by John Barth
“Why did she blame you?” I asked him—and was told that in human studentdom such false charges on the part of desperate women were not uncommon.
“She’d … been with Eblis Eierkopf, you know—” He said the word with difficulty, and his use of it, clearly in the Chickian sense, compounded a certain perplexity of mine: I had come to think that Lady Creamhair, on the occasion of that fiasco in the hemlocks, had not understood my honest intention to be (an activity for which G. Herrold had a host of other names); but if the term was after all common parlance, as Max’s use of it suggested, then her initial encouragement and subsequent wild rebuff of my advances were not yet clear. The memory made me sweat; another time I should have asked Max to gloss his term, but he’d gone on with the story. “—she must have been with him: you don’t get pregnant filing tape-reels! Then he wouldn’t do the right thing by her, and she thought to herself, ‘That old Spielman, I’ll say it was his fault, he’ll be glad enough to marry me no matter what, and once the baby’s born I can do what I please.’ You haven’t read much but the old epics yet, Georgie, or you’d know how it is with old men and young women.”
I ventured to say I understood what the situation was, if not why it should be so. Nothing in my kidship equipped me to appreciate the reasons for human jealousy, so alien to the goats; yet my own heart was alas no stranger to that unnatural sentiment, which had been the death of Redfearn’s Tom. But discreetly as I could I asked Max how it was that he, the soul of gentleness and reason, had been angered by the woman’s expedient, born as it plainly was of desperation and ill usage.
“Yes. Well.” He sniffed and frowned at me curiously over his eyeglasses. “That’s a hard question, George! Aren’t you a keen one, asking me that!” He said this not at all critically, but as if surprised and pleased. “A boy that asks that question is wise enough to raise his eyebrow at the answer. I hope he’s wise enough to know how the truth can sound sometimes like a lie.”
The truth came to this, he asserted: he could forgive, in the woman he’d felt such regard for, any infidelity; he did not count himself deserving of her love (or Eblis Eierkopf either, but that was her affair); the most he’d ever dreamed of winning was her respect and perhaps a daughterly affection, nothing more, in return for which he’d gladly have married her though she were pregnant by a different lover every year. But disregard for official morality and even for his feelings was one thing; disregard for Truth another. Let her confess frankly that the child was not his: he would wed her and give it gratefully, prayerfully, his name; but he could not allow a lie to be his marriage-portion, whose life’s enterprise had been the research after truth. In short, neither the Chancellor’s threats nor Miss Hector’s tears could induce him to wed his heart’s desire unless she openly admitted that Eierkopf had deflowered and impregnated her, and this admission she would not make.
“So that was that,” Max concluded. “Her poppa hollered how he’d like to whip me with his two hands, and if it wasn’t for his daughter’s reputation he’d have me to court. Miss Virginia hit my face once and ran away, which I haven’t seen her since, and just the next week was when I was sacked, like you know already. Why should it matter then, I should argue my case? So I came here to the goat-barn, and half a year later G. Herrold brings me this cripple-child out of the tapelift, he’s been sacked his own self for fetching you out …” He rubbed his left cheek, as if Miss Hector’s smite still tingled there. “What am I supposed to think, Georgie? What am I supposed to do, but kiss your poor legs and your goy blond hair, that no Moishian like me was ever the poppa of?”
I kissed Max’s own long hair at this fresh testimony of his goodness, and he mine; yet even as I chid him, most gently, for so long keeping from me his hypothesis of my parentage—which seemed a quite probable one, everything considered—and assured him that I was far more touched by his generous adoption of me than disturbed by the likelihood of having been sired by the hateful Eierkopf—even as I spoke, it occurred to me that the story had not after all been to the point. Just the contrary! Had he not set out by means of it to explain an actual suspicion on his part that I might be of uncommon parentage? That my brash claim to herohood might be not without some foundation? But if I was in truth the child of Dr. Eierkopf and Virginia Hector, my getting was by no means extraordinary; it was merely irregular.
Some minutes were required to make my point clear, for Max had quite forgotten, as unhappily he came frequently to do in this period of his life, what he’d set out to demonstrate, and then only with difficulty understood that he had not demonstrated it.
“Ja, so, what I mean,” he said then, “that’s what I thought when G. Herrold brought you here, you were Virginia’s kid by Eblis; what I guess, that’s what I wanted you to be. And sometimes yet it slips me now and again you aren’t, I have trouble remembering. But the fact is, she never had a son: she had a daughter, that she left to her uncle Ira Hector to raise. I heard that somewhere a long time ago, I forget where. It was a daughter she had.”
I closed my eyes and tried to assimilate this new disclosure. “Well, then—we’re back where we started! The gate’s still open!”
“No.” Max shook his head firmly. “No, it’s not open, either. No.” He seemed now to have his mind once more in order. “It was that GILES business made me wonder, once I knew you weren’t Virginia’s and Eblis’s kid, and when you started this Hero nonsense. An old man’s foolishness, Georgie, is all! You see yourself now you’re not any Grand Tutor, but just a good boy with a regular life’s work to do. You got a little badness in you and a little dumbness, pass your heart, like we all got.”
With considerable effort (for he was fatigued by so much recollection, and regarded his point as now quite established) I wrung this final information from him: Among the bizarre features of the Cum Laude Project in the month just prior to its abandonment was the preparation by WESCAC, under Eierkopf’s supervision, of a highly secret something known as “the GILES”—Max could or would not go farther than to explain that the word was an acronym for Grand-tutorial Ideal, Laboratory Eugenical Specimen. What that phrase meant (it had as well been in sheep-language for all it conveyed to me), and whether the attempt to prepare this same GILES was successful, and what in that event its purpose was—these things I was not to learn until later. But I gathered there was an uncertain connection between this mystery and my pretension to the office of Hero.
“I don’t say more than this,” Max said: “there’s things about the early days of Heroes and Grand Tutors. And when you took it in your silly head you were one yourself, I remembered these things and some others, that a person could stretch them and say they fit. So I thought up a couple experiments to prove what was what, I’ll tell you about later. But they’ve proved, George—they’ve proved—what you know your own self now: that you’re a good boy, and a human student, and that’s all.”
I supposed he was referring to the occasions when I had behaved stupidly or displayed a capacity, however slight, for actual flunkèdness, as in the matter of Redfearn’s Tommy and of Becky’s Pride Sue. It did not anger me to imagine, in the light of his confession, that Max may actually have encouraged such behavior, may even have arranged the circumstances of my temptation, perhaps in collusion with G. Herrold and (who knew?) with Lady Creamhair. That possibility was clearly beside the point; whatever experiments he had performed were for my own enlightenment and benefit, and had achieved their purpose. A Grand Tutor was very wise; a Grand Tutor was very good. Whatever the mysteries and portents of my birth, whatever formal prerequisites to Herohood I might coincidentally have met, I could not call myself very wise nor very good. Chastened, I took the conclusion to my heart, merely asking leave from the day’s instruction to get used to the feel of it there.
What remained of the morning I spent introspecting about the pasture, deaf to G. Herrold’s plea to wrestle in the cool March sun; after lunch I retired to the hemlocks with pencil and paper, thinking to map out as it were the road b
efore me by noting down the few clear signposts I had passed. Perched on a high stump I began with NEITHER WISE NOR GOOD, which I printed out in fair block capitals at the page-top. But when I considered inscribing beneath it PASS ALL FAIL ALL and the Maxim SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS ALWAYS BAD NEWS, I could not at once decide which merited second place, and, unable to care intensely, I fell soon into reverie. My fingers toyed with the paper; I had seen human visitors nibble, in my kidship, colored ices from paper cones, and had been wont to fashion any sheet I found into that form before I ate it. Such a cone I fashioned now, scarcely aware; but I had not the appetite of childhood days. Instead of eating it, therefore, idly I set it atop my head, and brooded the afternoon away thus perched and capped.
That night I dreamed the strangest dream of all. In our old meeting-place Lady Creamhair sat on the ground. It was dark night, not picnic time; yet the famous basket rested in her lap, and I squatted at her feet as in terms gone by. But we did not eat. As a child makes a comic mouth, she hooked her forefingers into the basket-lids and spread them wide. She bade me look, and I beheld in that dark chamber no peanut-butter sandwich, but a strange, a baleful host, I saw a man with wings and one with tail. An ancient leaned upon his crook. A lady girl did nothing. I saw a body with two heads, one atop the other. I saw a single head with two bodies, winking and blinking. Still other eyes I saw, seeing me: a bodiless pair that neither blinked nor moved nor changed their cast. A man was there who vanished when I looked, yet whom I saw when I looked away. And others, a multitude of shadows, men and women, sheep and goats—they hushed about, melting and shifting. They beckoned to me, all, inviting, threatening—except the lady girl forlorn and patient. I yearned to her. How was it I had not till then suspected what the basket held? I would go to that folk, not meant for eating. No matter the peril, I would press into their country, whence whooped to me a most clear call now. Tekiah! The goats swarmed over all. Tekiah!
Though I was sensible of no waking or change of scene, I got up from my cot and stood in the dark barn at last entirely clear. Max was not in his stall, nor was G. Herrold. No matter! My old wrapper I shucked off for good, and fetched from its storing-place in the supply-room a new one G. Herrold had made against the day I should matriculate: a long and splendid cape it was, of white-bronze fleece, sewed from the hides of two most dear to me, Redfearn’s Tom and Mary V. Appenzeller. Even as I drew it round my shoulders (over a clean wool underwrap) and took pleasure in the proud hang of it, I heard the buckhorn call again, not far distant.
I did not tarry even to pack a sandwich; merely I wound the watch upon its lanyard around my neck, found out my necessary stick, and left the barn. In the east a faint light shone that would presently be dawn; in the west a fainter from the thronging halls of New Tammany College, immeasurably distant. I shivered a moment by the gate, until through the quiet came a different blasting call: a whistle of far-off power, urgent! Whereat I shook no more nor wondered, but sprang the latch, and guided by what tooted through the fading stars, set out a-tap down the hard highway.
2.
A bend was in the road just down from the barn, the farthest I’d ever seen from the pasture gate. There (the strange whistle having ceased) I paused to review the cupolas and gambrels of my home. Lest I see more I pressed on. But just round the bend I found the road divided. I inclined to the right, being of that hand; then checked myself and bent left instead, it was so thin a reason. Yet this was no sensibler, after all, and I found myself quite stopped and suddenly discouraged.
How long I might have languished there who knows; the mere resolve that brooked no suggestion of retreat, before the issue of left or right availed me nothing. When I had commenced once more to shivering, however, I heard a rustle in the fork, and from a growth of sumac Max himself came forth, supported by G. Herrold.
“You walking in your sleep?” he asked me.
I might have demanded the same of him, under whose arm I spied now the horn that had waked me. But I saw a riddling seriousness in the question—it had the air more of a sentry’s challenge than a query—and at the same moment I understood that twice before in recent nights it was the sound of our actual shophar which had figured in my dreams.
“It’s time I matriculated,” I said.
“You know what you’re going to do, do you?”
“I’ll know once I get there.”
“So.” All this while Max stood before me, straining close to see my face in the dim light. “And you know the way? It’s not easy.”
“I’ll find it,” I declared.
“Ja, well. But come on back now, G. Herrold fixes you a box-lunch and packs some things. Wait till daylight, you can see your way better.”
But I declined, observing the the hour was already late, too late almost, and that as for food and extra clothing, I could not be burdened with them. Truly I was impatient to be off: if he would accept hasty, heartfelt thanks for all he’d done for me—and tell me please which fork led to New Tammany—I’d be all right, and forever in his debt.
“Which fork, Georgie? You mean you’re not sure?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said at once. “There’s bound to be a sign. Well, bye-bye, Max. Bye-bye, G. Herrold. I really must go.”
And I struck out as if I knew my way, hoping some impulse would turn me left or rightwards if I kept myself from thinking on the choice. But of course I could not not-think; no impulse came; and unwilling either to halt again or to betray my quandary (for I was conscious of their eyes upon me), I forged ahead into the sumac.
“I believe I’ll take a short-cut through here,” I called back.
“Ach, George! Wait once!” Max’s voice was joyous; but though I heard him call again for me and urge G. Herrold to help him overtake me, I crashed on through briars and foxgrape—only a bit more slowly, not to rip my fleece.
“Wait once, I got to tell you what we did!” As I would not stay, he bade G. Herrold fetch him up and run, and so in a moment was at my side, fending boughs off as we plunged.
“To the right, boy, not this way. Ay, George! I wouldn’t believe! Just an old Moishian!”
I said nothing, but turned to the right as he directed. Shortly we were on paved road again, all things more distinct now as the light came from behind us. I went on without hesitation and at such a determined clip (being free of brambles) that Max was obliged to remain in G. Herrold’s arms if he would keep pace.
“You know who you are, all right!” he said. “What you thought right along—but who could believe such a thing? Until we proved it!”
Without looking at him I inquired, “That’s why you blew the horn?”
“Ja, ja, that’s just why!” More excited than ever I’d seen him, Max described the “experiments” he’d mentioned the previous day. I had, he confirmed, met nearly all the prerequisites of herohood, as far as could be judged: the mystery of my parentage, about which it could be presumed only that I was the offspring of someone high in the administration; the irregularity of my birth, which had so seemed a threat to someone that an attempt had been made on my life; the consequent injury to my legs; the circumstances of my rescue, and my being raised by a foster parent in a foster-home, disguised as an animal and bearing a name not my own—these and other details corresponded to what Max had found true of scores of hero-histories. On the other hand none seemed unambiguous or conclusive, at least not to one who all his life had been skeptical of heroship. Even if it could be verified that my mother and father were close blood-relatives; that I’d been conceived in a thunderstorm and born in a cave; that rumor had it I was not my father’s son; or that my would-be assassin was either my father or my mother’s father—still nothing followed necessarily. As Max put it: “Not every dumbhead with a scar is a bonafide hero.”
To settle his doubts in the matter (that is, to prove to himself that my claims were mere boyish ambition) he had instructed G. Herrold on a certain night to blow a certain call upon the horn: if I had waked and asked what was the matter, as
Max anticipated, my claim for some reason would have been nullified. If on the other hand I had responded without a question or hesitation and set out in a certain way … But I had done neither, quite, only gone on with my troubled sleep. On a second night therefore had come a second call, which to have answered in any wise had been my refutation (Max did not say why): luckily, it too had not moved me, except to lustful dreams. This night had sounded the third and final; had I slept through it or merely inquired what was the matter, my future had been clear: Max would have enrolled me in the fall as a regular freshman at NTC, to pass or fail in some one of the usual curricula like any other undergraduate—quite what he wished for me, he confessed, in all his reasonable moods.
“But I couldn’t help thinking what you said, Georgie, about the WESCAC and its AIM. And crazy or not, I couldn’t help thinking how it was my hand pushed the EAT-button once, and the only way to save me from flunking forever was to lead a Grand Tutor down to West Campus with that same hand.”
From the corner of my eye I saw him stress the point with the finger next to his missing one. But my sharp attention to what he said did not retard me.
“So we blew and we blew; two times tonight we did; and just when G. Herrold took his breath to blow the one last time—what did you hear, my boy?”