CHAPTER 7

Monsieur Sorbonne and His Wife

Because his wealthy aunt and uncle adopted him, Monsieur Sorbonne had never learned to work. He was given, instead, to curiosity, to endlessly observing things—objects, architecture, weather, tools, and machines—and learning what made them go fast or slow, why they were the colors they were, the way they behaved in combination with other objects and items, the consequences they had, the questions they raised, the answers they could give. Monsieur Sorbonne loved learning. The stuff of life was his school, and he was its finest pupil.

When Monsieur Sorbonne arrived at that sorry state of adulthood in which most people give up their curiosity and go to work, he realized he had a serious problem. Work in itself could not be interesting, he thought. Work was just work. Unlike learning, it held no fascination for him.

When it became clear to him that he had no inclination to work, he decided to solve his problem in some other fashion. If you don’t know how to work yourself, perhaps you could learn by example, he thought. As a thing to be learned, work held an odd sort of interest for him. Or if you can’t work yourself, he further considered, perhaps you could marry someone who can. This was a viable theory in general, of course, and in particular, it held promise because Monsieur Sorbonne was quite handsome.

Having thus set aside his problem for the moment, Monsieur Sorbonne decided to continue his life as a student of all things. One day, while he was out having new business cards printed—

MONSIEUR SORBONNE

Considerer of All Things

—he made the acquaintance of a Miss Gutz.

Miss Gutz worked in a print shop where, daily, wearing an unspectacular oilcloth apron, she aligned the type and inked the press. She was not particularly pretty but she had, as Monsieur Sorbonne observed, considerable fortitude, a fortitude which for quite a few years now, had enabled her to be gainfully employed.

Since she, apparently, knew how to work, he started talking to her, and it became apparent before too long that they had a number of things in common—an interest in typefaces, for one. (Monsieur Sorbonne preferred above all the Egyptian Extended, while Miss Gutz, quite more conservative by nature, preferred Palatino and Times Roman.) In order to continue their conversation—Monsieur Sorbonne thought he might learn even more about the various inks, fonts, and colophons—he invited Miss Gutz to a fishstick lunch. This was not to his ordinary taste, but as Miss Gutz had a mere half-hour for her noonday repast, she removed her inky apron and suggested they mosey across the street to the Fishstick Restaurant.

It was there that Monsieur Sorbonne disclosed to her one of his lifelong dreams, which was to sail around the world in a boat. “It would be wonderful,” he said, “to learn about the sea from being in its midst.” Miss Gutz allowed as to how she also, from time to time, had had a similar dream. She had quite a sum of money in her savings account from having worked so diligently hard and for so long, and offered, with it, to supply him with a boat if, just for the ride, she might come along.

Although this was enticing, it seemed somehow inappropriate to Monsieur Sorbonne, who, although he had been endlessly supported by his uncle and his aunt, had never been supported by a woman. He was indeed obsessively curious, but he was not an opportunist, and so in exchange for the boat she would provide, he offered gamely to marry her.

They were married later that day, when, after removing her inky print apron and asking permission from her boss, she got off early. Within weeks she liquidated her funds and he purchased the boat, which he furnished according to his unusually excellent taste. Then with almost no further ado, they set out to sea.

Unfortunately, once at sea, Monsieur Sorbonne was once again bored. He wasn’t learning one-tenth as much as he’d hoped—about waves, fish, work, the night configuration of the stars, or even cooking at sea. And Miss Gutz—she never did take his name (fortitude, in her opinion, was worthy, while learning was mere frivolousness)—while sublimely proficient at manning the sails, was not, as it turned out, such very interesting company.

When they had finished their longish discourse on printing—inks, typefaces, colophons, and paper cuts—Miss Gutz had really little else to say. She exercised her muscle at the mast, while Monsieur Sorbonne, below deck, read again and again the few books on astronomy that he had brought along. It was thus that, not so happily, they passed two years.