He was small, and was no taller from head to foot than the fourth finger. He was grey-steel in colour. Owing to his small stature and to his rapid movements it was hard to tell whether the dim glow came from the body, or from a garment that stretched lightly over it. In any case it was something smooth, something expressly simple. The body seemed like a slender keg, broader at the belt, narrower at the shoulders and below. The arms and legs were of equal length and thickness, and of like nimbleness and flexibility; it seemed as though the arms were very long and thick, and the legs disproportionately short and thin. The neck was short. The face was hardy. The legs were widely astride. At the end of the back something was visible in the nature of a tail or a thick cone; like growths were upon the sides, under the elbows. The strange figure moved quickly, nimbly, and surely.
The monster sat down on the bronze ridge of the inkstand, pushing aside the wooden pen-holder with his foot in order to be more comfortable. He grew quiet.
Sonpolyev examined his face. It was lean, grey, and smooth. His eyes were small and glowed brightly. His mouth was large. His ears stuck out and were pointed at the top.
He sat there, grasping the ridge with his hands, like a monkey. Sonpolyev asked: “Gracious guest, what do you want to say to me?”
And in answer a slight voice—mechanically even, unpleasantly sharp and rather rusty in tone—made itself heard: “Man with a single head and a single soul, recall your past, your primitive experience of those ancient days when you and he lived in the same body.”
And again there was laughter, shrill and sharp, piercing the ear.
While he was still laughing, the guest, with mechanical agility, turned a somersault; he stood on his hands, and Sonpolyev saw for the first time what he had taken for a tail was really a second head. This head did not differ in any way, as far as he could see, from the other head. Whether the heads were too small for him to observe, or whether the heads did not actually differ, it was quite certain that Sonpolyev did not see the slightest distinction between them. The arms reversed themselves as on hinges, and became quite like the legs; the first head, then losing its colour, hid itself between these arm-legs; while the former legs reversed themselves mechanically and became the arms.
Sonpolyev looked at his strange guest with astonishment. The guest made wry faces and danced. And when at last he grew still and his laughter gradually died away, the second head began to speak: “How many souls have you, and how many consciousnesses? Can you tell me that? You pride yourself on the amazing differentiation of your organs, you have an idea that each member of your body fulfils its own well-defined functions. But tell me, stupid man, have you anything whereby to preserve the memory of your previous existences? The other head contains the rest of you, your early memories and your earlier experience. You argue subtly and craftily across the threshold of your pitiful consciousness, but your misfortune is that you have only one head.”
The guest burst out again into rusty, metallic laughter, and he laughed this time rather long. He laughed and he danced at the same time. He turned somersaults, or he rested upon one arm and upon one leg, thereby causing one of his sides to turn upward—until it was impossible to distinguish any of his four extremities. Afterwards his limbs again turned mechanically, and it became obvious that the growths on his sides were also heads. Each head spoke and laughed in its turn. Each head grimaced, mocked at him.
Sonpolyev exclaimed in great fury: “Be silent!”