The Physiognomy Read Free

trustworthy and prepared to meet him. As I opened the door, he ceased his whistling and walked forward to greet me.
    â€œWelcome to Anamasobia,” he said, holding out a gloved hand. His obesity was canceled by an insistent chin, his overbite by the generosity of jowls. I clasped his hand and he said, “Mayor Bataldo.”
    â€œPhysiognomist Cley,” I told him.
    â€œA great honor,” he said.
    â€œYou are having some trouble?” I inquired.
    â€œYour … honor,” he said, as if on the verge of tears, “there is a thief in Anamasobia.” He took my valise and we walked together down the hardened dirt path that was the only street in town.
    The mayor gave me a tour as we walked, pointing out buildings and expounding on their beauty and utility. He taxed my civility with colorful tidbits of local history. I saw the town hall, the bank, the tavern, all constructed from a pale gray wood full of splinters and roofed with slate. Some of them, like the theater, were quite large with the crudest attempts at ornamentation. Faces, beasts, lightning bolts, crosses had been carved into some of the boards. On the southern wall of the bank, people had carved their names. This tickled the mayor to his very foundation.
    â€œI can’t believe you live here,” I said to him, mustering a shred of sympathy.
    â€œHeaven knows, we are animals, your honor,” he said, slowly shaking his head, “but we can certainly mine blue spire.”
    â€œYes, very well,” I said, “but once, at an exhibition at the Hall of Science in the Well-Built City, I saw a monkey write the words ‘I am not a monkey’ five hundred times on a sheet of parchment with a quill. Each line was rendered with the most magnificent penmanship.”
    â€œA miracle,” he said.
    I was led to a sorry-looking four-story dwelling in the center of town called the Hotel de Skree. “I have reserved the entire fourth floor for you,” said the mayor.
    I held my tongue.
    â€œThe service is magnificent,” he said. “The stewed cremat is splendid and all drinks are complimentary.”
    â€œCremat,” I said through tight lips, but it went no further, because coming toward us on the left side of the street was an old blue man. Bataldo saw me notice the staggering wretch and waved to him. The old man lifted his hand but never looked up. His skin was the color of a cloudless sky. “What manner of atrocity is this?” I asked.
    â€œThe old miners have lived so long in the spire dust that it becomes them. Finally they harden all the way through. If the family of the man is poor, they sell him as spire rock to the realm for half what a pure sample of his weight would bring. If the family is well-off, they register him as a ‘hardened hero,’ and he stands in perpetuity somewhere in town as a monument to personal courage and a lesson to the young.”
    â€œBarbaric,” I said.
    â€œMost of them never get that old,” said the mayor, “cave-ins, natural poison gasses, falling in the dark, madness.… Mr. Beaton, there,” he said, pointing after the blue man, “he’ll be found next week somewhere, heavy as a gravestone and set in his ways.”
    The mayor showed me into the lobby of the hotel and informed the management that I had arrived. The usual amenities followed. The old couple who presided over the shabby elegance of the de Skree, a Mr. and Mrs. Mantakis, were, each in their own way, textbook examples of physiognomical blunders. Nature had gone awry in the development of the old man’s skull, leaving it too thin to house real intelligence and nearly as long as my forearm. I realized, as he kissed my ring, that I could not expect much from him. Not in the habit of beating dogs, so to speak, I showed him a smile and gave an approving nod. The missus, on the other hand, exhibited ferretlike tendencies in her pointed face and sharp teeth, and I