by John Barth
I know the story twice as well as you.
“I didn’t,” Greene whispered into my ear. “I’m glad the old man let us in on it.”
“Shh,” somebody hissed behind us.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
He tells it twice as well and often, too.
[TO TALIPED]
We hope, sir, you’ll be able to repeat that stunt; to set the College on its feet by some great deanly deed, before we’re dead. That’s what we came to tell you, Taliped.
TALIPED: [Aside]
Tell is right—the threat’s thinly veiled! Their point’s quite clear: that, deanwise, I’ve failed, and should resign my post.
[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
Look here, by Neddy!
You tell me nothing I don’t know already.
“ ‘By Neddy!’ ” Sear exclaimed. “That is a bit far!”
TALIPED: In fact, while you’ve been sitting on your thumbs (and on my steps), I’ve done things. Look: here comes my brother-in-law, by sheer coincidence, this minute, whom last week I had the sense and foresight to dispatch, as assistant dean, with all expenses paid, to survey the scene first-hand, and then to pay a formal call on the Professor of Prophecy in Founder’s Hall and ask his advice, just to forestall the shout that rascal raises when I leave him out.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside, to committee]
Of all the men around, look which he picks as his assistant! Campus politics makes strange bed-partners. Now, of course, we must pretend to be impressed by and to trust this arrant ninny’s judgment—not that he has either sense or perspicacity. Connections, though, he does have, which we worship:
[TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
Top o’ the morning to Your Brother-in-lawship!
“Is that a proper rhyme?” I inquired at once of Dr. Sear. He promised to go into the subject with me later, but bid me heed now the important exposition being revealed down on the stage, where Taliped had greeted his brother-in-law’s timely arrival and asked him what the Professor of Prophecy had had to say.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: You want it straight?
TALIPED: Why not?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: You want it here?
Right now?
TALIPED: There’s no choice. Despite my fear of more bad news, I’ve got my reputation to maintain—the one that Public Information invented for me (may they all get cancers): “The Dean who’ll go to any length for Answers.” Flunk the day they dreamed that up! But now I’m stuck with it, I guess. So, tell me how things are, and what the Proph-prof says to do about it.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Man, have I got news for you.
TALIPED: You’d better have, considering your expenses.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I won’t repeat the Proph’s own words; their sense is that one man is responsible for all our miseries and travail.
TALIPED: [Aside]
That’s Founder’s Hall, all right: I know their rhetoric. [TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
Go on, sir.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: One man’s doing more harm than the monster ever did to us. The Proph-prof feared we’re done for if that man’s not cashiered.
TALIPED: It’s like those propheteers to pin the blame on some bloke they don’t care for! What’s his name, this poor schlemiel that’s poisoning the place? I’ll sack him if I must.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: His name and face the Proph-prof couldn’t help us with.
TALIPED: Some prophet! I wish the bloody faker would come off it and admit he’s in the dark as much as we are.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Now that’s no way to talk about the Seer, Taliped. He couldn’t name the dirty dog right out, and yet he made it pretty clear whom we’re to look for and expel from Cadmus College.
TALIPED: Then come on and tell me who I’ve got to fire, man! Whom, I mean.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: The killer of Labdakides, our dean before you took his place nine years ago.
TALIPED: That was my predecessor’s name. Although he published not a word before he perished, Agenora speaks of him—his cherished wife, that I took later for my bride.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: No need to tell me that.
TALIPED: But how he died I never took the trouble to find out.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I noticed.
TALIPED: Excellent. But if the lout who did the old man in is still around and causing all this trouble, he’ll be found, by golly, and I’ll show the wretch no pity.
[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
I here appoint you head of a committee to find the killer of Labdakides.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Thanks a lot.
TALIPED: The rest of you will please continue to function as committee-members.
[TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
So how’d he die, and when?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Nine Septembers ago, I think, or ten—no, it was nine—Labdakides—a relative of mine,
I might add—
TALIPED: Everybody is, it seems.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Not everyone: just deans and wives of deans.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: In any case, the Dean had been invited to head up a symposium; this delighted him: he loved to speak in distant places, eat and drink for free, and see new faces; no matter what the subject or how rough the journey, if the fee was high enough, he’d go.
TALIPED: There’s nothing strange in that; it is among a dean’s responsibilities. He set out by himself, then? Please speak faster.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Alone he wasn’t. Besides the wagonmaster he took his secretary—quite a peach, she was—his valet, P. R. man, and speech-writer. Five men and the girl, and all but one was killed.
TALIPED: I guess it was the doll
who got away?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I wish she had, old pal; it should have been the girl and not the valet who escaped. The way that kid could walk!
TALIPED: All right, all right; forget her. Did you talk to this one chap, this valet who got away?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I did. But all the yellow wretch could say for himself was that he wished he’d never been promoted from his old job by the Dean—he’d used to be a shepherd, and he said he wished he’d never valeted instead. I guess he had no stomach for such snobbery …
TALIPED: Flunk his stomach! Was it highway robbery, a crime of passion, or assassination? Why was no subsequent investigation held? This valet himself might be the crook!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I doubt it: we made it plain we’d throw the book at him for lying, if we caught him at it. He swore to us he knew no more than that it was a gang of toughs who did the deed.
TALIPED: A gang of toughs? What for?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I wish that we’d had time to ask that question. But before we could, the shepherd bolted through the door and fled to the remotest Cadmus barn. We would have fetched him back, but then the darn monster-business comes along and ties us hand and foot, investigationwise. We put all other matters on the shelf till you came by. You know the rest yourself.
TALIPED: So here we are, hung up again with riddles! The Proph-prof prophesies, the committee fiddles, everybody gripes, and I’m supposed to solve a murder-case that you-all closed nine years ago. That’s great! And not a shred of evidence! The shepherd’s no doubt dead by now, or else he will have clean forgotten what little he saw. [Aside] Founder flunk this rotten image they’ve laid on me: Master Sleuth: The Dean Who’ll Dare Anything for Truth!
[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN AND BROTHER-IN-LAW]
Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do to get the College off the hook and you birds off my doorstep. It’s not a bit of fun to know that on the campus there’s someone who likes to kill administrators (not to mention pretty secretaries). What we need’s a public show of deanly prudence. Also firmness. Summon all the students and professors here at once. By heck, I’ll find out who’s to blame or break my neck!
We all applauded this resolution—all except Croaker, who I saw was fast asleep, and Max, who found the translation unsatisfactory. Dr. Sear especially commended Taliped’s statement, declaring however that in his mind
its appeal came from the fact that it was precisely this high-minded vow that would be the Dean’s undoing, according to the laws of tragedy. Taliped and his brother-in-law left the stage now, by way of the Deanery door, and the committee of department-heads and vice-administrators dispersed to right and left, but reassembled again a moment later, facing us in a line, just as I was about to inquire further into the laws of tragedy, which I was unfamiliar with.
“This is the párodos,” Sear whispered. “They sing and dance.”
As I had heard of dancing before but never seen any except in Stoker’s Living Room, I attended the line of committeemen with interest. First they stepped sideways to the left, in unison, singing in a kind of chant and taking one step to each accented beat of the rhythm:
O Founder all-potent and -wise.
Who sees with unspectacled eyes:
You must see that we’re
All spitless with fear
Since You laid on this latest surprise.
They then danced back again in the same manner, regaining their original position at the end of a stanza equal in length to the first:
To You, Sir, we come for advice,
Because (like we said) You’re so wise.
You rescued us once, Sir,
From the jaws of the monster;
For pity’s sake rescue us twice.
These separate dances Dr. Sear called strophes and antistrophes, and he excused the committee’s bad grammar on the grounds that probably no more than one member was from the Language and Literature Department. There were two other pairs of stanzas:
Cadmus College is half down the drain: [STROPHE 2
The drop-outs are dropping like rain;
Tuition’s outrageous;
The kids are rampageous;
And all people do is complain.
No wisdom or virtue survives: [ANTISTROPHE 2
Small boys prowl the streets with large knives.
Student morals are looser:
What they do when they woo, Sir,
We don’t even do with our wives.
“What do you suppose that could be?” asked Peter Greene, but no one answered him. The committee’s complaint greatly moved the audience, many of whom murmured assent or blew their noses into paper tissues.
All classes of woes seem to ail us; [STROPHE 3
For pity’s sake pass us or fail us!
Things look pretty quiet,
But we’re all set to riot
Against these dark foes that assail us.
On this strophe the dance had been rearwards; now in the closing antistrophe the committee marched forward, its voice rising strongly over the burst of applause from the spectators:
Our enemy’s strong, and he’s clever, [ANTISTROPHE 3
And we’re fairly stupid. However,
We hope that our Founder’ll
Search out the scoundrel
And flunk him forever and ever!
So great was the response to this last supplication that although Taliped reappeared from the Deanery door in time to hear it, and raised his hand for silence, it was some time before he could make himself heard.
“Conservative hysteria,” Max grumbled. “Always leads to persecution.”
“Now comes the first episode,” Sear whispered to me. The audience grew quiet.
TALIPED: Come on; there’s no use moaning to the Founder. Let’s put our own IQ’s to work. It’s sounder and also more reliable.
“I’ll say it is,” Max said.
TALIPED: Now look:
it seems to me the surest way to hook the fish we’re after is to make it clear that anyone can speak up without fear who has a tip of any sort. I won’t ask why he didn’t speak up sooner; don’t fear that. But on the other hand, by gum, if any prof or student knows the bum who turned my wife’s first husband off, he’d better come across, in person or by letter: the penalty for silence is suspension. The killer of the old dean (not to mention his stenographer and other lackeys) will suffer more: his punishment, in fact, is going to be total flunkage and expulsion from the College. Such is my revulsion for deanicide, I won’t hesitate to drive the rascal out myself; I hate him in advance! Even if it should turn out to be a relative, I would put it to him without mercy. I’m as hot and bothered over this old crime as if I’d seen it happen. Can you hear this vow I’m vowing, you folks in the rear? I couldn’t more despise the killer had he killed, not my predecessor, but my daddy!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
At least he talks a good investigation, and vows a pretty vow. In Proclamation One, an undergraduate course, we teach that sort of thing.
[TO TALIPED]
Look here, I’ll swear no speech-professor’s guilty of the deed, or of withholding evidence.
TALIPED: Because they love to talk, but not to act. What’s on your mind?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: This, sir: Was the Proph-prof disinclined to give your brother-in-law the killer’s name, or didn’t he know it?
TALIPED: Beats me.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I don’t blame him, understand; he’s not a bad advisor. I wonder, though, if it might not be wiser in this case to get all the help we can.
TALIPED: A stunning inspiration. What’s your plan?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Let’s call in Gynander, the Proph-prof Emeritus. That old boy knows his stuff, you must admit—although you think he’s swishy.
TALIPED: Think, man! I know there’s something fishy about that guy. You’ve heard the standard tale—how he was male at first and then female, and then turned male again. That was his brag, at least. Myself, I think the guy’s a faggot. But never mind: we deans soon learn to work with every sort of crank and queer and quirk; if I cashiered for moral turpitude adulterers and faggots—those who’ve screwed their colleagues’ wives, or shacked up with each other, or humped their dog, their sister, or their mother—
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Mother? Blah!
TALIPED: —I’d lose four out of five of my best men. So what I say is, “Swive away, my friends! Be cocksmen, dykes, or fairies—but stay out of the pants of secretaries, and please don’t lay your students.”
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: That seems just.
TALIPED: Now, speaking of Gynander: I don’t trust the blind old fag as far as I could throw him, but I told my brother-in-law to go and fetch him anyhow, to please you birds. Here he comes now, right on cue.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: His words of prophecy are always good.
TALIPED: For a laugh.
A youngster now led onstage an old man with a stick, who except that his beard had a tint of henna looked even more like Max than did the Committee Chairman.
“There’s my Grand Tutor!” Dr. Sear exclaimed. “Give me Gynander, and you can keep your Enos Enoch.”
TALIPED: [TO GYNANDER]
Hello there, old blind Proph-prof with a staff! How’s by you? I guess you wonder why we took you out of mothballs, huh?
GYNANDER: [Looks around until he locates voice]
Oh, hi.
TALIPED: On second thought, you know without my telling you, unless it’s true that you’ve been selling us a bill of goods. At Founder’s Hall they speak of you as Doctor Know-It-All: how come you didn’t know we were in trouble and hustle yourself down here on the double? Ah well, forget it. Do your hocus-pocus, if you please, and tell us who the bloke is that we’re after.
GYNANDER: Goodness gracious me. It isn’t any fun at all to see the Answers when they’re always such bad news! How could I have forgotten that? Excuse me, Taliped, my dear; I hope you’ll let us go now. [TO BOY] Lead me home again, my pet.
TALIPED: Oh no you don’t! Hold on there, sonny boy! Now listen here, Gynander: don’t be coy with me. I see your racket: you allow as how you know some deep dark truth, then vow it’s much too terrible to tell. Your tracks are nicely covered, aren’t they?
GYNANDER: One who lacks eyes may see what sharp-eyed deans are blind to.
TALIPED: Is that a fact! By George, I’ve half a m
ind to haul you in for obstructing justice. That would fix you! If you weren’t blind as a bat I’d say you knocked off Dean Labdakides yourself!
GYNANDER: [Aside]
And he calls me blind! When he sees the flunking mess he’s in, he’ll see he’s blinder!
TALIPED: Proph-prof—ha! When that old bitch resigned her bloody post as College Entrance Riddler, it wasn’t you who’d found out how to diddle her, was it? No indeed! You had to wait till Taliped Decanus reached the gate, didn’t you? I had no crystal ball or magic charms like Doctor Know-It-All; brains were all I had, man! When she said: “Answer this question quickly, or you’re dead: What mother eats up all her children, hey?” I didn’t dance in circles; I didn’t say: “I know the answer, ma’am, but it’s outlandish, so I won’t tell it.” She’d have made a sandwich out of me if I’d pulled those old tricks! Intelligence was what it took to fix her wagon! I said, “Nothing to it, Grampus: the mom that eats her kids is Mother Campus—matter of fact, she’s having you for supper!”
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
“Hearing this, the fearsome beast threw up her paws and died as if a spear were in her heart,” et cetera. I’ll throw up my dinner if I have to hear that bragging tale again.
TALIPED: No clairvoyance, Gynander: just my brain, my passèd human brain—that’s what it took!
GYNANDER: Then use your passèd brain to find the crook, since you’re so good at riddles. Here’s a clue: Know yourself. Begin your search with you. You’ll see the man you’re after in a mirror; take your falseface off—you’ll see him clearer.
TALIPED: We see a flunking traitor; that’s what we see! A nasty, scheming, blind old AC/DC traitor to the College! My wife’s brother’s in cahoots with you, I’ll bet—and others too, no doubt. I see your pretty plot: you’ll pin the rap on me, and when you’ve got me banished from the place, my brother-in-law and you will be co-deans. I never saw such flunkèdness!
GYNANDER: Your brother-in-law’s a fool, but you’re a nut. When this play’s over you’ll regret you made that silly vow of yours. You tragic-hero types are bloody bores. Who are you, Taliped? Say who your dad was! Where were you born? Why’d you come to Cadmus? Why marry Agenora and no other—a woman old enough to be your mother? Labdakides himself could hardly stand her! You’re the blind one, Dean; not old Gynander.