The Physiognomy c-1

by Jeffrey Ford

  "You know the expression 'Harrow's hindquarters'?" he asked, smiling.

  I nodded.

  "This was built by that Harrow," he said. "I could never quite figure out what that saying meant. Anyway, he built this inn here years ago, hoping that the island would attract visitors from the City. No one ever came, and Harrow swam out to sea one afternoon and was drowned or was eaten or something."

  "This is the prison?" I asked.

  The corporal pointed to his head and said, "This is the prison."

  "Is this where I am to stay?" I asked.

  "Yes. I bet you were expecting much worse," he said. "Sorry to say, at this juncture, we have no other prisoners. You can choose any room you like, though. In the morning before dawn—for one of your punishments is that you should never again see sunlight—my brother, the corporal of the day watch, will be here to roust you out of sleep and drag you off to the mine, where you will work till sundown. Is that clear?"

  I nodded.

  "You will meet Silencio. He is the caretaker of the inn. There is a well-stocked bar on the back porch, and he loves to play at being a bartender," said the corporal.

  'Thank you," I said.

  "Remember something, Cley. My brother is not so accommodating as I am. The night watch is sleep; the day watch is death." Then he smiled and waved to me, heading off through the maze of dunes.

  I stumbled through the dark inn, across the main barroom, and then up a flight of stairs where I thought the living quarters might be. On the second floor there was a long hall lined with doors. Halfway down that shadowy corridor, I could see that one of the doors was open and that a soft light shone forth.

  It was room number 7. I stepped inside and saw that it had been newly cleaned. The linen on the bed was uncreased and the curtains were spotless. There wasn't one grain of sand on the polished wooden floor. The light came from a gas lamp, whose light could be lowered or brightened or extinguished by turning a key like knob.

  There was a bed, a nightstand, a dresser, and a closet of moderate size. Next to the closet was a small bathroom that, instead of a door, had a curtain that could be pulled across. Inside hung a mirror over the sink that was too large for my liking, but the walls were painted a soothing sea green. I lay on the bed and pushed off my boots.

  The two windows had been left open, and the white lace curtains billowed. I could hear and smell the ocean cutting through everything. The salt air had sunk into me and turned me to lead. My eyes closed and I lay there for a second or two, grappling with the future.

  A minute later it seemed, I felt a stick come down across my back. Someone kicked me in the rear end. There were hands on me, pushing me onto the wooden floor. It was completely dark and outside I heard birds screeching.

  "Wear only your underwear," roared an angry voice. "You have two minutes in which to be out in front."

  I was groggy and aching from the beating I had gotten, but I rose to my feet, stripped off my clothes, and followed him. On the bottom step, I stumbled and fell against my tormentor's back. He turned to push me off him and struck me with his stick.

  "Get off me, you shit," he screamed.

  He let the screen door slam in my face on the way out. I came to stand before him on the path that led through the dunes. Hugging myself against the early morning chill, I peered through the darkness and saw the face of the corporal of the day watch. With the exception that he had long dark hair, he was the image of the corporal of the night watch. He wore the same coat with the same pins and medals, but his face was atwitch with red anger and fear.

  "Get down on the ground," he said.

  I did.

  "Draw me a circle in the sand," he said.

  I did.

  He hit me with his stick. "A bigger circle," he shouted.

  I drew a bigger one.

  Then he crouched down in front of me and showed me a pair of dice he held in his right hand. I think they were red with white spots. He put his fist around them and brought them up to his mouth to blow on. Once this was accomplished, he shook them and threw them into the circle I had drawn. The white dots of a three and a four glowed in the dark.

  "Seven pounds," he said, sweeping the dice up in his hand and standing.

  I got up.

  "You'll be digging seven pounds today," he repeated.

  I nodded.

  "All right, walk forward with your hands on your head," he called from behind me. I did as he said, and before I had gone one step I could feel the tip of his saber resting against my spine.

  We walked a different route through the dunes, and within a half mile, over loose sand, mosquitoes biting my arms and legs, we came to the entrance of the mine.

  A sick yellow light shone out from the timbered shaft, making visible the fumes that drifted up. I gagged several times at the smell. It was overwhelmingly corrupt.

  "Breathe deeply," yelled Corporal Matters of the day watch. "You will become this stench in a matter of weeks." He paused for a moment. "I will issue you a pickax and a shovel. You will also be given a bag to carry your sulphur to the surface, one gourd of putrid water, and three moist cremat disks." He walked off into the shadows and soon returned with those items.

  I put the shovel and axe over my shoulder and took the string of the gourd and the brown-wrapped package of food with my opposite hand to show the corporal that I understood.

  "There are a few things that my prisoners need to know," he said, pacing back and forth in front of me.

  I wondered if the Corporals Matters were really twins or just the same twisted fellow switching wigs. The similarities were unnerving.

  "My first dictum," he shouted. "Every miner must dig his own hole. This means that you must find a barren piece of rock and create your own tunnel. You will be requested to chisel your name over your tunnel after you have been with us for six months. Your remains, whatever they may be, will be interred in your tunnel, proceeding your demise. You are your tunnel. Do you understand?"

  I nodded.

  "My second dictum is: the mine is the mind," he said, then suddenly reached out with the stick and whacked me in the shoulder. "Say it," he yelled. "Say it."

  "The mine is the mind," I said in a near whisper.

  "Say it again," he yelled and I did.

  Then he stepped up to within an inch of my face, breathing his alcoholic breath on me. "The mine is my mind," he said. "While you work, you are in my mind, tunneling through my head and I see you always. My mind is always killing you as you dig through it. Dig hard. I will teach you a zest for the battle."

  I nodded again and waited for my next order. He came at me, brandishing the stick and reaching for his saber. * To work, you idiot," he bellowed. "Seven pounds or I'll feed you to the kraken in the lagoon."

  I turned and ran ahead of him, but not so far that he didn't catch me with the stick here and there. Into the sick yellow I went, toting my shovel and pickax, my gourd of putrid water, and cremat disks. I thought the odor of the sulphur would fell me, but after I realized that the corporal would not follow me in, I stood, bent over in the yellow mist, until my head and vision cleared.

  "Seven pounds of sulphur," I thought. "What is seven pounds of sulphur?"

  The walls of the chamber I entered had an ambient glow, some kind of phosphorous material mixed with the sulphur. I peered through the hazy light and saw, ten feet in front of me, a wooden bridge that passed over a small chasm and led to the opening of a tunnel. Shifting the weight of the tools on my shoulder, I advanced. The bridge swayed with every step, but I made it across, half expecting Garland to meet me on the other side.

  I paused for a moment to shiver and gag through the stench. The evil odor was always present, but sometimes it was as if I was not paying enough attention to it, and then it would consciously swamp me like a wave. To imagine this aroma, think of all things scatological roasting with a viral fever and bury your face in them. In the tunnel it was cramped and dark, and the way seemed to wind inward like a coiled snake
. The pickax kept striking the ceiling. My bare feet burned against the heat of the rock. I was on the verge of panic, when, eventually, I saw light up ahead and quickened my pace.

  The underground chamber I stepped into must have been as large as the entire structure of the Academy of Physiognomy back in the Weil-Built City. Before me was an enormous hole in the ground. I stepped carefully up to the edge and peered down and down. Its circumference was so wide, I could barely see across to the other side. All of it glowed a dull yellow through the mist, and I could make out a path that spiraled along the inner walls. Cut into these walls, at various points all the way to where the rising smoke obscured my vision, were the entrances to tunnels, which I assumed had been cut by the likes of Professor Flock and Barlow, the tepid poet. In relation to the immensity of the mine, these appeared the work of insects.

  With each step I took down the treacherous spiral, the heat increased another degree as did the foul bouquet. I wondered, as I crept lightly along, how many had tripped and fallen into the mine and how many beyond that had simply flung themselves down. The narrowness of the path would make it very advantageous to hurry the construction of a personal tunnel.

  I descended steadily for about an hour, trying to locate an unused portion of the inner wall. By the time I had found what I was looking for, I was gasping and drenched with sweat. My eyes burned so badly from the fumes that I could hardly see. I threw the tools down and placed my package of cremat disks safely away from the edge. Keeping the water gourd, I sat down on the path and cried. The tears washed my eyes out and this offered some relief. I took a sip of the water, and though it was putrid, it required great fortitude to keep from swallowing it all at once.

  After another sip, I cocked my head back and saw the name that had been chiseled over the opening to the tunnel to my right. Cut deeply into the glowing sulphur were the letters F-E-N-T-O-N. At first this made little impression on me, but then the mine gathered up its stench and battered me.

  As my head reeled, I remembered Notious Fenton. It was my physiognomical skills that had sent him here. I believe the charge was that he had harbored ill thoughts against the Well-Built City. He had been part of the roundup in the Grulig case. Most of the conspirators had had their heads exploded, and I could now see they were the lucky ones.

  I got up and entered Fenton's tunnel. The light was very dim inside, but I could still make out the form of a skeleton, sitting on the ground, cross-legged, with a pickax resting on what had once been his lap. I remembered that during the trial, his wife and sons had been very vocal in their protests against the realm. Then one day I came to court and they were not there. In fact, they never returned. It was only later, after the Master had intimated to me in a stupor of beauty that it was he who had Grulig beheaded, did I find out that he had also had the Fenton family, as he put it, "permanently restructured" as a personal favor to me, assuring the smooth procedure of the case.

  I stepped slowly forward as if the poor man's remains were potentially dangerous. Then I leaned over and said, "I am sorry. I am sorry." My hand came up of its own volition and rested on the collarbone of my victim. In a moment, it shattered beneath my touch, turning to salt and drifting to the dusty floor. I stepped back and watched as the process I had started in motion slowly spread like a plague through the rib cage and down the spine, disintegrating the entirety of Fenton until his skull crashed to the floor and disappeared in a shower of atoms.

  Although there was some respite from the smell in there, I could not stay in his tunnel. I stepped back out into the horror of the mine and lifted my pickax. It required a firmer grip than usual, because the voluminous sweat that poured from every inch of me made the wooden handle as slippery as a fish. I brought the tool back over my shoulder, and then I struck the wall with a mighty blow powered by self-loathing.

  I worked with an insane energy for about twenty minutes, after which, I collapsed against the craggy rock face I had torn away at. In a panic, I suddenly realized I wasn't breathing. The pick fell out of my hand onto the path. My eyes felt as if they had burned out completely. I could now no longer see. There was an intense pain in my head, and I could feel myself sliding down the wall, my hands and face being lacerated by the jagged stone.

  Unfortunately, I woke a little while later. Breathing somewhat easier, I crawled over to where my food and water were. A big chunk of sulphur I had chipped from the wall had landed on my moist cremat disks, squashing the package to a disturbing thinness. I ripped the paper open. Moist was not the word for them, for I found no disks within, just brown cremat smeared upon the paper. I licked it off greedily and then downed it with some of the water.

  When I was done, I rolled the paper into a ball and tossed it out over the edge of the pit. The rising steam prevented it from falling, and it floated for a minute or two before my eyes. Eventually the upward current overpowered it and carried it out of sight. I wondered what this phenomenon stood for in the mind of Corporal Matters of the day watch. If the mine was his mind, his mind was a hot stinking pit riddled with holes, holding the brittle remains of the dead. This struck me as humorous. But later, as I again dug away at the yellow wall, it dawned on me how accurate he had been.

  The day was eternal. I passed out twice more and thought, once, that my blood was literally boiling. In my brain, I heard a constant sizzling sound. Soon after I had eaten, the cremat dug into my stomach like a demon and gave me no rest from its fury. In addition to these tortures, the abrasions I had received from sliding down along the sharp face of the wall stung from the salt of my sweat mixing with the poisonous air.

  Finally, like a voice calling out of paradise, I heard my name echoing down through the emptiness of the mine. "Sundown, sundown, sundown," the corporal yelled. I gathered chunks of sulphur into the canvas sack I had been given and slung it over my back. On the other shoulder, I hefted the shovel and pick. The string for the water gourd, I held in my teeth. The ascent was brutal. My legs ached beneath the weight, and my arms shook with weariness. I stopped three times to catch my breath, but I made it out into the open air.

  It was dark outside, but the air was filled with a night breeze that carried the smell of the ocean. I would have traded ten vials of the beauty for just one gasp of it. The corporal propped his torch in a hole in the ground and weighed my load on an antique scale that operated somehow with shifting stones and springs. He beat me with his stick when he found I had brought up ten pounds instead of seven.

  "Does seven sound like ten?" he asked me.

  "No," I replied.

  "You are a moron of the first water," he said.

  I nodded.

  "You aren't the first physiognomist I've seen reduced to ash. I remember a Professor Flock. Oh, how I flayed that idiot. It was rich. I blinded him with a beating one day. Taking his sight was like pulling the wings from a fly. When he eventually went under, I stole this from him," he said.

  He held his stick out to show me the handle—a carved, ivory monkey head. "Some evening Harrows hindquarters will not shit you out, and I will find you down there in a pose of agony, surrounded by the smell of baking flesh," he said. "Now get out of here. I will be by to fetch you early tomorrow."

  The corporal took the torch with him and left me standing there in front of the mine. Above, the moon was shining and the stars were bright. My body stung all over as if I had a bad sunburn, and the cool night wind made me shiver. The abundance of fresh air caused me severe dizziness as I staggered forward onto the winding path that led through the dunes. It took me two hours to locate the inn.

  The light was on in my room. The bed was made, and someone had drawn a warm bath for me. For a moment, it was a battle between the water and sleep. I ended up opting for both. I lay in the tub in my underwear, feeling the warm perfumed water wash the mine off me as I fell asleep. I was awakened sometime later by a soft hint of a sound coming from downstairs. I tried to ignore it and continue with my dream of Aria, but it was as persistent as a mosquito. After a wh
ile, I gave into it and discovered that someone was playing a piano.

  After dressing in just my trousers, I went barefoot down the stairs, through the inn. I followed the sound of the music across the main bar, through a dining room toward the back of the place. A chair had been left in the aisle, shrouded by night, and I stubbed my toe against it. I held my voice, but the chair scratched along the floor and hit another one. With this collision, the music abruptly stopped.

  At the end of the dining room, I pushed through a door and stepped out onto a large screened porch. Again, I could hear the ocean, and the breeze washed over me. The dunes beyond the screen were lit by the moon. Sitting before me was a small black piano, not very much bigger than a child might practice at. Across the empty plank floor, at the other end of the porch, was a polished wooden bar with shelves of bottles and a mirror behind it. As I stared through the shadows, it appeared to me that there was someone sitting behind the bar.

  "Hello?" I called.

  I watched the dark figure and saw it raise a hand and wave. Slowly, I made my way across the porch. When I was within a few feet of the bar, a match flared. I stopped but then saw he was lighting a candle and continued to take a seat before him.

  "Silencio?" I asked.

  He nodded and I saw his face. The caretaker appeared slight of build, a miniature old man with a wrinkled face and a long beard. My attention was momentarily distracted by something moving in the air behind him. Suddenly it became clear that what I was looking at was a long tail. Silencio was a monkey.

  Seeing the look of recognition in my eyes, he reached below the bar and hoisted up a bottle of Rose Ear Sweet, which had been my standard cocktail at all political functions and social gatherings. With the other, he pulled up a glass. Putting the cork of the bottle in his teeth, he opened it. A smile grew around that cork as he poured me a double.

  "Silencio," I said and he nodded.

  We stared at each other for a long time, and I wondered if I had not died in the mines that day. "This is the afterlife, eternity for me—sulphur all day and a monkey at night," I thought. Then he nodded slightly as if he had been thinking the same thing.