soon.
– Unless it is life? – Thomas complained. – You stick out as a stub. Missed all walls to holes…
Oppressed mood of «captives of science» as joking their Core called, very much caused anxiety it. The heads could decay from melancholy before day of their demonstration comes.
And professor Kern took great pain to entertain them.
It got a movie camera, and Laurent with John organized in the evenings cinema sessions. As the screen served the white wall of laboratory.
Volumes especially were pleasant to the head comic pictures with Charlie Chaplin and Monty Banks’s participation. Looking at their tricks, Thomas forgot for a while about the poor existence. From his throat even something similar escaped on laughter, and on eyes tears navertyvatsya.
But here Banks otprygat, and on a white wall of the room the image of a farm appeared. The little girl feeds chickens. Crested chicken busy treats the baby birds. Against the background of a cowshed the young healthy woman milks a cow, driving away an elbow of a calf which tycht a muzzle in an udder. The shaggy dog ran, cheerfully waving a tail, and after her the farmer seemed. It conducted a horse on a string.
Thomas somehow croaked by extraordinary high pitched, false voice and suddenly shouted:
– It is not necessary! It is not necessary!.
John striving about the device understood not at once in what business.
– Stop demonstration! – shouted Laurent and hurried to turn on the light. The turned pale image still flashed some time and at last disappeared. John stopped operation of the projector.
Laurent looked at Thomas. In the face of it tears were seen, but it were no laughter tears any more. All his chubby face gathered in a grimace as at the offended child, the wry mouth was made.
– As at us… in the village … – complaining, he said. – Cow… chicken… Was gone, everything was gone now…
At the device already strove Laurent. Light was turned off soon, and on a white wall shadows started gleaming. Harold Lloyd bolted from the policemen pursuing him. But the mood at Thomas was already spoiled. Now the type of moving people began to make up on it still for great melancholy.
– See, rushes like mad – Thomas’s head grumbled. – To put him so, would not jump.
Laurent once again tried to change the program. The type of a ball of high society absolutely upset Brike. Beautiful women and their magnificent toilets irritated her.
– It is necessary… I want to watch how others live – she said.
Cinema was removed.
The radio receiver entertained them slightly longer.
Both of them were concerned by music, in particular dance tunes motives, dances.
– My God, as I danced this dance! – Brike exclaimed once, breaking into tears.
It was necessary to pass to other entertainments. Brike was capricious, demanded every minute a mirror, invented new hairstyles, asked to use her eye shadow a pencil, to bleach and rumyanit the person. It was irritated with stupidity Laurent which could not comprehend the mysteries of cosmetics in any way.
– Really you do not see – Brike’s head spoke with asperity – that the right eye is brought more darkly than left. Lift a mirror above.
She asked that brought it fashionable magazines and fabrics, and forced to drape a little table on which her head was strengthened.
She reached an eccentricity, having declared suddenly with overdue bashfulness that she cannot sleep in one room with the man.
– Fence off me for the night a screen or, at least, though the book.
And Laurent did «screen» of the big opened book, having established it on a glass board at Brike’s head.
Not less trouble was brought also by Thomas.
Once he demanded some wine. And professor Kern was forced to give it pleasure of intoxication, entering into the small doses of the intoxicating substances feeding solutions.
Sometimes Toma and Brike sung a duet. The weakened vocal chords did not obey. It was the awful duet.
– My poor voice… If you could hear how I sang earlier! – spoke to Brike, and her eyebrows sufferingly rose up.
In the evenings they were attacked by thought. Extraordinariness of existence forced even these simple natures to think of a matter of life and death.
Brike believed in immortality. Thomas was a materialist.
– Of course, we are immortal – Brike’s head said. – If soul died with a body, it would not return to the head.
– And where your soul sat: in the head or in a body? – maliciously Thomas asked.
– Of course, was obese… was everywhere … – Brike’s head uncertainly answered, suspecting some dirty trick of a question.
– So, soul of your body headless goes in the next world now?
– You headless – Brike took offense.
– I with the head. Only one I also have it – Thomas was not appeased. – And here no shower of your head there was in the next world? On this rubber gut on the earth returned back? No – he said already seriously – we as the car. Started up steam – again earned. And it was smashed – no steam will help…
And everyone was soaked into the thoughts…
SKY AND EARTH
Thomas’s arguments did not convince Brike. Despite the careless way of life, she was an isty Catholic. Conducting quite stormy life, it had no time not only to think of existence beyond the grave, but even to go to church. However the religiousness imparted in the childhood strong kept in it. And now, appear, there came the most right moment in order that these seeds of religiousness gave shoots. Her real life was awful, but death – a possibility of the second death – its scarecrow is even more. At night she was tormented by afterlife nightmares.
Languages of an infernal flame seemed to it. She saw how her vile body was already roasted on a huge frying pan.
Brike in horror woke up, knocking teeth and choking. Yes, she definitely felt suffocation. Her excited brain demanded the strengthened oxygen inflow, but it was deprived of heart – that live engine which so ideally regulates delivery of the necessary amount of blood to all body organs. She tried to shout to wake John who was on duty in their room. But John was bothered by frequent calls, and he quietly to have a sleep though several hours, contrary to requirements of professor Kern, switched off sometimes at the heads air cranes. Brike opened a mouth as the fish taken from water and tried to shout, but its shout was not louder than agonal yawning of fish… And about the room black shadows of chimeras continued to wander, the infernal flame lit their faces. They approached her, stretched terrible sharp-clawed paws. Brike
