by John Barth
In tears now, Max threw himself at Stoker’s knees. “For Founder’s sake let them go! Burn me!”
Anastasia and I hastened to calm him, she assuring him (her earlier complaint to the contrary notwithstanding) that her husband’s bark was far worse than his bite when it came to maltreating her, and I that I had more faith in my incorruptibility than Max seemed to, and no intention to let anyone suffer in my stead. As to Anastasia, I was not persuaded that her decision to remain with Stoker was freely chosen, nor contrariwise that it was simply coerced; I meant to investigate the matter further and act accordingly. In short—I vowed with some heat—the three of us would go together, whether to Great Mall and Main Gate or to the Power Plant. I might have added, but chose not to, that I was curious to see with my own eyes what flunkage really was, the better to understand its opposite, and thus looked forward to visiting both the Power Plant and Main Detention; also that Max’s pathetic gesture touched me less with gratitude and respect for him than with disapproval, even with a small, unexplainable contempt. It was but an amplifying of my own sentiments when Stoker said, “These Moishians, I swear to the Dunce, they enjoy being persecuted!” His tone was most amiable. “Don’t let anybody tell you they’re the Chosen Class: they volunteered!”
He ordered Max then to get off his knees and end the theatrics; he could burn all three of us if he had a mind to, he declared, and throw Croaker in for a backlog, but in fact he wanted only to entertain us for the night, inasmuch as he’d never matched drinks with a billygoat before, to say nothing of a Grand Tutor.
“Never,” Max said. “These children and I aren’t going.” He took Anastasia’s arm (who still pressed mine) and made as if to lead us away. The cattle-prodders glanced to their chief for instructions; Anastasia hesitated, as did I, unable to share my advisor’s resolve.
“Doggone!” Stoker said, ignoring us all. “There is a fellow we’ve got to burn; I’d almost forgot him! Black chap we fished off the dam. Friend of yours, was he?”
He strode over to one of the sidecars and flashed an electric torch: there sprawled the brown-skinned, white-fleeced body of G. Herrold, his head flung back; each separate water-drop upon him sparkled in the torch-beam. We went over, shocked, and regarded our lost friend. Max moaned and tore at his beard. Anastasia snatched up the dead man’s wrist and laid her ear to his chest.
“He’s not asleep, like Croaker?” I demanded.
She shook her head. “I can’t help feeling it’s my fault! If he hadn’t seen me out on the bridge …”
Stoker looked from speaker to speaker with a grin. I was smitten with grief. Dark fetcher from booklift, Belly, barn; first lover and teacher of full nelson; savior, sweep, and summoner (whose left hand still clutched the buckhorn)—he was the first dead human I had seen. His mouth being open, I kissed his cold forehead, and felt on my lips, with anger, drops of the river he’d crossed at last.
“This flunking place!” I cried. “What’s it called?”
“Just ‘The Gorge,’ ” Anastasia said.
“If you go with this Dean o’ Flunks here”—Max pointed grimly to Stoker—“you might as well call it South Exit, because you’re flunked for sure.”
“I’m going to give it his name,” I declared, indicating G. Herrold. Max showed some surprise at the firmness of my tone, but shrugged. To the company at large I announced: “From now on this river’s name is George. And the gorge is George’s Gorge.”
Max nodded. Even Stoker cocked his head and grinned approval.
“That’s okay,” Max said. “And we’ll bury him ourselves, right here. Help me lift him out, George.”
“Now, now, Maxie!” Stoker laughed. “You don’t go sticking people underground any way you please. Health rules! Forms to fill out; questions to answer! We’ll have to fetch him up to the morgue and have him looked over—only take a few minutes if you come along. And the Staff Graveyard’s right on Founder’s Hill, above the Powerhouse; we run the College Crematorium off the same pile as the main steam-boilers.” To me he added, “Awfully clever piece of engineering, actually: big oven man from Siegfrieder College designed it when we first hired him, just after the Riot …” He interrupted himself before Max could speak, to order his men to restart their engines. They answered him with curses, but finally obeyed when the order had been repeated several times by the lieutenant. “Hop in now, friends; the night doesn’t last forever. Maxie, you ride with your wet pal there and see he doesn’t bounce out. You kids ride with me.” He grinned at his inadvertent word-play and snatched my elbow to guide me to his vehicle. “Do you kiss a girl before you climb her, George, or just sniff around? I never saw a goat go to it, much as I admire them.”
“I’m not actually a goat,” I explained politely. “There may not even be any goat in me at all. And I never climbed a human girl before—just does, when I was younger.”
“You don’t tell me!”
I nodded, rather suspecting I was being teased but for some reason scarcely caring. Max’s warning, Anastasia’s mortified “Maurice!” my grief for G. Herrold—all caution and consideration were swept before Stoker’s outrageous high spirits. I rattled on as though despite myself. “G. Herrold and I used to do tricks sometimes, while we wrestled, till Max told me a Grand Tutor shouldn’t. Otherwise I certainly would enjoy Anastasia.”
“Would you, though!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Looks pretty good to you, does she?”
“Yes indeed. I think her teats are remarkably well formed, for a human girl’s, and I especially liked the patch of black hair I saw …” I turned to the red-faced lady I was complimenting and touched my stick lightly to her crotch. “Do you have a special name for it, ma’am? What we call the escutcheon?”
Stoker’s laugh rang over the roaring engines. Anastasia shrank from my stickpoint with a gasp—but did not let go my arm. From behind, Max’s voice came shrilly.
“Quit, George! Dear boy and girl, don’t!”
I glanced back: two grinning sooty guards were lifting him into the sidecar where G. Herrold was. “Take me and let them go!” I heard him beg one of them. “They aren’t even Moishians. You can kick and beat me!” To encourage them he began pummeling his own head with both fists, and continued to do so even after they had deposited him in the sidecar and mounted their cycles. Distressed as I was by the spectacle, I felt again that odd irritation—along with bad conscience, to be sure. I helped Anastasia into Stoker’s own sidecar and climbed in beside her.
“Don’t hurt Dr. Spielman, Maurice,” she pleaded. “He’s such a nice man, I wish he was my father. Promise?”
Stoker mounted chuckling to his seat and donned helmet and goggles. “Who needs to hurt Maxie? He does it himself!”
My laugh—I couldn’t help laughing—was lost in the blast of a small whistle he now blew several times, at the same time signaling with his arm and shouting, “Forward! Forward!” A great din rose as the cycles throttled slowly into motion, nudging, threatening, and blocking one another as if each aspired to lead the column. “Out of my way, flunk you!” Stoker would shout, and race his engine to intimidate those jockeying around him; they cursed him back with a grin, sometimes in our language, sometimes in others; we swarmed in all directions for a moment, like queen-less bees, until Stoker by thrust and knock had got clear of the tangle-whereupon with a whoop and cracking backfire he took off up the shore. The others followed in a wobbly line, weaving and bumping over shale until we reached the roadway that came down to the broken bridge. There we turned inland on the harder pavement; Stoker opened the throttle, and we roared out of George’s Gorge at a breath-catch clip. I was amazed by the noise and speed: I clutched at the handrail and Anastasia’s shoulder; my head jerked back, and I gasped for some moments against the rush of air.
“Not so fast!” Anastasia fretted.
I shook my head. “It’s all right.”
Stoker’s teeth flashed through his whiskers. “Okay, hey, George?”
“I think … I like it.”
“Hooray!” Stoker let go the handlebars to shake hands with himself; Anastasia squealed and admonished him to drive more carefully. In truth he delighted in recklessness, as did his fellows: we were less a procession than a freestyle race, which Stoker led not by virtue of his rank but by speed and daring. When someone threatened to overtake us Stoker would block his way and make as if to force him into ditch or embankment; inevitably the challenger yielded with exuberant curses. Any turn in the road, however blind or precipitous, inspired him to more speed rather than less: he would bid us lean right or left as he instructed and skid full tilt into the curve, sometimes lifting the sidecar off the pavement. A signpost or streetlight picked up by our headlamp (there were not many) became a target; never slacking speed for an instant he unlimbered his pistol and blazed away, as did others behind us. Woe betide the rabbit, snake, or opossum who crossed our path: if no wrench of the machine itself could run him under our wheels, he was brought low by a fusillade of bullets as the line roared past. At all these things Anastasia shrieked and protested; excepting the fate of the animals, however, which moved her to tearful poundings of her husband’s side, she seemed as much exhilarated as afraid: between her screams and shakings of the head her breath came fast; she clutched at my wrapper for support, and though her eyes would shut against a peril-in-progress, I sometimes saw them sparkle at one’s approach. I too, alarmed as I was to the marrow by the wild novelty of the experience, had seldom felt such thrill: I even found myself applauding Stoker’s marksmanship, over Anastasia’s protests, and praising his riskiest maneuvers.
“You shouldn’t encourage him!” she scolded. “How can a Grand Tutor encourage reckless driving?”
I admitted cheerfully that I didn’t have the least idea whether my attitude was proper for a Grand Tutor; but I added (the notion having just occurred to me): “It must be all right, though, come to think of it—since it’s my attitude, and I’m the Grand Tutor.”
“Well said!” Stoker let go the handlebars again to clap his hands, and Anastasia clawed at my arm.
“Besides,” I said, “if I’m not mistaken, you like it too.”
“I do not!”
Stoker shook a finger at her. “Don’t argue with the Grand Tutor, dear: you’re only a Graduate. Hey, George, is she really a Graduate?”
I considered her frowning face. Despite the racket and wild motion I sensed a good peculiar power in myself: a clarity of muscle, a tonus of thought, such as I’d rarely or never known. “She may not actually have Commenced yet, as Max thinks. I haven’t learned enough to tell. But I’m sure she must be a Candidate …”
My last words were lost on Stoker, who coming to a crossroads marked by direction-signs skidded to a halt and sprang off the motorcycle. Anastasia however was moved enough to lower her eyes, ignoring the riotous action before us. Stoker’s purpose in stopping, it developed, was to give the signpost a quarter-turn, “purely on principle,” as he later declared: a principle for the sake of which he not only sacrificed his hard-held lead but risked his life as well—bullets raised dust-puffs near his boots as the others flashed by, and clipped into the signboard over his head.
“Do you believe me?” I asked her.
Wanly she smiled. “I think you’re being polite. But I appreciate it—very much.” She raised her eyes. “I’ve hardly even thought of Graduation! Much as the boys used to argue about it at Uncle Ira’s, when they came to see me. I used to hope and hope they’d pass the Finals. Whether they hoped so or not.”
“Didn’t you want to pass too?”
“Oh, I guess I’ve thought of it. Lots of times.” Now that the line of motorcycles had passed, the air was quiet but for their fading backfire, and I could hear her without straining to listen. “But I know how silly the idea is, for me, so I’ve never dared wish for it really. Imagine me passing the Finals, after all I’ve done!”
“Do you believe in Graduation, Anastasia?”
“Believe in it?” Her expression was shocked. “I’d die if I didn’t! Could I go on living if I didn’t, after something like tonight on the beach?”
“Then you ought to believe what Enos Enoch said: Passèd are the raped …” I turned a finger in the hair upon her neck-nape. “For they shall be my virgin brides …”
“I believe in Enos Enoch,” she said quietly. “I really do.”
I smiled. “But not in me. Why don’t you believe in me too?”
She wrinkled her brow. “I want to, George! Honestly. But you’re so different from Enos Enoch. You don’t seem to hate Maurice very much, and you talk so strangely. And look what you’re doing now—” She removed my hand from her hair. “As if you were any ordinary fellow! Enos Enoch wouldn’t do that.”
Stoker came back from his work upon the roadsign (which now showed quite altered directions) in time to catch the famous name. “She should’ve been an early Enochist,” he said to me. “Put her in the arena, she’d make love to the lions—just to keep ’em off the others, you know.” He restarted our engine and turned onto a small dirt road, which he declared would get us to our destination ahead of the others. Then he shouted from the side of his mouth, with what seemed to me deliberate nonchalance: “Hey, why not pass her yourself, if you’re the Grand Tutor? You already examined her on the bridge, I understand.”
“That’s rather witty,” I said, ignoring Anastasia’s embarrassment. I explained, however, that while I was beyond question a Grand Tutor, I had not as yet begun actually Tutoring, it being necessary in Max’s opinion as well as my own to matriculate as a common student and undergo the dread Finals myself before descending into WESCAC’s Belly, changing its AIM, and thus bringing peace of mind to the entire student body. Indeed, to the best of my recollection Max had never mentioned the passage or failure of individual students in connection with my program, though it seemed to me (now I considered it) as proper work for a Grand Tutor as preventing Campus Riot III—perhaps even properer. I would think further on the matter. In any case, it was not my impression that Grand Tutors and Examiners were quite the same: my task, as I saw it, was not to pass or flunk anyone myself, but merely to point the way to Commencement Gate—which I must discover myself before leading others thither.
Thus I spoke, freely and eagerly as never before, sensing for the first time the power of my chosen role and wondering, even as I spoke, whether I had interpreted correctly the obscure message on my PAT-card: Pass All Fail All. I was pleased to see Anastasia listen with whole attention, if diverted eyes.
“That nutty Spielman!” Stoker marveled, much amused (we were obliged to move less swiftly on the rough dirt road, and so could speak without shouting). “What a prize he’s made out of you: a billygoat persuaded he’s Enos Enoch!”
I shook my head vigorously. “No, no, you’re wrong all around. In the first place Max didn’t persuade me: he’s a fine advisor, and I owe him my whole education, almost; but it was I who told him I’m the Grand Tutor. He still doesn’t believe me as much as he needs to, hard as he tries. He wants it to be true; he suspects it might be; but I’m the only one so far who knows it is.”
“You’re Max’s boy, though,” Stoker insisted. “Where’d you get the notion you should change WESCAC’s AIM?”
I admitted that it was indeed Max who had first proposed that particular labor, the worth whereof however I fully affirmed. All I had known was that I must rescue studentdom: from what, and how, I depended on experience—as well as my advisor—to clarify.
“How about your deportment?” Stoker challenged. “That’s Max’s doing too, isn’t it?”
“Beg pardon?” I mistook him to have asked which department of New Tammany College I intended to matriculate in, and it occurred to me that I’d given no thought to the choice of a suitable major since my discovery, some months earlier, that no program in Herohood was listed in the Undergraduate Catalogue. I would have to consult Max on the matter before I registered.
“I mean your silly morals,�
�� Stoker said. “Where’d you get the idea you shouldn’t have a go at Stacey, if not from Max? You said yourself you’d like to, and you can see she’s willing.”
“Maurice!” Anastasia held her ears.
“Wasn’t it Max who told you you couldn’t be a stud-buck if you want to be Enos Enoch?”
“Now look here,” I said firmly, “that’s another mistake you all keep making, and Max too. I may be a Grand Tutor—I am the Grand Tutor!—but I’m not Enos Enoch, and I don’t want to be.” Anastasia looked at me wonderingly. “Enos Enoch was Shepherd Emeritus, and I’m the Goat-Boy. There’s a big difference.”
“By George, we’ll have a drink on that!” From his trouser-pocket Stoker drew a black flask, unscrewed the top with his teeth, and forsook a clear chance at a strolling possum to tip himself a drink. Then he offered it to me.
“Grand Tutors don’t drink,” Anastasia said. It was half plea, half challenge; I responded by accepting the flask.
“They do when they’re thirsty.”
Stoker cheered. Anticipating water, I choked on the scalding stuff I swigged, a dark liquor manufactured, so Stoker explained, in the Powerhouse itself. Yet it promised splendid things against the chill night air, and I managed a second swallow before returning the flask. Anastasia turned away with a sniff.
“You’re all right, George!” Stoker said. “I’m glad Max didn’t ruin you altogether.”
I was firm. “That’s enough about Max. He’s a good man, and I’m glad for his advice. Wouldn’t listen to anybody else’s.” I tapped my chest. “But I’m the Grand Tutor, not him.”
“Exactly! My sentiments exactly.” Stoker whacked my shoulder. “A grand old man, but limited, you know? What worried me, the way you pulled your virtue back there, I thought he might actually have clipped you …”
“Oh, for pity’s sake!”
“No, really! I thought that might be your own equipment on your belt there.”
Without bothering to recount its history I declared the amulet-of-Freddie to be older than myself, and asserted further that so far from being castrate I knew my studly endowment to be greater than any buck’s in the herd, and than Max’s and the Beist-in-the-buckwheat’s too. Though not of the magnitude of either Croaker’s or the late G. Herrold’s. Rest his mind. Which observations led me—