The Philosopher’s Apprentice

by James Morrow

  “Sure. How’s this? It would be my guess that Londa has gone completely insane.”

  Edwina 0004 sipped her Chablis. “It’s such a privilege being a mother. I’m relishing every minute. ‘It would be my guess that Londa has gone completely insane.’ Marvelous. As you doubtless know, if Western Europe and the United States committed seven billion dollars annually to the cause of clean drinking water worldwide, that investment would save four thousand lives a day. Might I convince you to say it again? ‘It would be my guess that Londa has gone completely insane.’ I pity any woman who isn’t a mother.”

  I daubed the corners of my mouth with a tattered but spotless napkin. “How about we change the subject, okay?”

  “Seven billion dollars. That’s less than what Europeans spend each year for perfume and Americans for cosmetic surgery. Before he went to the gallows, Enoch Anthem spoke often about Christ turning water into wine, but he never once implored Christendom to turn perfume into water. God, I do love it—I love being a mother. Annual global expenditures to fight AIDS, a disease that kills millions each year, amount to three days of military appropriations. Londa, Yolly, Donya. I love them all. Three children in one. One child in three. My dearest, sweetest Yolonda.”

  Our encounter continued in this vein for another hour, Edwina indicting the geopolitical status quo by piling gruesome fact upon gruesome fact, until at last she fixed me with Londa’s most piercing gaze and said, “My daughter was right. She predicted you would join our side once I made my presentation.”

  “All mimsy were the borogoves,” I said, “and the mome raths outgrabe.”

  “That, too.” She smiled seraphically. “Remember our first meeting? Mason and the primal Edwina, sitting on wicker chairs in the geodesic dome? I gave you a mumquat from Proserpine. The mattress in the sleeping loft is a bit lumpy, but the one in my bedroom is soft as a cloud. Shall we draw straws?”

  “The loft is fine,” I said, moving my fettered hands in a circumscribed gesture of nonchalance. “But I must ask you something. After Londa decided to create you, did she take the trouble to—?”

  “To dig up the primal Edwina? Or did she simply use a specimen of her own DNA?”

  “That’s my question, yes.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Yes you do,” the Wild Woman said.

  “Knowing Londa, I would imagine she did it the hard way.”

  My hostess nodded, then pressed both hands against her brow, as if to assuage a headache. “According to my program, she exhumed and reburied her mother with the greatest care. A wayfarer happening upon the grave would never know it had been disturbed. That’s the sort of person my daughter is—respectful of the dead. She does us both proud, wouldn’t you say?”

  I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT, though the problem was neither the lumpy mattress, the despicable handcuffs, nor the Wild Woman’s ghoulish origins, but the far more vexing issue of Londa’s madness. The problem was the corpses on the foremast. To quiet my mind, I meditated on Zeno’s paradox, recited Aristotle’s taxonomy of causes, and tabulated leaping sheep. Nothing worked—not even the additional glass of Chablis I obtained through a furtive visit to the kitchenette.

  Shortly after dawn, I descended from the loft. The Wild Woman was up and about, dressed now in khaki pants and a safari shirt. Insomnia had lately plagued her as well—such was the testimony of her face, so haggard she looked more like Londa than ever. Silently we breakfasted on raw oysters washed down with freeze-dried coffee. The caffeine proved sufficient to open our eyes and get us talking past each other again, with my hostess attempting to convince me that her daughter was a libeled saint, certain to be vindicated by the verdict of history, while I countered her arguments with unassailable mountains of unequivocal evidence, not one particle of which successfully completed the arduous trek from Edwina 0004’s ears to the rational portions of her brain. Throughout this vaporous exchange—this nonversation, if you will—she filled her knapsack with bananas and cashews: snacks for our hike to Faustino, she explained.

  “Londa is eager to see you again. Now that I’ve entered her life, she’s prepared to forgive you your trespasses, a majority of them at least, maybe even your refusal to bless Operation PG.”

  “And who’s going to forgive Londa her trespasses?”

  The Wild Woman scowled impatiently. “Who do you think?”

  NO DIRT ROAD, no jungle trail, no thoroughfare of any sort lay between the lagoon and Faustino, and so we spent the better part of the morning hacking our way through the undergrowth. The heat was relentless, the mosquitoes gave us no quarter, and Edwina 0004’s incessant chatter—another depressing and pointless catalog of Phyllistine transgressions—drove me crazy. At long last we reached the valley of acacia groves and, passing beneath the dysfunctional crossing gate, its arm raised in an eternal Sieg heil, headed down the dirt road toward the mansion.

  Against my expectations, my first glimpse of Londa that afternoon aroused in me neither rage, revulsion, nor righteous indignation. There she was, dressed absurdly in a saffron silk muumuu and a pink ball cap, humming off-key as she stood on the veranda casually whipping up a jug of sangria, and this utterly banal tableau filled me with longing for the virtuous vatling I’d once known and also—I make my confession with great reluctance—for the fanatical vatling she’d become.

  Whooping with joy, trilling with delight, the women raced toward each other, Londa traveling from the veranda to the ground in a single balletic leap. Their embrace was spontaneous and passionate, and for a brief instant I fancied that the primal Edwina was actually walking the earth again, reveling in motherhood. Threaded onto a gold chain, the Godgadget hung from Londa’s neck like a crucifix, and I cringed at the thought that in hugging so tightly, these two beaker freaks might inadvertently detonate the explosives in forehold 3. At last Londa pulled free of her—her what?—her mother? daughter? sister? student? conscience? doppelgänger?—then returned to the veranda, where she poured a round of sangria for all.

  “Cheers,” she said, clinking glasses with Edwina 0004. “Tell me, Maman, what sort of philosopher have you brought me today?”

  “The former master has become the humble disciple. He bows to your wisdom, and he loves you more than ever.”

  I needed the whole of my cerebrum to process these words, my analytical left hemisphere rejecting Edwina 0004’s ridiculous assertion that I was now a Sabacthanite, even as my irrational right hemisphere contemplated the strange truth that yes, I still adored my vatling. I gulped some sangria and locked eyes with Londa. Our expressions, I imagined, were nearly identical: two fleshy Necker cubes, their aspects alternately reflecting our requited adoration and—flip—our bitterness over various mutual betrayals and—flip—the adoration and—flip—the bitterness.

  “As I was leaving the Redux, I thought of an ethical dilemma,” I told her.

  “The good old days,” said Londa, with only a modicum of sarcasm.

  “Imagine you’re in lifeboat number five, rowing away from the wreck. Screams fill the air—the abandoned passengers, afloat in their life jackets, freezing to death. There are twenty-four extra spaces left. Do you vote to go back, or do you—?”

  “Or do I decide that a mob of survivors will arrive en masse and sink the boat? Difficult question, Socrates. Give me till sundown.”

  “In the meantime, kindly unshackle me.”

  “Sorry. Can’t. As Mother says, you love me, but there’s something you love even more. You love the idea of hogtying your homicidal gumbo girl and bringing her to justice.”

  A protest formed on my lips—No, Londa, I just want to be rid of the damn handcuffs—even as I admitted to myself that Mason unbound might try to do exactly what she imagined. But before I could make my complaint, Londa took Edwina 0004 by the arm and escorted her into the mansion.

  Throughout the rest of the day, the women focused their physical and emotional energies on each other, gleefully pu
rsuing those mother-daughter activities that had so gratified the primal Edwina during her final months. They erected a badminton net on the lawn and played a series of three games, all of which Londa won. They took tea and biscuits on the veranda, simultaneously pursuing a conversation whose levels of rapport and intimacy were doubtless off the charts. As the sun descended, arraying the tropical sky with sashes of gold and turquoise, they slipped into identical yellow spandex bathing suits and went down to the beach, intent on frolicking in the surf.

  Having nothing better to do, I prowled through the library where Londa and I had first enacted the Riddle of the Borrowed Ax and the Fable of the Stolen Radium. In time I gravitated to the philosophy section, spontaneously unshelving a key influence on Ethics from the Earth: John Caputo’s Against Ethics, with its wry argument that lofty theories of virtue have done the world a grand total of no good. Briefly I traded stares with Alonso the Conquistador and, intuiting that he approved my choice, ferried it to the reading table, where I set about revisiting the various passages spun from Heidegger’s Es gibt—“There is”—which for the author meant “There is obligation,” savoring them as I might a rococonut julep.

  “Obligations happen, bonds are formed, tables are set, and the earth is covered in cold white snow, while the surf roars, while the stars dance their nightly dance, while worms inch their way toward forgotten graves.”

  At seven o’clock my stomach began to rumble. As if cued by this gastric clamor, Londa suddenly appeared, dressed once again in her saffron silk muumuu and holding a silver salver heaped with lobster canapés, caviar-smeared crackers, salmon croquettes, and oysters Rockefeller, all of which she’d pilfered from the Redux shortly before taking up residence at Faustino. She’d also brought a local delicacy, a blue ceramic flagon filled with mumquat nectar. I set the book on the reading table, splayed and spine up, so that it suggested a capital A. A is for Against Ethics. Adam’s fall, Augustine’s confessions, Anthem’s broken neck. Londa pulled up a chair. The Godgadget was no longer slung about her neck—hardly a cause for celebration: with eight duplicates on board, she could permanently mislay her own, or deliberately destroy it, or wrap it up in ribbons and give it to me for my birthday, and the deterrent would remain in place.

  We fed ourselves uncouthly, wolfing down one dainty after another, sluicing them into our stomachs with large swallows of serenity, and then Londa gestured toward Against Ethics and asked, “What’s that one about?”

  “Obligation,” I said. “The Loch Necessity Monster.”

  “Caputo’s a Kantian, then?”

  “More of a Kierkegaardian.”

  “Are we still friends?”

  “No.”

  “Enemies?”

  “That’s quite likely the case.”

  “Lovers?” she asked tentatively.

  “Perhaps that’s how history will remember us.”

  She ate the last of the lobster canapés. “I would vote to go back.”

  “What?”

  “I’m in boat number five, remember? I would vote to go back and rescue as many passengers as possible. They’re exhausted and weak and half frozen. It’s preposterous to imagine they would swamp us.”

  “Good answer,” I said, consuming the last oyster Rockefeller.

  From her pocket Londa produced a toothed steel rod, pressing it into my palm. The key, she explained. I immediately attempted to free myself, but thanks to the handcuffs this ambition proved paradoxical, like trying to write on a pen using the pen with which you’re writing. Londa came to my aid, popping both shackles in a matter of seconds.

  I swung my arms in joyous circles. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  “You haven’t done it yet, but you will. Listen, darling. I just got off the phone with Colonel Fox. Our liberated hostages are still behaving badly. It would appear that their new and improved pineal glands have atrophied.”

  “You expected otherwise?”

  She pointedly ignored my question. “In keeping with Dame Quixote’s ultimatum, I should call Colonel Fox back and arrange for Pielmeister to join his fellow incorrigibles on the foremast—unless you think Gittikac, Wintergreen, or North would be a better choice.”

  “The hell with Dame Quixote. The hell with her ultimatum.”

  “A worthy sentiment, Mason. I quite agree. The hell with them. Hear my proposition. I’m assigning you to Mother’s old bedchamber, second floor, the suite with the grandfather clock outside the door. The Wild Woman will sleep in my room. I’ll come to you at midnight. We’ll drink nectar together and kiss our pain away, and for a few glorious hours we’ll become the same person. At dawn we’ll start talking again, a full-blown philosophical conversation, Socrates and his gumbo girl, all morning and maybe all afternoon, however long it takes us to figure out what my next move should be.”

  “I already know what your next move should be. Surrender to the FBI, and convince the Valkyries to do the same.”

  “Such high expectations you have for your student,” she said.

  “The mark of a caring teacher.”

  She brought a hand to her mouth, her thin fingers set across her lips like sutures, then used the opposite hand to silence me. “No words,” she whispered. “From now until the sun comes up, no words.”

  I nodded. She dropped her hands, brushed my cheek, and, shifting softly within her muumuu and her equally enveloping inscrutability, slipped out of the room.

  WITH ITS DRIVING RAIN, explosive thunder, and brilliant bursts of lightning, each discharge flashing through the black sky like an aneurysm bursting in God’s brain, the tempest now raging up and down Isla de Sangre inevitably evoked the stormy night Henry and I crept into Torre de la Carne and observed Yolly’s advent. In a matter of hours, the island would, Isis assenting, Thoth willing, witness the birth and maturation of a rather different creature. If I played my part well, wielding my philosopher’s scalpel with consummate skill, by noon tomorrow I would give the world a rehabilitated Londa Sabacthani, moral agent extraordinaire, committed to shutting down Operation PG before it spilled more blood.

  True to my expectations, the primal Edwina’s former boudoir was a paragon of opulence, shaming even the most extravagant stateroom aboard the Titanic Redux. The canopy bed was especially splendid, a hushed bower girded by green velvet curtains fastened to the posts by silken cords. As the wind rattled the casements, hurling barrages of droplets against the panes, I set about increasing the ambient eroticism—lighting the ensconced candles, igniting a stick of patchouli incense, equipping the CD player with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D Major, arraying the nightstand with the mumquat flagon flanked by crystal goblets—then took a quick shower and, returning to the bedchamber, put on a black satin caftan, the sole garment hanging in the closet.

  Midnight arrived, heralded by the grandfather clock in the hall, and as the twelfth chime died within its depths, Londa appeared before me, wearing only a white silk dressing gown. We embraced. No words. I untied her sash and parted the halves of her gown, portals to her beauteous estate. Grasping my caftan by the shoulders, she slipped it smoothly over my head. No words. We climbed onto the mattress and, like Tristan and Isolde hoisting the sails of their love barge, pulled the silk cords loose from the bedposts, so that the curtains glided noiselessly into place.

  In a matter of minutes, the wind and the tide carried us far from shore. And still no words, though of course we didn’t need them, being absorbed in the discourse of our skin, Londa’s carnal morphemes, lickerish sestinas, and wet lexica, her conscience’s lubricious phonemes, tactile stanzas, and spasmodic sonnets. How abundantly I loved my creature that night. I loved her confabulated flesh and ontogenerated smile, her synthetic psyche and labyrinthine mind. I loved each cell in her marrow, every synapse in her brain, all the mites in her lashes. Occasionally we procured the flagon and filled our goblets, and at one point we broke our vow of silence and recited Shakespeare to one another—“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so
long lives this, and this gives life to thee”—the nectar all the while heating our blood, until at last our private orgy ended, and our love barge came to rest, and we descended into a delicious and unfathomable sleep.

  THE CONCERT BEGAN with warbling finches, and soon the squawks of the parrots arose, followed by the cries of herons and flamingos. Golden shafts of sunlight slanted through the gaps in the bed curtains, and I knew that the storm had blown out to sea. I yawned, stretched, and with a slow downward stroke propelled myself into wakefulness. Time to beguile Londa with all my powers of reason. Time to make the Scarlet Darwinist once again sovereign over her soul.

  But she was gone, my errant undine, absconded from our love barge. I drew a slow breath. No need to fret, I told myself. She was merely taking a shower, or once again sharing tea with her mother on the veranda, or enjoying a morning swim in the bay. Or perhaps Londa had acquired the primal Edwina’s habit of spending Saturday morning in the conservatory, though I imagined that the place must be more Swinburnian than ever, all canker and rot and wilt.

  I slipped into my street clothes and began the search, repeatedly calling Londa’s name as I checked the bathrooms on all three floors, then descended to the foyer and headed for the veranda. Suddenly Edwina 0004 stood in my path, dressed in her safari jacket and demanding that I join her for coffee in the geodesic dome. She claimed to know Londa’s whereabouts. Our forthcoming conversation would be of epochal significance, she said, keyed to matters of life and death.

  “Londa’s life, to be specific,” she insisted as we arrived among the languishing orchids and expiring ferns. “Londa’s death.”

  The coffee urn held a potent mocha java. I filled my mug to the brim and, settling opposite Edwina 0004 at a small wrought-iron table, ventured small electric sips.

  “Let me summarize the situation as baldly as I can. My daughter is now my prisoner.” With unnerving sangfroid the Wild Woman poured a fragrant cup of hazelnut from a glass carafe. “Earlier this morning I put your handcuffs on her, then locked her in Dr. Charnock’s old laboratory.”