dation in the Bible. Jesus was certainly no woman hater!
I’ll say no more. But you will be hearing from me again.
When Sophie had read the chapter on Aristotle one and a half times, she
returned it to the brown envelope and remained sitting, staring into space. She
suddenly became aware of the mess surrounding her. Books and ring binders lay
scattered on the floor. Socks and sweaters, tights and jeans hung half out of the closet.
On the chair in front of the writing desk was a huge pile of dirty laundry.
Sophie had an irresistible desire to clear up. The first thing she did was to pull
all the clothes out of the closet and onto the floor. It was necessary to start all over.
Then she began folding her things very neatly and stacking them all tidily on the
shelves. The closet had seven shelves. One was for underwear, one for socks and
tights, and one for jeans. She gradually filled up each shelf. She never had any
question about where to put anything. Dirty laundry went into a plastic bag she found
on the bottom shelf. One thing she did have trouble with—a white knee-length
stocking. The problem was that the other one of the pair was missing. What’s more, it
had never been Sophie’s.
She examined it carefully. There was nothing to identify the owner, but Sophie
had a strong suspicion about who the owner was. She threw it up onto the top shelf to
join the Lego, the video cassette, and the red silk scarf.
Sophie turned her attention to the floor. She sorted books, ring binders,
magazines, and posters—exactly as the philosophy teacher had described in the
chapter on Aristotle. When she had done that, she made her bed and got started on her
writing desk.
The last thing she did was to gather all the pages on Aristotle into a neat pile.
She fished out an empty ring binder and a hole punch, made holes in the pages, and
clipped them into the ring binder. This also went onto the top shelf. Later on in the
day she would have to bring in the cookie tin from the den.
From now on things would be kept neat. And she didn’t only mean in her room.
After reading Aristotle, she realized it was just as important to keep her ideas orderly.
She had reserved the top shelf of the closet especially for that kind of thing. It was the
only place in the room that she did not yet have complete control over.
There had been no sign of life from her mother for over two hours. Sophie went
downstairs. Before she woke her mother up she decided to feed her pets.
She bent over the goldfish bowl in the kitchen. One of the fishes was black, one
orange, and one red and white. This was why she called them Black Jack, Gold-top,
and Red Ridinghood.
As she sprinkled fish food into the water she said:
“You belong to Nature’s living creatures, you can absorb nourishment, you can
grow and reproduce yourselves. More specifically, you belong to the animal kingdom.
So you can move around and look out at the world. To be precise, you are fish, and
you breathe through your gills and can swim back and forth in the waters of life.”
Sophie put the lid back on the fish food jar. She was quite satisfied with the way
she had placed the goldfish in Nature’s scale, and she was especially pleased with the
expression “the waters of life.” So now it was the budgerigars’ turn.
Sophie poured a little birdseed in their feeding cup and said:
“Dear Smit and Smule. You have become dear little budgerigars because you
grew out of dear little budgerigar eggs, and because these eggs had the form of being
budgerigars, luckily you didn’t grow into squawking parrots.”
Sophie then went into the large bathroom, where the sluggish tortoise lay in a
big box. Every now and then when her mother showered, she yelled that she would