Cley: The Physiognomy Part 5

It turned out that her father was no less brilliant than she. He had an inordinately large p.e.n.i.s, which obviously revealed the curse of his ignorance. Aria showed great diligence in measuring this organ, but I cut her off in the middle of her work, saying, "There's nothing there. Next!"

With our lead suspects cleared by Aria's computations and my necessarily more intuitive approach, we began to go to work on the rest of the town. So far, my plan to make it seem as if I was using this opportunity to mentor my a.s.sistant had worked well. "And what did you find?" I would ask her with each instrument she applied. She handled the chrome tools with great adeptness, calling out numbers for me to record in my book. I was, of course, going to allow her to catch the thief for me. Occasionally, her confidence would falter, and she would look to me with a question in her eyes. Then I would say, "Go on, continue. I am watching. I will let you know when you have made an error." With these words of encouragement, she would smile, as if thanking me for my generosity, and I began to think that the whole affair might work out better than I had imagined.

They filed in one by one, a never-ending nightmare of the repulsive and displeasing. With my new blindness, picking a thief out of this populace was like trying to identify a scoundrel in a room full of lawyers. Their nakedness was very unsettling. All that flesh and their blatant s.e.x staring me in the face made my stomach queasy. When Aria ordered the mayor's wife to bend over, I lit a cigarette, hoping the smoke would obscure from me her dilapidated mysteries.

Then, on our twentieth subject, a man named Frod Geeble, the owner of the tavern, Aria stopped in her application of the calibrated navel standard and said to me, "You'd better double-check me here."

I gave her a nervous look, and she squinted as if for an instant she saw through to my unknowing. Quickly, I put down my notebook and approached the subject. She held out the instrument to me; although I could recall the name of it, I had no idea how it worked. Instead of accepting the standard from her, I bent over and put my left eye up to the fat man's navel, looking in as if peering through the end of a telescope. Unable to think of what else to do, I stuck my index finger into the flesh ditch. Frod Geeble belched.

"Interesting," I said.

"What number do you come out with?" she asked.

"That was my question for you," I said.

"I feel uncertain after having discerned evidence of depravity in the abundance of eyebrow hair," she said.

"Forget your uncertainty," I said.

"But I read last night, in your work The Blemished Corpulence and Other Physiognomical Theories that the physiognomist should never operate out of uncertainty."

In order to circ.u.mvent her discovery of me, I stood up and looked Frod Geeble in the eyes, asking myself, Could this man have stolen the sacred fruit? It struck me then that this was the only method of judging another human being that the uninitiated had. The slovenly nature of such a method of discovery made me shudder at the utter darkness so many lived in. Still, I had a feeling he hadn't done it.

"He has brown eyes," I said. "This negates your concern."

"Very well," she said. "He is innocent."

"Free drinks at the tavern for your honor," said Frod Geeble as he dressed.

Calloo was on his way out to fetch the next subject when I called him back. "Bring me the mayor this time," I said.

The hulking miner broke into a broad grin at this suggestion and, for the first time, spoke intelligibly. "Pleasure, your honor."

I had to smile myself.

The mayor held his hands cupped over his privates as he stepped forward for inspection. Aria showed no timidity but went at him with all of my devices just as she had the others. When she was done calling out her findings to me, and I had gone through the charade of jotting them down with the pin, I asked her to step aside. She moved back. The mayor, though no physiognomist himself, took one look at me and very astutely read the malicious intent in my gaze. The folds of loose flesh on his chest and stomach as well as his bottom lip began to quiver.

"I know," he said, giving a nervous laugh, "you have never seen such a resplendent specimen."

"On the contrary," I said, "very piglike."

"I am not a thief," he said, losing his sense of humor.

"Undoubtedly, but I do see a small character flaw that I may be able to adjust," I said. I got up and went over to where my coat hung on the back of a chair and retrieved the scalpel from its pocket. With the instrument in hand, I walked up in front of the mayor, waving the blade inches from his eyes. "I detect an asinine sense of humor that may be your undoing if we cannot correct it early enough."

"Perhaps I can simply work at being more serious," he spluttered.

"Now, now, Mayor, this won't hurt a bit. I'm just trying to see where to make the appropriate cut. Perhaps lower down, near the seat of your intelligence," I said, and stepped back in order to run the dull side of the blade across his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

"Aria, please," he said over my shoulder.

Then I remembered that she was there, watching. I wanted badly to vent the entirety of my frustration on him, but the stronger urge to not let Aria see my anger stole my initial impulse to cut into him like a cake.

After I had dismissed him and he was dressed and gone, Aria said to me, "I saw through you."

"Whatever are you talking about?" I said.

"You were trying to get him to confess," she said.

"I was?"

"You did notice the aberrant nature of his posterior, did you not?" she asked.

"Be specific," I said, as if I were quizzing her on her determination.

"The patch of hair he had growing on his left b.u.t.tock. I believe it is called the Centaur Quality? Unremitting proof of the potential for thievery."

"Very good," I said. "I have already put him in the suspect category."

We saw half the town by nightfall, and I was as far from resolving the case as when I had started. For all I knew, the Traveler had awakened and stolen the fruit. Aria had come up with a short list of possible criminals, but none of them seemed as if anything miraculous had befallen them. Perhaps they were h.o.a.rding the fruit till the case was over. I paid Calloo a few belows for his work and just barely caught myself from thanking him. My near slip came, most likely, from the fact that I was so thankful the day was over. I packed my bag, put on my coat, and watched longingly as Aria let her hair down.

"Meet me at the hotel in an hour," I said to her.

She nodded and left the church. Her abrupt departure made me wonder if she was on to me. I needed to consider if I could safely put my trust in her. But what I needed more than anything was the beauty. I could not remember when I had gone so long without it. My hands were shaking slightly, and I was beginning to feel my skull itch, a sure sign that I was overdue for a violet fix. Garland was still kneeling there praying as I left. I slammed the front door behind me as hard as I could, hoping his wooden Gronus would topple down upon him. Instead, I tripped again on the bottom step and landed facedown in the snow.

Mrs. Mantakis was behind the desk at the hotel when I entered, counting belows and chittering furiously to herself like a weasel caught in a leg trap. I wiped the snow off my feet onto the welcome mat and approached her. Even when I was standing before her, she paid no attention to me but went on with her monologue: "If he thinks I'm going to stand out in the cold all day waiting and then be told to come back tomorrow so that he can lay his greedy eyes on my-" I cleared my throat, and she looked up suddenly.

"Your honor," she said, "so good to see you. You must have had a long, hard day. What can I do for you?" She swept the money off the counter and smiled insipidly to cover her rancor.

"Today was wearisome," I said, "but tomorrow will be twice that, seeing as I will have to spend time studying you and your husband."

"Why will that be difficult?" she asked. "My mother used to say I have fine attributes." Her smile turned into a sneer with the wrinkling of her nose, the widening of her nostrils.

"I didn't know your mother was a veterinarian," I said.

She held her tongue, as well she should have, knowing I was tired.

'Send two bottles of wine up to my office. Also, dinner for two, and it had better not be any form of cremat. I don't care if you have to fry that dim-witted husband of yours. Then get to bed early; there will be a long wait in the snow again tomorrow."

"As you wish," she said, eyeing my jugular.

"A town of militant morons," I said to myself as I trudged up the flights of stairs to my room. Once inside, I took off my topcoat, slipped off my shoes, and lay on the bed. What I wanted was a moment of rest, but, of course, my mind could not leave the case alone. When I tried to recall some of the subjects we had seen, all I could get a picture of were amorphous blobs of flesh. Aria then came to my eye's-mind, and even in my diminished condition stirred my desire. There was no doubt, I was falling in love with her. This never would have happened had I retained the Physiognomy. I could see now that the loss of reason proceeds in a geometrical progression until unholy chaos pushes every methodical theory from one's mind. What was worse, I was not completely hostile to the sensation it engendered.

There was only one thing that could clear my mind, and I got up and went to my valise for a clean hypodermic. Since Aria was most likely on her way, I only administered a sparing dose, seeing as I did not want her to witness one of my deep stupors. The beauty was all I had left to rely on, and true to her form she came to me splendidly, growing out from the point of entry between the big and second toe of my right foot in spreading tendrils of bliss.

I believed the dose too small to bring hallucinations, although the lamps in the room did emit a very faint music-strings and oboes, if I recall. It was just a fine, light feeling that lifted my spirits and gave me the energy to dress. At least the luckless Mantakis had cleaned up the shards on the carpet and replaced the gla.s.s in the mirror his hardened brother would hold for eternity. I made a mental note to commend him at bath time the next morning.

He came to my room a half hour later to let me know that dinner had been served next door and that the Beaton girl had arrived. I quickly dabbed a touch of formaldehyde beneath each ear, an aroma the scientific mind cannot resist, and went next door with a low smoldering of excitement in my bowels.

When I came in the room, I found Aria standing in front of the statue of her grandfather, her palms resting gently on either side of his face.

"Communing with the family tree?" I asked.

"Make that rock," she said and turned to smile at me.

I was pleased to see she appeared to have left the business of the case behind for a while. I was also pleased to see her dressed not so drably as earlier. She wore a dark green dress with yellow flowers on it that hung well above her knee. Her hair was down and, to my beauty-enhanced vision, literally shining. When her eyes met mine, it was all I could do to keep from smiling.

On the small table, Mantakis had laid out two plates of food. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a real caribou steak, vegetables I could recognize, and not the faintest scent of cremat anywhere. Beside the plates were two bottles of wine, one red, the other blue, along with two fine crystal gla.s.ses. I sat down before one of the plates and motioned that she should join me.

She took a seat and immediately cut into the steak and began eating. I poured us each a gla.s.s of blue wine, hoping she did not realize it was the more potent of the two. Then I leaned back in my chair and said, "You did some very fine work today."

"I told you I would," she said.

I desired a slightly more respectful response and perhaps that she did not chew so loudly, but these were minor annoyances lost amid the deluge of her charm. We ate and exchanged pleasantries, had a good laugh over Morgan and his daughter, Alice, possibly having anything to do with the crime. Just when everything was moving along smoothly and I had gotten her to accept another gla.s.s of wine, Professor Flock materialized behind her. I had momentarily forgotten that at least half of my contentment grew from the beauty.

"You didn't think I'd miss this little get-together, did you, Cley?" he asked.

Aria looked up and around at this moment as if she detected the buzzing of a mosquito, but I realized she was merely reacting to my reaction. I couldn't very well yell to my old mentor to be gone in front of her. I focused on her eyes and worked hard to ignore him.

"Quite the little brisket, old boy," he said, "and I'm not talking about dinner, though I may be talking about dessert, eh?" He was dressed in a loincloth and carried a shovel. His face was haggard, and the sweat dripped off him.

Aria took a drink and then said, "I have had more daydreams in which I remember pieces of my grandfather's journey."

"Interesting," I said.

Flock leaned over her and looked down the front of her dress. "I suggest the Twelfth Maneuver," he said, snickering sardonically.

"Yes," she said, "I recall him telling me, surprisingly enough, about a being he met that closely fits the description of Father Garland's Traveler."

"You don't say," I said, watching the professor make lewd movements behind her.

"Yes," she said, "and I remembered him saying that this being told him the name of paradise."

Flock said to me, "Watch, Cley, this is how I died." Then I could see fumes rising around him, and the smell of sulphur permeated the room. Dropping the shovel behind him, he grabbed at his throat with both hands. His face turned red and then quickly to purple, his tongue protruded, his eyes popped wide.

"Wenau," she said.

The professor fell forward over Aria, her head piercing his incorporeal chest, and I leaped to my feet in an attempt to keep him from crushing her. The hallucination faded in a moment, and I was standing before her, leaning over.

"Almost my very reaction," she said.

"Interesting," I said and sat gracefully back down, trying to disguise my agitation.

We finished dinner with no more interruptions from unwanted guests. Aria stood up, taking her wine, and went over to the window. She looked out at the moon, which shone in full view, and asked, "Do you think we have seen the thief yet, or shall we discover him tomorrow?"

"From the information we have so far, I cannot tell. Remember, the Twelfth Maneuver requires that we read all inhabitants."

"Tell me about the Weil-Built City," she said.

"It is all crystal and pink coral, spires, and ivy-covered trellises. There is a large park and broad avenues. It is the brainchild of Drachton Below, the Master. The story goes that he had been a pupil of the great genius Scarfinati, who had taught him a memory system by which you construct a palace in your mind and then adorn it and fill it with ideas that have been transformed through a mystic symbology into objects. Hence, when you need to remember something, you simply stroll through the palace in your memory, find the object-a vase, a painting, a stained-gla.s.s window-and the idea in question is again revealed to you. Below had been such a curious youth that instead of a simple palace, his knowledge could be housed in nothing less than a city. By the time he appeared in Latrobia, a young man of twenty, he had constructed every inch of the metropolis in his mind. He knew where every brick was to be laid, how every facade was to be ornamented before the work even began. It was said that he whispered something in the ears of the men and women he sought to work for him, and from that moment on, they were like joyous machines, tireless unto death, with no need of instructions. It was built well before I was even born, in so short an amount of time that that in itself is as much a miracle as its actual construction."

"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.

"Aria," 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 tranquillity. "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."

"Aria," 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 Aria'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.