Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  now, girls.

  KIDS: Okay.

  COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Bye-bye.

  TALIPED: No, wait!

  BROTHER-IN-LAW: You’ve bossed

  us long enough, pal; I’m in charge here now. You weren’t too good at deaning anyhow.

  COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]

  A good administrator’s hard to find.

  TALIPED: [Aside]

  I might take up proph-proffing, now I’m blind.

  “That’s my Grand Tutor!” Dr. Sear whispered proudly. “Poor blind Taliped and his fatal ID-card, stripped of innocence! Committed and condemned to knowledge! That’s the only Graduation offered on West Campus, George—and, my dear boy, we are Westerners!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” Stirred by the pitiful sight of Dean Taliped being led from the orchestra, and wondering too what was keeping Max, I but half-heard what he’d said.

  “We have to plumb the depths of experience,” he went on very seriously. “If there’s such a thing as Graduation, it’s not for the innocent; we’ve got to rid ourselves of every trace of innocence!”

  “Why is that, sir?” The stage was cleared now except for the Chairman, whose committee was forming a semicircle behind him, facing the audience.

  “We all flunked with the first two students in the Botanical Garden, George; we’re committed to Knowledge of the Campus, and if there’s any hope for us at all, it’s in perfecting that knowledge. Ye would be like Founders, the Old Syllabus says, with knowledge of Truth and Falsehood. Very well, then we’ve got to be like Founders, even if the things we learn destroy us …”

  I was not uninterested in this line of reasoning, especially since it was expounded with such uncommon intensity by the usually blasé doctor—whose eyes, however, as he spoke, flashed curiously more like Maurice Stoker’s than like any founder’s eyes. But now the Committee Chairman chanted the epilogue directly at us, and because of the extraordinary events that followed upon it, I wasn’t able to draw my companion out further on his theory of Graduation.

  “So take a look at Taliped Decanus,” invited the Chairman:

  The hot-shot Answer-man who nearly ran us on the rocks. We envied Taliped the old dean’s chair and Agenora’s bed; he solved the monstrous Riddle, cracked the Quiz, and found out whom he’d humped and who he is. Look where his Answers got him, and rejoice that you don’t know who you are, girls and boys! Don’t be too optimistic, vain, or proud; every silver lining has a cloud. Let no man be called passèd from this day, until he painlessly has passed away.

  He bowed; then as he turned to his committee our applause became a rush of dismay, for a great white figure fluttered out of the black sky onto the stage. Whether on wires or by some other means, one could not tell; two large somethings waved from his shoulders as he descended, and disappeared as if tucked in when he lit in the orchestra. Though like the others he was gowned in white, his costume had a different cut: long-skirted in the style of a ceremonial vestment, but tight-cuffed, high-necked, and buttonless on the order of a doctor’s tunic. The chorus of committee-members seemed as surprised as we by his appearance; they gave way, some in plain alarm, and the actors who had played the roles of Taliped and Agenora thrust their heads out from the Deanery to see what was causing the commotion.

  “There’s no machina in the script!” Dr. Sear exclaimed.

  “Failed!” the white figure declared, in an oddly clicking way. Holding a mask to his face like one of the principles in the play, he pointed accusingly at Taliped. “Taliped Decanus and his sort are flunked forever! Tragedy’s out; mystery’s in!” He removed the mask and tossed it behind him, revealing a round, black-mustachioed countenance.

  “For pity’s sake,” Dr. Sear exclaimed. “It’s Harold Bray.”

  “I’m your Grand Tutor!” the man on the stage said loudly. At once there was an uproar in the audience, partly mirthful, over which he shouted, “I’ll show all of you who believe me the way to Commencement Gate! I’m the way myself, believe me!”

  “He is not!” I protested to my companions. “I am!”

  “His name’s Harold Bray,” Dr. Sear explained, evidently amused and impressed. “Minor poet, half dozen other things. Used to do some kind of therapy-work in the Clinic, too. What do you suppose he’s up to?”

  Bray went on: “I’m the Tutor WESCAC announced. If anyone doubts it, I invite him to talk things over personally with me in my office. I’ve come to pass you flunkers all, and to prove I’m the one who can do it, I’ll walk into WESCAC’s Belly and come out unEATen. See if I don’t! See for yourselves!”

  “Remarkable chap, actually,” Dr. Sear beamed—every bit as interested in Harold Bray as he had been in me. “Came to New Tammany a few years ago, goodness knows where from. Fancy him the Grand Tutor!”

  “He can’t go into WESCAC’s Belly,” I insisted. “I’m the only one who can do that!” I looked back for Max.

  Now Bray stepped forth from the orchestra into the aisle of the Amphitheater, raising his arms to left and to right.

  “Come on!” he clicked. “All you folks who need Commencing, come on to me!”

  There was near-pandemonium in the audience, everyone shouting to his neighbor and crowding this way and that. Those who wished only to leave the theater pressed against those—a growing number—who thronged already down towards the man in white: some on their knees, some carrying children in their arms, who it seemed to me were up past their bedtimes. Greene was on his feet next to the aisle up which the pretender came; Dr. Sear leaned back and surveyed the spectacle with a little smile, lacing his fingers about one knee.

  “Why is Max taking so long?” I asked him. He shrugged his eyebrows and marveled skeptically at Bray’s announced intention of entering WESCAC’s Belly.

  “I’m going up and try to find Max,” I announced. “Croaker will be all right with my stick to chew on.”

  But the aisle as Bray drew nearer was choked with the curious and troubled, who far outnumbered the mockers. “Can you cure cancer of the cervix?” I heard someone shout.

  “I know the way!” Bray called back. His face was ruddy; his eyes were dark and glintish.

  “How’d you ever fly down like that?” asked another.

  “I have the Answers!” Bray replied.

  I forced my way into the aisle behind Peter Greene, who I thought had heard my intention and was clearing a path for me. But he turned—Bray was no more than ten steps below us now—and called down to him between cupped hands: “S’pose a fellow’s lost one eyeball? Ain’t nothing you can do ’bout that! Is there?”

  “Come along and see!” the man called back.

  Max had to be found at once. I left Peter Greene to his delusions and struggled through the crowd to the exit. The first uniformed attendant I met—a slack-mouthed pocky chap my age—paid no attention to my question; his eyes were fixed on the self-styled Grand Tutor, and his expression was transfigured. I inquired of several people near the box-office (to which more crowds were swarming, the news apparently having spread) whether they’d seen a small white-bearded old man in a mohair wrapper, but got nothing for my troubles except frowns and mocking replies—until a stout campus policeman, one of a number endeavoring to keep the crush from getting out of hand, shouted over his shoulder: “Spielman? You his lawyer or something?”

  I declared that Dr. Spielman was my advisor.

  “Don’t take his advice!” the policeman laughed. “He’s yonder in the pokey, under arrest!”

  He could not be bothered with explanation. Stunned, I made my way across the street to an office labeled CAMPUS PATROL—GREAT MALL SUB-STATION, and learned from a uniformed reception-clerk with yellow hair and a large red face that Max was in Main Detention, charged with the shooting of Herman Hermann.

  “That isn’t so! Max doesn’t believe in hurting people! It’s some trick of Maurice Stoker’s!”

  Unimpressed by my opinions, the clerk informed me that I might be permitted to speak to the prisoner after his ar
raignment, but not before. Then he looked at my wrapper suspiciously.

  “You don’t happen to go by the name of Goat-Boy? George Goat-Boy?”

  I confessed that I was that same person, and though I couldn’t satisfy his request for an ID-card to prove it, he finally either accepted my word or decided he didn’t care.

  “Takes all kinds to make a campus,” he grunted. “Prisoner left a message for one George Goat-Boy.” He declared as if reading from a paper: “No need for me. Announcement settles everything. Don’t hesitate at Scrapegoat Grate.” As he spoke, a number of telephones on his desk began ringing, and the roar of the crowd outside increased. He picked up one telephone receiver and leaned to see around me through the window. “Run along now, Mac. We got our hands full, this Grand Tutor business. Yes, sir,” he said into the telephone, and cleared the yellow hair from his brow with his other hand.

  I couldn’t imagine what to think or do. From the steps of the station-house, heart draining, I looked out over the host that now, all mirth gone, bore white-gowned Bray upon their shoulders, up the boulevard, cheering, chanting.

  “Hooray for Bray!”

  “Bray’s the Way!”

  His arms were lifted over them; he turned triumphantly from side to side; even at that distance, when he faced in my direction, I saw the striking glitter in his bush-browed eyes, like a goat’s or cat’s eyes in the dark, most remarkable. And across the translux in the square the message flashed, over and over: Never fear: Commencement’s near! All the way with Bray! It soon became the mob-chant. Never fear: Commencement’s here! All the way with Bray!

  There were no such advertisements for myself.

  In a short while the area before Main Gate was clear, everyone having gone with the celebrators. The Amphitheater hoardings and ticket-office were dark, the entrance-gates left open and abandoned. Of our borrowed motorcycle there was no sign. I went over, thinking to tell Dr. Sear about Max’s misfortune and ask what might be done to right the error of his arrest. Moreover I had no idea where I was to sleep, or how procure tomorrow’s food—such an easy matter at home, and so difficult here where nothing grew!—or what I was to do with myself once past Scrapegoat Grate, or how to deal with the arrant pretender Harold Bray. To ruminate in the meadows of leading studentdom to Commencement Gate was one thing; to stand in the concrete brilliant heart of a mighty college, potent and populous beyond imagining, and dwarfed by its towers to find one’s own way, not to mention others’, was quite something else. Never had I more need of my advisor!

  At the rim of the great dark bowl I paused. Vast and empty, strewn with discarded programs that palely caught the moon, the theater gathered like a giant ear echoes of distant jubilation. Dr. Sear was gone; there was no sign of Greene either, who I had half hoped might lodge me somewhere. No one was about but Croaker, his black outline discernible as an occlusion of white trash where we had sat through the tragedy. I went down. He was picking popcorn kernels from the stones with one hand, scratching at his groin with the other, and croaked to see me.

  “Don’t you believe in Bray?” I asked him, and got no answer. I picked up my stick, and, perhaps misunderstanding me, Croaker hoist me to his shoulders. Very well, I had no reason to protest, or on the other hand any direction to give him. I rested my arms and chin on his black bald skull and worried about Max, permitting Croaker to range at whim about the aisles and tiers. The reasonablest explanation I could come up with was that my advisor and keeper might indeed have seen the murder occur, or come upon the Bonifacist’s corpse in the woods, and said nothing about it—that would account for his unusual behavior during the day. Judging from remarks of Stoker’s and the general character of his staff, it would not be surprising to learn that the infamous Hermann had been employed at the Powerhouse under some alias, perhaps even with Stoker’s knowledge and under his protection. Max might have recognized him, and Stoker seized upon some pretext for having the man killed before his identity came to light and blaming Max for the crime. It would not be easy to save him, I imagined, what with Stoker chief administrator of Main Detention. Perhaps, if things went well next morning, one could approach Chancellor Rexford with the truth … But rumor had it he and Stoker were half-brothers!

  As I considered how a Grand Tutor ought to manage the situation—what Bray, to my shame be it said, might for instance have done in my position—Croaker evidently achieved his fill of popcorn-leavings or was taken by some dim new urge, for he gave over his ransack and trotted up out of the bowl; turned left and left again and loped away, Founder knew where, through emptied streets, I jogging listless pick-a-back.

  5.

  We wended up an alley and through a wall beyond which stretched a lawn of some dimension. On its farther side, moonlit, a squat domed tower was, with slits and slots but no proper windows; Croaker galloped to it, grunting. A plank door in its base flew open without our having touched it; we went in and up a spiral of stone stairs as if Croaker knew what he was about, and emerged into a bright chamber under the dome, of which my first impression was that it was full of apparatus as had been the Powerhouse Control Room. Lights winked on panels; things hummed. But more arresting than the furniture was the occupant of the room, before whom Croaker squatted now. Hairless he was and naked, with the whitest skin I’d seen; his legs were useless-looking sticks that dangled from the high stool he perched on; shrunk too were his hams (though his hips were wide) and his bald gonads scarcely there at all. His paunch however was considerable, even bloat, and rounded up to a smaller chest and the sloped white shoulders from which plumpish arms depended. Most remarkable was his head: an outsized hairless browless ball that dandled forward and to one side as if too weighty for the neck. Thick round eyeglasses he wore on it, whose rimless lenses magnified his thumbnail-colored eyes. He had no teeth.

  “So,” he said, Z-ing the sibilant as Max did. But his voice was a furry pipe. Croaker at once set to whining.

  “He wants you off so he gets his work done,” the strange man said, with a faint smile. I dismounted and leaned on my stick, confounded. At once Croaker hurried to a metal locker nearby, took a white robe out, and draped it about the man’s shoulders; our host bared his gums, and Croaker hurried to another room, returning presently with a set of false dentures in his hand. Accepting and inserting them, the man sighed and said, more clearly: “It was good not to have the brute around, but I do need him.” He addressed Croaker then in a flurry of some unfamiliar speech, which the black man evidently understood, for he sprang to a cupboard and set about some task.

  “You’re the famous Goat-Boy, nein?” He tapped a long metal cylinder beside him, thrust into a slit in the wall. “I saw you through the night-glass while I was adjusting the main telescopes. There’s an annular solar eclipse tomorrow. I’m Eblis Eierkopf.” He smiled at my alarm and fluttered a hand. “Don’t believe all Herr Spielman tells you.” Here he managed an actual chuckle. “That dumbhead, shooting Herman Hermann! He thinks with his ventricles!” He had, he explained, heard the news bulletins about Max’s arrest and Harold Bray’s appearance in the Amphitheater, as earlier he’d heard reports from the Powerhouse of Croaker’s having been subdued by the Ag-Hill Goat-Boy, et cetera. I was still too disconcerted by his identity and appearance to make a proper reply. This was the man responsible for the Cum Laude Project, and Miss Virginia R. Hector’s undoing? This was Max’s arch-enemy? Anastasia’s father?

  “Sit down,” he invited. There was another stool near the eyepiece of a huge telescope aimed through a vertical opening in the dome. “Croaker brings beer as soon as my pablum’s ready.”

  This my former ally did, clearly now emancipated from my direction; not only beer he brought me—excellent stuff, in a pewter-topped stein—but boiled chicken-eggs, which he sliced with a clever wire gadget.

  “Not those!” Dr. Eierkopf wailed when he caught sight of him. “They’re for research!”

  But it was too late, the eggs were sliced; whatever scientific work they’d been meant fo
r would have to be begun afresh. Croaker served them round and spoon-fed Dr. Eierkopf his gruel—insisting, with grunts and throaty babble, that he eat every bit of it.

  “So,” Dr. Eierkopf sighed again. “When he ran off I could think undistracted, just as your friend Stoker promised, but I starved to death. Now I eat and don’t get my work done, and he spoils my research. Drink up! Don’t be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I said. “I—believe I should despise you, sir.”

  This news he merely nodded at. “Of course you should, after all Spielman told you! The old man is plenty mixed up.”

  Sternly I declared that my keeper and advisor was the passèdest man on campus as far as I was concerned—

  “As far as you know, you mean.”

  As far as I knew, then; that he most certainly had been cashiered unjustly, thanks in part to the bad offices of Eblis Eierkopf; that nothing could be more false than the present charge against him, inasmuch as all his life he’d affirmed the principle of non-violence—whereas his rival had been, if not actively a Bonifacist himself, at least a leading enemy scientist during Campus Riot II, who had contemplated without protest the combustion of numberless Moishian civilians in the furnaces of Siegfrieder College, and after the Riot had agreed without qualm to do EAT-research for New Tammany. And so forth. My harangue lasted some while, fueled by an actual twinkle in Dr. Eierkopf’s eyes. Croaker meanwhile was peering through the smaller telescope, the one identified as a “night-glass”; he moved it slightly, gave a croak, and offered the eyepiece to his master, who begged me to excuse him for a moment.

  “Ja, that’s nice,” he remarked a second later, and I was not too indignant to be astonished at Croaker’s fondling the man’s tiny organs while he peered. “Want to look?” he invited me. “Young ladies’ dormitory across the way. But you’re too agitated. No matter.” He pushed Croaker’s hand away. “Ach, that’s enough. He is droll, don’t you think?” he asked me. “Flunking nuisance, all the same. Now, Goat-Boy, let’s see where to start on these notions of yours and Spielman’s. I really am obliged to you for bringing Croaker home.” He laughed aloud, as if struck by an extraordinarily amusing thought. “Do you know, your distinguished keeper went so far once as to accuse me of making his girlfriend pregnant. Imagine!”