The Physiognomy (7 page)

The Father was there, waiting for us, and somehow he had moved the Traveler to the flattened boulder that was the altar.

“Your honor,” he said, and bowed, his disposition apparently having lightened since that afternoon.

I waved halfheartedly to acknowledge him.

“Arla, my dear,” he said, and she went over to him and kissed him on the forehead. As she did, I noticed him rest his pointy little hand lightly on her hip.

“How did you get him in here?” I asked, wanting to shorten their coziness.

“The Traveler is light,” he said, “almost as if he were made of paper or dried corn stalks. Of course, I had to drag his feet, but I barely lost my breath bringing him up the stairs.”

The thought of Garland losing his breath seemed a near impossibility.

I stepped up to the altar and rested my bag of instruments next to the subject's head. Arla followed and helped me off with my topcoat. As she removed her own, I began laying the tools out in the order in which I would need them.

“Can I be of assistance?” Garland eagerly asked.

“Yes,” I said, not looking up from my work, “you can leave us now.”

“I thought I might watch. I'm keenly interested,” he said.

“You may go,” I told him without raising my voice.

He sulked over to the corridor that led to his office, but before he finally left, he offered an aphoristic blessing: “May God be everywhere you are about to look and absent where you already have.”

“Thank you, Father,” Arla said.

I turned to look at him and quietly laughed in his face before he disappeared down the corridor.

“Hand me that cranial radius,” I said to her, pointing to the first instrument, a chrome hoop with representative screws at the four points of the compass; and, with this, we began.

In order to perform the reading, I had to overcome my initial revulsion at touching the brown shiny beetle-back skin of the Traveler. One of the first things we learned at the academy was that dark pigmentation of the flesh is a sure sign of diminished intelligence and moral fiber. In addition, the consistency of it, like a thin yet slightly pliant eggshell, put a fear in me that my sharp instruments might leave a crack in the subject's head. I put on my leather gloves and then set to work with the radius.

The slender nature of the cranium made Mantakis's thin head seem almost robust, but at the same time there was something so concise and elegant about this expression of Nature that the computations, when I figured them in my workbook—a tiny, leather-bound volume in which I recorded all my findings in secret code with a needle dipped in ink—at once pointed to both a severe paucity of rational thought and a certain sublime divinity. The numbers seemed to be playing tricks on me, but I let them stand since I had never read anything before quite like the Traveler. Is he human? I wrote at the bottom of the page.

“Pass me the nasal gauge,” I said to Arla, who stood close by me, rapt with interest. Now I could see that to have invited her along on this venture might have been a mistake. I did not want her to sense my uncertainty in the face of the Traveler. What could be worse than a pupil discovering a lack of confidence in her mentor?

“He is most peculiar-looking up close,” she said. “Nothing physically would suggest anything but the weakest link to humanity, yet there is something more there.”

“Please,” I said, “we must let the numbers do the thinking.” I fear she took this as a reprimand and was from then on completely silent.

The bridge of the nose began almost at the hairline, and instead of flanging at the nostrils tapered to a sharp point with two small slits, like the puncture wounds of a penknife on either side. “Madness,” I muttered, but, again, I put down precisely what I found. Instead of the math solidly confirming my suspicions that he represented a species of prehistoric protohuman, the measurement was in direct ratio to that of a Star Five, my own and Arla's illustrious physiognomical evaluation.

The hair itself was long, black, and braided, and appeared as healthy as Arla's beautiful tresses. There was a point where the braiding ended, but the hair had continued to grow a full six inches. From the look of it, I was forced to wonder if it was still not growing beyond death, slowly reaching outward through the centuries. I removed my glove and tentatively ran my fingers through it. Soft as silk, and I could almost feel life in it. I wiped my hand on my trousers and quickly put the glove back on.

I continued, calling for Arla to pass the various instruments—the Hadris lip vise, the ocular standard, the earlobe cartilage meter, etc. I took my time, working slowly and carefully, recording, as always, precisely what I found, yet all the time a feeling of frustration was mounting in my intestines. The representative mathematics of this strange head was acting more like magic, conjuring something utterly superior to even my own features. When all I had left to apply was the calipers, my specialty, I stepped back from the altar and motioned to Arla that we would take a break.

I turned away from the Traveler and lit a cigarette in order to calm my nerves. Sweat trickled down from my brow, and my shirt was damp. Arla said not a word but gave me an inquiring look, as if I should relate to her my findings so far.

“It is too early to make any determination,” I said.

She nodded and glanced past me at that long face. From the cast of her gaze, I knew what it was she was looking at—the same eye-crease-to-jawline measurement we had earlier discussed about her grandfather. I didn't need the calipers to know that I would find a measurement there well within the bounds of the Grandeur Quotient.

“Your honor,” she said, “I think he is moving.”

I spun around, and she brushed past me. She put her hand out and laid it on his chest. “I feel it,” she said, “the slightest movement.”

I reached over and withdrew her hand with my own. “Now, now,” I said, “at times we can doubt what we see, but I'm afraid there is no doubting Death, especially since it has had residence in this fellow for a thousand years or more.”

“But I felt it move,” she said. There was a look of fear in her eyes, and I could not let go of her.

“Garland probably upset the internal structure of the thing when he moved it. You must feel the breaking of brittle bones turned to salt or the rearrangement of petrified organs. That is all.”

“Yes, your honor,” she said, but still stepped back with a look of horror on her face.

How could I have told her that all of my calculations to this juncture pointed to an individual of great awareness and subtle nuance? How could I admit that this freak of nature, with his insect skin and webbed fingers, was, as far as I could tell, the very pinnacle of human evolution? “Where does this put me?” I wondered. I wanted desperately to change my findings. It would have been easy, and I knew, for all involved, it would have been better, but the magic that had infected my computations had put a hex on me that tied me to the bitter truth.

I spread the calipers wide and once again approached the subject. For the first time since beginning, I saw the face devoid of geometric and numerological inference. Instead of angles and radii, I saw that he wore a sly, close-lipped smile, and that from the shape and position of his lidded eyes, he had been a man of great wisdom and humor. Then I looked up to see the candles flickering all around the dim cavern that was the church. The Master's voice ran through my head. “Cley,” he said, “you are buried alive.” I began to feel trapped and claustrophobic. I forced myself to hide my fear and placed one tip of the instrument at the direct center of his forehead and the other at the end of his long chin where grew a small pointed beard. I tried to take the reading, and then instantly realized I had no idea what I was doing. The Physiognomy, with its granite foundation in the history of culture, suddenly dissolved like a sugar cube in water. I stood between my love and that slab of living death and felt Garland's blizzard of sin sweeping over me.

“Aha,” I said, a bit too theatrically, “here is what I was looking for.”

“What is it?” Arla asked.

“Well, if you take into consideration the meager nostril slits and divide them into the center-forehead-to-center-chin measurement, as I have just done, this activates the Flock vector, which in turn conclusively proves our subject is little more than an animal with an upright stance.”

“The Flock vector?” said Arla. “I'm unaware of it.”

As was I, but I created a history for it and talked at great length about the brilliance of my professor.

A look of disappointment crept across her face, and I was unsure if it was for me or for her own desire to be witness to a grand discovery. At that point, though, all I wanted was the beauty and to sleep for a very long time.

As I put away my instruments, Arla asked if I would like her to get Garland. I brought my finger to my lips and waved for her to follow me. She looked surprised, but she helped me on with my topcoat and then put on her own. I took one more glance at the Traveler before fleeing. His expression seemed somewhat different now. The mouth was slightly open, as if satiated after having devoured the Physiognomy right out of me.

I couldn't, for the life of me, recall the most basic theories, and the geometry of things had all become circles. The sudden nature of the loss made me dizzy, leaving me sick to my stomach. I no longer had an angle on the world, an anchor in myself. Arla helped me across the swaying bridge, through the doors, and down the steps. When she did not let go of me out amid the swirling snow, I knew she knew there was something wrong.

After a few deep breaths I insisted she unhand me and then, by force of will, trod along in my normal, determined gait. My eyes, devoid of the ability to measure, saw no meaning. Everything was just inexplicably there and brimming with uncertainty. “Structure determines existence in the physical world,” I said to myself. At least I had remembered this much, but the meaning of it melted down to the base of my spine and froze.

I left her in the street outside the Hotel de Skree. “Tomorrow, ten sharp,” I said. “Don't be late.”

7

Up in my room, I pushed a vial and a half of the beauty into my favorite vein. I was perilously skimming the edge of overdose, but I needed strong medicine to tolerate my fear. I could feel the violet liquid almost immediately begin to perk in my head and chest, but before she had me fully in her grasp, I went over to my valise and took out the derringer I carried as insurance against hostile subjects. Placing a chair, back to the wall, I sat with my feet pulled up and listened hard for a lurking danger I could not put my finger on.

Cursed Anamasobia had become the hell of physiognomists, and I prayed to everything—Gronus, Arla, the Well-Built City—that my amnesia was not permanent. If it were, my life would be lost, and I knew I would eventually have to turn the derringer on myself.

“The Flock vector, I like it,” said the professor who now stood before me, laughing. He was dressed all in white and as young as on the first day of class I had had with him.

“That damn Traveler has erased everything,” I said, unable to see the humor.

“Perhaps you'll be joining me soon,” he said.

“Be gone!” I yelled. He evaporated instantly, but the sound of his mirth lingered like the smoke of an extinguished cigarette.

In the wind outside, I heard low voices, passing on gossip. The lights flickered. The Mantakises were either groaning or singing, and the floor began to move like water. I bobbed in the tide, trying to think of numbers and rules, but all I was capable of seeing in my eye's-mind was a parade of meaningless faces. The harder I thought, the faster they sped by, disappearing into the wall above the bed. During my career, I had read each of them, each revealing to my instruments and well-trained eye a certain measure of guilt, but now they might as well have been lumps of cremat for all the meaning they bestowed. I couldn't find the sum, and, when I tried to divide, my brain went haywire, emitting showers of green sparks. If I even attempted to think of the mathematical formula for figuring surface-to-depth ratios, I would immediately picture Mayor Bataldo, leaning on his balcony, saying, “A first-rate beating,” and smiling like a classic moron.

I was, though, able to read a message of doom written on my own countenance as it peered back at me from Arden's mirror across the room. My hands shook from the beauty chills, those tremors of the nervous system that occasionally rack the long-time user, and the paranoia was exquisite. For a moment, I thought I saw the face of a demon at the window, staring in through the falling snow. To calm myself, I got up, grabbed my instrument bag off the dresser, and brought it to the bed. Still holding the derringer in my left hand, I opened the bag with my right and took the chrome instruments out one by one. I laid them on the bed in a straight line and then stood and stared. The sight of each of them brought back to me the damnable face of the Traveler. I was reaching for the calipers when I heard someone begin climbing the stairs to my room, one heavy step at a time.

Even as I spun to face the door, bringing the derringer up for better aim, the question struck me, Why do they call this man-thing the Traveler? It seemed to me he hadn't gone anywhere for centuries. But like an enormous dry cornstalk rattling in the autumn wind, I saw him in my eye's-mind now coming to me, wearily mounting the stairs, his very skin creaking, his exhalations, heaves of dust. I wondered if he was using the banister. “Mantakis,” I yelled at the top of my voice, yet only the slightest murmur escaped me.

The sound of steps ceased at the landing and I cocked the trigger. I had never fired the gun before, and I wondered if it was, in fact, loaded. Three methodical raps sounded upon my door and in the silence that followed I detected the faint wheeze of labored breathing. “Come in,” I said.

The door opened, and it was a good thing I did not give in to the urge to pull the trigger, because standing before me was the pig-faced driver of the coach and four. The miserable wretch stared, glassy-eyed, as if he were walking in his sleep.