What Is Visible: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

when they were married, but that news could wait.
    “You shall have your hands full of heads here, Combe,” Doctor said. The phrenologist was almost seventy, but his handshake was still crushing. “Get your calipers ready!”
    “Work Laura first, please,” Julia said. “I would like to observe before I am examined.”
    Laura reached out to Doctor. “Have surprise for Julia,” she wrote. Whenever she had a secret, she signed the letters more quickly.
    “After the exam,” he wrote equally as quick. It was their equivalent of whispering. She nodded and sat back in her chair, ready for the doctor. He had examined her annually since she arrived six years ago.
    Combe stood behind Laura and placed one hand on each side of her head, but he spoke to Julia, who had come closer to watch.
    “The brain is made up of congeries of organs,” he said as he drew vertical and then horizontal lines on Laura’s head with his index finger. “Each one corresponds to the thirty-seven innate and independent faculties of man. Each faculty, be it emotional or intellectual, has its seat in a particular region on the surface of the brain, and the size of that region shows the development, or not, of that faculty.” He parted Laura’s hair with the calipers and gently pinched the skin at the front of her skull. “The coronal, just above and behind the forehead, shows enormous growth since last year, especially in relation to her animal region, back here above the nape of her neck. The coronal is the seat of the moral faculty. Right behind her eyes, the organ of language, ah yes, continuing to grow, right on schedule.”
    Combe validated that Laura’s brain was responding to Doctor’s rigors and nurturance, just as he had hoped. Before his work with her, the world believed anyone this impaired to be doomed to imbecility, incapable of rational thought or the natural questing of the spirit for the divine. He had proved them all wrong. Not since Itard’s progress with the Wild Boy of Aveyron had anyone created such a stir, and Doctor and Laura already had achieved far more than that feral child and his mentor. Doctor was now the foremost discoverer of the inner workings of the human mind and soul. Like William Parry at the Arctic, he had planted his flag on the farthest shore of the world, unexplored country.
    Laura sat perfectly still. She seemed to be enjoying it. Combe continued his exam, stopping periodically to take notes on a small pad.
    “Oh, Miss Ward,” he said, “you should feel this. The bump of hope. On the left side below the braid. Very modulated. Do you want to touch it?”
    Julia looked closely, but shook her head. Doctor moved Laura’s braid. Yes, he was right. It was pronounced.
    “You know, Howe, the girl started out with such a promising head—the contours have always confirmed naturally vigorous moral and intellectual powers—but my, what you’ve done with it!”
    Doctor thanked him and tapped Laura to get up.
    “My head good?” she wrote, and he told her the news of her growth. She clapped.
    Julia sat down in the chair in front of Combe. “I’m a little nervous, I must confess,” she said. She looked at Doctor. “There’s so much riding on something I can’t control.”
    “It will be fine,” he said. “Let’s see what she’s got, Combe.”
    Julia closed her eyes as Combe picked and measured. “The anterior lobe,” he intoned, tapping the right side of her head. “Very well developed. Knowledge and reflection. Self-esteem, love of approbation―you two share these things, Howe. And here”—he indicated a spot behind her ear—“quite the combativeness bump.”
    Julia opened her eyes.
    “Almost as large as yours, Howe, if I remember correctly.”
    Doctor smiled at her. They would be fine; a little combativeness can be countenanced. Combe had found nothing terrible, no great aggressiveness or lack of order or causality.
    “Dr. Howe has one of the largest affection bumps I’ve ever seen on a