Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  I managed to catch just the words “… all arbitrary” behind me, but that was enough. I demanded of The Living Sakhyan (“Rhetorically, man,” they said, “rhetorically!”): “Could it mean that the boundary between East and West Campuses is arbitrary and artificial, and ought to be denied? Should we abolish the Power Line?”

  They applauded this suggestion as vigorously as limpness permitted. I was emboldened to ask whether they understood that had The Living Sakhyan answered either yes or no, He’d have affirmed the Boundary’s reality, and thus answered falsely. Several nodded, and were at once rebuked by their cleverer classmates, who snapped, “Don’t answer!” I had just presence enough of mind to smile and say no more.

  In like manner I reviewed the whole of my Assignment with T. L. Sakhyan’s aid. Overcome Your Infirmity, we decided, must mean affirm my limp and goatliness—a happy imperative! See Through Your Ladyship was more difficult, since the students knew nothing of my connection with Anastasia; but their whispers of “revisionist psychology” and “normal bisexuality,” though meaningless to me, put me in mind of Dr. Sear and his fluoroscopic diversions. Should I literally make My Ladyship transparent? In any case, when I said, “I’ll see Dr. Sear about that one,” they laughed knowingly. In theory, the fifth task was also problematical: Re-place, because of its curious hyphen, seemed still to me to mean “Return the Founder’s Scroll to its place” and not, as the students suggested, “Replace it with something better”—though “it’s place” clearly meant its source rather than its proper location in the Library stacks. However, by interpreting source to mean, not the sandy Moishian cave where the Scroll was found, but the mind and body of studentdom whence its teachings sprang, I was able to satisfy both the students and myself: recalling to them the East-Campus table-grace about “eating Truth,” I asked The Living Sakhyan whether I should make a meal of the Founder’s words!

  Someone whispered, “ ‘… not bread alone’!” Another, “To make way for the new!” And a third asked, “Eat instead of EAT; is that it?” I did not reply.

  The sixth and seventh tasks, on the other hand, were clear: to Pass the Finals could only mean to by-pass WESCAC; perhaps not to destroy it, as the students urged (who regarded it as the emblem of much that they objected to in the University), but certainly to frustrate or circumvent it by way of denying its authority. This established, the final task, like the first, was already accomplished: I myself was my Examiner; I had no proper father, nor was there anyone save myself to whom my ID-card need be presented. I read the seventh task aloud and asked The Living Sakhyan: “What signatures do I need on my card? And who are the ‘proper authorities’?” His silence was my Answer.

  I bid goodbye to the students then, who thanked me for Tutoring them and hoped I wouldn’t judge their group by its non-non-violent members; they’d needed the time of day from the “Old Man of the Mall” in order to schedule a protest march to Main Detention in behalf of Max and me.

  “That’s not what I was protesting,” said one of them. “I was protesting Saturday-morning classes and the Open Book rules.”

  Some applauded his deviation and maintained that both protests could be served by a general demonstration in the name of Carte-blanchisme. Others protested this indiscrimination, but most certainly didn’t want to be thought to favor the opposite; still others contended that repudiating such distinctions was the first principle of Beism (as well as the last, since All was One). And so I left them, some protesting, some protesting the protest, and a few protesting that to protest protest was either to affirm Carte-blanchisme and hence (by Beistic paradox) to deny it, or to deny it and hence affirm it—which was perhaps to say, deny it …

  Stoker slouched beside Ira Hector on the bench. Ignoring the old man’s scolding, he grinned contemptuously as I approached.

  “You’re supposed to protect the right of private information!” Ira berated him. “What do I pay taxes for?”

  “You never paid taxes in your life,” Stoker said, not bothering to look at him. “Did you think they’d thank you for cutting off their scholarships?”

  Drawing his head into the collar of his topcoat, Ira retorted that he didn’t give a fact for their opinion of him, but he did have more right to be protected from robbery than anyone else in New Tammany College; precisely because he had withdrawn all support from his former tax write-offs, the Philophilosophical Fund and the Unwed Co-ed’s Hospital, he now paid the highest taxes on campus. In fact, he declared (glaring at me with his shellèd eyes) the Administration was bleeding the golden goose to death, and thus cooking its own; he was on the verge of intellectual bankruptcy, thanks to my bad advice, and the daily robberies and copyright infringements perpetrated on him would soon put him over the edge if the campus patrol refused him the help he’d bought and paid for—with his ward Anastasia as well as with his ruinous taxes.

  “Buy your own bodyguard,” Stoker said. “You can afford it.”

  “Why didn’t you help me, Goat-Boy?” he demanded.

  “Help yourself,” I answered. “That’s what you were Certified for doing.”

  He thrust a bony fist at me from his coatsleeve and accused me of having given him false advice nine months previously. I reminded him that, as he hadn’t paid the Tutor, he shouldn’t complain of the Tutoring.

  “But my advice to you might have been good, after all,” I added with a smile. “I told you that wealth was flunking and that the passèd thing to do was to flunk yourself to help others pass—”

  “Don’t believe him,” Stoker said behind his hand. “He told me the same thing.”

  “I don’t believe him,” Ira snapped. “You should’ve heard the claptrap he was retailing! But I don’t believe you, either! I’m my own man, sir!”

  “What I meant,” I put in, “was that selfishness was flunking, but that to keep your wealth from others would actually be unselfish …”

  “Rot!”

  “So it turns out,” I agreed. “Now I think you ought to be selfish, because Failure is Passage.”

  Ira thrust out his neck and blinked his lashless lids. “You talk like those fool Beists.”

  “Exactly. The question is, which is selfish: the miser or the philanthropist? Take me to the Light House, Stoker.”

  “Flunk you,” Stoker cursed amiably. But when I thanked him for doing just that, he sneered off towards the motorcycle.

  “Well, which is it?” Ira demanded. “Not that I’d believe you.”

  “Let go my sleeve, please,” I said. “I don’t Grand-Tutor for my health.”

  “You can’t Tutor at all!” he reminded me angrily. “You’re not the Grand Tutor!”

  We struck up a bargain then, to exchange bad advice for the wrong time of day.

  “Be greedy,” I counseled him. “Give all you have to the P.P.F. and the New Tammany Lying-In! Then you’ll have nothing, and pass at other people’s expense. That’s the flunking thing to do, you see, and Failure is Passage. When those Beist-fellows come around, don’t just give them the time of day; give them all they want. Give them the shirt off your back.”

  Ira considered my shadow and squinted at me cunningly. “It’s exactly eight o’clock.”

  However, as I mounted the motorcycle and Stoker throttled its engine, he cackled from the depths of his coat-collar: “I can turn your bad advice inside out, Goat-Boy, but you can’t do that with the time of day! I got the best of you again!”

  But I smiled—and not merely to worry him, as I’d done with Stoker. For the fact was, I hadn’t the slightest idea whether reversing my advice would flunk and therefore pass him, or vice-versa, and whether in either case he’d be passed or failed. Whereas I suspected he’d given me the correct time in order to mislead me, for an hour did seem to have elapsed since I’d heard that student say seven o’clock. But if he’d lied to his molesters too, I was no worse off, for Ira Hector desperately needed Grand-Tutoring, but I had no use at all for the time of day. Let him shriek after me (as he did), “It’s
later than you think!” How could it be, when I had no thought upon the matter?

  We came in sight of that grand square where Tower Hall stands like a dean at the head of a committee-table, flanked on one side by the Light House, on the other by the Old Chancellor’s Mansion. There was traffic now; I checked the Clock, also my watch: neither was running. A flutter of blackbirds from the Belfry reminded me of Eblis Eierkopf. Again I tapped my chauffeur’s shoulder.

  “What ever happened to Dr. Eierkopf? Do you suppose he’s still in the Belfry?”

  Stoker shook his head. “I got him running the hamburg concession out at the Powerhouse. All he can eat and seconds on Madgie.”

  I recognized that he was speaking sarcastically. “I’m going to see him before I call on the Chancellor,” I said. “But I’ll need a ride later to the Infirmary. Would you rather have lunch with your brother in the Light House or have him out to dinner at the Power Plant?”

  Stoker snorted and opened the throttle; I barely managed to land on my feet. Newsboys hawked the morning paper on the Tower Hall esplanade, calling out that Max’s Shaft-time had been set for next day at sunset, and that in consequence of grave new incidents at the Power Lines, Classmate X had arrived on Great Mall, presumably to sever the remaining diplomatic ties between East and West Campus. I half expected Stoker to wait for me, but as I entered the lobby of Tower Hall I saw him drive off towards a squadron of his troopers roaring up in ragged files from the direction of Main Gate.

  The elevator-guard frowned at my detention-suit, consulted an empty clipboard, and forbade me the Belfry-lift.

  “Don’t you remember me?” I asked pleasantly.

  “I remember you, all right.” His tone was not cordial. “But your name ain’t on my list any more. In fact, there ain’t any list, since you flunked up the College. Nobody’s allowed up there.”

  I asked where Dr. Eierkopf was, in that case—for I’d assumed Stoker was lying to me—and was told that he was indeed still in the Belfry—or at least his skeleton must be: the lift had not been summoned since Croaker’s desertion, the guard said (not without grim satisfaction); as nobody was allowed access to the Clockworks without the Chancellor’s authorization, not even repairmen, and since the Chancellor seemed not to care any more about lists or anything else, one could only suppose that Dr. Eierkopf had starved to death and rotted many months ago—if he’d not been killed when Croaker went berserk. “Serves the Bonifacist right, either way,” he concluded.

  Alarmed, I sprang liftwards, though there was no hope of saving one so long abandoned. The guard drew his pistol, threatened to shoot if I touched a button, and repeated, for the benefit of startled bystanders, that nobody could use the Belfry-lift. Perspiring, I bethought me of the trick old Laertides had played upon the one-eyed shepherd. I handed him my ID-card, and, hoping he’d miss the one not-quite-eradicated name, I said, “I’m Nobody,” and pushed the Belfry-button. The doors began to close.

  “Oh no you don’t!” the guard cried, and would have leaped me, but his classmates-in-arms restrained him on the grounds that while my authority to use the lift was questionable, he unquestionably had none at all. Too late then to shoot; the doors clicked shut and I was lofting.

  Though I dreaded what I’d find of Eblis Eierkopf, I was prepared this time for the din and spectacle of the Clockworks. But when the lift stopped, all was silence. The gears, large and small, were still; the awful pendulum hung fast before my nose, perpendicular between Tick and Tock. Round about was a strew of papers, eggshells, calipers, and lenses: the birdlimed, dusty ruins, I feared, of oölogical research. High in the center of the works, struck face-on by the rising sun, sat Dr. Eierkopf—dead or alive, I could not at once tell, but at least not quite a skeleton. He was perched—one might even say poised—on the escapement, just under the butt of the weathervane-shaft: one shriveled leg hung on either side of the knife-edged pivot, and the crown of his head thrust up into a smallish bell, as far as to his browless eyebrows. Had he been planted there by Croaker, or climbed there to escape him? His lab-coat and spectacles were smeared with droppings of the blackbirds that flew in and out of the Belfry, hopped upon his shoulders, and squatted on his pate beneath the skirt of the bell. They or other birds had woven a nest of straw around his neck and under his chin. Most had food in their beaks when they entered the tower—bread-crusts, sunflower seeds, or kernels of dry field-corn—and I was astonished to see that now and then one would drop a morsel into Dr. Eierkopf’s open mouth. He chewed and swallowed without other motion.

  “Are you all right?” I cried.

  He showed no sign of having heard me. I scrambled up through gears and cables to examine him more closely. Two Eierkopfian lenses, each inscribed , were clipped onto his spectacles; behind them his eyes were open and glazed. No question but he was alive—a drop of dew ran off the bell and he caught it neatly upon his tongue—but he either could not or would not hear me, how anxiously soever I begged him to ignore my old advice.

  “Everything I told you before was wrong!” I shouted in his ear. “Be like you used to be—even worse! Be like Croaker!” My cries resounded in the bell and flushed out several blackbirds; but assert as I might that he must embrace what I’d bid him eschew, I could not stir him.

  “Don’t sit there like T. L. Sakhyan!” I implored. I was standing on the teeth of two giant gears; as I leaned forward to shout “Wake up!” I caught at a nearby cable to save my balance. It ran to the outside clapper of that central bell, second smallest of the lot, which now was struck one mighty stroke. The Eierkopfian lenses shivered; every bird rushed from the Belfry; Eblis’s hands flew to his ears, and he piped a little squeak of pain. More, the after-swing of the bell disturbed his long equilibrium: the escapement teetered back and forth until its passenger fell, just beyond my reach. His lab-coat caught on the knife-edged fulcrum; for a moment I thought him saved; then fulcrum and coat both gave way—the latter sliced through, the former snapped off where the Infinite Divisor had shaved it almost to nothing—and he tumbled head-first to the floor, breaking his eyeglass-frames and, I feared, his skull. I sprang down. Tears stood in Dr. Eierkopf’s eyes; he rubbed his cranium and spat out a sunflower seed.

  “Ech,” he said weakly. “Be glad you’re not a bird, Goat-Boy.”

  I propped him against a lab-stool and wiped guano off his head with a page of old graph-paper. At sight of it he wept. It was not Croaker’s rampage that had undone him and his great research, he managed to declare, but my parting remark about chicken and egg. He had, incredibly, forgot to deal with that ancient question in his otherwise exhaustive treatise, and though stunned by my reminder, he’d been so confident of reasoning out the answer on the basis of his other findings that he’d bid Croaker proceed with the application of the Infinite Divisor. Not to miss the triumphant sight of its operation, he’d donned his high-resolution lenses and had Croaker balance him atop the escapement; as the Divisor’s twin milling-heads shaved towards him, ever-halving the thickness of the fulcrum’s edge, he had rocked joyously from Tick to Tock, which in his head became chicken and egg. And it was precisely at the instant when the Divisor had disappeared between his legs, into the center-hole of the escapement, that he’d seen the problem to be insoluble. What had transpired between that moment and the striking of the bell, he had no idea, and his tears, it turned out, were not for smashed lenses, ruined papers, his months of starvation, or his injured head: what difference did any of those make, when the fundamental question of chicken versus egg could not be resolved?

  I seized his tapered shoulders. “That’s the answer, sir!”

  He groaned. “Goat-Boy, Goat-Boy!”

  “There isn’t any problem!” I insisted, shaking him eagerly until the straw fell from his neck. “Chicken and egg, tick and tock, Croaker and Eierkopf—they’re false distinctions, every one!”

  He squinted through his empty spectacle-frames. “You hit your head too?”

  But I told him happily that he was better off for t
he breaking of his lenses and the failure of the Infinite Divisor. What the Founder had joined, who could put asunder? Or resolve the One into many? Had the escapement fallen now into the gears and locked them fast? Then let Infinite Divisors and Everlasting-Nowniks embrace: they were proved brothers, and the Clock was fixed! Let there be no brooding among eggs or crowing of chickens: neither had seniority over the other; they were one, like Day and Night. In short, let him rejoice over the failure of his enterprises, inasmuch as, failing, he had passed!

  Dr. Eierkopf said: “Goat-Boy, go home.”

  “I’m leaving,” I replied. “But take my advice, sir: forget about WESCAC; forget about logic. Go out and live!”

  “Now you tell me,” he said sarcastically. “My head’s kaput.”

  “Don’t measure eggs,” I exhorted him, “eat them!”

  “Eggs, blah.” He made a sour face.

  “Don’t watch co-eds undressing in your night-glass—”

  “You said that last time.”

  “Go undress them yourself! You can’t help being an animal: so be one! Be a beast of the woods!”

  “I should be a beast of the woods?” he asked skeptically. Inspired by Stoker’s earlier sarcasm, I advised him to gratify his appetites directly instead of vicariously: to go to the Powerhouse, debauch himself with Anastasia in the Living Room, or with Madge if My Ladyship happened to be engaged with Harold Bray.

  “Eat meat,” I said, though my own stomach heaved at the idea no less than his. “Raw meat. You might even try some prepared mustard on Madge.”

  “You lost your mind,” Eierkopf muttered.

  Only my Reason, I replied: the flunking Reason that distinguished him from Croaker, and denied that contradictories could both be passèd at the same time, in the same respect.

  “Entelechus or no Entelechus,” he said, “a man can’t diddle except he’s got a diddler, not so? You’re cracked in the head!”