by John Barth
TALIPED: Be glad you’re old; I’d have your derrière on a platter if you weren’t old, you fairy! Because I haven’t bragged about my past, sir, you make me out to be some nameless bastard, and tell me it’s unnatural to enjoy a woman who is—well, mature …
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Oh boy,
that gal’s mature, all right! Poor Agenora—she’d be senile if she were maturer!
TALIPED: [TO GYNANDER]
There seems to be no end to your affronts and dark insinuations!
GYNANDER: Let me once again declare, more clearly than before, the ugly answer to our problems: You’re the wretch you want. You’ll see, when Scene Four’s
done, that you’re your daughter’s brother, your own stepson and foster-father, uncle to your cousin, your brother-in-law’s nephew, and (as if that wasn’t enough) a parricide—and matriphile! Bye-bye now, Taliped. You call me vile, but your two crimes will have us all upchucking: father-murdering and mother—
TALIPED: Ducking
out won’t save you! You’ll hear from me!
GYNANDER: You killed your daddy.
TALIPED: No!
GYNANDER: You shagged your mommy.
With these last dreadful words the old man withdrew, led by the youngster. The Committee Chairman restrained Taliped from assaulting him, and presently the Dean retired, much agitated, into the Deanery, pausing on the doorsill to shake his fist at the crabbed back of the Proph-prof Emeritus. The Chairman then gathered the committee around him to sing an ode on this appalling new development. This time they danced in pairs and clapped their hands three times sharply at the end of the longer lines.
Things have gone from bad to worse, [STROPHE 1
And in singsong doggerel verse
We will sing a song of things that make us stagger:
First the Founder’s Hall Proph-prof,
Then Gynander sounded off,
And it seems as though the Dean’s a mother-shagger.
Though he’s often made us sore, [ANTISTROPHE 1
No one’s called him that before;
So we trust Gynander’s just a little batty.
It’s a first-class tragic trauma
To be told you’ve humped your momma,
And to further hear you’ve murthered dear old Daddy.
But Dean Taliped’s no dummy; [STROPHE 2
Agenora’s not his mummy
(Even if she’s over fifty, which she sure is).
Though the old dean came a cropper,
He could not have been the poppa
Of a lad who came to Cadmus as a tourist.
So we won’t believe the slander [ANTISTROPHE 2
That our old Proph-prof, Gynander,
Made us ill with—not until it’s verified.
Since the Dean pays us our wages,
We declare the charge outrageous
And quite false. The Dean’s our boss. Gynander lied.
Dean Taliped’s brother-in-law now strode onstage and commenced the second episode by addressing the Committee Chairman:
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Just now I met that sly old pederast Gynander, with his boyfriend, and I asked him how his interview with Taliped had gone. If half of what the bugger said is true, then cross my heart and hope to flunk if I don’t break the neck of that young skunk my sister had the lack of sense to marry. Called me a traitor, did he? I declare!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: He did say something of the sort, I’m sure.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I’ll slug him!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: What, and lose your sinecure? I’ll bet you will.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: A whipping-boy—that’s what he’s looking for! This guff about a plot against him is a way to pass the buck for his bad judgment.
[Enter TALIPED, from Deanery]
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Well, I wish you luck; you’re going to need it.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Hah! I’ve half a mind to punch his nose!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: He’s standing right behind you.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: He wha– Oh, hi there, Taliped, old buddy! Ha ha! I was just saying how that cruddy Proph-prof ought to be hauled in for selling baloney without a license. I was telling my old friend here that. Ha ha! Ha! Ha.
TALIPED: He said I murdered Pa and mounted Ma.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Gyander said that? Wait till I see him!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
Don’t sock the Dean too hard.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: TALIPED: [TO TALIPED]
I ought to trim the rascal’s ears back for him! And I ought to break your scheming neck for you! You thought I didn’t see what you were up to? Haw! Gynander and my own dear brother-in-law! Who would’ve thought you had the guts?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: He doesn’t,
Taliped, believe me.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: [TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
Thanks.
TALIPED: It wasn’t him who hatched the plot?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It wasn’t he.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: No, sir, it wasn’t me.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I.
TALIPED: Yes sirree, I think it was. Why did Gynander wait nine years to speak? When I came through the gate of Cadmus that first time, he could have made his crazy speech. The truth is, he was paid to tell those lies today.
[TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
You want to be the dean, right?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Wrong. It wasn’t me.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It wasn’t I.
TALIPED: [TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
Who said it was?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Excuse me.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: [TO TALIPED]
Consider this, sir, and you won’t accuse me: Why would I want your job, when my own is so much better? You don’t hear me groan, like you, about long hours and great mobs of nincompoops to deal with.
TALIPED: No.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: My job’s an easy job.
TALIPED: The easiest.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: It pays me well enough.
TALIPED: Too well.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I’d be crazy to want the deanship. You don’t get the credit when things go well; the teachers do.
TALIPED: You said it.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: And yet when things go wrong you take the blame.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Not if he can help it.
TALIPED: All the same, I say you’re out to get me, and since I’m the dean, what I say goes.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Now there’s a prime example of his keen intelligence!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: You’re not a dean, sir, when you don’t talk sense.
TALIPED: For Cadmus’ sake!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: This joint’s my alma mater; it isn’t yours.
TALIPED: Oh boy, you’re in hot water now! [Enter AGENORA, from Deanery.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Hey, look: here comes old Agenora. [Aside]
That woman can’t resist a quarrel or a man. Her tongue is second to none for meanness, and she’ll sleep with anything that has a—[TO AGENORA]
Deaness, dear! How nice you look today! So young!
AGENORA: And you’re so gallant. Pity you’re not well hung.
[TO TALIPED]
What’s going on here, lover? Gee, you’re cute when something makes you angry.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: The dispute you overheard was Taliped accusing me of treason!
AGENORA: That’s the most amusing poppycock I’ve heard all day.
TALIPED: It’s true.
AGENORA: You’re handsome, strong, and sexy, doll, but you don’t have as much upstairs as down below. Him a traitor! Sweetums, don’t you know he couldn’t hurt a flea? He’s such a lily!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Thanks a lot, Sis.
AGENORA: Now, then: quit this silly squabbling, before Momma spanks you both. My brother signed the Cadmus loyalty oath; that proves he’s loyal, doesn’t it? Of course.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
She reasons like
the Dean himself. [TO TALIPED]
There’s force in what she says, sir.
AGENORA: Who asked you?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Beg pardon, beautiful. [Aside] I couldn’t get a hard on with such a sharp-tongued, nymphomanic sow even to gain a deanship—which is how young Taliped got where he is today.
AGENORA: “Peace in the Deanery,” I always say. Let’s have one now, all right? It’s been a while. Forget this treason nonsense, love, and I’ll show you what the old dean used to run for.
TALIPED: Close your mouth once! Don’t you see I’m done for if he’s not guilty? It’s a doggone sticky spot I’m in! This loudmouth Chairman tricked me into promising I’d sack whoever killed Labdakides, and then your clever brother paid Gynander to pretend that I’m the guilty one. Should I suspend myself? It’s me or your flunking brother!
AGENORA: My little man’s upset! Come here to Mother …
TALIPED: For Founder’s sake, don’t talk like that! Not here in public, anyhow.
AGENORA: All right, my dear; you always used to like it, though, when I’d talk baby-talk to you, and we’d play hide-and-seek at night upstairs, all mother-naked—
TALIPED: There you go again, for pity’s sake! It isn’t like it used to be!
AGENORA: It sure isn’t! You don’t love me any morel
TALIPED: Agenora, dear—
AGENORA: You think because you’re young and I’m beginning menopause it’s quite all right to ditch me now and take a crack at some young co-ed on the make! You men—that’s all you think of!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Look who’s talking.
TALIPED: Now now, my dear; I’d never dream of walking out on you, as you know very well.
AGENORA: Say you love me.
TALIPED: Of course I do.
AGENORA: No, tell me right.
TALIPED: But, sweetheart …
AGENORA: Now!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
It always pays to hear these things. I’ll bet I get a raise next month, to keep me quiet.
AGENORA: Say it!
TALIPED: Oh,
all right. [Whispers] I wuv—
AGENORA: No, don’t just whisper!
TALIPED: So
I’ll shout: I WUV OO! [TO COMMITTEE]
Don’t you bastards smile!
AGENORA: Again.
TALIPED: I WUV OO VEWWY MUCH!
[TO BROTHER-IN-LAW]
And I’ll break your grinning head if you don’t get it out of here!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Oo mean I’m fwee?
TALIPED: I’ll bet I tear you limb from limb, you flunking boozer!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Hah. You always were a lousy loser. [Exits
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: So what do we do now, Dean Taliped?
TALIPED: Don’t ask me. I should’ve stayed in bed this morning.
AGENORA: That’s my boy! Come on, let’s run!
TALIPED: What about Gynander? It’s no fun to be accused of parricide—and worse!
AGENORA: Forget that old hermaphrodite. The curse of every campus is its local prophet. Tell him he should take his charge and stuff it.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Mercy, how unorthodox a view!
AGENORA: All right, so it’s unorthodox. So sue me. Look, I’ll prove to you once and for all what liars proph-profs are: one came to call on me and my first husband years ago, just after we were married, and you know what he told Labdakides would be his fortune?
TALIPED: What?
AGENORA: He said I’d better get an abortion quick, or else my husband would be killed by his own son.
TALIPED: And was that curse fulfilled?
AGENORA: Of course not, silly! Naturally I declared the proph-prof was a liar; but he scared Labdakides so bad that when our kid was born—a boy—we secretly got rid of him the way unmarried co-eds do it.
TALIPED: And how was that, I wonder?
AGENORA: Nothing to it: we stuck a peg or something in his feet and dumped him in the woods for crows to eat.
“That’s a terrible thing to do!” I cried aloud. “How could anybody do a thing like that?” Until people shushed and chuckled all around me, I was as indignant as I’d been at Troll’s misconduct years before. Apparently, however, Agenora herself had not approved of this cruel expedient, for she wiped the hollow eyes of her mask with the hem of her robe and said:
AGENORA: The thought of it still makes me want to throw up. Labdakides was sure the kid would grow up and do him in; for my part, I was willing to take a chance on that instead of killing our only son. My husband had his way, but things weren’t right between us from that day until the day I heard that he’d died. Now listen, and you’ll see the proph-prof lied: Our poor boy never had a chance to clobber Labdakides; it was some highway robber—a gang, I mean—that knocked him off near Isthmus while he was out weekending with his mistress. That intersection called the Three-Tined Fork is where they ambushed him and pulled his cork, and slit his little girlfriend’s throat from ear to ear.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: His girlfriend?
AGENORA: What, are you still here? Yes, I mean that brazen little slut, his secretary. Was I glad they cut her up!
TALIPED: Excuse me, dear, but were there two or four roads at that intersection you just mentioned?
AGENORA: Are you deaf or something, baby?
Three-Tined Fork is what I said.
TALIPED: [Aside]
Then maybe old Gynander’s not entirely blind! Good grief!
AGENORA: What is it, doll? What’s on your mind?
TALIPED: Tell me again: it was a robber gang?
AGENORA: That’s what the valet said who came and flang himself before me. Four or five, he swore, attacked my husband and that little whore. They were so busy murdering and raping, they didn’t notice that he was escaping. He said it was a gang, and begged a transfer to the sheep-barns.
TALIPED: I must hear that answer from the man himself. I wish you’d ask your maid to fetch him.
AGENORA: I put him out to pasture years ago; but he can always leave.
TALIPED: Send for him, then. My dear, you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you …
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Here we go: another monster-story.
TALIPED: Sure, I know I look as perfect as you think I am: handsome, brave, and smart—
AGENORA: Sexy, lamb,
not smart.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Not modest, either.
TALIPED: I’m so swell, you probably won’t believe me when I tell you that I once did something bad …
AGENORA: I’ll try.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Me too.
TALIPED: Are you still here?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Where else?
TALIPED: Then I will tell you both of the one indiscretion in an otherwise faultless life. This whole confession is off the record, naturally.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Oh, sure.
TALIPED: I know you’ve often asked yourselves before: “Where did our clever, handsome dean come from?”
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I stay awake nights wondering that
TALIPED: “How come he came here?” you have doubtless asked each other. “Who was his daddy, and who was his mother?” Well, it’s this way: Once upon a time—
AGENORA: Spare us the details, hon.
TALIPED: All right. I’m from Isthmus College, where the dean’s my dad. I was his fair-haired boy—you see I had it made there. I would be their dean today, except I heard a drunk old poet say at someone’s cocktail party that I wasn’t my dad’s son at all! Now, such talk doesn’t bother me, as a rule; bad-tempered fellows call you a bastard just because they’re jealous. This poet, though, had no ax to grind, and so I called our proph-prof in to find out what he’d say about it. (Dad refused even to discuss it; I was used to silence from him and from Mom—his wife—whenever I brought up the Facts of Life. I had to learn the truth myself.)
AGENORA: I see.
[TO
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
That’s why he was so green when he met me. I taught him what a young man needs to know.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: You taught us all, madam, even though we weren’t young and didn’t need a tutor.
AGENORA: You needed blood transfusions.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Or someone cuter, who wouldn’t’ve had to pull her husband’s rank to get us into bed.
AGENORA: Screw you.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: No thank you.
TALIPED: Stop mumbling, please, and listen.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: If we must.
TALIPED: As I was saying …
AGENORA: [TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
I’ll fix you, buddy; just you wait.
TALIPED: Some things the proph-prof said weren’t clear—
you know how those chaps talk—he didn’t hear my question, or chose not to answer it. Instead, he told me something that, well, hit me like a load of bricks. You’ll never guess …
AGENORA: He didn’t say you’d kill your father?
TALIPED: Yes.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: And swive your mother in the prone position?
TALIPED: That’s right! How did you guess?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Just intuition. I swear, those proph-profs have a one-track mind.
AGENORA: A dirty track at that.
TALIPED: I’m inclined to think so too.
AGENORA: What happened next?
TALIPED: I quit my assistant-deanship. Daddy had a fit.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Naturally.
TALIPED: I left the College on sabbatical, hoping I’d avoid what that fanatical proph-prof laid on me. I’m still on leave, and never shall return.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It makes me heave—
TALIPED: A sigh, to think I left them in the lurch?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: —my lunch, to think of all the great research I could’ve managed on a nine-year furlough.
TALIPED: I would have done some, too, except there were no libraries where I traveled.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I’ll bet not.
TALIPED: In any case, one day I reached that spot they call the Three-Tined Fork and tried to hitch a ride to Cadmus with some sonofabitch who passed by with his lackeys and who turned up his old nose at me. Boy, was I burned up! He wasn’t headed for Cadmus, so he shouted; he told some drunken tale—no doubt about it, he was plastered—of a beast someplace behind them, with a pretty woman’s face and a lion’s body. Naturally I thought the guy was putting me on, and when I caught a glimpse of what was sitting on his knees, I knew the old man was afraid I’d please her more than he could. “You’re a liar,” I said. He had the gall to punch me in the head just because I called him that and pinched his girl’s backside. Well, of course that clinched it. First I cut the old man’s throat and dumped him out, to teach him manners. Then I humped his girlfriend as he bled to death, for sport. My policy, in cases of this sort, is first to stab ’em in the belly-button and then cut other things. She was a glutton for punishment, this kid—all kinds of stamina. I spent so much time butchering and banging her, the others almost got away. I found three, as I recall, hiding around and underneath the wagon, and of course dismembered them.