The Physiognomy c-1

by Jeffrey Ford

  I was awakened at four by the voice of Mrs. Mantakis. "What is it?" I called. "Mr. Beaton is here to escort you to the mayor's house." I got quickly out of bed and began to freshen up. I changed my shirt, combed my hair, and licked my teeth. It was only as I was putting on my topcoat that I caught the name Beaton. By the time I reached the lobby, I remembered him, and there he was, hunched over, blue, threatening to fall. As he saw me approach, he shuffled forward and, slowly enough so that I might have drunk a cup of tea, handed me a letter from the mayor. When he mumbled, a few grains of blue dust fell from his open mouth and drifted to the carpet.

  Your honor, read the letter, since you expressed such interest in Beaton's condition this morning, I thought you might like an opportunity to study him up close. Should he stiffen irreparably on your journey, simply continue on the road he takes you to and you will arrive at my house. Yours, Bataldo. But by the time I had finished reading, it appeared Beaton had already traded his human status for that of mineral. There had been no sound from him at all, no last grunt or cry, no whispered crackle of flesh giving way to stone. He stood staring up at me with a look of insipid expectation, his hand forward, the fingers parted only the width of the letter. I reached out and touched his face. It was as smooth as blue marble, even the wrinkles and the beard. When I drew my hand away, his eyes suddenly shifted to stare into mine and then froze solid. The unexpected movement momentarily frightened me. ' 'Perhaps you will heat my apartment this winter," I said to him as an epitaph. Then I called for Mantakis.

  The missus came in, and I asked her how to get to the mayor's house. In less than two minutes she told me five different ways to get there, none of which I truly committed to memory. But there was still plenty of light before sundown, and I had a general sense as to where I was going. "Do something with Beaton, there," I said. "He seems to have taken a stand."

  She took one look at the blue miner, shook her head, and told me, "It is said that when he was born, they dropped him on his head." I hurried out the door of the de Skree as she rattled on.

  The street was empty as I headed north to find a certain alley between the general store and the tavern that had been mentioned in all five sets of directions. The sun was on the decline and a strong wind blew down on me. As I walked along through the shadows of the buildings, I wondered if the mayor was playing a joke on me or if he was truly trying to satisfy my well-known scientific curiosity. I had seen nothing in his face that would lead me to believe he had the courage to make light of me, so I dismissed the idea of a slight and turned my attention to finding my way. The cold air was invigorating and it drove off the last few tentacles of the beauty.

  I had not gone far when I heard someone approaching from behind. "Your honor, your honor," I heard over the wind.

  Before turning I thought that they might have sent someone to lead me, but instead it was a young woman carrying a baby. She wore a shawl over her head, but from what I could see of her she appeared quite attractive. I greeted her.

  "Your honor," she said, "I was hoping you would look at my son and tell me what to expect from him in the future." She held the baby up in front of me so that I was eye to eye with a squashed little face. One glance told the story all too plainly. In the lout's features I read a brief novel of debauchery and dissolution unto death.

  ''Brilliant?" she asked as my eyes probed the child's form.

  "Somewhat less," I said, "but not exactly an idiot."

  "Is there any hope, your honor?" she asked after I had told her full well my conclusion.

  "Madam," I said with exasperation, "have you ever heard of a mule whose excrement is gold coin?"

  "No," she said.

  "Nor have I. Good day," I told her and again turned north.

  When I entered the long alleyway that ran between the general store and the tavern, the sun was resting at a point just beyond late afternoon, but as I exited the alley, I stepped out into dusk and felt the great beast of night begin to murmur. There, standing next to a bush, was one of the hardened heroes, holding a hand-painted sign that read this way, your honor. An arrow beneath the words pointed the way up a path that twisted ahead into a darkening wood.

  The wind ran through me, quickening my pace. I cursed the moronic statue with its blue-toothed smile and pop eyes, and then a large black bird suddenly swooped low out of nowhere and shit on the arm of my topcoat. I screamed after it and followed its flight upward toward the snowcap of Gronus, where it was obvious some wild storm was raging. The stain sickened me with its aroma of pineapple, but it was too cold to take the coat off.

  As I passed beneath the boundary of the treetops into the shadows of the wood, I remembered Beaton's eyes, how they had shifted and froze, and then I realized that night had come. The branches were barren, and I trod through piles of yellow leaves that littered the path. Stars shone clearly beyond the skeletal canopy above, but none of them seemed to be where I expected. I made a mental note to repay the mayor's kindness when it was his turn to step before the calipers. "There's always the possibility of surgery," I said aloud to comfort myself. I walked on slowly, sticking to the path as best I could and hoping at every turn that I would see the lights of a house.

  Rationale was what was needed to keep my mind clear. I was not much for the unknown. Ever since childhood, the dark had been one of my greatest challenges. There was no face to it, no signs to interpret, no clues to decipher in an attempt to discern a friend or foe. The physiognomy of the night was a great blankness that scorned my instruments and harbored the potential for true evil. I can't tell you how many of my colleagues had this same problem and were prone to sleeping with a light on.

  I attempted to concentrate upon the case, what I could expect and how long it would take to diligently read the features of the entire town. It was precisely here, stumbling through the woods, that I had a brainstorm, one of the rare ones that came without an injection. "If these fools believe in the potency of this stolen fruit to cause miracles," I thought aloud, "perhaps what I need to be on the lookout for is someone whose character has changed drastically since the crime was committed." Be assured, I was not affording the fruit any strange powers—that was all drivel to me—but if one did believe that it would make him a genius or bestow the power of flight or cause him to become immortal, would he not then comport himself differently? As I had told my students at the academy each semester of my tenure there: "The physiognomist is more than his chrome instruments. The acute and reasoning mind is the mother of all tools; let her suckle you to insight."

  As this grand thought played itself out, I rounded a bend and came in view of the Mayor's residence. Two hundred yards up what appeared to be a steep incline, I saw the glow of candlelight shining through a battery of windows lining the front of the house. I was about to begin the climb, when I heard something approaching on the path behind me. The noise started small and far away, but grew exponentially with each heartbeat. I thought absolutely nothing in the few moments before it burst from the darkness like a monster clawing free of a nightmare and stopped only inches from me, hooves pawing the air.

  What had materialized was a coach and four, being driven by the porcine mystic who had brought me from the Weil-Built City. He sat grinning in the light from the lamp that hung beside him. "The Master has sent me to escort you," he said. I had a million imprecations to shower upon him, but his mention of the Master stopped me cold. I nodded once and got in.

  "Where is Beaton?" the mayor asked me. I wanted to send him to town for some ice." The guests, dressed in their pathetic finery, broke out in fits of laughter. If I'd only had my scalpel, I'd have cut them all to ribbons, but as it was, I smiled and gave a slight bow. In a mirror on the other side of the room I watched the mayor put his arm around my shoulders.

  "Let me show you my house," he said. He smelled strongly of alcohol, and I gracefully slid him off me.

  "As you wish," I said, and followed him through the crowds of guests, drinking, smoking, jabbering like a room ful
l of monkeys. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Mrs. Mantakis and wondered how she had beaten me to the party. 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 Weil-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 Anama-sobia. 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, ovei 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 knew 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."