Gene Wolfe, who wrote The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories, presents now an intriguing story told by a man born with no head. Being headless gives him a peculiar viewpoint, and enables him to see things in life that you and I usually miss.
by Gene Wolfe
It’s really very good of you to read the history of someone as grotesque as I—or perhaps you like grotesques? Most people would turn away. Or stare. Or be sick. I have no head.
No, I’m not joking, and this is not some silly story about an execution. I was born this way.
I don’t remember it, of course. But Pliny (Pliny the elder, I think; you could look it up) told all about us. He said we lived in India. (I live in Indiana, which shouldn’t be the same thing at all, but somehow is.) And in old manuscript illustrations of Marco Polo we appear. (I say we because I feel a kinship. It’s a lovely little picture, a miniature, and there is also a man—he’s Pliny’s too—shading himself with his foot, and another with one eye.) Even though Marco Polo didn’t say he saw— You know. We were gone by then, I suppose; except for myself, and I wasn’t born.
Just in case you still don’t know what I look like, let me describe myself. My hands reaching up beneath my shirt tell me (and the old miniature); I never look in mirrors. My eyes are very large—twice, three times the size of yours. The lids are elaborately curved and open wide. They are large, bright eyes and are placed just where the functionless nipples of most men are. I think my eyes are probably my best feature.
I have a wide mouth, reaching completely across my belly, and big teeth. My lips (because I can bend at the waist I can look down, when I’m naked, and see them) are redder than most people’s lips, so that—ridiculously—I look as though I am wearing lipstick. And mine is not a straight mouth at all. I suppose it would be called a cupid’s bow if it were a woman’s mouth, and not so wide. My nose is large and rather flat, which is a blessing because it doesn’t make much of a bulge under my coat—of course it is possible that it has been flattened by the pressure of clothing all these years.
Having no head, naturally I have no neck. (An unoccupied stump sticking above my shoulders would be silly, after all. I suppose it was thalidomide or something.) I’m sure you’re wondering how my internal, organs are distributed and all that, but the truth is that I have no idea. I mean, would you, if you couldn’t assume you’re just like everyone else? My mouth I suppose opens directly into my stomach; and my brain must be situated somewhere close to my heart, which no doubt assures it of a good supply of well-oxygenated blood—but this is just guesswork.
As I said, I was born this way. It must have been a dreadful shock to my poor mother. At any rate she took (at least I suppose it was she, though she may have been carrying out instructions from my father) a head—I mean a dummy head, in this case a doll’s (some dolls’ heads resemble very closely the heads of human infants, and they are easily obtained), and attached it to my shoulders by straps. Fortunately the faces of babies are not very expressive, while the faces of dolls— I mean the better quality dolls—are surprisingly suggestive. With my nose, my mouth, and my eyes all covered by the gown she made me wear in public I dare say I cried almost continually, and the deception was completely successful.
My first memory is of that doll’s head. I was playing with blocks—colored wooden blocks painted not only with the letters of the alphabet and numbers but with pictures of various (mostly farmyard) animals. I picked up one of these and it occurred to me that it was extraordinarily like the object on my shoulders. (Don’t smile. The memory, even now, is tender to me.) It was a yellow block smelling of the new paint, and I believe I put it in my mouth afterward. It’s lucky I didn’t swallow it. (Why is it that a few moments of time are recalled so distinctly and the events to either side—often more striking—forgotten?)
I was a sickly boy, and this, as well as my peculiarity, prevented me from taking part in scouting, sports, and the other ordinary boyish activities. Save for a few weeks in late spring just before vacation, my mother drove me to school and picked me up afterward. A letter from our family physician delivered me from the embarrassments of the athletic program, although it occurred to me—I think at about the time I entered high school—that if I had been of more robust build, and been permitted to unstrap my head (by this time made by one of those craftsmen who furnish ventriloquists with dummies—a long thread, cemented to the skin between my lower lip and my navel, sufficed to move the jaw when I spoke) I might have done well in football.
My classes presented problems. I had discovered—or rather, my parents at my insistence had discovered for me—a very cheap brand of boys’ shirts whose material was so flimsy as to constitute almost no impediment to vision at all; but it was necessary that I sit in the first row of every class—and that I slouch in my chair, with my hips forward and my weight resting on my spine, in order to see the blackboard. This, I think (since I am not going to reveal my name) is your best way of determining—assuming you wish to determine it—whether I was in one of your classes. If you remember a rather blank-faced boy who sat in the manner I have just described, in the front row, you may have been a classmate. To be certain you may wish to look for my picture in your yearbook, but the blankness will not be apparent here. My head at that time, as well as I can remember, possessed eyes of the kind called roguish, freckles, and an upturned nose.
Of course it was necessary to exchange the old heads for new every year or so as I grew older, and I do not retain them. My current one is quite handsome, and has a speaker in the mouth to reproduce the words I whisper into a microphone; but handsome though it is I cannot bear to wear it a moment more than necessary, and remove it immediately as soon as my apartment door shuts me off from the headstrong, pigheaded dummkopf (love that word) world outside.
That was why I insisted to the girl that we turn the lights off and pull down the shades. I wanted to take it off, you see—I was tense as it was, and I knew that if I couldn’t get that thing off it was just no good. I had expected she would go along with it because she had seemed—I think you know what I mean—unprofessional. But she said that it was hot, and it was true: it was very hot. The place should have been air-conditioned, but it wasn’t. She said the tenants had to furnish their own air-conditioners, and she had meant to save enough to buy one back when it was cooler, but there had been so many other things to buy, and I knew what that meant. A girl like that, that you meet in an amusement park, expects something. I don’t mean that she is a real professional, she probably looks everyone over very carefully, and maybe only goes with men who appeal to her in some way, but just the same she has learned that she can make a nice thing out of it. I asked if she had an electric fan, and she said she didn’t. “You can get a nice one,” I said, “for about ten dollars.”
“Twenty-five,” she said, but she was smiling and good humored. The lights went out, but with the shades up enough light came in from the street for me to see her smile in the dark. “I’ve priced them, and a nice one costs at least twenty-five.”
“Fifteen,” I said, and I told her the name of a discount store; she had been going to the regular appliance stores. “You’ve been going to the regular appliance stores,” I said. “They always charge twice as much.”
“Listen,” she said, “will you meet me there tomorrow about six? We’ll look at them, and if I can find one I like that cheap I’ll get it.”
I said that was all right, and I thought how strange it was, getting a girl like that for an electric fan, discounted, and besides I could always stand her up but she must know I wouldn’t, because I’d probably want to see her again before long, and besides, it would be kind of interesting, walking her through the store and thinking about what I’d come to buy for her and why, and looking, much lower down than they thought, through my shirt at all the people who wouldn’t know, and besides we might want to do something afterward, so I said it was all right. I still wanted to pull down that blind, but it was on the other side of the bed, and there was no way, right then, for me to get past her.
“Why do you want it so dark? At least with the blind up we get some breeze.”
“I guess I’m just not accustomed to undressing with someone watching.”
“I know, you haven’t got hair on your chest.” She giggled and thrust a hand into my shirt Fortunately she touched my eyebrow and drew her fingers back. “No, that isn’t it.”
“I suffer from a grotesque deformity.”
“I guess everybody does, one way or another. What is it? A birthmark?”
I was going to say no, but when I thought about it— you could say I was marked at birth, in a way of speaking. So I was going to say yes, and then suddenly it got much darker. I said, “Did you pull down the blind?”
“No, they turned off the lights in the drugstore. They close now, and most of the light was coming from there.” I heard a zipper, and for a minute I thought foolishly: Now where in the world did that come from? The back of her dress, of course, and I took off my shirt and tried to take off my head, but I couldn’t. The catch on the strap was jammed or something—but it didn’t bother me the way I’d thought it would. I just told myself it would save me trouble that way so I’d just keep it on and that way I’d know for sure I wasn’t putting it on backward when I got dressed again in the dark. My eyes were getting used to it now anyway and I could see her a little. I wondered if she could see me.
“Can you see me?” I said. I was taking my pants off. I might keep my head on, but no underwear, no shoes.
She said, “Not at all,” but she was laughing a little so I know she could.
“I guess I’m too sensitive.”
“You haven’t got anything to be sensitive about. You’re nice looking. Broad shoulders, big chest.”
“I have a wooden face,” I said.
“Well, you don’t smile very much. Where’s the mark? On your stomach?” I felt her hand in the dark, but she didn’t reach out for my face—my real face—the way I expected her to.
“Yes,” I said. “On my stomach.”
“Listen,” (I could see her white body now, but her head, in heavier shadow, seemed gone) “everybody worries about something like that. You know what I used to think when I was little? I used to think I had a face inside my belly-button.”
I laughed. It seemed so funny, so very humorous at the time, that I simply roared. No doubt I disturbed her neighbors. A belly-laugh—that’s what I have, I suppose, the only genuine belly-laugh on earth.
“Really, I did. Don’t laugh!” She was laughing too.
“I have to see it.”
“You can’t see anything, it’s too dark. It’s just a little black hole in the dark, and there’s not really a face in there anyway.”
“I have to see.” There had been matches, I remembered, beside the cigarettes on her night table. I found them.
She said, “There was this story I told myself, that I was supposed to be twins, but the other one never grew big and was just a tiny little face in my stomach. Hey, what are you doing?”
“I told you, I have to see.” I had lit a match, and was cupping the flame in my hand.
“Listen, you can’t!” She tried to turn over, giggling more than ever, but I held her down with my leg. “Don’t burn me!”
“I won’t.” I bent over her, looking at her navel in the buttery light of the match. At first I couldn’t see it, just the usual little whirls and folds; then just before the match went out I did.
“Here,” she said, “let me see yours,” and she tried to take the matches away from me.
But I kept them. “I’m going to look at mine myself.”
I lit another match. “You’ll set your hair on fire,” she said.
“No I won’t.” It was hard to see, but by bending at the waist I could do it. There was a face there too, and as soon as I saw it I blew out the match.
“Well,” she giggled, “find any lint?” Her body was a face too, but with bulging eyes. The mouth was where it folded because she was half sitting up on the piled pillows; the flat nose was between the ribs. We all look like that, I thought, and it went all through me: We all look like that.
The little faces in our navels kissed.