My Ishmael Read online

  The woman said to him, “You know they’d really like to have one more.” Obviously I had no idea who “they” were.

  “I’m aware of that,” he said. Then: “Come back to my office and we’ll talk about it. I’m Phil, by the way, and this is Andrea.” Back in his office we sat down, and he said, “The reason we’re hesitating is that we need people who can go away for a while. For a good long while, actually.”

  “That’s no problem,” I told him.

  “You don’t understand,” Andrea said. “We’re talking about years, maybe even decades.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind that,” I told them. “Honestly.”

  (“Now you notice,” I said to Ishmael, “that neither of them said I was too young or it’d be better if I was a boy or I should really stay home and take care of my mother or finish school or anything like that” He nodded to show he hadn’t missed that important point.)

  The two of them exchanged another look, then Phil asked how long it would take me to get ready.

  “You mean to leave?” He nodded. “I’m ready now. I came ready.”

  “That’s great,” Andrea said. “As you can see, we’re just packing up here. If you’d come an hour later, you’d have missed us.”

  Now you notice that they both referred to the ad, but neither one of them had uttered even one syllable of its main word, which was teacher. This worried me a little. I wondered if the teacher angle was just some kind of lure, but I kept it to myself. Adults get real cranky if you quiz them about the scams they’re running on you. So I kept my mouth shut and helped carry boxes down to a huge Suburban parked in the alley behind the building.

  An hour’s drive took us out into the middle of nowhere (an unspecified nowhere that will not be found in any maps of this region). It looked like the spot where they shot all those goofy old horror-sci-fi movies with giant spiders and killer shrews. I guess you could say it was the spot. This was my daydream, after all.

  Our destination was like a small military camp with no soldiers. We drove in, and folks waved and went on with what they were doing. It was easy to see there were two groups—the Staff, who were sort of khaki and uniform, like Phil and Andrea, and the Recruits, who were sort of miscellaneous, like mall walkers on a Saturday afternoon.

  Phil and Andrea dropped me off at a barracks, where some recruits took me in and assigned me a bed and so on. No one offered to explain anything, and I didn’t ask. I figured it would all come clear eventually. What actually happened, however, was that I finally said something that made it clear I was totally clueless. They were shocked that Phil and Andrea hadn’t spelled it out for me, and I said, so why don’t you spell it out? Well, they had to scratch their heads and do some hemming and hawing, but one of them finally took charge and said, “Why go looking for a teacher if you want to save the world?”

  “Because I don’t know how to do it myself, obviously.”

  “But what kind of teacher would know how to do it, do you think?”

  “I have no idea,” I told her. This was a woman in her forties named Gammaen.

  “Do you think it might be some government official or other?”

  I told her I didn’t think so, and when she asked why, I said, “Because if somebody in the government knew how to do it, then they’d be doing it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Why do you think people in general don’t know how to save the world?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think no one in the whole universe knows how to live without destroying the world?”

  “I have no idea,” I told her.

  They got stuck at this point for a while. Finally one of the guys had a shot at it. He said, “There are people all over the universe who know how to live in the world without destroying it.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. I wasn’t being smart. This was the first I’d heard of it—and that’s what I told him.

  “Well, that’s the case,” he said. “There are thousands of inhabited planets all over the universe—maybe millions—and the people who live on them do just fine.”

  “They do?”

  “They do. They don’t wreck them or strip them bare or fill them up with poisons.”

  “Well, that’s great,” I said. “But how does that help us?”

  “It would help us if we knew how they did it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Certainly.”

  For a second it looked like they were going to get stuck again, but then Gammaen found a way to carry on.

  “We’re going out there to learn,” she said.

  “Who is?”

  “We are. All the recruits—you, us.”

  “Going out where?” I asked, still not able to take in what she was getting at.

  “Out into the universe,” she said.

  Finally it got spelled out: We were waiting to be picked up.

  It was expected that we’d be gone for decades. We wouldn’t be going to school. We’d be visiting planets, observing—figuring it out.

  And what we learned we’d bring back to the people of earth.

  That was the program.

  And that was the daydream.

  Meet Mother Culture

  Stupid, huh?”

  Ishmael frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, I mean, it’s a daydream. It’s meringue. Fluff. Twaddle.”

  He shook his head. “No story is devoid of meaning, if you know how to look for it. This is as true of nursery rhymes and daydreams as it is of novels and epic poems.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your daydream isn’t fluff or twaddle, Julie, I can assure you of that. And what’s more, it’s done what I wanted it to do. I asked for a story that would explain what you’re doing here, and you’ve given me that. I now understand what you’re looking for. Or to put it more precisely, I now under stand what you’re prepared to learn—and without that I couldn’t proceed at all.”

  I didn’t really understand what he was getting at, but I told him I was glad to hear it.

  “Even so,” he went on, “I’m not sure as yet how to go on with you. Whether you know it or not, you present me with a special problem.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’m not like the teachers at your school, Julie, who merely teach you subjects that your elders have decided you should know—things like mathematics, geography, history, biology, and so on. As I explained earlier, I’m a teacher who acts as a midwife to his pupils, bringing out into the open air the ideas that are growing inside of them.” Ishmael paused for a moment to think, then asked what I thought the difference was between me and Alan Lomax—educationally speaking.

  “Well, I suppose he’s finished high school and probably college.”

  “That’s right. And so?”

  “So he knows some things I don’t know.”

  “That’s true,” Ishmael said. “Nevertheless, the same ideas are growing inside of both of you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  His lip twitched into a smile. “Because you’ve both been listening to the same mother from the day of your birth. I’m not referring to your biological mother, of course, but rather to your cultural mother. Mother Culture speaks to you through the voice of your parents—who likewise have been listening to her voice from the day of their own birth. She speaks to you through cartoon characters and storybook characters and comic-book characters. She speaks to you through newscasters and schoolteachers and presidential candidates. You’ve listened to her on talk shows. You’ve heard her in popular songs, advertising jingles, lectures, political speeches, sermons, and jokes. You’ve read her thoughts in newspaper articles, textbooks, and comic strips.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess I see what you mean.”

  “This is, of course, not peculiar to your particular culture, Julie. Every culture has its own nurturing and sustaining educational mother. The ideas being nurtured in you and Alan are very differe
nt from those being nurtured in tribal peoples who are still living the way their ancestors lived ten thousand years ago—the Huli of Papua New Guinea, for example, or the Macuna Indians of eastern Colombia.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “The things to be brought forth from you and Alan are the same, but they’re at different stages of development. Alan’s been listening to Mother Culture for twenty years longer than you, so what is to be found in him is naturally more fully fixed and articulated.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Like the way a fetus is more filled out at seven months than at two months.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. So now what?”

  “So now I’d like you to go away and let me think about how I’m to proceed with you.”

  “Go away where?”

  “Anywhere. Wherever you like. Home, if you have one.”

  This made it my turn to frown. “If I have one? What makes you think I don’t have one?”

  “I think nothing,” Ishmael replied coolly. “You bridled at my calling you a child, and you tell me you’re old enough to steal cars, have an abortion, or deal crack cocaine. Therefore I thought it best to make no assumptions about your living arrangement.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Do you take everything so literally?”

  Ishmael took a moment to scratch the side of his jaw. “Yes, I suppose I do. You’ll find that I have a certain sense of humor, but statements of comical exaggeration tend to be lost on me.”

  I told him I’d keep that in mind—indulging in some comical exaggeration. Then I asked him when I should come back.

  “Come back whenever you please.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “By all means,” he said. “Sundays are not days off for me.

  The little twitch around his mouth told me this was meant to be a joke of some kind.

  Mom was in a comfortable haze by the time I got back. I guess she feels it’s her motherly duty to take an interest in how I spend my time away from home, so she asked where I’d been. I told her the lie I’d prepared, that I’d been with Sharon Spaley, a friend.

  Did anyone think I was going to tell her the truth? That I was having a cozy little chat with an ape?

  Gimme a break.

  The people of The Curse

  When I got to Room 105 the following morning, I put my ear to the door. I wanted to know if Alan the dork was ahead of me. When I was sure he wasn’t, I went in.

  Nothing had changed. This means I was knocked down by the smell, which I now knew was gorilla smell. I don’t mean I disliked it. I didn’t. I wish I had a bottle of it. You know, put on a dab before going to parties. That would make folks sit up and take an interest in things.

  Ishmael was where I’d left him. I wondered if there was anywhere else for him to be in that joint. I figured there had to be a room behind the one I could see into. The room behind the glass was too small for anyone to live in, much less a gorilla.

  I sat down, and we looked at each other.

  I said, “What’ll you do if Alan comes while I’m here?”

  He made a face. I guess he thought this was an unnecessary question. All the same, he answered it—by asking me what I wanted him to do.

  “I guess I want you to tell him to come back later.”

  “I see. And is that what I should tell you if you come while Alan’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Alan’s here when you arrive, I should tell you to come back later?”

  “That’s right.”

  He shook his head, bemused. “I’ll have to talk to him about it. I can tell you to come back later, but I can’t tell him to come back later. Not without discussing it first.”

  “I don’t want you to do that,” I told him. “If Alan comes while I’m here, I’ll just leave.”

  “But why? What have you got against him?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want him to know about me.”

  “What is it you don’t want him to know?”

  “I don’t want him to know anything. I don’t even want him to know I exist.”

  “I can’t guarantee such a thing, Julie. If he walks through the door right now, he obviously will know you exist.”

  “I realize that. But that’s just my first choice,” I told him. “If I can’t get that, then I’ll get the next best thing.”

  “And what’s the next best thing?”

  “Whatever I get just by walking out, that’s the next best thing.”

  Ishmael suddenly lifted his upper lip, exposing a row of golden-brown teeth as big as thumbs. It took me a second to recognize this as a smile.

  He said, “I’m beginning to think you have a character very like my own, Julie.”

  I gaped at him.

  “If you don’t understand what I mean by that right now, you’ll understand it someday.”

  He was right, I didn’t understand it then. Now, four years later, I think I understand it. Maybe.

  Anyway, when the chitchat was over, Ishmael settled back into his brushy bed and started in. “You believe that someone in the universe must know how to live in the world without destroying it. This is what your daydream seems to indicate.”

  “Well … I don’t exactly believe it.”

  “Let’s say rather that it makes sense to you. It seems reasonable to you that, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, some people somewhere must know how to live sustainably on their world.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why does this seem reasonable, Julie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The ape frowned. “Before saying, ‘I don’t know,’ I’d appreciate it if you’d take a moment to see if perhaps you do know. And even if you find you truly don’t know, please take a stab at the answer.”

  “Okay. You want to know why it seems reasonable that people on other planets would know how to live sustainably.”

  “That’s right.”

  I thought about it for a while and told him it was a good question.

  “The whole art consists of asking good questions, Julie. This is information I need to draw from you right at the beginning. It will be the basis of all our later work.”

  “I see,” I said, and went back to thinking. After another while I said, “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Simple things are almost always the hardest to explain, Julie. Showing someone how to tie a shoelace is easy. Explaining it is almost impossible.”

  “Yeah,” I told him. “That’s so.” I worked on it some more. Finally I said, “I don’t know why this example works, but it does work a little bit. Let’s say you have a dozen ice-makers put out by a dozen different companies. One or two of these ice-makers will turn out to be not worth a damn. But most of them will work pretty well.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I guess because you wouldn’t expect every single one of these companies to be incompetent. Most of them have to be sort of averagely competent to be in business at all.”

  “In other words, if you lived on a world where a lot of people made ice-makers, but not a single one of them worked, you’d figure your world was exceptional. If you visited other worlds, you’d expect to find people who knew how to make viable ice-makers. In still other words, it seems to you that there’s something abnormal about dysfunctionality. What’s normal is for things to work. What’s not normal is for things to fail.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Where do you get this impression, Julie? Where do you get the impression that what’s normal is for things to work?”

  “Wow,” I said. Where did I get that impression? “Maybe this is it. Every other thing in the whole universe seems to work. The air works, the clouds work, the trees work, the turtles work, the germs work, the atoms work, the mushrooms work, the birds work, the lions work, the worms work, the sun works, the moon works—the whole universe works! Every single thing in it works—except for us. Why? What makes us so special?”

 
“You know what makes you special, Julie.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. This will be the first piece of knowledge I tease out into the light from you. What does Mother Culture have to say about this? What makes you different from turtles and clouds and worms and suns and mushrooms? They all work, and you don’t. Why don’t you work, Julie? What makes you special?”

  “We’re special because everything else works. And it’s because we’re special that we don’t work.”

  “I agree that there is a circularity in what you learn from Mother Culture on this point. But it will be useful if you define that specialness.”

  I squinted at him for a while, then I said, “There’s nothing wrong with turtles and clouds and worms and suns. That’s why they work. But there is something wrong with us. And that’s why we don’t work.”

  “Good. But what is that, Julie? What’s wrong with you?”

  I spent some time on it. Finally I said, “Is this what maieutic teaching is like?”

  Ishmael nodded.

  “I’m impressed. I like it. No one has ever done this with me before. Anyway, what’s wrong with us is that we’re civilized. I think that’s it.” But as I went on thinking about it that answer lost some of its certainty. “That’s part of it,” I told him, “that we’re civilized. But there’s also something about the way we’re civilized. We’re not civilized enough.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Wow,” I said. “The reason we’re not civilized enough is that there’s something wrong with us. It’s like there’s a drop of poison in us, and this one drop of poison is all it takes to ruin everything we do.” I guess I was sitting there with my mouth open, because finally Ishmael told me to go on. I went on.

  “Here’s what I hear, Ishmael. Is it okay to call you Ishmael?”

  The gorilla nodded, saying, “That is how I’m called.”

  “Here’s what I hear: We’ve got to evolve to a higher form in order to survive. I’m not exactly sure where I hear this. It’s like it’s something in the air.”

  “I understand.”

  “This form we’re in right now is just too primitive. We’re just too primitive. We have to evolve into some higher, more angelic form.”