Cartesians

The philosopher came into the bar, tired as usual after a long day’s work unraveling the secrets of the universe, and sank into one of the stools by the counter. I mixed his usual drink, a gin and tonic, and set it a safe distance before him. It took him a moment to notice it, but when he did it disappeared in the blink of an eye. He looked a bit woozy afterwards, which is probably why what happened next did.

I asked him if he’d like another, and he began to reply in the negative: “I don’t think—“ but barely had the words gotten out of his mouth when, BOOM! There he wasn’t. He’s disappeared as surely as he’d been there—a point on which, after a few minutes, I was beginning to get hazy.

What sentient customers there were in the bar stared, gape-jawed as myself, and someone must have called the police because the next thing I knew red and blue lights were flickering across the ceiling and a bunch of big local guys, in uniform, were marching into the bar.

Of course, I swore to them I hadn’t laid a finger on the fellow, and on the promise of a free pint in the future they ceased their questioning. I should have known it wouldn’t end there.


The next evening, sure enough, another guy walked into the bar. By this point I had developed a nervous twitch at every ring of the bell above the door, because who knew which customer would be the next to disappear? When he got closer, however, I could tell that he was a detective, albeit a subtle one. He sat down at the seat next to where the philosopher sat and ordered vodka, which I provided. He sat quietly for a moment, commenting on the weather, asking after my wife and making general small talk; I was trembling in my shoes. Finally, he set down his drink, and with no apparent change in demeanor said, “Listen, the local police have brought me in about that disappeared philosopher.”

I’ll be having a word with them, I thought to myself, and listened to him.

“I wonder if you’d mind answering a few questions.” There’s nothing really I could have done. I shook my head no.

“Good. Can you tell me what transpired in this very bar on the night of the philosopher’s disappearance, 10 June?”

I told him, of course, omitting nothing from the gin and tonic to the patched sweater the philosopher wore. The detective made a note in his little notebook, and wanted to know the philosopher’s full name and address.

“What had your relations with the victim been in the past?” I balked at the word “victim,” but asserted that we had never been on anything less than amiable terms.

“I wonder if I could taste some of this gin and tonic.” I poured him some, and he drank it nearly as fast as the philosopher had consumed his drink the night before, presumably to see if the effect was indeed invisibility. He remained corporeal.

“Did you do anything to the victim? Did your hand, perhaps, slip over his drink, as an accident?” I denied this accusation. He shut his notebook indecisively and stood up.

“Thanks for the drink,” was his farewell, accompanied by the chink of the money he put down to pay for the gin and tonic and the glass of vodka.

The next I saw of the detective was the following Friday evening, when he came in looking as haggard and overworked as the philosopher had. He ordered gin and sat there the entire night without saying anything, swaying slightly and muttering to himself.


A curious phenomenon began to make itself known the next morning. All over town, people were disappearing into the humid summer air, as though the philosopher had brought on a plague which started at the bar and radiated out. The old gentlemen who sat in the shade of the elder trees by the bank started disappearing. Lazy students vanished in class. The detective was frantic, and he could be seen every day rushing all over town, writing down every detail of the successive cases of the vanishing townspeople. He began coming to see me a lot, at first alleging that he was searching for clues at the scene of the crime, since a lot of people did disappear there; as fewer customers brought a similar decline in disappearances, however, he dropped all pretence of coming there for business—in fact, he rarely said anything anymore.
Soon he was found slumped on the bar in front of me more nights than not, in despair over the possibility that it would be this particular case that would stymie him and end his career. Night after night, reviewing the evidence he had collecting during the day, which only reinforced his belief that the case was insolvable, he grumbled that the case would kill him.

“No, Detective, you’ll die of the gin,” I said.

“It’s the same thing,” he sighed.

He was sure that if he lived to see the end of the case he’d never be able to drink gin again; in fact, towards the end he used to buy a glass for the pleasure of pouring on the floor.


And then, one morning about six weeks after the philosopher walked into the bar, inspiration struck. The detective sat bolt upright, knocking over his glass and spilling its contents all over his shoes. He reached for his notebooks and pen, and rummaged around in his detective’s bag for the file, filled to exploding, that contained his extensive notes on the case and all the evidence he had collected, at the bar and the philosopher’s residence. He dug through the file for a moment before he brought out a sheaf of paper stapled together at one corner, and flipped to a certain page, which he looked at for a moment. Replacing the evidence in its folder, he wrote something down in bold block letters in his notebook, tore the page out and handed it to me. Then he fell off his chair.

I hastened to pick the detective off the floor, and propped him against one of the tables while I called 911. The ambulance, arriving some minutes later, found him still completely passed out, and they assured me that after some rest he’d be himself again.

That taken care of, I turned my attention to the piece of paper that had been given to me. I was sure it contained the key to solving the case. Unfortunately, it also appeared to be in Latin, a language I had never studied. It took me barely any time to close up the bar and run down to the house of the high school Latin teacher, who I found reclining in his slippers and bathrobe with a box of frosted chocolate doughnuts.

He leaned closer to inspect the note I held out to him, and it only took him a moment to translate the sentence therein.

COGITO, ERGO SUM
I think, therefore I am

I don’t think that can have anything to do with it. The strain must have overwhelmed the detective’s mind; he’s gone senile. I opened my mouth to voice my opinion and—