The Physiognomy

by Jeffrey Ford

  “And did he bring the Physiognomy with him?” she asked.

  “The Physiognomy had been in existence in one form or another dating back to when the first people looked into one another’s eyes. But Below, needing some law to govern his creation, codified it and made it a mathematics of judgment concerning humanity.”

  “I always hoped to go there someday to study in the great libraries and perhaps even attend one of the universities.”

  “You are truly idiosyncratic, my dear. No woman there would ever dream of going to a university; no woman has access to the libraries.”

  “And why is that?” she asked.

  “They know full well that they are inferior to men in general, just as certain men are inferior to others. Not only do they know it, it is a law,” I told her in my softest voice.

  “You can’t really believe that,” she said.

  “Of course I do,” I said. “Look, you’ve read the literature. Women’s brains are smaller than men’s; it is a scientific fact.”

  She turned away from me with a look of disgust.

  “Arla,” I pleaded, “I cannot change nature.” I could feel her growing cold. She took a step away from me, and I tried to think of something that would bring back her tranquility. “Women have certain attributes, certain, shall we say, biological possibilities. They have a place in the culture, but …”

  She seemed to brighten and turned to face me. “Oh, I think I know what you mean,” she said, smiling.

  “You do?” I asked. My mind reeled, and I felt gravity drop away. The beauty, the wine now thought for me as I put my arm around her and prepared to kiss her. In the back of my mind, I was wondering where I had left the leather glove I habitually employed in such crucial moments.

  Then it came, as unexpected and devastating as the loss of the Physiognomy. She slapped my face and tore away from my grasp.

  “Women have their place in the culture,” she said, mocking me. “Just remember, it is I who am conducting this investigation. I may be a woman, but I am smart enough to know you have somehow lost your abilities.”

  “Arla,” I said. I had wanted to speak her name sternly, but instead my word came like the cry of a child.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone. I will finish the investigation, because I want you to know, even if it remains a secret, that it was I who solved the case.”

  I could not believe what I was thinking, but I was actually going to apologize. By Harrow’s hindquarters, my world was shredding in every direction. “I’m sorry,” I said, and the words were like a pound of cremat on my tongue.

  “You are sorry,” she said. “I will see you tomorrow at ten. This time, don’t you be late. Hopefully you will exhibit a more professional demeanor in the morning.” With this she grabbed her coat, crossed the room, and was gone.

  I was completely immobilized by both her revelation that she had perceived my loss of the Physiognomy and of her opinion of me. This was true humiliation—and worse, true loneliness. Because I felt the greatest need to get away from myself, I went next door, quickly put on my coat, and went after her.

  Outside, the darkness of the night frightened me more than usual as the brisk wind, following Arla’s lead, also slapped me in the face. I saw her distant figure as she made her way up the empty street. My plan, if you could call it that, was not to confront her—I knew that would be a mistake—but merely to follow her. I could not bear her leaving. Sticking to the deep shadows in front of the buildings, I ran, a skill I hadn’t utilized since childhood.

  She stopped once and turned around, standing and watching for a moment. I too stopped, hoping she did not see me. Then she took to the alley between the bank and the theater. I moved up to the end of the alleyway and waited until she had traversed its entirety. When she was out of sight, I made my move. In this manner, I tracked her from a distance through a thicket of pines and then across a small meadow, running along on the toes of my boots so that she would not detect the sound of the hardened snow crunching beneath them.

  On the other side of the meadow there stood a one-story ramshackle house made of that splintered gray wood everything in Anamasobia was constructed of. I could see a warm light glowing from its one front window. She entered and closed the door behind her. I tiptoed up to the front of it and then, if you can believe this, got down on my hands and knees like a dog and cautiously crawled up beneath the window.

  I peered in on a living room furnished with crude chairs made of tree limbs. Sitting in two of them, staring at each other, were an old man and woman. In the light thrown off from the fireplace, I could see that he had the telltale blue tinge that suggested he was well on his way to becoming one of the ghastly hardened heroes. Here was a tableau of utter dullness. Obviously, she had not lied about the mental capacity of her parents. I scowled and crawled around to the side of the house.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw there was another window. Making my way up beneath it, I reached into my pocket and took out the derringer. I had resolved to shoot myself if she discovered me. It would have been a humiliation I could not have endured. From inside I could hear someone moving around, and then I heard the most unworldly noise, a strange crying sound. “Perhaps she is repentant for having treated me so shoddily,” I thought. This gave me the courage to look.

  To my utter astonishment, it was not she who was crying. It was, of all things, a baby. I watched, hypnotized, as she held the bawling runt in one arm and took down the top of her dress, revealing her naked breasts. I could not help it, but I sighed audibly. In spite of the hazardous situation I found myself in, I felt my manhood give a tiny nudge against my trousers.

  At that moment, I heard a strange hissing noise behind me and turned quickly to look, adrenaline shooting through my system. I saw nothing at first. The noise came again, and I could make out that it was up high. In the lower branches of a huge tree approximately twenty yards behind me I detected a pair of yellow eyes glaring at me. I did not have time to wonder what it was, because as soon as I saw it, I noticed the huge batlike wings begin to move.

  Now I thought nothing, cared for nothing, but stood straight up and began to run. I could hear the demon following above me, could feel the air it sent out from the beating of its wings. I dashed across the meadow, actually running like an athlete, with the monstrosity in close pursuit. Even with my terror to drive me on, I was quickly winded. I tripped and went sprawling in the snow. Hearing it hovering just above me, I turned on my back, raised the derringer, which was still in my hand, and fired. Through the residual smoke of the blast, I caught a vague glimpse of the creature as it quickly ascended. With that momentary, hazy glance, I could tell that old man Beaton had gotten the description right: a hairy, horned devil with cloven feet and a spiked tail—exactly as I remembered from the religious books I had collected as objects of ridicule during my student years.

  When it was almost completely out of sight, I could barely make out that it had released something it had been carrying under one arm. “A boulder,” I thought, and began rolling over in the snow as fast as I could, there being no time to get up and run. The missile hit with a distinct noise, like a large melon squashing against the earth, only a foot or two to my left. When I was certain the demon had departed, I crawled over to it. On inspection, I found it was not a melon but, instead, the head of what I took to be poor Gustavus, Father Garland’s missing dog.

  I don’t recall my walk back to the hotel. I was surprised no one had heard the gunshot and come to investigate. I do remember taking a large dose of the beauty and crawling beneath the covers. Of course, I left the lamps burning, for now the evil night had shown me the face of its minions. Sometime near morning I woke in a cold sweat, filled to brimming with a nauseating anger born of jealousy. “So,” I said to my reflection in Arden’s mirror, “not only has Arla lied to me, but she has already cheated on me.” I spat out the word “impure.” By dawn, the only regret I had was that I had apologized to her.r />
  10

  My miserable rooms at the Hotel de Skree were a veritable earthly paradise compared to the thought of what I would face at the church that morning. I would have preferred to wrestle a demon than go and meet Arla and pretend at cordiality, while all the time I knew that she knew I had, through the diseased magic of Anamasobia, been transformed into a fraud. “The slut could easily give me away in front of the whole rogue’s gallery,” I thought. Even if I were to make it through the day’s proceedings without trouble, I had given up hope of ever solving the case, which meant that whatever tribulation and torture I would escape in the territory would later be heaped a hundredfold upon me by the Master.

  Still, I got up, bathed, dressed as neatly as always, put my instruments in order, donned my coat, and went to work. It was lightly snowing by the time I left the hotel. Standing outside, dressed again in his absurd black hat, was the recurring nightmare of Mayor Bataldo, smiling as broadly as ever. After having run the scalpel over his testicles the day before, I now wondered what it would take to subdue his idiocy. For a moment, I pictured cutting it out of him, a large laughing black mass, like a comedic tumor on the brain.

  “Your honor,” he said, waving as though we were longtime friends who had not met in months.

  I had run out of imprecations and could do no more than nod tersely.

  “A splendid selection of our populace awaits your educated opinion,” he said, and took up walking next to me.

  Then it struck me that if I could not shoot him, I might make some use of him. “Why was I never informed that the Beaton girl had a child?” I asked.

  “An excellent question,” he said, and stopped to look bemusedly at the falling snow. “I suppose I never thought it was important.”

  “How is it she has a child and is not married?” I asked.

  “Please, your honor,” he said with a laugh, “need I really explain to you, a man of science, how it happens?”

  “No, you dolt. I mean, what was the situation?”

  “Well, I believe she was in love with one of the young miners, a fellow by the name of Canan, who, after creating the situation, as you so delicately put it, was done in by another situation, namely a cave-in,” he said.

  “They were not married?” I asked.

  “You have to understand something about Anamasobia,” he said. “The rules of refined society are sometimes bent a little here and there, living as we do in such proximity to the ungodly, as I explained to you a few nights ago. I’m sure they would have eventually taken the vows.”

  “I see,” I said. “Is the child male or female?”

  “Male,” he replied, and we continued on our way toward the church.

  “She is a promiscuous young woman,” I said.

  “Promiscuous in her mind, making love to many ideas, and always has been very rebellious.”

  “How can you allow such things to go on among your people?” I asked, stopping again.

  “In the territory, such qualities are not always a detriment,” he said. “She is a fine person, though, sometimes too serious for me.”

  “And who might I find who would not be?” I said, ending the conversation.

  He laughed quietly all the way to the church.

  Arla awaited me at the altar. I greeted her with an emotionless hello and she returned the salutation in the same curt manner. I laid out the instruments, and we began at once.

  I wondered how life could be any more disappointing when, after sending Calloo for the first subject, he brought back with him Mrs. Mantakis. Not having the stomach to face her in the flesh, I told the old marsupial to leave her clothes on.

  “But, your honor,” said Arla, “do you not wish to inspect her biological possibilities?”

  I lit a cigarette and said, “Very well,” with as little reaction as possible. As Arla put her through her paces, having her assume all manner of horrid postures, I sat with my arms folded and stared like a man facing a wall. As she applied the calipers and other instruments, calling out the mathematics of her findings, I did not bother with the charade of the tiny notebook and pin, but simply nodded as if I were committing it all to memory. When Arla measured the earlobes, I believe I heard Mrs. Mantakis growl.

  “A thief, for sure,” Arla said to me after the old woman had dressed and left the church.

  “A thief but not a liar,” I thought to myself.

  The morning wore on, a steady stream of the bereft, the congenitally damaged, geniuses of stupidity passed before my sight without leaving any impression but one of vague disgust. Arla, for her part, though I could palpably feel her hatred for me, worked methodically, keeping her snide remarks to a minimum.

  I knew that eventually I would have to accuse someone of the crime if I wanted a chance to save my own skin. I knew also that the punishment for so serious an offense would be execution—the Master’s new and efficient system of justice for any crime more serious than spitting on the sidewalks of the Well-Built City. “Who shall it be?” I asked myself with each subject that passed before me. Then Calloo brought in Father Garland, and I conceived of my plan of revenge against Anamasobia.

  Arla was visibly upset by the presence of the little holy man. Her clear skin blushed a deep red as the Father appeared before us, dressed for paradise. I took a quick glance to see if his shrunken penis came to a needle’s sharpness like his teeth and nails. Imagine my surprise when my sight corroborated my suspicions. He said nothing but moved his hand in a sign of a religious blessing for us. I had so hoped that he would act up so that I could call Calloo and have him squashed. Arla’s hands shook as she moved the instruments over his face and body. When she applied the Hadris lip vise, I almost told her to leave it on him as a good deed to all mankind.

  After he had dressed and was preparing to leave us, he turned and said to me, “I have committed no crime but that of love.”

  “The charge is tedium,” I said as he left, and I began working out in my mind how I would convince the town that he had stolen the fruit. I knew that a good measure of my scheme would need be lofty rhetoric, a commodity so exotic in Anamasobia it would convince by way of its novelty.

  “Next!” I yelled, and Calloo made for the door. I thought that I could work out my speech as we went through the next few dozen unfortunates.

  But Arla called out, “Wait, Willin,” to the giant. “Go wait outside for a moment and we will let you know when we want the next one.”

  “Do you need a break?” I asked flatly.

  She sat down and looked at me as if she were about to cry. Seeing her in this state melted my anger at her somewhat. “She has seen her error,” I thought, “and is about to apologize to me for last night.”

  “Is there something you wanted to tell me?” I asked, speaking like a schoolmaster to a favorite pupil who has done some minor wrong.

  “It’s him,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, confused by her response.

  “Father Garland. He is the one.” Tears began to roll down her face.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I tell you, it’s all there. It’s as clear as was your face in my window last night,” she said.

  I remained silent. My guilt at being found out was canceled by my excitement at the thought that I might survive this nightmare. She then launched into a detailed explanation, using the logic of Physiognomy, which of course meant nothing to me but sounded mightily convincing.

  “I wish it weren’t so, but I can’t deny what I read in his face.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hate you and this damn system,” she said.

  “Good work,” I whispered. Then I bellowed for Calloo. When he appeared, I told him to get the mayor and to have him gather the citizens into the church.

  The people of Anamasobia began filing into the church, filling the pews and then taking up positions in the shadows along the walls beneath the torches where the gallery of hardened heroes stood. There was a great hubbub of hushed conj
ecture punctuated occasionally by laughter or a loud proclamation of innocence uttered by those who naturally assumed guilt for everything.

  The mayor came up onto the altar and shook my hand. He looked genuinely relieved that we had discovered the thief. “I offer my congratulations to your honor,” he said. “I do not understand your methods, but they are obviously amazing.”

  I gratefully acknowledged his adulation and asked him to place one of his people at the door in case the suspect tried to escape. He motioned to Calloo to come to him, and then he whispered something in the big man’s ear. Calloo made his way through the crowd to take up a position at the entrance to the altar chamber.

  As Arla took down the screen and began putting my instruments neatly into my bag, I scanned the room in order to find Garland. I knew he must have been at least somewhat suspicious that we had called no one in after him. I found him easily enough, sitting in the front row, glaring up at me. I smiled at him and stared into his eyes for a good long time. When he did not avert his glance, I did, in order to look out at the crowd and call for silence. I clapped my hands as if calling a pet dog and the talking turned to whispers and then to silence.

  Now that it was time for me to speak, I paced back and forth gathering my thoughts and turning them into the raw material of oration. The crowd watched my every move, and I felt powerful again for the first time in days. In a dramatic flare, designed to heighten the tension, I turned my back on them and stared up at the droll portrait of the miner God that hung behind the altar and for the past two days had born witness to the entire investigation. The idea came to me that I would start by relating my run-in with the demon, so that they might see me as a man of action as well as a superior intellect.