Headless

by Brian W. Aldiss


A vast crowd was gathering to  see Flammerion behead himself. The TV  people and
Flammerion had rehearsed almost every move so that the event would go without  a
hitch. It  was estimated  that some  1.8 billion  people would  be watching: the
largest TV audience since the nuking of North Korea.

Some people  preferred to  watch the  event live.  Seats in  the stadium, highly
priced, were booked months in advance.

Among the  privileged were  Alan Ibrox  Kumar and  his wife  Dorothea Kumar, the
Yakaphrenia Lady. They discussed it as they flew in to Dusseldorf.

'Why is he  giving all the  proceeds to Children  of Turkmenistan, for  heaven's
sake?' Alan exclaimed.

'The terrible earthquake... Surely you remember?'

'I remember, yes, yes. But Flammerion's European, isn't he?'

For answer, she said, 'Get me another  gin, will you?' She had yet to  reveal to
him she was divorcing him directly after the beheading.

The Swedish royal family  had reserved two seats  in a back row.  They felt that
Sweden should be represented at what was increasingly regarded - by the media at
any rate - as an important  event. The Swedish government remained furious  that
their  offer  of  a  prominent  site  in  Stockholm  had  been  turned  down  by
Flammerion's agent.

Fortunately, six  Swedes, two  of them  women, had  since volunteered  to behead
themselves, either in Stockholm or preferably Uppsala. They named the  charities
they preferred.

Dr Eva Berger had booked a seat in the stadium on the day the box office opened.
She had  counselled Flammerion,  advising against  his drastic  action on health
grounds. When she realised she was  unable to deflect him from his  purpose, she
begged him that at least a  percentage of the proceeds go towards  the Institute
of Psychoanalysts.  Flammerion had  replied, 'I  am offering  you my psychiatric
example. What else do you want? Don't be greedy.'

Later, Dr Berger had  sold her seat for  nineteen times the amount  she had paid
for it. She felt her integrity had paid off.

Dr Berger's feckless nephew, Leigh, happened  to be a cleaner in the  Dusseldorf
stadium. 'Thank God I'm not on duty tonight,' he said. 'There'll be one hell  of
a mess. Blood everywhere.'

'That's  what the  public pay  for,' said  his boss.  'Blood has  a whole   vast
symbolism behind it. It's not just a red liquid, son. You've heard of bad blood,
and princes  of the  blood, and  blood boiling,  or things  done in  cold blood,
haven't you? We've got a whole mythology  on our hands, no less, tonight. And  I
need you to do an extra shift.'

Leigh looked hang-dog and asked what they would do with the head when Flammerion
had finished with it.

His boss told him it would be auctioned at Sotheby's in London.

Among those who were  making money from the  event was Cynthia Saladin.  She had
sold her story to the media worldwide. Most people on the globe were  conversant
with what Cynthia and Flammerion had done in bed. Cynthia had tried her best  to
entertain,  and  was now  married  to a  Japanese  businessman. Her  book,  'Did
Circumcision Start  Flammy Going  Funny?' had  been rushed  into print,  and was
available everywhere.

Flammerion was passably  good-looking. Commentators remarked  on the numbers  of
ugly men  who had  bought seats  in the  stadium. Among  their numbers was Monty
Wilding, the British  film director whose  face had been  likened to a  wrinkled
plastic bag. Monty was boasting  that his exploitation flick, Trouble  Ahead was
already at the editing stage.

The  Green Party  protested against  the movie,  and about  the  self-execution,
claiming that  it was  worse than  a blood-sport  and would  undoubtedly start a
trend. British sportsmen, too, were up  in arms. The beheading clashed with  the
evening of the Cup  Final. F.A IN HEAD-OFF  COLLISION, ran the headlines  in the
Sun.

There were others in  Britain equally incensed by  what was taking place  on the
continent.  Among  them  were  those  who  remained  totally  ignorant  of   the
whereabouts of Turkmenistan.

As so often  in times of  trouble, people turned  towards their solicitors,  the
Archbishop of  Canterbury and  Gore Vidal  for consolation  - not necessarily in
that order.

The  Archbishop  delivered  a  fine   sermon  on  the  subject,  reminding   the
congregation that Jesus  had given His  life that we  might live, and  that that
'we' included the common people of England  as well as the Tory party. Now  here
was another young man,  Borgo Flammerion, prepared to  give up his life  for the
suffering children of Central Asia -  if that indeed was where Turkmenistan  was
situated.

It was true, the Archbishop continued, that Christ had not permitted Himself  to
be crucified before the television  cameras, but that was merely  an unfortunate
accident of timing. The  few witnesses of the  Crucifixion whose words had  come
down to us were notoriously unreliable. Indeed, it was possible (as much must be
readily admitted)  that the  whole thing  was a  cock-and-bull story. Had Christ
postponed the event by  a millennium or two,  photography would have provided  a
reliable testament to His self-sacrifice,  and then perhaps everyone in  Britain
would believe in Him, instead of just a lousy nine per cent.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop concluded, we should all pray for Flammerion, that the
deed he contemplated be achieved without pain.

Visibly put out by this address, the British Prime Minister made an acid  retort
in the House of Commons on  the following day. She said, amid  general laughter,
that at least  she was not  losing her head.  'My head is  not for turning,' she
stated, amid laughter.

She added that the Archbishop of Canterbury should ignore what went on in Europe
and look to her own parish. Why, a murder had taken place in Canterbury just the
previous month.  Whatever might  or might  not be  happening in  Dusseldorf, one
thing was certain: Great Britain was pulling out of recession.

This much-applauded speech was delivered only hours before Flammerion  performed
in public.


As the stadium began to fill,  bands played solemn music and old  Beatles' hits.
Coachloads of  French people  of all  sexes arrived.  The French took particular
interest  in L'Evenement  Flammerion, claiming  the performer  to be  of  French
descent, although born in St Petersburg of a Russian mother. This statement  had
irritated elements of the  American press, who pointed  out that there was  a St
Petersburg in Florida, too.

A belated move was afoot to have Flammerion extradited to Florida, to be legally
executed for Intended Suicide, now a capital offence.

The French, undeterred, filled the  press with long articles of  analysis, under
such headings as FLAMMY: EST IL  PEDALE? T-shirts, depicting the hero with  head
and penis missing, were selling well.

The country which  gained most from  the event was  Germany. Already a  soap was
running on TV called Kopf Kaput,  about an amusing Bavarian family, all  of whom
were busy buying chainsaws with which to behead each other. Some viewers read  a
political message into Kopf Kaput.

Both the Red Cross  and the Green Crescent  paraded round the stadium.  They had
already benefited enormously from  the publicity. The Green  Crescent ambulances
were followed by lorries on which lay young Turkmen victims of the earthquake in
blood-stained bandages. They were cheered to the echo. All told, a festival  air
prevailed.

Behind  the scenes,  matters were  almost as  noisy. Gangs  of well-wishers  and
autograph hunters  queued for  a sight  of their  hero. In  another bunch  stood
professional  men and  women who  hoped, even  at this  late hour,  to  dissuade
Flammerion from his fatal act. Any number of objections to the act were  raised.
Among  these objections  were the  moral repulsiveness  of the  act itself,  its
effect on children,  the fact that  Cynthia still loved  her man, the  fear of a
riot should Flammerion's blade miss its  mark, and the question whether the  act
was  possible  as Flammerion  proposed  it. Among  the  agitated objectors  were
cutlers, eager to offer a sharper blade.

None of these people, no priests, no sensation-seekers, no surgeons offering  to
replace the  head immediately  it was  severed, were  allowed into  Flammerion's
guarded quarters.


Borgo Flammerion sat in an office  chair, reading a copy of the  Russian Poultry
Dealer's  Monthly.  As a  teenager,  he had  lived  on a  poultry  farm. Earning
promotion, he had worked for a while in the slaughterhouse before emigrating  to
Holland, where  he had  robbed a  patisserie. Later,  he was  lead singer with a
group, The Sluice Gates.

He was  dressed now  in a  gold lame  blouson jacket,  sable tights  and lace-up
boots. His head was shaven; he had taken advice on this.

On the table before him lay a  brand new cleaver, especially sharpened by a  man
from Geneva,  a representative  of the  Swiss company  that had manufactured the
instrument. Flammerion glanced at this cleaver every so often, as he read  about
a startling new  method of egg-retrieval.  Figures on his  digital watch writhed
towards the hour of eight.

Behind him stood a nun, Sister  Madonna, his sole companion in these  last days.
She was chosen  because she had  once made a  mistaken pilgrimage to  Ashkhabad,
capital of Turkmenistan, believing she was travelling to Allahabad in India.

At a signal from the sister,  Flammerion closed his periodical. Rising, he  took
up the  cleaver. He  walked up  the stairs  with firm  tread, to emerge into the
dazzle of floodlights.

An American  TV announcer  dressed in  a blood-red  gown said  sweetly, 'If your
immediate viewing plans do not include decapitation this evening, may we  advise
you to look away for a few minutes.'

When the applause died, Flammerion took up a position between the chalk marks.

He bowed without  smiling. When he  whirled the cleaver  to his right  side, the
blade glittered in the lights. The crowd fell silent as death.

Flammerion brought the blade up sharply,  so that it sliced from throat  to nape
-of-neck. His head fell cleanly away from his body.

He remained standing for a moment, letting the cleaver drop from his grasp.

The stadium audience was slow to  applaud. But all had gone exceptionally  well,
considering that Flammerion had had no proper dress rehearsal.

