"So it was settled, then. Right after the execution, Mr. Deibler would ask the head, `Can you hear me, Languille?' And if Languille could hear him, he'd blink."
The scientist in me bridled at this simple-minded protocol. "What were you trying to prove? A blink could quite easily be nothing but a reflex! And besides, guillotines cut off heads, not ears!"
"All right, but anyway he blinked… and he's still blinking now!"
I had to face facts: twelve days after his beheading, Languille was still blinking away.
"Fine! The experiment was a success, if you must. Then what?"
"After that, I did something dumb. The whole thing had gotten me all turned around. He could still hear, see, think… What was going on in that bodiless head? Do you realize-? Anyway, I was supposed to bury him on my own, Mr. Deibler was already on the train back to Paris, but at the last moment I wanted to try the experiment again, just to see."
Bennett Riven fell silent. At the end of his fist, the head was silent, too. A single mysterious emotion held the two consciousnesses in a single embrace-the hardened killer and the apprentice executioner, so different and yet so close in that instant beyond all guilt and innocence.
"Well?"
"He didn't just blink again, he spoke to me. He said it hurt, that he was scared. Of the dark, especially. The darkness of the grave. I should've put him right back in that coffin of raw wood, with his uncomplaining body, and nailed it all up tight and buried him and not given it another thought, but put yourself in my shoes… I couldn't. After all, Mr. Deibler and me aren't paid to kill them but once. I felt sorry for Languille, because of how he talked about the dark. I couldn't, and well… here we are."
Where had Languille come up with those tears, those heavy tears that trailed down his creased and greenish cheeks?
"How did you make it all the way here? What did you do for those twelve days?" I asked Bennett Riven.
"I hid him in this bag I usually use for lunch, and I took him home with me-I mean, to the room I was renting in Orleans. That night we talked a lot. I reassured him as best I could. He was thirsty, so I gave him some moonshine."
"You gave it a drink?"
"I had to put him in a bucket, of course. But it did him good, or so he said. Just the taste of it made his head spin, I mean. And I could keep using the same moonshine over and over…"
That first night, Bennett Riven had understood that he'd committed a great wrong in the eyes of Mr. Deibler, the administration, and perhaps authorities even higher still. Imagine that night and those that followed. A young soul of twenty interrogating himself on the consequences of an ill-considered act, the crushing responsibility he had undertaken while from the shadows on the table that terrified and terrifying presence, that nightmare curio, clicked its teeth from time to time in the quiet of the night.
The next day, the boy did not return to Paris, where his master Deibler was waiting. He panicked and ran away with his charge. Together, one carrying the other, they wandered the highways and byways at random, sleeping in small inns but also in fields, beneath bridges, on the beach. And always, the head complained-it ached; it was afraid of the night, of the day, of everything! It was fear incarnate, absolute, confined to the tiny chamber of a human skull. And it was beginning to reek. Bennett washed it in the sink when he dared take a room for the night, or in a brook, or the sea. But the saltwater stung… In the villages he passed through, he bought lotions and vials of perfume for it. Nothing did any good. The head was rotting alive. The decomposition manifested itself not only in sight and smell, but also in memory loss, hallucinatory episodes, delirium, and fits of dementia. Several times, the head tried to bite its benefactor. Bennett was afraid of it now. He wanted to have done with it, smash the head against a wall or a rock, free it once and for all-even it had been begging him to do so for several days nowbut he dared not, and that was why they were here before me. They'd thought a doctor might know how to do it. It was forbidden, of course, but what exactly was forbidden? Practicing euthanasia on a lopped-off head? What article of the law forbade that?
Dear reader, friend and brother! I don't know what you would have done in my place. I know I couldn't let this child leave again with the contents of his tarred canvas sack swinging against his leg. I calmed him, and then sent him off alone toward an altered fate-for I doubt he ever took up his apprenticeship with Mr. Deibler again. After he left, I hid the head and its stinking sack in a cupboard and rang for Edgar. Pleading faintness, I bade him announce that I would see no more patients that day. Then, alone in my locked office, I consulted diverse treatises on pharmacology and toxicology while waiting for my angry and disappointed patients to leave. When at last all was quiet once more, I removed Languille from the cupboard. I spoke to him gently. I listened to him at length. And when I was sure of his resolve, I did what must be done.
Lozere, February 1992
The Styx
n hindsight, I should've suspected something. Strictly speaking, I didn't feel sick, but still, those persistent dizzy spells should've clued me in. I was losing my footing, like at the beach. You walk into the water, it's up to your chin, and suddenly the hard, rippled sand shifts beneath your feet, you feel yourself sinking, right away you close your mouth, pinch your nose, water slaps a cold cap over your head. A quick backward kick and you're up again, like a Cartesian diver… You know what I mean. But I wasn't at the beach, and there was no water, only air and dry land and life. I was losing my footing in life, on the street, in the office, rising to leave a table in a restaurant, or at home, in my own living room-everywhere. It never lasted long: like the diver, I bobbed back up good as new. I was never unduly worried, as these episodes were so brief. No matter what happens, we feel at heart that it'll pass, we tell ourselves it's just a feeling without real cause or meaning. But in the end, with the hindsight I mentioned earlier-the decisive hindsight my new status grants me-I'm uniquely placed to appreciate that everything has cause and meaning. Now when I think back on yesterday's dizzy spells, I realize they were early warning signs, and that if I'd seen my doctor in time I might not have wound up where I am. Bah! If you have to be wary of the least sensation, the slightest tingling, the mildest twinge in any muscle or organ, you might as well give up and stop living. That was, in fact, what had happened: I'd stopped living. I don't know when it started. My doctor couldn't shed any light on that, either. The day I finally went to see him-for something else altogether, actually-he examined me and, with a certain gravity to his voice, said simply: "My friend, I've got some bad news for you. You're dead."
I didn't get really worked up over it right then. My doctor must've thought I hadn't heard him correctly, for he repeated himself: "You're dead, buddy. Deader than a doornail!"
This time when he spoke he looked at me from the corner of his eye, as though fearing an irrational reaction on my part-a "despair response, as they say.
"Do you… understand what I'm saying?"
I nodded. "I think so. I'm dead, right?"
He nodded back, and patted me on the shoulder. "You're taking it quite well. Go home. You'll have to tell your loved ones. I can't do anything more for you now. Please accept my sincere apologies."
His remorse seemed genuine. I felt obliged to say a few reassuring words. "Don't worry, Doc, it'll be fine. Thanks for everything!"
I paid for the visit and left. Back on the street, I tried to look at things and people in a new light. I wasn't quite managing to, at least not quite enough, and silently urged myself to feel more. After all, not just anything had happened to me: I was dead. And yet, try as I might with all my body and soul, everything in and around me remained the same, just as it'd always been. It seemed like life as usual. And I admit that, after the initial stages of curiosity, almost impatience even-no doubt childish but understandable-I felt deeply, immensely relieved. I'd finished that terrifying chore through which all things on earth come to an end. We make such a fuss about ourselves, I thought, but ultimately it comes to nothing, less than nothing even, a flower, a passing breeze… I congratulated myself on having gotten off so lightly, and for a trifle would've danced in the streets, if I'd known how to dance and dared to do so.