by Jeffrey Ford
"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 Aria 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."
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. "FH 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 ttttfe 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 s
pire 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?"
She uncrossed her legs, and I pulled up a chair. Leaning forward, as if in the strictest confidence, she whispered, "Everyone thinks Morgan took it and fed it to his daughter, Alice."
"Why?" I asked, leaning close enough to smell her perfume.
"The child is different now," she said, pursing her lips, her eyelids descending.
"Does she fly?" I asked.
"People say she now has all the right answers."
I took out a cigarette and lit it as a means of changing the subject. "Have you recently been in contact with any members of the opposite sex?" I asked, staring directly into her eyes.
"Never, your honor," she said.
"Do you have any aversion to the naked human form?" I asked.
"None at all," she said, and for a moment I thought she smiled.
"Does the sight of blood or suffering bother you?"
She shook her head.
"Are either of your parents dim-witted?"
"To some extent, but they are simple, kind people."
"You must do whatever I say," I told her.
"I fully understand," she said, moving her head suddenly so that her hair flipped back over her shoulder.
I couldn't help myself and leaned over to measure the distance from her top lip to the center of her forehead with my thumb and forefinger. Even without the chrome exactitude of my instruments, I knew she was a Star Five—an appellation reserved for those whose features reside at the pinnacle of the physiognomical hierarchy. It sickened and excited me to know that if not for the fact that she was female, she would have been my equal.
When I pulled my hand away, she said, "Star Five."
"Prove it," I said.
"I will," she said.
We left the hotel, and as we proceeded up the street toward the church, I asked her to recall for me the essence of the renowned Barlow case. She hurried along beside me, her hair twisting in the wind, as she recited from memory exact facial measurements I had made myself ten years earlier on an obscure doctor who had flatly denied having written subversive poetry.
To be candid, Aria Beaton reminded me of my first love, and I knew she would mean nothing but trouble for me. Involving a woman in the official business of the realm was strictly forbidden, but how could I ignore her? In the work I had done all my life, she was for me, in the concise elegance of her features, my earthly paradise. As she driveled on about the case in question, quoting me, quoting Barlow's rotten poetry, I temporarily lost my head and allowed myself to remember.
When I was a young man studying at the academy, we had a series of classes in the human form. These were early classes in "the Process" (a term used to describe the eight-year curriculum of the physiognomist), and they were extremely difficult so as to weed out those who were not worthy.
I had an advantage over many of my classmates, because I refused friendships and eschewed social life. In the evenings, when the others were out visiting the cafes of the City, I took my notebooks and returned to the academy. Every night I descended to the bowels of the enormous old building to the Physiognomy labs. The human form lab was a small room with just enough space inside for a table and chair. When you sat down, you faced a window with a curtain drawn across it. Simply by speaking, you could command the curtain to open. As it did, a stark white, well-lit room behind it appeared. The academy saw to it that a subject for study was in that room twenty-four hours a day. These were naked forms, and by speaking you could order them to bend and pose for you. I often wondered how much these human puppets were paid or if they were paid at all. They were usually of inferior physiognomical design—who else would do such work?—yet this made them all the more interesting as subjects.
I saw my first Zero there—a person devoid of any craniome-tric, facial, or bodily merit. This fellow was a real favorite with the students. He was often there late at night, I supposed, because he was so dim there was nothing else he could have been doing. Reading him, though, was like staring into infinity, seeing nature with her pants down, so to speak—both unsettling and sublime. I went one night expecting to find old Dickson there, as blank and crooked as a half-melted snowman, but when the curtain drew back at my command, I found something completely different.
She had the most exquisite body I had ever seen. All perfection and her nipples were like the points of straight pins. I had her twist and turn and jump, get down on all fours and lie on her back. Still, I could not find the slightest blemish. Her face was smooth and radiant, her eyes the deepest green, her lips full, and her hair a cascade of auburn that moved like a divine sea creature swirling in a tidal pool. That first night I stayed with her till dawn, and my commands for crude motor movement slowly gave way to whispered pleas for the wink of an eye or the flexing of a pinkie.
I should have been dead tired that next day, but instead I was filled with a strange excitement, a smoldering in my solar plexus. I could not concentrate on my studies, all the time wondering how I might meet her and have a chance to converse instead of merely command. I returned the next two nights, and to my delight she was there behind the window. On the third night, I told the curtain to open, and the sight of Dickson, drooling, brought an audible groan from me that in turn made that idiot simulate silent laughter. Right there, I devised a plan to discover who she was.
The following morning, I bribed the old fellow who oversaw the operation of the labs. "Just a name," I said to him and slipped fifty belows into his jacket pocket. He said nothing but kept the money and walked away. What I had requested was clearly against the law, and I waited for two days, wondering if I would be turned in. On the night of the second day, the authorities showed up at my apartment. Four men in long black coats, one holding back a huge mastiff with a chain thick enough to haul an anchor. "Come with us," the leader demanded, and they hustled me outside and into a carriage that swept me across town to the academy. During the ride I had given myself up to being sent to the sulphur mines or, at best, executed on the spot.
I was shaking and my mouth was incredibly dry as the four silent agents and the dog ushered me down into the basement where the labs were located. We entered a hallway I had never seen before and from that hallway entered a large stone chamber with metal doors fitted into the walls.
The agent who had spoken to me at my apartment said, ' The Master, Drachton Below, has taken a special interest in your progress and has decided to grant your request." He then walked over to one of the doors, pulled on its metal latch, and slid out a table holding the body of my love. "You requested her name?" said the agent. "She is number two forty-three."
"But she's dead," I said, tears coming to my eyes.
"Of course she's dead," he said. "They are all dead. This one was a suicide, distraught over the indictment of her parents in court by Physiognomist Reiling. Her body has been hollowed out and preserved and then fitted with special gear work and the grafted neurons of dogs—all of the Master's invention."
He leaned over and touched her behind the head, turning her on. She opened her eyes and sat up. "Sing," he said to her and she began to grunt pitifully. The other agents laughed. "Now go home and don't speak a word of this to anyone," he said. As I hurried toward the door of the chamber, I looked back and saw the men gathered round her, removing their black coats. The dog, free of its leash, was madly running in circles.
The architecture of the church at Anamasobia elicited two initial reactions in me, neither of which I allowed myself to act on. The first was to laugh uproariously at the absurdity of its conception; the second, to light a match and burn it to the ground. Composed of that horrid gray wood, the structure had been built to resemble the outline of Mount Gronus. Had Aria not been with me to explain, I would have thought it just an enormous pile of splintered lumber that came, somehow, to a point.
As on the summit of the true mountain, there were representative crevices, cliffs, and sheer drops. None of the steps that led to its crooked doors was the same width or height; there was no symmetry to the placement of the windows, which were paper-thin slices of spire rock engraved with holy scenes. Set atop its highest peak was what appeared to be a miner's axe forged from gold.
"Who is responsible for this mess?" I inquired.
"It was entirely conceived of by Father Garland the first year he appeared in Anamasobia.
He swore God had controlled the hand that drew the plans for it," Aria said.
I took her slender hand, pretending to help her up the steps, but before we reached the door, it was I who stumbled and momentarily leaned against her. She surprised me with her strength, and the smile she gave in helping me drained all of mine.
"You must be more careful," I told her before pulling back the taller of the two doors.
'Thank you," she said, and we entered into the darkness.
The bad joke that was the exterior of the building was drawn out to nauseating proportions within, for to enter the church was to enter an underground cavern. There were splintered wooden stalactites and stalagmites affixed to the ceiling and floor. Shadowy constricting pathways led off from the entrance to the right and left of us into utter blackness, while directly in front was a rope bridge that traversed a miniature ravine. Across the bridge and through the sharp outcroppings, like the partially open mouth of a giant, I could make out a large cavern lit only by candlelight.
"Isn't it incredible?" asked Aria as she led the way across the bridge.
"Incredibly insipid," I said, feeling the surrounding darkness like a weight against my eyes. "Church as high adventure."
"The workers and their families feel at home here," she told me.
"Undoubtedly," I answered and nervously began inching my way out above the abyss.
In the altar chamber the pews were hewn from spire rock, and lining the walls were occasional statues that I slowly realized were more of the blue, hardened heroes. Large white candles flickered here and there, dripping wax and infusing the scene with a dim shifting light that was like the last few moments before nightfall. The altar itself was also a large flat boulder, and behind it hung an immense portrait of God as a miner.