Scientific Purposes

by Thomas Bernhard

A hairdresser who suddenly went mad and decapitated a duke, allegedly a member of the royal family, with a razor and who is now in the lunatic asylum in Reading-- formerly the famous Reading Jail-- is said to have declared himself ready to make his head available for those scientific purposes which, in his opinion, would be rewarded with the Nobel Prize within at least eight or ten years.

from The Voice Imitator