Free Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban

awkward and it was by its own admission unreliable but I felt a strong need to talk to it. I couldn’t think of any reason to go out but there weren’t any bananas in the house so I went to the North End Road market.
    ‘Look, look!’ shouted a man. ‘Look at this cabbage! Get yourself a head, you never know when you’ll need one!’ It was the gom yawncher man from the Cheshire Cheese who’d also been the broken-brimmed-hat man in the underground. ‘Look, look!’ he shouted.
    I looked. There it was, green-slimed and barnacled among the lawful fruit and vegetables on the barrow. Its mouth was open and speaking. ‘Swaying, swaying their tops against the sky the trees came down to the water’s edge,’ said the head of Orpheus, ‘and I found her there in the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade by the river.’
    ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘not here!’ To the gom yawncher man I said, ‘I’ll have this one.’
    ‘Sixty-five p for the thinking man’s cabbage head,’ he said as he weighed it and wrapped it up in page three of the
Sun,
‘with a visual treat thrown in.’
    ‘You remember me, don’t you?’ I said. ‘From the underground and the Cheshire Cheese?’
    ‘How could I forget?’ he said.
    As I hurried home through the people and the traffic the head continued its story. I had to hold it close to my ear to hear what it was saying, ‘In the leafy shade she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang; the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. Gone she was and lost to me for ever, Eurydice! Eurydice!’
    ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I said. ‘How can she be gone and lost to you for ever when you haven’t even met her yet?’
    ‘Where was I?’ said the head. ‘Where did I leave off last time?’
    ‘You heard the unseen woman weeping by the river and you became the world-child and the tortoise you’d killed. Underworld opened to you and you sang and blood came out of your mouth and your nose.’
    ‘Yes. Weeping, weeping in the golden afternoon her voice came to me in the mottled sunlight by the river and I went to where she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang, the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. She looked at me not as one looks at a stranger but as if she expected me to comfort her. Full of desire and uncertainty I took her in my arms. She smelled of honey, it was like a dream, there was no strangeness in it; there already seemed to be a long history between us.’ The head lapsed into silence.
    ‘Go on,’ I said.
    ‘Go on with what?’
    ‘With what happened when you found Eurydice weeping in the leafy shade.’
    ‘We made love.’
    ‘Didn’t you say anything first? Surely you didn’t just jump on her without a word?’
    ‘I don’t know what I said at first.’
    ‘You probably said, “Why are you crying?’”
    ‘That was it,’ said the head. ‘I said, “Why are you crying?”
    ‘“I was sleeping,” she said, “and I dreamed that I was the whole world; the whole world had become me and I was a child and I was afraid.” She was still trembling as she clung to me.
    ‘“Did you hear me singing by the river?” I said.
    ‘“In my dream there came around me all the strange and many colours of death,” she said. “They took my hands and wanted me to dance with them and I was afraid.’” Here again the head fell