The Philosopher's Apprentice (9 page)

“The social event of the season,” I said.

“Look what Brock's building for me!”

She led me to the far corner, where a man in his early forties, handsome as Dorian Gray, was methodically adding tiny trees to a miniature amusement park spread across a plywood platform. This raucous and frenetic marvel, as lovingly detailed as the Lionel O-gauge electric train set I'd inherited from my grandfather, featured a Ferris wheel spinning in place like a vertical phonograph record, a six-horse carousel rotating to the tune of “The Washington Post March,” and a roller coaster subjecting a dozen diminutive passengers to its scale-model vicissitudes. As I gaped in appreciation, the tree planter introduced himself as Brock Hawes, “the sensitive half of the relationship, Henry being in charge of dental appointments and balancing the checkbook.”

“Donya, will you excuse us, darling?” Henry said. “The adults need to talk.”

“I want to stay here,” Donya said.

“Sorry, tomato,” Henry said.

“You can't
make
me go.”

“Donya…”

“If you try to
make
me go, I'll tell Mommy you were mean to me, and I'll do other stuff you won't like either—with matches, maybe, or scissors.”

“Know what, Donya?” Brock said. “I'll bet you a million dollars there's something yummy in the fridge, second shelf down on the right.”

“You can't
make
me do anything. What's in the fridge?”

“I forget exactly,” Brock said, “but there's some major yumminess involved, I promise you.”

Donya pirouetted toward the kitchen, moving so gracefully I
wondered whether Henry and Brock's curriculum might include ballet lessons. Omar, stretching, rose from his rug and followed his mistress out of the room.

“The person who hired you—she claims to be Donya's mother, right?” I asked.

“Edwina Sabacthani,” Henry said, nodding.

“Edwina,” I muttered. So much for my theory that Donya's mother was Edwina's twin sister. I could imagine a Monty Python routine about twins with the same first name, but I doubted that the practice flourished on Isla de Sangre. “I'm working for her, too.”

“We know,” Brock said. “Donya told us.”

“Are you by any chance a connoisseur of children's television?” Henry asked. “
Professor Oolong's Oompah-pah Zoo
?”

I shook my head.

“For six years running, I was Professor Oolong on Nickelodeon, but then the ratings went south, and I became plain old Henry Cushing, unemployed actor. This job has been a gift from heaven. Edwina's nephew used to enjoy my antics every Saturday morning, and that was recommendation enough.”

“I was hired to tutor an adolescent named Londa,” I said.

“Londa Sabacthani,” said Brock. “Seventeen years old. Donya's got a fabulous memory. She showed you a photograph of her mother.”

“Who looks exactly like Londa's mother,” I said. “Apparently our students are sisters—half sisters at least.”

“Are you merely
tutoring
Londa,” Brock asked, “or would it be more accurate to say you're
rehabilitating
her?”

“Rehabilitating, yes,” I said. “A diving accident resulting in cerebral trauma. The symptoms include severe amnesia plus—”

“Let me guess,” Henry said. “Alienation, anomie, and sociopathic behavior.”

I frowned and nodded.

“In other words, Londa woke up without a conscience,” Brock said. “Donya has the same deficit.”

“So I hear,” I said. “No rectitude. What a strange coincidence.”

“I don't think it's a
coincidence
at all,” Henry said. “It appears that Edwina has been playing games with our heads, and her children's heads, too, and maybe her own head as well.”

“Did Donya also have a diving accident?” I asked.

“Supposedly she fell off her bicycle,” Brock said.

“Londa has inherited her maternal grandfather's gift for speed-reading,” I informed my new friends. “And Donya?”

Henry hummed in corroboration. “Yesterday she got through
Heidi
in fifteen minutes. This morning she devoured
The Secret Garden
in ten.”

“Did Edwina ever mention a second daughter?” I asked.

Henry and Brock shook their heads in tandem.

“When I had tea with Donya, she told me she's an only child,” I said. “Londa believes the same about herself. Evidently Edwina makes a point of it.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Henry said.

For the next half-hour, we attempted to construct a coherent narrative that would account for the bizarre domestic arrangements on Isla de Sangre, but far from dissolving the mystery, we only deepened it. Our employer's nomadism had us especially confused. Just as I'd assumed that Edwina resided exclusively with Londa at the moldering estate called Faustino, so did Henry and Brock believe she was permanently ensconced with Donya at Casa de los Huesos.

“Apparently she spends much of her time on the move, a peculiar lifestyle for a person allegedly in poor health.” Henry flipped back the top of the carousel and removed the mini-CD. “Proposition, Mason. While the cat's away in Chicago, why don't we mice spend Saturday afternoon exploring the island?” Receiving my nod, he smiled approvingly, then inserted a disc labeled “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” into the carousel. “I can't speak for you or Brock, but I won't rest until I've figured out precisely how many
daughters Edwina has, and who their fathers are, and why the hell the children aren't supposed to know about each other.”

 

DURING THE INTERVAL
since my last encounter with the mutant iguana, a new sentence had coalesced in his cold-blooded brain. When I walked into the library on Friday morning, Quetzie stared at me from his perch atop the conquistador's helmet and proclaimed, “All you need is love.”

“That's a matter of some controversy,” I said.

“All you need is love,” Quetzie insisted.

Just then Londa stepped into the room, dressed distractingly in blue denim cutoffs and an orange halter top, clutching her copy of
Ethics from the Earth.
As she approached Quetzie, he hopped from the conquistador to her head, so that she now wore an Aztec princess's feathered crown.

“Stick out your tongue,” I instructed her.

“I didn't mutilate it.”

“All you need is love,” the iguana said.

“Stick out your tongue,” I repeated.

Londa stuck out her tongue. It looked entirely healthy.

“Show me your hands.”

She did as instructed. The inflamed skin beneath her thumbnail seemed to be healing, likewise the blister on her palm, and I saw no evidence that she'd manually snuffed another candle. I inspected her shoulders. No aberrations. I glanced at her knees and calves. The skin seemed intact.

“I'm still a Stoic,” she explained, “but from now on I won't
behave
like one, since it makes you so fucking unhappy, though your fellow educator Jean Piaget believes that a developing child constructs her world through action.”

“Your teacher this morning is Mason Ambrose, not Jean Piaget. Did you reread chapter four?”

“Twice.”

“Mason is a genius,” Quetzie said.

“Here's the setup,” I said. “Imagine you're an artist living in a contemporary version of the Stoics' fabled City of Zeus. Your name is Sybil Bright, and you believe that personal integrity is the highest virtue.”

“Let me get this straight,” Londa said. “I'm allowed to
play
at Stoicism, but I'm not allowed to
practice
it.”

“What you're not allowed to do is burn your palm or puncture your thumb or any such crap,” I said curtly. “A man named Alvarez has come to your studio. He works for a bank. Ready?”

“Whatever you say.”

I rapped my knuckles on the reading table to simulate Mr. Alvarez knocking on Sybil Bright's door.

“Could I have a minute of your time, young woman?”

Londa pulled a colorfully packaged piece of bubble gum from her hip pocket. “My newest vice,” she said, unwrapping the pink lozenge. “It helps me overcome the urge for a cig.”

I cleared my throat. “Could I have a minute of your time?” I said again.

She shrugged and popped the gum into her mouth. “Would you like to buy a painting?”

I pantomimed a banker entering Sybil's studio. “Casper Alvarez of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company. I'm here to offer you a credit card. No annual fee, a stunning five-point-eight percent APR, and you get to accumulate a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt before we bat an eye, assuming you keep up the minimum monthly payments.”

“I don't need a credit card.”

“Sure you do.”

“Why?”

“To buy things.”

“What things?”

“A recreational vehicle, a snowmobile, a sailboat, a home theater.”

“Will they make me a better person?” she asked.

“They won't make you
better,
” I said, “but they'll afford you countless hours of enjoyment.”

“We Stoics distrust enjoyment. My life is a quest for divine wisdom.”

“Don't be self-righteous, Sybil. When you experience intimations of the numinous, this gives you a rush of satisfaction.”

“True enough, but it's the wisdom I value, not the rush.”

A crackerjack retort, I thought. Perhaps I was a better teacher than I knew.

Our conversation went on for another twenty minutes, an interval during which Mr. Alvarez failed to make Sybil stray even one centimeter from her personal code with its imperatives of integrity, forbearance, and openness to epiphany.

“Curtain,” I said, resting an affirming hand on Londa's bare shoulder. “You were terrific.”

“Was I?”

“Absolutely sensational. For Monday's class, I want you to study the next chapter, all about Epicurus, then write out a two-page conversation between an Epicurean and an anti-Epicurean.”

She set her hand atop mine, pressing down until I felt the bone beneath her flesh. “The Epicureans believed pleasure was a virtue, didn't they?”

“True enough,” I said, retrieving my hand.

“You won't allow me to experiment with pain. Am I supposed to run screaming from pleasure, too?”

“Depends on what you mean by pleasure. An Epicurean would be the first to argue that hedonism is both degrading and dangerous.”

Londa blew a bubble that looked like a pink cantaloupe. She let it pop, returned the strands to her mouth, and smiled. “I've got the whole fucking weekend ahead of me. There's no telling
what
I might do.”

 

ON SATURDAY MORNING
I filled my backpack with trail mix and juice boxes, then hiked to Casa de los Huesos, where I found everyone assembled on the lawn for croquet—Donya, her tutors, plus a rangy Asian man and a ruddy, zaftig woman, whom Henry introduced as, respectively, Chen Lee, “a cook with Szechuan credentials,” and Rosita Corona, “a gardener with a green thumb on each hand.” Omar sat on his haunches just beyond the midfield stake, ready to referee. Donya offered me the blue-striped mallet—me, the washout at soccer, badminton, volleyball, kick the can, and every other athletic activity save tree climbing. I told her I'd rather watch.

The game was barely ten minutes under way when I realized that the four adults were arranging for Donya to win. They deliberately missed wickets, allowed her to retake bobbled shots, and declined to roquet her ball even when that was the only rational tactic. I wondered how this pathetic charade was supposed to further her moral education. Did Henry and Brock really believe that a sham victory would help give Donya a superego?

When at last the contest reached its predictable conclusion, Donya the winner and still champion, Henry shouldered his own backpack, bulging with luncheon delicacies secured in Tupperware containers, then announced that he and I were about to go rambling around the island in imitation of Robinson Crusoe.

“I want to come, too!” Donya shouted.

“Sorry, cupcake,” Henry said.

Storm clouds gathered above the child's head. She screwed her features into a cameo of disgust and hurled her croquet mallet onto the grass. “You never let me do
anything
!”

“Guess what, pumpkin?” Brock said, strolling nonchalantly up to Donya. “A special package came yesterday.”

“What special package?” she demanded shrilly. “What was in it?”

“
Indoor
voice, Donya,” Brock admonished her, “
indoor
voice.”

“But we're
outdoors.
”

“Let's say we go open that special package,” Brock suggested, stooping into a leapfrog position. Donya jumped onto his shoulders, swinging her legs around his neck. He rose, grasped her ankles, and started toward the villa. “I think it might be the bumper cars for our amusement park.”

“Giddyap!” Donya cried. “Giddyap! Giddyap!”

As I followed Henry across the croquet field, barely resisting the temptation to hook my instep under the wickets and loft them into the air, he informed me that in fact the narrative of Robinson Crusoe was much on his mind these days. He'd recently hit on a concept for a children's show,
Uncle Rumpus's Magic Island,
centered on a castaway who spends his days combing the beach for whatever flotsam and jetsam might help him to survive. Being part of a larger artifact, each piece of junk he finds proves perplexing—table leg, bicycle chain, umbrella frame, clock face—and so Rumpus enlists his young viewers in interpreting each treasure, thus presumably enhancing their powers of inference.