The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow Read Free Book Online Page B

you’re right,” I said.
    â€œIt’s in the fucking Encyclopaedia Britannica. And he never massacred the Indians. They kicked his Castilian ass.”
    â€œI’m sure they did. Ready for your lesson?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThis 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.”
    â€œMother 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.”
    â€œDo 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.
    â€œI’ll take the part of Jerome,” I told her, “and you’ll be Alice.”
    â€œAlice Walker is best known for The Color Purple, published in 1982. Mother tells me you’re from Boston.”
    â€œCorrect. Shall we start the game?”
    â€œBoston 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.”
    â€œLonda, are you listening?”
    â€œOur 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.”
    â€œLonda, 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 herlips 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.”
    â€œDoes your mother let you smoke?”
    â€œYeah, 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.
    â€œYou’re suffering from a serious dysfunction,” I told her. “It behooves you to cooperate.”
    â€œI’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?”
    â€œYour 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.”
    â€œMe neither.”
    â€œOn Saturday you almost killed a fish for no reason.”
    â€œIf 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 shespoke. “Epidermis, dermis, fascia. I’m always