“What happened then?”
“Then I woke here, on this glass panel, after a deep sleep… My body was lying on the dissection table, and Kern was opening the rib-cage. Here, as you see, my heart is beating in this glass vessel…”
Miss Adams looked at the head in horror.
“And after that… after that you continue working with him? If it hadn’t been for him, you would have conquered the asthma and been a healthy man by now… he is a thief and a murderer, and you are supporting his rise to fame? You are working for him! Like a parasite, he feeds on your mental functions; he has turned your head into a sort of accumulator of creative thought, which he exploits to earn fame and money. And what about you? What does he give you? What sort of life do you have? You are deprived of everything! You are a miserable amputee, with your desires still alive inside you! Kern stole the whole world from you! Forgive me, but I don’t understand you! And yet you can really work for him meekly and calmly?”
The head smiled sorrowfully.
“The revolt of the head? Would that achieve anything? What could I do? Why, I’m deprived even of a man’s ultimate option: to do away with myself.”
“But you could refuse to work with him.”
“And I did refuse. In a manner of speaking, I rebelled, like the angels. But my rebellion was not provoked by Kern using me as a thinking machine. In the end, how important is the name of the author? The important thing is that my idea went out into the world and had its effects. I rebelled solely because it was difficult for me to get used to my new existence. I preferred death to life. I’ll tell you about one incident that occurred at that time. For some reason, I was in the laboratory, alone. Suddenly a large black beetle with nippers on its head flew in at the window. Where could it have come from in the center of an enormous city? I do not know. Perhaps it was brought in by a car returning from a trip into the country. The beetle started circling around me and settled on the glass panel of my table, beside me. Squinting, I followed the progress of this repulsive insect, unable to flick it away. The insect’s tiny feet slid over the glass and, buzzing, he moved slowly towards my head. I don’t know if you can understand me… I have always felt an exceptional degree of disgust, a sense of revulsion for such insects. I could never bring myself to touch them with a finger. And here I was, helpless before this insignificant enemy. As far as he was concerned, my head was just a convenient place for take-off. And he continued slowly approaching, rustling his little feet over the glass. After several efforts, he managed to cling on to the hairs of my beard. For a long time he scrabbled around, getting lost in my hair, but he stubbornly climbed ever higher. Then he crawled over my tightly squeezed lips, up the left side of my nose, over my clamped-shut left eye, until finally, after reaching my forehead, he fell to the glass, and then on the floor. What a pointless incident! Yet in my then emotional state, it shook me severely.
“And when Professor Kern came in, I categorically refused to continue our scientific work. I knew that he would not exhibit my head publicly. He would not keep a head which might act as evidence against him unless it was useful for his research. Therefore he would kill me. That was what I was counting on. War broke out between us. He swiftly resorted to rather cruel measures. Attaching electrical conductors to my temples, he released a current, constantly increasing it. It felt as if someone were drilling into my brain with a white-hot drill.
“He looked at me, but my lips whispered: ‘No!’
“Then he started to put chemicals in my feeding tubes which caused new kinds of tormenting pain in my head.
“I could not be swayed.
“He left, beside himself with rage, showering me with thousands of curses. I celebrated my victory.
“For several days, Kern failed to appear in the laboratory, and every day I expected to be liberated by death.
“On the fourth or fifth day he arrived as if nothing had happened, merrily whistling a tune.
“Without glancing at me, he started continuing our work. For two or three days I observed him without taking part. But the work could not fail to interest me. And when he made a series of mistakes in carrying out his research, mistakes which could have destroyed the results of all our efforts, I could not restrain myself and made a sign to him.
“‘About time too!’ he said with a satisfied smile, releasing air to pass through my throat. I explained his mistake to him and since that day I have continued to supervise the work… He outwitted me!”
V. Victims of the Big City
It was twilight. The laboratory was quiet. Only the air hissed softly, passing out of the head’s throat. Miss Adams was sitting with her head in her hands. Suddenly she heard the voice of Professor Dowell’s head.
“I am tormented by a single desire… A crazy desire… for you to kiss me!”
A pained smile appeared on the face of the head.
“Are you shocked? You didn’t expect an... admirer, in my condition? Calm down! It isn’t what… what you think. I know that I can arouse only revulsion. The revived head of a corpse!... My body has long been in the grave… But try to understand me: one cannot live by thought or consciousness alone… Try to understand what you mean to me! You are young, beautiful! Men will fall in love with you and you will give them the gift of your kisses. But to no-one in the world will your kiss give as much as it would to me! For me, you are not merely a woman. For me, you are life, all of life in all its variety. By kissing you, I would be touching life, touching everything you touch, all that I can only long for hopelessly. If you spurn me, I will be hopelessly unhappy… This is not a passionate kiss! What sort of passion can a head feel, without a body? Take a look: my heart is beating peacefully in its glass vessel. It is not capable of love. This is a symbolic kiss. A kiss of life, glittering, triumphant life, taking pity even on that tiny, dwindling spark which still glows inside me… Don’t leave me to feel like a corpse until the end! Take pity on me… Kiss me!”
During this speech Miss Adams sat silent and pale, gazing at the head with wide-open eyes. Only her fingers, rubbing together, gave away her disturbance. A sorrowful crease extended between her brows. Within her, a profound feeling of pity battled with involuntary physical revulsion.
After a long pause she slowly stood up, walked over to the head… kissed it… and suddenly gave a brief shriek and sprang away.
The head had bitten her lip.
Miss Adams was so shocked, frightened and embarrassed that she sank almost senseless onto her chair. But the eyes of the head watched her seriously and calmly.
“I thank you… I am grateful! Don’t imagine that I’ve gone out of my mind… That wasn’t a fit of insanity. Alas! I thought about this for a long time before I acted. You see, don’t you, that there is nothing, nothing I can do in this world of living people and real objects. And I wanted to leave in this world a tiny trace… a trace of my will… and this was the only way I could do it. I will think how you will walk home with this mark, along noisy streets, among other people. Perhaps someone will notice this trace in that world, so far from me – this trace that I have made – and he will think, that someone—”
The head suddenly paused and whispered:
“Forgive me! That was selfish, but I didn’t have the strength to resist... It may be that my reason is really starting to betray me…”
By the strange logic of emotions, her unpleasant experience with the head’s kiss inspired in Miss Adams a storm of indignation against Professor Kern. Ever since Miss Adams had learned the head’s secret, she had detested Kern with all the force of her spirit. And this feeling grew with every passing day. She fell asleep with this feeling; she woke up with it. She dreamed terrible nightmares about him. She was practically ill with hatred. Recently, when she met Kern, she could barely restrain herself from flinging the word “Murderer!” in his face.
Her manner with him was strained and cold.
Quite possibly, this state of mind worsened her ever more unstable nerves. The days she
spent in company with the revived head of a corpse, and everything that she had learned from it: none of these shocks could pass without leaving some trace. Little wonder that she blamed Kern for everything.
“I forgive you,” Miss Adams said heatedly, “although you don’t deserve it! You frightened me and caused me pain… But I won’t forgive Professor Kern! I’ll report him! I will shout from the rooftops about his crime! I won’t rest until I have deprived him of his stolen fame and revealed all his crimes! I won’t spare myself…”
“Softer… calm yourself… I already told you that I have no desire for revenge. But if your moral feeling is outraged and requires vengeance, I will not try to dissuade you… but please do not hurry… I beg you to wait until our experiments are concluded. Kern and I need each other now, after all. He cannot finish his work without me, but neither can I, without him. And that is all I have left… I cannot create anything else. But the work I have begun must be finished…”
They heard steps in the office.
Miss Adams swiftly closed the tap and sat down with a book in her hand; she was still very agitated. Dowell’s head lowered its eyelids, like a man plunged in reflection.
Professor Kern entered.
He looked suspiciously at Miss Adams.
“What’s the matter? Are you upset by something? Is everything in order?”
“No… nothing… everything is in order… I have some family problems…”
“Let me take your pulse.”
Miss Adams unwillingly extended her arm.
“It’s beating more rapidly… Are your nerves affected? I admit this is a difficult job for the nerves. But I am happy with your work. I am doubling your wages.”
“I have no need of it. I thank you.”
“‘I have no need of it!’ Who doesn’t need money? You have a family, after all!”
Miss Adams made no reply.
“Well then. We must make some preparations. We will transfer Professor Dowell’s head into the room behind the laboratory. Temporarily, my dear colleague, temporarily! You’re not asleep?” he addressed the head. “Tomorrow two fresh corpses will be brought here, and we will turn them into a couple of well-spoken heads and exhibit them to the academy. It’s time we made our discovery public.”
And Kern once again looked at Miss Adams with some mistrust.
So as not to reveal her dislike too clearly or too prematurely, Miss Adams forced herself to ask a question, the first that came into her head: “Whose corpses are being brought?”
“I don’t know; no-one knows. Because right now these are not yet corpses; they are living, healthy individuals. Healthier than we are – that I can say with confidence. I need heads from absolutely healthy people. But tomorrow death is lying in wait for them, inevitably. And within an hour of dying, no longer, they will be here – on the dissecting table. I’ve already made all the arrangements.”
Miss Adams, who considered Professor Kern capable of anything, gazed at him so uncomprehendingly and challengingly that he was momentarily abashed; but then he roared with laughter.
“Nothing could be simpler! I have ordered a pair of fresh corpses from the morgue. The fact is, you see, that the city – this modern-day Moloch – demands daily human sacrifices. Every day, by the inevitability of natural laws, several people perish in traffic accidents; not counting accidents in factories and building sites. And now these doomed, perfectly happy, strong and healthy people will peacefully fall asleep today, not realizing what tomorrow has in store. Tomorrow morning they will rise, cheerfully singing a song, dress to go – as they think – to work, but in reality, to meet their inevitable death. At the same time, in another part of town, singing just as carelessly, their accidental executioner, some chauffeur or goods driver, is also dressing. Then the victim will leave his apartment, while the executioner will, at the opposite end of the city, drive out of his garage or tram park. Overcoming the flood of traffic in the streets, they will steadfastly travel towards each other – without knowing it – to the fateful intersection of their paths. Then, for one brief instant, one of them will be distracted – and it’s done! Statistical charts, recording the number of victims of traffic accidents, rise by one point – precisely by that point the chart required to fulfil its own prediction.
“Thousands of accidents must occur to bring them to that fatal point of intersection. Yet, nonetheless, everything is inflexibly completed with clockwork precision, placing both hands at the same point on the face of the clock for a single instant, although they move at different speeds.”
Professor Kern had never been so talkative with Miss Adams before. And as for this unexpected generosity!
“He wants to trick me, to buy me,” thought Miss Adams. “He seems to suspect that I have guessed or that I even know a great deal. But he’ll never manage to buy me!”
VI. The Laboratory’s New Inmates
That complicated mechanism, known as probability theory, directed thousands of chance happenings towards a single point in time and space, and the next morning two fresh corpses were indeed lying on the dissecting table in Professor Kern’s laboratory.
The two new heads, intended for public exhibition, were not to know about the existence of Professor Dowell’s head. And this was why Professor Kern had had the forethought to move the latter into an adjacent room.
The first corpse belonged to a workman aged about thirty, who had died in a traffic accident. His powerful body had been cut in half. An expression of fear was frozen in his glassy, half-open eyes.
Professor Kern, Miss Adams and John, all in white gowns, were working on the corpses.
“There were some other bodies,” Professor Kern was saying. “There was a worker who had fallen from scaffolding. But he might have suffered brain contusions from the impact. I also rejected several suicides who had poisoned themselves. This chap here seemed as if he might do. And then there’s this… lady of the night as well. I won’t swear that her blood is good quality, but there wasn’t any other choice.”
With a jerk of his head he indicated the corpse of a woman with a beautiful, but faded, face. It still showed traces of rouge and mascara. The face was peaceful; only the raised brows and half-open mouth expressed a kind of childish surprise.
“A singer from a quayside bar. She was killed instantly by a stray bullet during a quarrel between some drunken sailors. Right in the heart, can you see? You couldn’t aim so well if you tried!”
Professor Kern worked swiftly and confidently. The heads were separated from the bodies and the corpses removed.
A few minutes later, the heads had been transferred onto elevated tables. Tubes were run into the throat, the main vein and artery.
Professor Kern was in a pleasantly excited state of mind. His moment of glory was at hand; he had no doubt of success.
The stars of the scientific world had been invited to Professor Kern’s forthcoming speech and demonstration to an academic society. The press, skilfully manipulated, had published advance articles praising Professor Kern’s scientific genius. His portrait appeared in journals. Kern’s exhibition, with his astonishing experience in the revival of dead human heads, was regarded as grounds for national celebration. All the glory of the discovery was credited to Kern. Only one medical journal mentioned, in passing, the name of the late Professor Dowell, “who carried out several experiments in this direction.”
Miss Adams read these articles greedily. They gave her a kind of bitter pleasure, feeding her hatred for Professor Kern.
Whistling cheerfully, Professor Kern washed his hands, smoked a cigar and gazed with self-satisfaction at the heads arranged before him.
“Ha, ha! Not only John’s head is on the plate, but Salome’s as well! What an encounter this will be. All that’s left to do is open the taps, and… the dead will come to life! We really are setting up as rivals to the Lord God! Well, miss? Look lively! Open all three taps. That large cylinder contains compressed air, and not poison, ha, ha…”
For Miss Adams this was anything but news. But with almost unconscious cunning, she gave no sign. He frowned, becoming suddenly serious. He walked right up to Miss Adams and, snapping out every word, said: “But in Professor Dowell’s case, I must ask you not to open the tap. He has... damaged vocal cords and…”
Meeting Miss Adams’ mistrustful look, he added with irritation:
“In any case – I forbid you to open it, unless you wish to bring very serious unpleasantness on yourself…”
And, brightening up once again, he sang out, “Well, let’s get started!”
Miss Adams opened the taps.
The laborer’s head was the first to give signs of life.
Hardly noticeably, the eyelids quivered. The pupils grew more transparent. The skin color changed almost imperceptibly.
“Circulation is established. All is going well…”
Suddenly the eyes moved, turning towards the light from the window. Consciousness was slowly returning.
“He’s alive!” Kern exclaimed cheerfully. “Turn the air flow up higher!”
Miss Adams opened the tap more widely.
Air whistled through the throat.
“What’s this?... Where am I?” were the head’s first, barely audible words.
“In the hospital, my friend!”
“In hos-pit-tal?” The head moved its eyes, looked downwards and saw the empty space beneath it.
“But where are my legs? Where are my arms? Where’s my body?”
“It’s not there, my good fellow! It was smashed into bits. Only your head is in one piece; we had to cut off your body!”
“What do you mean, cut off? Well, no, I won’t allow it! What kind of operation is that? What am I good for now? A head on its own can’t earn a crust of bread! I need hands! Nobody’s going to hire me without hands or feet… I’ll walk out of hospital… hell! Nothing to walk on! What do I do now? I have to live, I have to eat! I know your kind of hospital – you keep people for a couple of days, then you sign them out: cured! Well, look how you’ve cured me! No, I won’t allow it!” he repeated firmly.
Red Star Tales Page 13