Land Of The Headless (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

How happy those weeks were! Or did you think my narrative would move only from unhappiness to unhappiness? Perhaps you were expecting that - no, or not quite. I discovered something new and gleaming in that city, and the loss of my head and all my suffering were as nothing beside it. Indeed, and since they had led me to it, they were things I could celebrate.

  ‘Let us marry,’ I said to her one day.

  ‘Are the headless permitted to marry?’ she asked. This, I noticed, was not no.

  ‘Of course! We may marry, and we may have children, that’s all perfectly legal. I know of people who have done this. Or, at least, I have heard of them.’

  ‘Headed children,’ she said uneasily.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would it not revolt a child, cradled in our arms, to look up at two headless parents?’

  ‘I don’t think it would,’ I said. ‘For children take the world as they find it.’

  She pondered. ‘I am, I confess, a little uneasy,’ she said shortly. ‘But perhaps not because of the children. If the All’God wills it, children will love us whatever our shortcomings.’

  ‘Then why be uneasy?’

  She thought a long time before answering this. ‘I am unnerved at the thought of happiness,’ she said.

  ‘You deserve happiness,’ I insisted, too forcefully.

  ‘I am not used to it. I am afraid of it. Unhappiness becomes so habitual a thing that the thought of leaving it behind prompts a peculiar anxiety. What is the term of it? When a child leaves its parents for Masjud on the first day. Separation anxiety, that’s what they call it.’

  ‘Happiness,’ I agreed, ‘is not a dependable quantity. Not in the same way that unhappiness is.’

  ‘And then,’ she said, putting her hands together in her lap, ‘there’s the question of whether we deserve to be happy . . .’

  ‘You do,’ I said.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I deserve it,’ I said, ‘insofar as I make you happy. That’s my project now: to make you happy. And only if I succeed in that then I deserve to share in it.’

  ‘Perhaps the happiness won’t last long,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps it will be the condition of our lives, and last for ever, and we will live for the rest of our time as happy people. But if the happiness passes away then it will be because it is like any mortal thing. It will be because it has been alive. I would prefer a living happiness that dies to an embalmed ordinariness that does not. I will marry you.’

  ‘You say yes!’

  ‘Yes.’

  We embraced. This, I can say, was the greatest joy I have known in my life. ‘Shall we stay in this city?’ she asked, as we separated.

  ‘Let us go to the Land of the Headless,’ I said. ‘I came to this city not to live here, but only to find you. Now that I have found you, I wish to start a new life. In Montmorillon this newness is possible. I shall take work wherever I can find it - in the mines even. We’ll rent a house together, and live amongst many of our kind. We shall have a family.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Then let us go at once,’ I said. ‘We shall marry in Montmorillon, for that will give us the rights of habitation.’

  ‘We can’t go straight off!’ she laughed. ‘We must conclude our lives here. I must work to the end of the month to collect my salary, for instance.’

  ‘And I,’ I agreed. ‘We will need the money. But the end of the month is only eight days. And during that time we can prepare ourselves for the journey.’

  We embraced again. I felt the press of her body against mine, the pressure of her two breasts squashed against me, her warmth. I thought to myself: this is now no longer illicit, this intimacy. That thought stirred a happiness very deeply inside me.

  She pulled away. ‘I am going to ask you to promise me something,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘You have killed people,’ she said.

  ‘Only in the army—’

  ‘Yes,’ she conceded. ‘But there is still a rage in you against the man - the man you blame for my headless condition.’

  ‘I blame myself,’ I said, but weakly.

  ‘You blame another,’ she said. ‘Your talk has returned to this point many times—’

  ‘You can hardly claim that nobody is to blame,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Nobody is to blame.’

  ‘Not Mark Pol Treherne?’

  ‘Not him.’

  This was the closest I came to asking her directly to confirm that her attacker had been Mark Pol. I took her denial to be an expression of her own principle of forgiveness, rather than as a statement of his material innocence. Perhaps I should have asked her to clarify what she meant at this point. But I didn’t. I was already certain of Mark Pol’s guilt, you see. This seemed to me confirmation enough.

  ‘You must promise not to kill anybody,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said a little stiffly. ‘Because you ask me, I shall not kill this person.’

  ‘Not anybody,’ she insisted.

  ‘Not a single person.’

  I wish, perhaps, that she had not asked me that; or that she had asked it of me at another time. For this, her request that I inhabit her realm of perfect forgiveness, that I forgive Mark Pol as she had; this request that I relinquish the revenge I had planned for so long, this soured our time together, if only a little. I promised her, but I was unsure whether I would be able to keep my promise. My time in the army had persuaded me that, sometimes, killing must be done.

  But after a few days my mood brightened. I had searched the city for Siuzan, and I had found her. And not only had I found her, but I had found her in love with me, and we were to be married. How could I be sad? This reunion, and this marriage, was, evidently, meant to be. Now, during my search, I had also been looking for news of Mark Pol. Had I found him perhaps I would have killed him, and so fulfilled the vow for vengeance I made so long before. But I had not found him. It was possible that he had left the city entirely, of course. But if he were still in the city, and if I had not chanced upon him in the eight days between now and our departure, then he would live, and my promise to Siuzan would be unbroken. This, I thought likely.

  Five

  The days went past quickly, busy with work and with the preparations for our departure. I quizzed such headless as were my friends about the direction of Montmorillon - the north-east road out of Cainon, they said; three days’ walking, taking such leftward forks of the road as led us towards the tallest peak visible along the crowded horizon. The road went up, through a valley, and finally came to the Land of the Headless itself. It seemed simple enough.

  I went so far as to check with an agency of travel as to whether it would be possible to fly, or ride on a coach, to get to this place. There was a plane that made the journey, but the agent declined to sell me a ticket. I was neither surprised nor angered by this. I was content to walk. I hoped that the walk would overlay the memory of the previous walk, on which Siuzan had suffered so much, and that this means of travel would supersede all the journeys of the past. Everything was to be made anew.

  I was not illusioned. I knew that Montmorillon was no paradise. The authorities controlled it, and many headed people lived there. The proportion of headless was larger than in other places, but many of these were the most lawless of offenders. The reputation of the place in Cainon was as of a nest of bandits and snakes and a continual threat to social order. But it was a new land. It would be the place where Siuzan and I could start again.

  I spent much of my remaining funds on supplies for the journey. I bought two pairs of good shoes, one for Siuzan and one for myself. I bought a single backpack in which I planned to carry all our belongings. I bought two staffs, one smaller than the other, that each of us would have one to lean upon as we strode; for walking great distances is much easier with a staff in one’s hand. I had taken a walk before, and without a staff, and I remembered wishing that I had had one. That walk, so long ago, that had had so large an impact on my life, for ev
il and for good. There were many things, then, that I had wished for; and the best of them I now had. And my staff seemed to me a symbol of this: straight and clean-planed and strong to hold me up.

  The days counted down. I became aware of a tension inside me, a fear that something would come along to interrupt the smooth passage from my sad old life to my bright new one. Perhaps this was a presentiment, because - of course - something came. And what came was this: I was to be tested against my word.

  It happened this way: I was returning from work one evening. In one more day I would be leaving Cainon for ever with the woman I loved. Soon she would become my bride. It was the very edge and lip of my new life.

  I made a detour to buy four sealed slabs of sugarcake, which I did to complete my supplies. The first shop refused to serve me, because I was headless, and I was forced to walk further on to find another shop that would. The sun was precisely in the process of setting.

  And here was a knot of headless individuals, gathered about a brazier. Here was one, talking loudly and tipping wine into his neck valve, and something about him snagged my attention.

  I stepped closer towards the fire. Thin strands of yellow flame struggled upwards from the mouth of the brazier like fluid grass under the action of wind. The sun low in the sky diluted the firelight with its own commanding brightness, but even from many yards away I could feel the heat of the brazier. It was a cool evening, and promised a cold night, but wine and raw fire can make a man feel warm again. The air had that violet quality of dusk that is not, or is not only, a function of colour.

  He turned, this man, and was silhouetted against the light of the fire. On the left side of his neck stump was an eye-stalk prosthesis, but his right shoulder was bare.

  My hand went to my charm, hanging about my truncated neck. I clasped it.

  This was unexpected. I had spent weeks looking for this man and had not found him. Then I had given up the search, and at once I stumbled across him. The remaining day might have passed without me chancing upon him, and then I would have left Cainon for ever with Siuzan to trek to the Land of the Headless. One more night, and one mere day, and I would never have seen him again. Yet here he was, directly in front of me.

  I wondered once again whether the hand of the All’God had arranged this. I remembered my vow of vengeance upon him. But I remembered Siuzan’s words as well. Forgiveness was her nature, and mercy was the core attribute of the All’God.

  But here he was, drinking and laughing, and he had the right to do neither.

  What must I do?

  I came up behind him and struck him on the back, halfway between a blow and a slap. He lurched forward and turned about.

  ‘What?’ he blustered. ‘What?’

  ‘This,’ I said, holding up his eye stalk.

  The whole little group, half a dozen headless men and women, fell silent at once. Mark Pol Treherne moved his one remaining eye to bear on the object I held. He seemed to have trouble recognising it.

  ‘It is yours,’ I said, slipping the cord from my neck stump and offering it to him. ‘I return it to you.’

  ‘But,’ said Mark Pol, in a voice of realisation, ‘it cannot be! This is my eye - Matthea, Senge, look! Here it is - after so much time it returns to me!’ He took it from me and held it up like a prize.

  ‘So,’ said one of the other headless, ‘one-eyed Pol has two eyes again!’ There was laughter.

  ‘How did you come by this, my friend,’ Mark Pol asked me.

  ‘Don’t you recognise me?’

  ‘The light is not good,’ he said. ‘And I have only one eye. Where did you find my other one?’

  ‘I got it by snapping it from your neck,’ I said curtly. ‘Do you truly not recognise me?’

  ‘Hah!’ he shouted with sudden recognition. ‘Really? Is it you?’

  ‘You sound even pleased to see me?’ I asked.

  ‘How can I not be pleased, to get my eye back, to meet with an old friend !’

  ‘The last time we met,’ I reminded him, ‘we were fighting. Old friend? We held one-another in mutual detestation and anger.’

  ‘Ach the old times!’ Mark Pol cried. ‘I’ve told you about them often, have I not?’ This last was addressed to his friends around the brazier.

  ‘I can’t recall them with any pleasure,’ I said. ‘Do you remember Siuzan Delage?’

  ‘Ah, the woman,’ he said. ‘Yes, the woman. Of course I remember her.’

  ‘She was beheaded.’

  There was a silence after I said this. Then, in a puckish voice, he said, ‘We are all of us here present familiar with that procedure!’

  My anger almost overcame me. ‘Do you make light of it? After what you did to her?’

  Immediately he returned anger for my anger. ‘I? I did nothing to her.’ He drew himself up. ‘You are the rapist, not I.’

  ‘This again? You dare accuse me? As you did before, in front of that policeman?’

  He squared up to me. ‘I did not assault this woman,’ he insisted.

  ‘She says otherwise,’ I said.

  ‘Then she is lying,’ he insisted.

  ‘I should believe you, or her?’

  Abruptly he was laughing. ‘But this is exactly how we parted, years ago! Bickering over this business! It is as if no time has passed. You didn’t believe my protestations of innocence then, and so I don’t suppose you’ll believe them now. Have you truly met up with Siuzan?’

  My mind was half occupied with sizing up this group of half a dozen, and planning how I would fight them off should they come to Mark Pol’s aid when I tackled him. ‘I have,’ I said.

  ‘And she is headless?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor woman. She did not deserve that.’

  This new tone of his gave me a moment’s pause. ‘She did not.’

  ‘She showed us great kindness, and was repaid foully. But not by me, Sieur Cavala.’

  ‘And not by me either.’

  He laughed again. ‘When I last knew you, Sieur Cavala, you would have rebuked me for using the honorific. You would have said I do not deserve it!’

  ‘I have changed.’

  ‘We all have. I am sorry for Siuzan. But everybody here has suffered, and some are as blameless as she. I do not,’ he added, ‘refer to myself. But some of these others.’ I looked about the group again.

  ‘Good day to you, sieur stranger,’ said one of them. It was a woman’s voice. ‘I am Matthea.’

  ‘Good day, my lady,’ I said.

  She laughed at this. ‘How pleasant it is to be politely treated,’ she said.

  ‘Come, Jon Cavala,’ said Mark Pol. ‘Let us bury our bygones. We weren’t friends before, I know. Perhaps you still despise me, and perhaps I deserve your despite, although not for attacking Siuzan Delage. But I thank you for returning my eye to me. Allow me to repay you with a quarter-hour’s hospitality: we have a little food, and a little drink. Sit with us!’

  I sat. I shall tell you why. I had resolved, pricked by Mark Pol’s infuriating chatter and his shameless self-justifications, to take my revenge upon him after all, then and there. Siuzan would be saddened that I had broken my word, but, on the journey to Montmorillon and in our life together thereafter, I would make such atonement to her as I could for this new disappointment. But, having decided this, I was faced with the possibility that, in killing Mark Pol, I might be compelled to kill some of his friends, or even that they might kill me. They might of course try to protect, or to avenge, their friend. And what, for example, if I killed the woman Matthea? Could my revenge against Mark Pol, which had lived in my mind for so long as a just matter - could that tolerate these other killings and remain pure?

  So I sat. I asked myself whether I was merely prevaricating. One more day and I would leave Cainon for ever. One more day, and then nothing to look forward to except a new life with the woman I loved. I could have walked away from that place, and in doing so preserved the integrity of my promise to Siuzan. And yet I stayed.
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  This was a dilemma.

  ‘So you have met Siuzan,’ Mark Pol was saying. ‘Is she well? Apart, of course, from her headlessness.’

  ‘She is well enough,’ I said. ‘Hers is not a constitution well fitted to bear shame.’

  ‘She was always devout, I remember,’ he said. ‘But there are many devout people amongst the headless. And where have you been these years, my friend?’

  ‘I have been in the army.’

  ‘The army! And you’ve travelled from star to star, in spaceships?’

  ‘I have.’