Soul

‘This is off the record, but ma’am, have you ever wondered why the department’s suddenly got someone like you on the case?’

Sensing a slight threat under the question, Julia didn’t answer.

Winston continued, ‘I guess it’s because of what happened in Brazil last year. A lot of taxpayers’ dollars went up in that operation—a few guys at the top probably did some heavy-duty soul-searching afterwards.’

‘What operation in Brazil?’

He buttoned up his shirt and grinned a teasing half-smile.

‘If you don’t know, I ain’t telling.’

Julia sat in a Starbucks at the edge of one of the gated communities south of the border. The gridwork of mock-Mediterranean mansions with recently planted bougainvillea tacked against their stucco walls was visible from the freeway, the fecund irrigated landscape a vivid emerald—the artifice of the great Californian dream. Outside the fence, the native scrubland was a burnt brown.

Sipping her coffee, Julia studied the marine’s file. The twins’ biological parents both had criminal records, with the father showing characteristics of extreme violence, suggesting a genetic basis to the twins’ violent disposition. She needed to locate the parents, take blood samples and brain scans, and find out about their own parents—the twins’ grandparents. Julia was excited by the notion of tracing the lineage of the trait until she noticed a footnote at the bottom of the page: Parents deceased. It was like coasting down a road only to discover it was a dead end.

The thought led her to her own ancestry, to a memory of sitting on her father’s lap and questioning him about Lavinia Huntington and the awkward expression that traversed his face as he evaded some of her questions. What had really gone wrong with her great-grandmother’s marriage, she wondered now.

Her coffee was cold. Julia stared out at the Mexican gardener fastidiously blowing leaves from one side of the path to the other. It was one of those timeless sunny days that transformed everything—the sky, the freeways, the malls—into oblongs of colour: salmon-red, beige, pale indigo. Looking around, she realised she was in a landscape of consumerism, with all the recognisable totems found in any corner of the country: McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, In an’ Out Burgers, Riteway, Borders—a two-dimensional environment that felt unanchored and impermanent, as if it could all float away at any moment. Is everything expedient, Julia wondered—marriages, houses, cars, identity?

Crushing her polystyrene cup, she attempted to dismiss the sudden image of Klaus clowning for her in the mall car park. As recollection jabbed her sharply between the temples, she understood exactly what Winston Ramirez had meant by the phrase ‘morally wronged’; she knew his anger.

32

Mayfair, 1861

COLONEL HUNTINGTON STOOD in the centre of his study, holding aloft a skull whose cranium was carefully marked into divisions with red ink, like the topography of a recently discovered planet. Behind him, the glass doors of the display bureau housing his collection of skulls and artefacts stood open.

Hamish Campbell, dressed in a striped sack suit, sat near the Colonel, writing neatly into a leather-bound notebook. Lavinia sat by the fireplace.

‘As you know,’ the Colonel said, ‘I am an associate member of the Anthropological Society of Paris, but despite my friendship with Monsieur Paul Broca, I disagree with his notion of measuring intelligence by the size of the brain. I side with Broca’s rival, Louis Pierre Gratiolet, who believes that brain size bears no relationship to intelligence.’

Surprised, the young man looked up. ‘Surely you don’t also believe there is equal intelligence between men and women, even between races?’

‘Is that so preposterous?’

‘Preposterous? It’s ridiculous. You just have to observe the behaviours of savages or of women. For example, have you ever seen a man lose his logic and engage in a fit of hysteria?’

‘Have you ever observed a boxing match, my good fellow?’

‘Regularly, sir. And I’ll have you know, I regard pugilism as a highly sophisticated and controlled ritual that requires considerable manifestation of intelligence.’

‘Perhaps,’ conceded the Colonel, ‘but, unlike Gratiolet, who still believes the intellectual inferiority of women and natives can be measured by earlier closure of the skull sutures, I suspect our capacity to measure intelligence is too narrow. There has been far too much emphasis on the importance of craniology in anthropology; I myself have been guilty of this. However, I do not entirely dismiss the importance of phrenology, particularly in the diagnosis of pathology—but I digress.’

‘But, with respect, sir, you cannot afford to doubt your own research. That would make you a heretic within the movement,’ Campbell blurted, distressed by the Colonel’s argument.

‘Indeed. It should be noted that Gratiolet is a self-declared Royalist, whereas I regard myself as a follower of Gladstone. Is our destiny to be shaped solely by the size of our brain, our race or our sex? I find myself wondering whether nurture has rather more to do with shaping us. Of course, whether such a utopia will ever exist where such a hypothesis could be tested remains to be seen. Somehow I suspect that such a notion is beyond the vision of most Homo sapiens.’

Intrigued, Hamish walked over to the bureau bookcase, where he picked up a small stone axe, its flint tied to the roughly hewn handle with reeds.

‘Sir, you do realise that if your ideas were proved correct, over one hundred years of study would be rendered irrelevant, perhaps even vilified as hocus-pocus?’ He swung the axe as if to emphasise his point.

‘Of course he does!’ Lavinia sprang up and took her husband’s arm. The Colonel, bemused by Hamish’s irate tone, calmed her then turned back to the young man.

‘Believe me, I have not come to these conclusions lightly. My close observation of the Bakairi led me not down the path of racial superiority; to the contrary: of course there was poverty, of course there was ignorance, but there were other intelligences operating of which we have little or no understanding. Not inferior, not necessarily superior, simply profoundly different.’

The Colonel walked over to the bureau bookcase. ‘I usually keep this locked for I am ashamed of its contents. I have not collected a skull for a good ten years.’

Flushed and confused, Hamish pointed out a small skull with jutting frontal development. ‘You cannot believe that a prognathous skull with a small cranium can possibly house the same intelligence as, say, a Napoleon?’