The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow

devil.”
    â€œThat will do,” Londa said, and Quetzie apparently understood her—at any rate, he dropped the subject.
    â€œI’d like to see your homework,” I said.
    Londa sighed and rubbed up against the conquistador’s breastplate like a house cat alerting its owner to the menace of an empty food dish. “Your chapter on the Stoics—I’m not sure how to put this—it simply amazed me. My pathetic essay doesn’t begin to convey what it’s like to meet a mind like yours.”
    â€œChapter four isn’t about my ideas. It’s about the Stoics’ ideas.”
    Quetzie hopped from Londa’s shoulder to the conquistador’s helmet. “Mason is a genius,” the iguana announced from his new perch.
    I furrowed my brow and groaned. “Did you teach him that dubious proposition,” I asked Londa, “or is it merely something he overheard?”
    She smiled coyly, then approached a massive writing desk, ornately carved with flowering creepers—I imagined some mad Caribbean poet at work there, scribbling the national epic of Isla de Sangre, a phantasmagoria of mutant lobsters, sentient mangroves, talking iguanas, greedy conquistadors, and mysterious concrete walls—and retrieved a printout from the top drawer. Retracing her steps, she transferred Quetzie back to her shoulder and presented me with an essay titled “In Praise of Adversity.”
    â€œWhile you were slaving away on this, I had something of an adventure,” I told her. “I was hiking along the beach and suddenly found myself facing a high concrete wall. Do you know about it?”
    She pursed her lips and shook her head.
    â€œEvidently it runs far into the jungle. I climbed over—”
    â€œI thought it was high.”
    â€œI used a tree. And you’ll never guess what I discovered.”
    â€œThe Fountain of Youth?”
    â€œA large house—big as Faustino. Bigger, even. A villa.”
    â€œHow strange.”
    â€œA little girl lives there. She calls herself Donya. Is that name familiar to you?”
    â€œI don’t think so. Donya?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œSince I hit my head”—Londa gulped loudly, as if swallowing a horse pill—“I’ve forgotten so many things.”
    â€œIs it possible you have a little sister named Donya?”
    She blinked in slow motion. “Mother says I’m an only child. What makes you think this Donya person is my sister?”
    Londa’s morality teacher now proceeded to lie to her. “A wild hunch. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
    â€œShit, I hate it when the amnesia takes somebody away from me. I goddamn fucking hate it.”
    â€œFor what it’s worth, I believe you’ve never met the child in question.”
    â€œKnow something, Socrates? I’m not enjoying this fucking conversation one little bit.”
    â€œMason is a genius,” the iguana said.
    â€œShut the fuck up,” Londa said.
    Quetzie took flight and landed atop the globe, perching on the North Pole like a gigantic vulture about to devour the rotting carcass of planet Earth. I apologized to Londa for introducing such a painful topic, promised never to do so again, then suggested that while I negotiated “In Praise of Adversity,” she should amuse herself with a book of her own choosing. She ambled to the fiction collection, plucking out Pride and Prejudice, and we sat down together at the reading table.
    I was barely two sentences into Londa’s essay before realizing that she was uncommonly skilled at articulating her thoughts on paper: not a complete surprise, given the many acres of text she’dsoaked up of late—though, God knows, my Watertown High students had rarely made the leap from reading lucid prose to writing it. Her last paragraph struck me as downright eloquent.
    Above all, the Stoics sought wisdom, a condition that I myself hope to