The Physiognomy Page 3

  One drunken fool stopped me and said, “I see you have been talking to the mayor,” and pointed to the bird excrement on my topcoat. The mayor laughed uncontrollably and patted the fellow on the back. Amid this sea of gabbling wretchedness was intertwined a discordant music played by old men on strange instruments made from pieces of trees. “Absence,” the drink of the evening, a clear liquid with a bluish tinge, was brewed by the miners. The hors d’oeuvres were chived cremat—something like grass on a dog turd on a biscuit as hard as a dinner plate.

  We stopped to greet the mayor’s wife, who pleaded with me to get her husband a position in the city. “He’s upright,” she said. “He’s an upright man.”

  “I’m sure he is, madam,” I told her, “but the Well-Built City is not looking for a mayor.”

  “He can do anything,” she said, and tried to give him a kiss.

  “Get back to the kitchen,” he told her. “The cremat is running low.”

  Before leaving, she kissed my ring with all the passion she had intended for him. I wiped it on my trouser leg as we continued through the crowd, the mayor shouting at me over the noise of the party. I couldn’t make out a word of it.

  We finally left the main room, stepping out into a long hallway. Bataldo waved over his shoulder for me to follow him. He showed me up one flight of stairs, and when I reached the landing, he pushed back a set of doors that led to his library. Three of the walls were lined with books and the third held a sliding glass partition that opened onto a balcony. Once inside, he moved to a small table that held a bottle of absence and two glasses. I stared at some of the titles on the shelves and before long found four of my twenty or more published treatises. I was sure he hadn’t read Miscreants and Morons—A Philosophical Solution, since he had not yet committed suicide.

  “You’ve read my work?” I asked as he handed me a drink.

  “Very interesting,” he said.

  “What did it tell you?” I asked.

  “Well …” he said, and fell silent.

  “Did it tell you I don’t care to be toyed with by an ape such as you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, your honor?”

  I threw my glass of absence in his eyes, and, when he cried out and began rubbing them, I drove my fist into his throat. He reeled backward, wheezing noises escaping his mouth, and eventually fell onto the floor where he writhed to catch his breath. I hurried over to him. “Help me,” he whispered, and I kicked him in the side of the head, drawing blood. Before he could plead again, I stuck the heel of my boot into his gaping mouth.

  “I should kill you for sending Beaton,” I said.

  He tried to nod.

  “Take one more liberty with me, and I will relay to the Master that this entire town is in need of extermination.”

  He tried to nod again.

  I left him there on the floor, opened the door to the balcony, and stepped outside, hoping the breeze would dry my perspiration. I abhorred violence, but I was called to use it occasionally. In this case, as a symbolic gesture to slap the town awake after a long dream of ignorance.

  A few minutes passed before the mayor came staggering out to join me. His head was bleeding and there was vomit on his shirt front. He had a glass of absence which he sipped in between groans. When I looked over at him he leaned back against the railing and raised his glass to me, “A first-rate beating,” he said, and smiled.

  “Unfortunately, it was what the moment called for,” I told him.

  “But if you look out here, your honor, you will see something,” he said, pointing into the dark.

  “I can’t see a thing,” I said.

  “We are now at the northern border of the town. Out there, a few yards away, is the beginning of a vast, unexplored forest that may go on forever. It is believed that the Earthly Paradise lies somewhere deep in its heart.” He took a handkerchief from his vest pocket and laid it against the cut on his head.

  “What does this have to do with me?” I asked.

  “One year we sent an expedition of seasoned miners in an attempt to discover the celestial garden, and all perished but one. He barely made it back alive and when he wandered into town two years later, dazed and broken, he told stories about demons in the Beyond. ‘With horns and wings and ridged backs, like in a child’s catechism,’ he said. They had also encountered a fire-breathing cat, a black reptilian hound with tusks, and herds of a type of reindeer whose antlers grow together into nests where a bright red bird usually took up residence.”

  “I’m not beyond another painful encounter. Get to the point,” I said.

  “The point is, you must understand the people of Anamasobia. There is a certain sense of humor here born from living in the shadow of the ungodly. For the past few years, the demons have been spotted on the northern border of town. One of them flew out of a fog one night and snatched up Father Garland’s dog. You see, in the face of this threat, we must continue, so we laugh as often as possible.” He nodded to me when he finished as if that would help me to understand.

  “Get cleaned up,” I told him, “and meet me downstairs. I will address the townspeople.”

  “Very good, your honor,” he said, and then spun quickly around. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “Out there, in the bushes,” he said.

  “The demons?” I asked.

  He pointed at me and started to laugh. “There, I had you,” he said. “You have to admit it.”

  I punched him as hard as I could in the left eye, chafing my knuckles. While he leaned over, swimming through the pain, I told him I would leave my topcoat in his library and that he should have it cleaned for me by the time the party was over. Then I left and returned to the purgatory beneath me.

  The mayor’s wife handed me a chived cremat as I ordered her to set up folding chairs for the guests. “Right away,” she said, and was already overseeing the operation when I turned to look. The aroma of the hors d’oeuvre was penetrating, and instinctively I tossed it off the plate I held. It rolled onto the carpet. For some time I was taken with watching the unwitting guests come within a hairsbreadth of stepping on it—a metaphor for their search for meaning. Finally, a woman ran it through with a slender high heel and carried it off into the crowd.

  “We are ready for you,” said the mayor’s wife, awakening me from my reverie.

  I had a method I employed when speaking to large groups of the dim, a way of making them focus on my message. I began by doing some quick readings of faces in the crowd and making predictions. No one could resist its appeal. “You, over there,” I said, pointing as I strode back and forth in front of the assembled guests, “you will live in poverty for your entire life. You, the woman with the flowers in her hat, should you really be cheating on your husband? Dead within the year. A child on the way. Worthless as the day is long. A mockery of nature. I see a marriage to a man who will beat you.” I bowed to thundering applause.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of Anamasobia,” I began as silence returned, “just as Mr. Beaton was transformed from flesh to spire rock this afternoon, you too have been changed. You are no longer citizens; you are no longer mothers or fathers, sisters, brothers, et cetera. You are now suspects in my case. Until I leave, that is all you are. I will be calculating each of your physiognomical designs in order to flush out a criminal. Most of you, I should think, are aware of my credentials. You will disrobe for me. I am a man of science. I probe gently with an educated touch. If I am forced to delve into the topography of your private areas, I will do so wearing a leather glove. My instruments are so sharp that even if they do happen to nick you, you will not discover the cut for hours. Remember, move swiftly. Pose for me in utter silence. Don’t ask me to tell you my assessment. I guarantee, you won’t want to know it.”

  My oration was smooth and cleanly, and I could see that the women, though failing to understand, were taken by my innate command of the human language. The men nodded and scratched their heads. They kne
w enough to know I was their superior. It was a job well done. I moved through the crowd so they could get a better look at me. The beating I had given the mayor gave me newfound energy and I conversed roundly. They asked me what books they should read, how to raise their children, the best way to make money, how many times a day did I bathe. I told them everything.

  Someone had lowered the lights to a faint glow, and I had had a glass or two of absence, when from out of the crowd stepped a physiognomy that my eyes slid over without a scratch. She walked up to me and said, “May I ask you a question about Greta Sykes?” Stunned by her beauty, I nodded, not realizing what she was asking. “How could you have been sure that she was the werewolf simply by an insufficient nostril-to-forehead measurement when the elegance of her jawline canceled out all upper facial anomalies?”

  I stared at her features for a minute, then stared away for another. “My dear,” I finally said, “you’ve forgotten about the Reiling factor, after the great Muldabar Reiling, that states that a pitched gait, such as Greta Sykes had, reinstates the importance of the upper facial features even after they have been canceled by elegance.”

  She stared away for a minute, and in that time I eyed her hair, her eyes, her figure, her long fingers.

  “Did you see her in her wolf form?” she asked, as I skimmed over the red and yellow paisley of her dress.

  “Did I see her? I beat her on the head with my umbrella when she went for my ankle once. In her wolfen form, she was hairy and—no lie—a veritable saliva factory. Her teeth were like daggers, her nails as long as knitting needles. All this from a seemingly innocent child.”

  “Were you frightened?” she asked.

  “Please,” I said, and then someone turned the lights out all together so that the room was pitch-black. I reeled from the sudden attack of my old enemy night, and thought for a moment I would fall, but then I heard the voice of the mayor.

  “For your honor’s pleasure, we have tonight the rare fire bat found only in the veins of Mount Gronus.”

  I heard a box being opened. Then the mayor cried out, “Shit, it bit me,” just before the sound of flapping leather wings was heard overhead. It circled toward me from out of the dark, a phosphorescent flying rat, and I jabbed at it with my glass. It gained altitude and then flew in circles above the guests. Every time it made a complete loop, a round of applause went up.

  I said to the person I felt standing next to me, “This is Physiognomist Cley. Get word to the mayor that I have had as much of the bat as my patience will tolerate.”

  A few minutes later, I heard Bataldo scream, “Bring up the lights.” The minute the lamps were lit the bat went crazy, smashing into things and diving down to snatch at women’s jewelry. The mayor had, standing next to him, a particularly limited looking fellow with a bald head and a faraway grin. “Call it back,” the mayor said. The man of limitations stuck his pinkie fingers in his mouth and blew nothing but air. The bat continued on its destructive course. The man blew. The mayor called for a shotgun. A chandelier, a wounded valet, and two windows later, the fire bat of Mount Gronus fell dead atop a platter of chived cremat. It remained there for the rest of the evening while the guests danced the quadrille.

  “Find me that girl,” I told the mayor as I was leaving. “Send her to me. I need an assistant.”

  “You are talking about Arla Beaton.”

  “Beaton …”

  “His granddaughter. Beaton was the one who returned from the expedition to the Earthly Paradise,” he said as he helped me on with my topcoat.

  “And what did he find when he finally reached Paradise?” I asked as the scent of pineapple rose up to greet me.

  “He never said.”

  4

  The tub was cast iron, crouching atop lion paws, and it sat on a screened porch at the back of the Hotel de Skree where I boldly disrobed in the first rays of a dim morning. Thick hedges bordered the grounds, and the wind scattered yellow leaves across the lawn. Stepping into the ancient vat, my feet and ankles and calves went almost instantly numb. As my hindquarters submerged, a fist of ice grabbed me by the brain stem and tugged. I held my peace and sank into it. These were harsh gray waters, and the beauty was no match for them.

  While I soaked, my teeth chattered and I contemplated the expedition to the Earthly Paradise—miners, carrying pickaxes and wearing lantern hats, wandering off into an uncharted wilderness, searching for salvation. All that now remained of that exquisite folly was a blue statue standing in the lobby of the hotel. I then went on to think of the mayor and the infernal fire bat before I realized it was imperative that I read Beaton. In my eye’s-mind I saw him holding out a message to me he had come all the way from Paradise to deliver.

  I called loudly for Mantakis, who eventually appeared on the porch, wearing an apron and carrying a feather duster. He displayed a long face and was as tiresome as could be with his sighs and labored step.

  “Snap out of it, Mantakis,” I commanded.

  “Your honor,” he said.

  “What’s your problem, man?”

  “I missed the party last night,” he said.

  “You missed nothing,” I replied. “The mayor loosed a dangerous animal on his people and there was nothing to eat but turds.”

  “The missus said you were quite eloquent in your oration,” he said.

  “How would the missus know?” I asked, soaping my left armpit.

  “The missus—” he began, but could I really have let him go on?

  “Mantakis,” I said, “I want you to send Beaton up to my study.”

  “Begging your pardon,” he said, “but I think the family wants him.”

  “The family can have what is left of him when I am through,” I said.

  “As you wish,” he said, and lightly dusted the air in front of him.

  “Mantakis,” I said as he was about to leave the porch.

  “Your honor?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder.

  “You missed the party quite some time ago,” I said.

  He nodded in agreement as if I had told him the sky was blue.

  I heard them lugging Beaton up the steps to the study as I dried off in my room and prepared an injection. The voices of the two workmen who wrestled with the stone echoed up the stairway and through my door. Their curses became a boys’ choir as the beauty put her arms around me and began to slowly breathe. I dressed amid waves of an inland sea, my eyes twin lighthouse beacons casting visions on reality. Professor Flock made an appearance to help me with my tie, and then the fire bat circled and swooped for five minutes while I hid beneath the bed. Down on the floor there in the dark, up to my nose in dust, I heard the Master whisper in my ear. I felt his breath and the presence of his body nearby. “Now answer the door,” he said. “There is no bat.”

  As I slid out from beneath the bed, I heard a knocking at my door. I hurried to my feet and dusted myself off. “Who is it?” I called.

  “Miss Beaton is here to see you,” shouted Mrs. Mantakis.

  “Bring her to my study,” I said. “I’ll be in shortly.”

  I went to the mirror and tried to compose myself. I studied my features, a mock physiognomical exam, in an attempt to win back my reason. I was doing quite well, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Arden’s blue lips begin to move. They remained stone, yet they moved like flesh. A strained voice struggled like a mole burrowing up through a landslide to call faintly for help.

  I closed the door behind me and went across the hall to the study. She was there, sitting next to my desk. When I entered, she stood and bowed slightly. “Your honor,” she said.

  “Be seated,” I told her.

  As she sat, I watched her body bend.

  “Where did you learn the Physiognomy?” I asked her.

  “From books,” she said.

  “My books?” I asked.

  “Some,” she said.

  “How old were you when you began your studies?”

  “I began in earnest three years
ago when I was fifteen,” she said.

  “Why?”

  After a lengthy pause, she explained: “Two of the miners of Anamasobia had developed a grudge against each other. No one knew exactly what the cause was. Things got so bad between them that they decided to settle things by having a pickax duel in the stand of willows on the western side of town. The willows were at their peak and their tendrils hung almost to the ground. The two men entered from different sides, wielding axes, and two days later someone went in and discovered that they had killed each other. Simultaneous head wounds. The senseless horror of the event upset the town. In response, Father Garland told us one of his parables about a man born with two heads, only one mouth, and a shared eye, but this did little to explain the tragedy for me. The Physiognomy, on the other hand, has a way of dismantling the terrible mystery of humanity.”

  I reviewed my findings on her breasts. “And what do you see when you look in the mirror?” I asked.

  “A species striving for perfection,” she said.

  “I love an optimist,” I told her. She smiled at me, and I was forced to turn away. To my surprise, facing me was her grandfather, newly nestled in the corner of the room. The sight of him nearly made me jump, but I controlled the impulse. “What do you think of your grandfather, that ill-figured boulder there?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  I turned to look at her, and she was staring peacefully at the old blue man. “I may have to do some chiseling during my analysis,” I told her.

  “I’d be honored to help in excavating that head,” she said.

  “What might we find?” I asked.

  “The journey to Paradise,” she said. “It’s there. He told it to me when I was a young child. Sometimes a moment of the story will come back to me all in a flash and then, a minute later, I will have forgotten it. It’s there, encased in spire rock.”

  “I suppose we will find a white fruit at the center of his brain,” I said.

  “Or a cavern,” she said.

  I acquiesced with a smile and quickly asked, “Who is the thief?”