Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  His incorrect pronunciation, his wide, sunburned, freckled countenance, the naïve expression of his blue eyes – all these marked him out as a country dweller, possibly from a far-off land. Privation had forced him away from his native fields, the city had chewed up his young, healthy body…

  “Maybe I can get some compensation for this? And where is he?” the head suddenly recalled. Its eyes widened.

  “Who’s ‘he’?”

  “Why, that fellow – who ran me over? There was a tram, and another one, and then a car, headed straight for me…”

  “Don’t worry! He’ll get what’s coming to him. The number of the goods van was written down: 4.711, in case that interests you. What is your name?” asked Professor Kern.

  “My name? They called me Tom. Tom Beggins, that’s me.”

  “Well, then, Tom… You won’t need anything and you won’t suffer from hunger, thirst, or cold. We won’t throw you out on the street, have no fear!”

  “What do you mean, are you going to feed me for nothing, or show me at street fairs for money?”

  “We’ll certainly show you off, but not at street fairs. We’ll show you to scientists! And now, it’s time for you to rest!” And, after glancing at the woman’s head, Kern said, “It seems Salome is making us wait a long time!”

  “What’s this? Another head without a body?” asked Tom’s head, indicating the head of the woman.

  “As you see! So that you wouldn’t feel too dull here, we took the trouble to find you a young lady companion! Please shut off his air supply, Miss Adams, so that his chatter won’t disturb us for a while!”

  Kern removed a thermometer from the nostril of the woman’s head.

  “The temperature is higher than that of a corpse, but still low. For some reason the revivification is proceeding slowly…”

  Time passed. The woman’s head did not revive. Professor Kern began fretting. He walked anxiously around the laboratory, looking at the clock; every step he took on the stone floor rang out loudly around the whole room.

  Tom’s head watched them with puzzlement and silently moved its lips.

  Finally, Kern approached the woman’s head and attentively examined the glass tube, encased in rubber, running into an artery.

  “There’s the problem! The tube is too loose, and the circulation is going slowly. Give me a wider tube!”

  Kern changed the tube, and within a few minutes the head came to life.

  The head of Watson – that was the woman’s name – reacted more strongly to her revivification. When she had completely regained her senses and started speaking, she began screaming weakly and begging them to kill her rather than leave her looking like such a monster.

  “Ah, ah, ah… my body… my poor body… What have you done to me? Save me or kill me! I don’t want to live without a body! Let me at least look at it! No, no, there’s no need… It doesn’t have a head… how awful… how awful!...”

  When she had calmed down a little, she said:

  “You say you revived me. I may have little education, but I know that a head can’t live without a body. What is this: a miracle or a magic spell?”

  “Neither the one nor the other. This is a triumph of science.”

  “If your science can work miracles like these, then it should be able to do more. Give me another body! That ass Teddy shot a bullet through mine… But there must be lots of girls who shoot themselves in the head. Cut off one of their bodies and stick it on to my head. Only show it to me first. You have to choose a beautiful body. Otherwise I just can’t… A woman without a body! That’s even worse than a man without a head!”

  And, turning to Miss Adams, she asked:

  “Kindly give me a mirror!”

  Looking in the mirror, Miss Watson studied herself long and seriously.

  “Awful… Could I ask you to tidy my hair? I can hardly do my own…”

  “Well then, everything’s turned out well,” said Professor Kern, turning to Miss Adams. “Your work has increased. Your wages will be increased proportionately. I must be off.”

  Kern glanced at the clock and, stepping close to Miss Adams, whispered to her:

  “In their presence,” he indicated the heads with his eyes, “not a word about Professor Dowell’s head!”

  And, the raised heels of his boots clattering loudly, he left the laboratory.

  Miss Adams went off to inform Professor Dowell’s head.

  Dowell’s eyes gazed at her sadly. A sorrowful smile made his moustache tremble.

  “My poor, poor dear!” whispered Miss Adams. “But soon you will be avenged!”

  VII. The Heads Entertain Themselves

  The heads of Tom and Miss Watson found it almost harder to adapt to their new existence than had Professor Dowell’s. His intellectual resources were greater than theirs. His head was occupied with the same scientific tasks which had absorbed him in life. He had “felt” his body only when he lost it. Tom and Miss Watson were simple people, with primitive requirements and feelings. Lacking their bodies, their existence lost almost all meaning. No wonder that they very quickly grew listless, like birds accustomed to freedom, suddenly trapped in a cramped cage. Tom found captivity particularly difficult.

  “Can this really be life?” he said. “Sticking up like a stump; I must have stared holes in all the walls.”

  Kern was very troubled by the mood of his “prisoners of science,” as he jokingly called them. The heads could pine away from gloom, putting an end to their temporary existence even sooner than the day they were due to be exhibited.

  Thus Professor Kern did everything in his power to cheer them up.

  He obtained a projector, and Miss Adams and John screened a program of cinema films for them in the evenings. The white wall of the laboratory served as their screen.

  At first, this entertained them. But soon the sight of people moving around started making them even gloomier. Even the “king of the screen,” Charlie Chaplin, had no effect.

  “Look at him, carrying on like a scalded cat,” grumbled Tom’s head. “If he were shut up like this, he’d soon stop leaping around!”

  Miss Watson was irritated by watching beautiful women at their toilette.

  “Turn it off… I don’t want to watch the way others live!” she said.

  They took the projector away.

  The radio entertained them for slightly longer. But music, especially dance tunes, agitated both of them.

  “God, how I used to dance to that number!” cried Miss Watson.

  They were forced to resort to other forms of entertainment. Miss Watson was troublesome, constantly demanding a mirror, contriving new hairdos, asking to have her eyes made up with eyeliner, or her face powdered and rouged. She was annoyed by Miss Adams’ incompetence; the latter had never managed to grasp the mysteries of make-up.

  “Can you really not see,” said Miss Watson’s head crossly, “that the right eye has been underlined a touch more thickly? Raise the mirror higher!”

  She asked to be brought style magazines and fashionable fabrics, and made them drape the table to which her head was fixed.

  “So that I’m spared the sight of my mutilated self…”

  She even indulged herself in whimsies. In a fit of belated modesty, she suddenly announced that she could not sleep in the same room as a man; she asked to be shielded at night by a screen.

  “Protect me, at the very least, with a book!”

  And Miss Adams made a “screen” from a large open book, placing it on the glass surface beside Miss Watson’s head.

  Tom was no less troublesome.

  He announced that he could not live without food, even though he was unable to feel hunger.

  “How can anyone feel full with your little pipes and tubes? Give me Irish stew – with pepper, and plenty of it!”

  With extreme caution, they drew the tube out of his throat and began to “feed” him. His pleasure in chewing was all the greater since it proved that he had not lost his sen
se of taste. One piece of food at a time was placed in his mouth, as if he were a raven fledgling. The chewed food fell from the opening in his throat onto the floor.

  Once he demanded whisky. The whisky flowed straight through him, without making him tipsy. As soon as he was able to speak again, he swore roundly.

  “This is all trickery. I’m not a gutter-pipe! I want to get drunk!”

  And Professor Kern was obliged to make him happy by intoxicating him mildly with ether.

  Tom’s mood became playful.

  “Miss Watson! Allow me to offer you my hand and my heart, or at least my head, if you’ll have me. Let’s get married and have lots of little heads. Ho, ho!”

  Miss Watson made no reply, but Tom was already trying to sing.

  Sometimes they sang a duet. Their weakened vocal chords were unreliable; the duets were dreadful.

  “My poor voice… If only you could have heard how I used to sing, before!” Miss Watson would say, pitifully raising her eyes to heaven.

  In the evenings they grew thoughtful. The strangeness of their situation forced even these simple souls to consider the great questions of life and death.

  Miss Watson believed in immortality; Tom was a materialist.

  “Of course, we’re immortal,” Miss Watson’s head would say. “If my soul had died with my body, it wouldn’t have returned to my head.”

  “And where did your soul reside, in your head or in your body?” Tom would ask acerbically.

  “In my body, of course – it was everywhere,” Miss Watson’s head would answer uncertainly, suspecting a trap behind the question.

  “So in that case, your body’s soul is now wandering in the other world, without a head?”

  “You’re headless yourself!” Miss Watson would say indignantly.

  “Actually, I do have a head. But I have nothing else. What if your body’s soul came back from the other world?” Tom did not relent. “What if it returned through that rubber tube? To say hello, how are you? Tell me, what did you see in the other world? What news have you heard? No,” he said, growing serious, “we are like machines. Release the steam – we start working again. But if we’re smashed in pieces, no amount of steam can help.”

  And each of them sank into thought.

  VIII. Tom Dies a Second Time

  Exhibition day for the heads was approaching.

  Professor Kern was anxious and ever more often sent mistrustful, testing glances Miss Adams’ way. But outwardly he was twice as kind to her.

  The night before Kern’s formal presentation to the scientific society, the head of Tom unexpectedly fell sick.

  In the morning, when Miss Adams came to relieve the Negro, Tom’s head was already unconscious.

  Professor Kern ranted at John for not waking him in the night, as soon as Tom’s head took ill.

  “I thought Tom was asleep, and when I looked at him in the morning – he was dead…”

  “You were asleep yourself, you ass!’

  Kern went to work on the head.

  “Oh, how horrible,” hissed the head of Miss Watson, “he’s died! I’m just terrified of corpses! And I’m also afraid of dying… what did he die of?”

  “Shut off the tap with her air supply!” ordered Kern angrily.

  Miss Watson fell silent halfway through a word, but she continued to stare fearfully and pleadingly into Miss Adams’ eyes, helplessly moving her lips.

  “If I can’t bring this head back to life within twenty minutes, we’ll just have to throw it out!” said Kern.

  Fifteen minutes later the head gave some signs of life. The eyelids and lips trembled, but the eyes stared blankly, without any thought. After another two minutes the head uttered several disconnected words. Kern was already celebrating his victory. But suddenly the head felt silent again. Not a single nerve moved on its face.

  Kern looked at the thermometer.

  “The temperature of a corpse. It’s over!”

  And forgetting that Miss Watson was there, he angrily seized the head by its thick hair, wrenched it off the table and hurled it into a large metal bucket.

  “Put it in the freezer! We’ll have to open it up and find out why it died.”

  The Negro swiftly picked up the bucket and went out.

  Miss Watson’s head watched him, eyes wide with horror.

  Kern took giant paces around the laboratory, agitatedly twirling between his fingers a cigar he had forgotten to light.

  The death of Tom’s head reduced the effect of his exhibition by half.

  Finally, he turned towards the head of Miss Watson, who had continued to follow him with her wide-open eyes.

  “Well then. Today at eight in the evening you will be taken into a crowded meeting. There you will have to speak. Answer the questions that they ask you briefly. Don’t chatter about anything unnecessary… Do you understand?”

  Kern opened the tap for air, and Miss Watson whispered:

  “I understand… but I’d like… please…”

  Kern walked out without listening to her.

  Miss Watson began preparing herself for her excursion into society.

  Forgetting about the death of Tom’s head, she was engulfed by worries about her appearance. She tormented Miss Adams with her hairstyle and her “tattoo,” as Miss Adams mentally called the cosmetic decoration of the head.

  Miss Watson’s head unexpectedly announced that she could not venture out “looking like this,” and she demanded that a body be made for her from a corpse and swathed in fashionable fabric. Kern was forced to intervene.

  “The hall,” he said to her, “will be full of heads with bodies. You, however, possessing only a head, will be the most original woman in the gathering.”

  Miss Watson was convinced by this argument, and she abandoned her whim.

  Kern grew more and more worried. The task facing him was not easy; he had to transfer the head to the meeting hall of the scientific society. The slightest jolt could prove fatal for the head’s survival.

  Had Tom’s head still been alive, the chances of success would have been double.

  A specially equipped motor-car was prepared. The table on which the head was placed, with all its equipment, was set on a special tray with wheels for pushing across the floor and with handles for carrying on stairs.

  Finally, everything was ready. At seven o’clock in the evening they set off. Miss Watson’s head, curled, combed, painted and wrapped in veils, was glowing with anticipation of her outing in society.

  IX. Triumph Spoiled

  The huge white hall was flooded with bright light. The auditorium was filled with the grey hair and shining pates of men of science, swathed in black waistcoats and tails. The glass of thousands of spectacles sparkled. The boxes and stalls were allotted to élite members of the public, claiming some connection to the scientific world.

  The ladies’ splendid costumes, glittering with diamonds, suggested the atmosphere of a concert hall or a speech by a celebrity.

  A restrained hum filled the overcrowded hall.

  Below the stage, at their little tables, press correspondents fussed around like excited ants, sharpening their pencils for their stenographic reports.

  To the right of the stage a row of movie cameras had been arranged, in order to record on film every moment of Kern’s fascinating exposition and of the revivified head’s appearance.

  An honorary committee was assembled on the stage, chosen from the most important representatives of the scientific world. A podium was erected in the middle of the stage, with a microphone for broadcasting the speeches by radio to the entire world. A second microphone was placed in front of the head of Miss Watson. She was looking down from the right side of the stage, glowing all over from pleasure. The lessons in “tattooing” had not been wasted on Miss Adams; her skilful and moderate application of make-up lent Miss Watson’s head a fresh and attractive appearance, softening the troubling impression that the head was bound to make on an unprepared observer. Miss Adams
and John stood near her table.

  At precisely eight o’clock Professor Kern walked up to the podium.

  The gathering greeted him with lengthy applause.

  He was paler than usual, but full of dignity.

  A movie-camera creaked into action. The anthill of pressmen fell silent and gave their full attention. Professor Kern began his speech.

  This was a brilliantly delivered and cunningly structured talk. Kern did not forget to mention the “preparatory, but very worthy work of the prematurely deceased Professor Dowell.” But, after paying his dues to the work of the dead man, he did not neglect to mention his own “modest service” also. The listener could not be left with any doubt that all the honor of the discovery belonged entirely to him, Professor Kern.

  His speech was repeatedly interrupted by applause. Hundreds of opera-glasses were trained on him. The men’s opera-glasses, with no less interest, were directed towards the head of Miss Watson, whose enchanting smile never faltered. She considered herself the star of this brilliant gathering, and grew drunk on her own success.

  But Miss Adams’ face was furious and deathly pale.

  At a sign from Professor Kern, she opened the air tap, and Miss Watson’s head had the pleasure of uttering a few phrases.

  “How do you feel?” an elderly scientist asked her.

  “Oh, wonderful, thank you!”

  This response brought smiles to the lips of the audience. Several successive naïve responses made the whole hall laugh. This spectacle had proved more interesting than the public in the lodges and the stalls had expected.

  Although Miss Watson’s voice was flat and toneless, with a whistle caused by the flow of air under high pressure, and although the sound lacked any modulation, her speech produced an unusual impression. Many world-famous actors never heard such a storm of applause.

  The simple-minded Miss Watson, accustomed to applause in small bars, took all this enthusiasm as personal praise. Unable to curtsey – a shortcoming she bitterly regretted – she lowered her eyelids languidly and delighted the hall with her bewitching smile.