of rococonut milk.

  “I detect a trace of Proserpine,” I said.

  “Not enough to cause an opium dream, just your basic euphoria-inducing dosage.” Londa filled her own mug, a real collector’s item decorated with Weill and Brecht’s Pirate Jenny waving a cutlass and singing, THAT’LL LEARN YA. She sipped. “The crop we harvested is still in the Faustino freezer. Henry sends us a shipment every now and then. The Hallucinogen-of-the-Month Club.”

  I swallowed some tranquillity and said, “Londa, I’m going to ask this only once. Are you the cause of my immaculoid?”

  She fluted her lips, siphoning up a measure of well-being. “We must approach this mystery rationally. Do I have a motive to torment you? Let me think. If it weren’t for those goddamn ethics tutorials, I might be leading an enviable existence right now. House in the suburbs, white picket fence, golden retriever, a couple of kids. But thanks to you the house burned down, the fence collapsed, the dog ran away, and the kids are in jail.”

  “I ruined your life, no doubt about it. But I still need to hear you had nothing—”

  “I had nothing to do with your immaculoid.” She fixed me with her fiercest basilisk stare. “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.” I did.

  “All you need is love,” Quetzie said.

  “I imagine this Mr. Snow has put a strain on your marriage,” Londa said.

  “We’ll survive.”

  “I must meet your fortunate bride.”

  “She’s one of your biggest admirers.”

  “As you may have noticed, I’ve got a regular goddamn fan club,” Londa said, sucking coffee through the crack in her smirk. “I used to be a member, but then I outgrew the whole thing. There comes a time in every girl’s life when she throws away her League of Londa comic books.”

  Spontaneously we drifted toward a conference table holding an architect’s model as intricate as Donya’s toy amusement park. It was all there, Londa’s riposte to the Phyllistines—the Vision Syndicate, the Artemis Clinic, Arcadia House, the Institute for Advanced Biological Investigations. The longer I contemplated this solar-powered El Dorado, the more it received my begrudging esteem. How far my pupil had come since her Faustino days of chain-smoking Dunhills and wondering how she might insert “fuck” into her next dependent clause. God knows I wasn’t about to acquire a Dame Quixote T-shirt, but perhaps I’d been wrong to turn my back on Themisopolis.

  “Edwina would be proud of you,” I said.

  “And what about my auxiliary conscience? Is he proud of me?”

  “Your auxiliary conscience thinks he must’ve done something right.”

  “There’s a good chance Yolly and I will leave the world a better place than we found it,” she said in a corroborating tone. “Don’t tell anybody, but the Susan B. Anthony Trust is about to supply the U.N. with enough information to nail more than a hundred traffickers in female sexual slavery. Operation Velvet Fist. And we’ve got another miracle in the pipeline. You’ve never heard of a drug called Xelcepin, but after the institute runs some clinical trials, we hope to announce a breakthrough in the treatment of ovarian cancer.”

  For the first time in years, a snippet from The Egyptian flashed through my brain—the courtesan disrobing before Sinuhe, showing him the malignancy that had deformed her beauty. No wonder drugs for Nefer. Only suffering and blood and futile prayers to Isis.

  “In certain contexts, my difficulties with John Snow seem trivial,” I said.

  Londa’s next remark caught me by surprise. “You know what’s appalling about you, Socrates?” she said, passing a hand over the miniature city.

  “Pray tell. What’s appalling about me?”

  “You think I had a choice about all this. You think Themisopolis was an act of free will.”

  “Of course you had a choice.”

  “I’m trapped, dearest Mason. I’m locked inside my own lousy comic book, Dame Quixote versus the whole goddamn Phyllistine world.” She gra
sped my shoulders, rotating me until our eyes met. “Don’t you have any idea what you did to me? Are you completely clueless?”

  “Not completely.”

  “You carved a thousand facets in my face, so I’d never run out of cheeks to turn. You took the stone that never hit the adulteress and hung it around my neck.” She issued an indecipherable laugh, then released her grip. “All signs point to Charnock.”

  “I had the same thought,” I said, pleased to realize she’d changed the subject. “Unfortunately, he’s dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “And landed in the armpit. Armpit, North Carolina, to be precise, otherwise known as Jacob’s Notch, an insolvent little town on the Pasquotank River. He’s become an aquatic hermit, living on a houseboat. Once a month I get a screed from his laptop, no punctuation, all lowercase. Our species has lost its collective mind. Modernity is a swindle. The future belongs to the ants.”

  “Did he mention making another vatling?”

  “Nope. Shall I have a Valkyrie ride down to Jacob’s Notch and give the old man a scare? Major Powers would be good for the job. She’d crack him like a walnut.”

  “Thanks. I’d like to try a simple conversation first.”

  Not far from the Vision Syndicate replica lay an object resembling a hockey puck. In fact, it was a hockey puck. The label read CIRCUS OF ATONEMENT. “And what goes on here?” I asked, pointing to the thick disk. “Gladiatorial combat?”

  “Testosterone has no friends in Themisopolis.”

  “Then what?”

  “Our chief source of recreation.”

  “What sort of recreation?”

  “A secret recreation,” Londa replied, her tone clarifying that the topic would enjoy no further elaboration just then. Again she waved her hand over the model City of Justice. “You’d be amazed at all the details the architects got into this thing.” She pointed toward the building in which our fractious and disjointed encounter was now occurring. “Pop the roof off Caedmon Hall here, and you’ll see a tiny clockwork Londa trading barbs with her old morality teacher. Can you stay for lunch? I’ll order Chinese, and afterwards we’ll drop by the Circus for some postprandial entertainment.”