'Madam,' I said with exasperation, 'have you ever heard of a mule whose excrement is gold coin?'
'No,' she said.
'Nor have I. Good day,' I told her and again turned north.
When I entered the long alleyway that ran between the general store and the tavern, the sun was resting at a point just beyond late afternoon, but as I exited the alley, I stepped out into dusk and felt the great beast of night begin to murmur. There, standing next to a bush, was one of the hardened heroes, holding a hand- painted sign that read this way, your honor. An arrow beneath the words pointed the way up a path that twisted ahead into a darkening wood.
The wind ran through me, quickening my pace. I cursed the moronic statue with its blue-toothed smile and pop eyes, and then a large black bird suddenly swooped low out of nowhere and shit on the arm of my topcoat. I screamed after it and followed its flight upward toward the snowcap of Gronus, where it was obvious some wild storm was raging. The stain sickened me with its aroma of pineapple, but it was too cold to take the coat off.
As I passed beneath the boundary of the treetops into the shadows of the wood, I remembered Beaton's eyes, how they had shifted and froze, and then I realized that night had come. The branches were barren, and I trod through piles of yellow leaves that littered the path. Stars shone clearly beyond the skeletal canopy above, but none of them seemed to be where I expected. I made a mental note to repay the mayor's kindness when it was his turn to step before the calipers. 'There's always the possibility of surgery,' I said aloud to comfort myself. I walked on slowly, sticking to the path as best I could and hoping at every turn that I would see the lights of a house.
Rationale was what was needed to keep my mind clear. I was not much for the unknown. Ever since childhood, the dark had been one of my greatest challenges. There was no face to it, no signs to interpret, no clues to decipher in an attempt to discern a friend or foe. The physiognomy of the night was a great blankness that scorned my instruments and harbored the potential for true evil. I can't tell you how many of my colleagues had this same problem and were prone to sleeping with a light on.
I attempted to concentrate upon the case, what I could expect and how long it would take to diligently read the features of the entire town. It was precisely here, stumbling through the woods, that I had a brainstorm, one of the rare ones that came without an injection. 'If these fools believe in the potency of this stolen fruit to cause miracles,' I thought aloud, 'perhaps what I need to be on the lookout for is someone whose character has changed drastically since the crime was committed.' Be assured, I was not affording the fruit any strange powers—that was all drivel to me—but if one did believe that it would make him a genius or bestow the power of flight or cause him to become immortal, would he not then comport himself differently? As I had told my students at the academy each semester of my tenure there: 'The physiognomist is more than his chrome instruments. The acute and reasoning mind is the mother of all tools; let her suckle you to insight.'
As this grand thought played itself out, I rounded a bend and came in view of the Mayor's residence. Two hundred yards up what appeared to be a steep incline, I saw the glow of candlelight shining through a battery of windows lining the front of the house. I was about to begin the climb, when I heard something approaching on the path behind me. The noise started small and far away, but grew exponentially with each heartbeat. I thought absolutely nothing in the few moments before it burst from the darkness like a monster clawing free of a nightmare and stopped only inches from me, hooves pawing the air.
What had materialized was a coach and four, being driven by the porcine mystic who had brought me from the Weil-Built City. He sat grinning in the light from the lamp that hung beside him. 'The Master has sent me to escort you,' he said. I had a million imprecations to shower upon him, but his mention of the Master stopped me cold. I nodded once and got in.
'Where is Beaton?' the mayor asked me. I wanted to send him to town for some ice.' The guests, dressed in their pathetic finery, broke out in fits of laughter. If I'd only had my scalpel, I'd have cut them all to ribbons, but as it was, I smiled and gave a slight bow. In a mirror on the other side of the room I watched the mayor put his arm around my shoulders.
'Let me show you my house,' he said. He smelled strongly of alcohol, and I gracefully slid him off me.
'As you wish,' I said, and followed him through the crowds of guests, drinking, smoking, jabbering like a room full of monkeys. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Mrs. Mantakis and wondered how she had beaten me to the party. One drunken fool stopped me and said, 'I see you have been talking to the mayor,' and pointed to the bird excrement on my topcoat. The Mayor laughed uncontrollably and patted the fellow on the back. Amid this sea of gabbling wretchedness was intertwined a discordant music played by old men on strange instruments made from pieces of trees. 'Absence,' the drink of the evening, a clear liquid with a bluish tinge, was brewed by the miners. The hors d'oeuvres were chived cremat—something like grass on a dog turd on a biscuit as hard as a dinner plate.
We stopped to greet the mayor's wife, who pleaded with me to get her husband a position in the City. 'He's upright,' she said. 'He's an upright man.'
'I'm sure he is, madam,' I told her, 'but the Weil-Built City is not looking for a Mayor.'
'He can do anything,' she said and tried to give him a kiss.
'Get back to the kitchen,' he told her. 'The cremat is running low.'
Before leaving, she kissed my ring with all the passion she had intended for him. I wiped it on my trouser leg as we continued through the crowd, the Mayor shouting at me over the noise of the party. I couldn't make out a word of it.
We finally left the main room, stepping out into a long hallway. Bataldo waved over his shoulder for me to follow him. He showed me up one flight of stairs, and when I reached the landing, he pushed back a set of doors that led to his library. Three of the walls were lined with books and the third held a sliding glass partition that opened onto a balcony. Once inside, he moved to a small table that held a bottle of absence and two glasses. I stared at some of the titles on the shelves and before long found four of my twenty or more published treatises. I was sure he hadn't read
'You've read my work?' I asked as he handed me a drink.
'Very interesting,' he said.
'What did it tell you?' I asked.
'Well ...' he said and fell silent.
'Did it tell you I don't care to be toyed with by an ape such as you?' I asked.
'What do you mean, your honor?'
I threw my glass of absence in his eyes, and, when he cried out and began rubbing them, I drove my fist into his throat. He reeled backward, wheezing noises escaping his mouth, and eventually fell onto the floor where he writhed to catch his breath. I hurried over to him. 'Help me,' he whispered, and I kicked him in the side of the head, drawing blood. Before he could plead again, I stuck the heel of my boot into his gaping mouth.
'I should kill you for sending Beaton,' I said.
He tried to nod.
'Take one more liberty with me, and I will relay to the Master that this entire town is in need of extermination.'
He tried to nod again.
I left him there on the floor, opened the door to the balcony, and stepped outside, hoping the breeze would dry my perspiration. I abhorred violence, but I was called to use it occasionally. In this case, as a symbolic gesture to slap the town awake after a long dream of ignorance.
A few minutes passed before the mayor came staggering out to join me. His head was bleeding and there was vomit on his shirt front. He had a glass of absence which he sipped in between groans. When I looked over at him he leaned back against the railing and raised his glass to me, 'A first-rate beating,' he said and smiled.
'Unfortunately, it was what the moment called for,' I told him.
'But if you look out here, your honor, you will see something,' he said, pointing into the dark.
'I can't see a thing,' I said.
'We are now at the northern border of the town. Out there, a few yards away, is the beginning of a vast, unexplored forest that may go on forever. It is believed that the Earthly Paradise lies somewhere deep in its heart.' He took a handkerchief from his vest pocket and laid it against the cut on his head.
'What does this have to do with me?' I asked.
'One year we sent an expedition of seasoned miners in an attempt to discover the celestial garden, and all perished but one. He barely made it back alive and when he wandered into town two years later, dazed and broken, he told stories about demons in the Beyond. 'With horns and wings and ridged backs, like in a child's catechism,' he said. They had also encountered a fire-breathing cat, a black reptilian hound with tusks, and herds of a type of reindeer whose antlers grow together into nests where a bright red bird usually took up residence.'
'I'm not beyond another painful encounter. Get to the point,' I said.
'The point is, you must understand the people of Anama-sobia. There is a certain sense of humor here born from living in the shadow of the ungodly. For the past few years, the demons have been spotted on the northern border of town. One of them flew out of a fog one night and snatched up Father Garland's dog. You see, in the face of this threat, we must continue, so we laugh as often as possible.' He nodded to me when he finished as if that would help me to understand.
'Get cleaned up,' I told him, 'and meet me downstairs. I will address the townspeople.'
'Very good, your honor,' he said and then spun quickly around. 'Did you hear that?' he asked.
'What?' I said.
'Out there, in the bushes,' he said.
'The demons?' I asked.
He pointed at me and started to laugh. 'There, I had you,' he said. 'You have to admit it.'
I punched him as hard as I could in the left eye, chafing my knuckles. While he leaned over, swimming through the pain, I told him I would leave my topcoat in his library and that he should have it cleaned for me by the time the party was over. Then I left and returned to the purgatory beneath me.
The mayor's wife handed me a chived cremat as I ordered her to set up folding chairs for the guests. 'Right away,' she said and was already overseeing the operation when I turned to look. The aroma of the hors d'oeuvre was penetrating, and instinctively I tossed it off the plate I held. It rolled onto the carpet. For some time I was taken with watching the unwitting guests come within a hairsbreadth of stepping on it—a metaphor for their search for meaning. Finally, a woman ran it through with a slender high heel and carried it off into the crowd.
'We are ready for you,' said the mayor's wife, awakening me from my reverie.
I had a method I employed when speaking to large groups of the dim, a way of making them focus on my message. I began by doing some quick readings of faces in the crowd and making predictions. No one could resist its appeal. 'You, ovei there,' I said, pointing as I strode back and forth in front of the assembled guests, 'you will live in poverty for your entire life. You, the woman with the flowers in her hat, should you really be cheating on your husband? Dead within the year. A child on the
