The Vanishing Act Read Online Free PDF

passed. He walked down the same streets, through the same park, passing the same shops and, just before turning the last corner into his street, he would admire the same large chestnut tree.
    But one day the chestnut was gone. In its place were blue sky and a straight view to Madam Trapp’s laundry. On the footpath sat neat stacks of firewood. Kant went to bed with the heaviest of hearts and had no philosophical thoughts whatsoever for three weeks.
    The worst thing about it all, said Papa, was that Kant began to sleep soundly at night.
    ‘But isn’t it good to sleep at night, Papa?’ I asked.
    ‘No, Minou, a philosopher should never sleep soundly.’
    ‘But why?’ I thought that sounded terrible. ‘Don’t you sleep, Papa?’
    ‘My girl, that is my greatest sorrow, I drink coffee every night and yet I sleep like a bear in hibernation.’ Papa’s cheeks flushed. ‘As if there was nothing to work out, no problems at all.’
    I thought of my nights awake in the lighthouse and all the scarves I had knitted after Mama disappeared, and I wondered if staying up at night had made me a better philosopher.
    Papa claimed the first word I said was ‘Hegel’. Mama said that I had just eaten my first enormous portion of stewed apples and had the hiccups.
    But Papa insisted. ‘You had such an intelligent look in your eyes, Minou. You looked straight at me and said “Hegel”, loud and clear. And,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I read Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
to you when you were still in your mama’s womb. She thinks his sentences are too long, Minou, but I read to you while she was asleep. So you see, it’s perfectly plausible that your first word would be “Hegel”.’
    I read Descartes’
Meditations
when I was ten, and tried to read Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
, but couldn’t make anything of it. Then I read Galileo and Freud. Freud, Papa explained, wasn’t really a philosopher, but still part of modern thinking.
    ‘You have to know what is out there,’ he said. ‘The more you know, Minou, the more equipped you are to find the truth.’
    But Descartes wasn’t just a great philosopher, said Papa. He was also our ancestor and it was therefore especially important to know his philosophy well.
    Papa told me that Descartes’ first name was René and that he was born in France on a cold day in March 1596.
    Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Heargued that it is only through thinking that we can know something to be true.
    I wasn’t sure I completely understood, and asked Papa, ‘You mean, we can’t even know the ocean exists just by seeing it?’
    ‘That’s true Minou, we can’t, although—,’ he glanced through the window at the dark ever-changing sea, ‘—it makes for such a convincing argument that I am almost tempted to make an exception.’
    ‘And me, Papa?’
    ‘You?’
    ‘Do I exist?’
    ‘You definitely exist, can’t you hear yourself think?’
    ‘Yes, but you can’t.’
    Papa looked worried. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, and patted my head as if to make quite sure I was really there.
    A philosopher, Papa explained, spends most of his time searching the dark room of his mind for the absolute truth; the one he has no reason whatsoever to doubt. Grandfather once said to Papa, ‘When you find the absolute truth it’s like finding the beginning. It’s like a string. You pull and pull and pull some more. And then it all falls into place.’
    Papa hadn’t found the beginning yet. But he hadfound smaller truths, and taught me how to write them down:
    Truth:
    Theodora had great stamina.
    Evidence:
    1) She built the houses and the church on the island.
    2) She lived on the island with only a goat for company.
    3) She read Aristotle every day.
    Deduction:
    Reason conquers all.
    Papa often said that if only he had been as smart as Grandfather then he would have found the absolute truth a long time ago.
    Kant still lay next to my pile of blankets in the lighthouse,