Tale of the Phrenologist

© 2002 Joseph Nathaniel Baron
All rights reserved.

"Irregular in its form, without concavity where it should appear, or proper ridging at the brow ... the poor fellow had no feature I could countenance as promising; indeed, there was little hope for the future of the young man, truly more feral than human, according to my divining. Today they ridicule the system, but, you see, there is a long line of practitioners, going back, so to say, some scores of years, deeply rooted in the sciences and anatomy," Herr Steiner replied to the young reporter's first question.

"But surely there is no peer-reviewed science behind the practice," offered the writer of a feature dealing with occult and mystic practices in the health-care structure of rural Europe.

Stung by the apparent arrogance of ignorance, Steiner, nevertheless, as a true explorer of the nature of humans, only sighed. Then, having gathered his composure, he conveyed an alertness not seen by the young questioner for the better part of the two hour-long sessions held over two days at the retirement villa. He decided to reveal what he had withheld so as to avoid any sensationalistic reaction journalists were wont to register.

"Young lady, you live in a seemingly rational time, where science has become a new priesthood, so to say, but permit me to inform you that many of the scientists, most of whom contributed in divers ways to phrenology, upon whose shoulders your scientism has stood and progressed, have met their deaths without having had the chance to sit with you today...."

Steiner paused, seeming to have concluded, whereupon the interviewer interjected: "I see, they have passed away ... must have been...."

And, now, it was she who was interrupted.

"The young subject of whom I have spoken these past hours, repeatedly, was, you must understand, responsible for their demise."

Stillness had somehow robbed the air of its life-giving gas, like some unexpected order instantly aborting a budding chaos, pregnant with the portent of revelation.

"I don't think I understand. Are you speaking of some murderer, some particular slayer whose penchant was the learned?" she asked, feeding, alternatively, upon the moment's substitute: adrenaline.

"I grow weary. Come back tomorrow and we will complete your divinings, yes?" the sage suggested.

Perhaps the old man alluded to Dr. Mengele or any of a large and incomplete roster of Nazi zealots, those who wore the mark of Cain with distinction, so innovative in the practices of the odious and inhumane. She was confused, having been told by her detailed research, including still-sensitive OSS records in American archives, that a kind of rigorous occultism, often masked by the trappings of signal scholarship, and the Third Reich's SS were synonymous. Surely he could not have spoken of Hitler himself—no one could have lived to tell that tale, no matter how bright his star may have been in that long-imploded craven constellation.

Early the next morning she received a phone call: "Yes, I am head of nurse care for Herr Steiner, and I am afraid he has overexerted himself. The doctor has prescribed bed-rest for a week."

Frustrated but determined, Laura Meisner persuaded her editors to extend her stay in the Alps on the premise that much progress was being made; she was to lose herself in the village registries while awaiting her final audience with Steiner.

The Austria of Laura's delvings proved not much altered from the days of its dubious glory as the Osterreich. She had been stunned by the prominently displayed memorabilia of the period in shop windows. Some still bore the trance-like visage of its most infamous son, as if the prized aim of a vibrant culture was never the pasteurized life-enhancing mother's milk of a timeless Strauss waltz, the statesmanlike artistry of a Metternich or the haute vie of Vienna herself, but, rather, the nondescript infectious primitive agents lurking within. So discomfiting was this glisteningly fetid, long-lived pus from so perverse a self-inflicted mutilation of a high-cultured body politic that Laura broke off her planned visit to Hitler's birthplace, her mind fleeing thoughts so virtual its mortal house almost shuddered in agreement. Her intuitive, almost primal twinge had been veiled, however transparently, with the comparatively sterile rationalization that no revelations abided in so mystic a site.

While Steiner's health seem to have stabilized, he was, nevertheless, reluctant to continue. Yet the same scruples that had guarded his secret governed his actions still, and they finally did meet again, as he had promised.

"I understand that you made good use of our unavoidable delay," mused Steiner, ever the gentleman.

"Yes, yes...." she stammered, unsure of the wisdom of revealing her dissuasion from pursuing her Austrian researches.

"A curious country, do you not agree?" He sensed her tenuousness. "I myself have not returned for almost fifty years; still the land of Waldheim, sadly." He audibly sighed the exhalation of one who knew the hearts of his countrymen and women. "Imagine, the one voice of voices sent to the cosmos as the herald of amity."

"Dr. Steiner, you may not believe me, but I am almost reluctant to learn more," Laura confided.

"Yet, my dear, you—perhaps we—owe it to the future, do we not? I will be direct, so as to respect your understandable discomfiture—this secret is truly rather an open one, albeit no names are used. You will find it in the pages of Mein Kampf." He almost whispered, though it was more a function of his pulmonary capacity than any sign of irresolution. "You see, without this fact, Hitler's hatred cannot be fully fathomed, it wearing largely the time-worn garment of twice-told tales of incoherent mythology of such ancient provenance that even his strident repetition was but an echo of echoes over millennia, truly." He paused for renewed breath, cognizant of her slack-jawed, questioning face, pale and drawn, yet unblinking in its attentiveness.

"He had a brother, you see ... for a few months. A very sickly child, whose cranium I have spoken of previously, yes," he reminded her. "The family possessed Jewish blood, you see, consanguineous bl...."

Laura blurted out "His mother's," interrupting Steiner, who was momentarily startled.

"True, my child; and it was upon this otherwise meaningless fact—indeed, it likely accounted for his cleverness, almost genius—that he built the edifice of that mindless rancor, the spilling of which became the obsessive mania of his demise," Steiner concluded, now wan and appearing to have released a great yoke from his soul, which was soon to depart the usually violent hence exhausting realm of time and space. He entrusted to her, on their parting, a plain manila envelope of medical data, including x-rays, of some thickness.

It had been a year since Laura Meisner had, inexplicably left the employ of her editors. She had never revealed to them, or anyone, the words of Herr Steiner, now long dead. She somehow knew that, as fact spawns fiction, this fact would prove the midwife of an endless phalanx of somehow lost, though breathing, offspring, waiting their numberless turn as pretext for unleashing the unslayable dragons of the human heart.

Indeed, as she read the latest of an endless series of mainstream stories about the search for Hitler's body and final forensic proof of the same in her morning paper, Laura resolved, on yet another January 1st, to maintain the exile of her seemingly passé secret fact, reposing in forensic solidity in a safe-deposit box in an unsuspecting city in a too dangerous, credulous world.

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