Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  His objection had the tone of a complaint, as if he wished to be refuted. I stood up confidently. “You’re still being logical,” I said. “Anastasia will find a way. Want me to help you get your papers together?”

  He waved away the offer, declaring glumly that all the dean’s assistants could not restore his oölogical masterwork, so hopelessly had Croaker and the four winds scrambled it.

  “Come on, then,” I urged him. “Leave all this. The campus is your oyster!”

  He gagged at the figure, but admitted I’d been right in calling him flunked before, when he’d thought himself passed, and he agreed to consider my strange new counsel. However, after nine months of intense meditation he was too weak to leave the Belfry just that instant. Moreover, he had scores to settle with certain blackbirds who maliciously had fed him angleworms all summer …

  “Catch them and eat them!” I suggested, remembering the meal once offered me by Croaker. “Bake them in a pie!”

  His head shook limply. “I’m a failure, Goat-Boy.”

  “Failure is Passage,” I said, and returned to the lift, hoping to rouse him to action. “Go find Anastasia; bite her in the belly.”

  But he bared his toothless gums. “Mit was? I’m a broken man, Goat-Boy.”

  “No, sir,” I said firmly, and pushed the Down-button, “you’re a chicken.”

  4.

  I feared the lift-guard might detain me, and indeed I found him and his fellows conferring in a worried cluster—but not about my ID-card, which I spied in the sand of an ash-tray near the lift. They appeared more anxious than threatening; I decided that my bluff had worked and might be made use of. Boldly I retrieved and pursed my card and said, “Dr. Eierkopf wants his lunch. Right away.”

  Neither my effrontery nor the news of Eierkopf’s survival moved them much. “No use him eating,” one guard said gruffly. “Way things look, we’ll all be EATen before long.” Alarming rumors, it appeared, were coming from the Light House every few minutes: that WESCAC was out of order; that Classmate X had declared Riot; that Lucky Rexford had taken an overdose of tranquilizers and was in a coma. Who cared whether Eierkopf was alive, or whether unauthorized persons got into the Clockworks? The subject of their conversation was not how to deal with me, but whether to perish at their posts or at home with their families.

  “Stay where you are,” I advised them. “I’m on my way now to end the Boundary Dispute.”

  “That settles it,” the lift-guard said. “I’m going home.” He cursed remarkably when I congratulated him for seeing that, in effect, the dispute was settled already, since it had never properly existed—but neither he nor his steadfaster colleagues prevented my leaving Tower Hall. The sun, far in the south, I guessed halfway towards its meridian, but the sky was overcast now and the Light House gray. A sheep-fleeced band of students picketed the gate, some bearing the wordless placards of Carte-blanchisme, others crossing arms, joining hands, and singing in doleful measure:

  E plu-ri-bus u—u-nu-um …

  Despite the stunning aptness of that sentiment, there was small spirit in their demonstration. Indeed, the whole scene was listless: Stoker’s troopers slouched about, some asleep in their sidecars, some hunkered idly on the curb. Now and then one clubbed a student, but so half-heartedly I couldn’t always judge whether their victims fell unconscious or merely “went limp.” The few passersby who stopped to watch seemed scarcely more interested than the throngs who ambled past without a glance. Even the hecklers sounded bored: yet when languidly one called, “Hurrah for apathy,” two pickets shrugged and wandered off.

  My approach was greeted by three or four with pale applause and by the rest with so mild jeers I could scarcely credit that a like crowd had once lynched me. The same lassitude appeared to have infected Stoker, who lounged against the Light-House gate with Rexford’s Frumentian aide. I thanked him for waiting.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “Ignition trouble.”

  The aide chuckled lazily, not at all the brisk chap I’d lunched with last time around. “At least you’ve got fuel in your tank; that’s more than the Chief has.”

  I advised Stoker not to accompany me inside, as I thought it fitter his brother come out to him. He yawned and scratched his armpit.

  “Forget it.”

  “Nobody’s allowed in while X is there,” the aide explained. No use, I knew, to try Laertides’s trick on them. “Unless you happen to know the password,” he added with a smile. “Which you don’t.”

  I considered. “Could it be Nothing in excess?”

  Stoker frowned. “What kind of talk is that?”

  “How about Pass All Fail All?”

  The brown man shook his head slightly, not very interested.

  “E pluribus unum? Failure is Passage?”

  “Those sound like flunkwords to me,” Stoker said.

  I searched my memory for Maxims. “Veritas vos liberabit? Gnothi seauton? Don’t burn your bridges at both ends?”

  “Give it up,” the aide advised.

  A little angrily I said, “I don’t think there is any password!”

  He shrugged and laid his hand on the gate-latch as a party issued from the Light-House door. “You’re probably right. Run along, now.”

  What happened then is somewhat equivocal. I recognized a number of the exiting visitors as Nikolayan officials from the University Council—all of them, in fact, except one who covered his face with his hat, and whom I therefore took to be Classmate X. At the same time I chose to think that I’d hit upon the right response to the aide (it suited my general Answer, certainly), and that his directive and gesture with the latch were invitations to pass through. It’s true he said “Stop” when I entered, and that Stoker drew and clicked his pistol, cursing when it failed to fire. But it was not unlike Stoker to frighten people thus for sport, and I was gating the aide aside somewhat roughly in my haste. In any case no one restrained me, whether because I’d chanced upon the password or because no one finally cared.

  Not so Classmate X’s colleagues: I saw a number of hands fly into coat-breasts as I sticked up the walk.

  “Dr. Chementinski!” I called. “It’s George Giles, the Goat-Boy! I have news from Leonid Andreich.”

  As his face was concealed I could not gauge X’s reaction, but he muttered something in cold Nikolayan to his colleagues, and no weapons were drawn, though the hands stayed fast. Cameras clicked about us.

  “Mistaken identity,” he said to me through his hat. “These names mean nothing.” But he did not press on at once. His aides immediately ringed us to keep off the journalism-majors who sought a statement about his interview with Chancellor Rexford.

  “I know who you are and why you wanted your son arrested,” I said.

  “There are no sons in Nikolay College,” he replied; “all men are brothers.”

  “Then you may be interested to hear that your brother Leonid took poison recently—nearly a whole bottle of eradicator.”

  For just an instant he uncovered his blank gray eyes, then hid behind his hat again and said tersely: “He is no more then, this stranger you mention.”

  I replied that Leonid was, fortunately, “more” indeed—more than his stepfather and more than he himself had ever been before, thanks to the less-than-perfect effectiveness of the eradicator; for though he’d not decided yet whether to rescue Max and perish in his stead or defect in truth to New Tammany, he most certainly would use no force on my keeper, who loved him as a son; nor would he be likely to try suicide again, now he saw its selfishness.

  “Sentimental mid-percentilism. Petty-Informationalist logic-chopping.” But X’s voice was thick. “If Leonid Andreich—was that the name you mentioned?—if he failed at suicide it’s because a perfect Student-Unionist has no self. Let the Union order his suicide and see whether he fails!”

  “You call him a perfect Student-Unionist,” I pointed out. “You must be very proud of him.”

  “Bah.” He turned away. “He’ll never
learn.”

  “But you want him to! You’re ambitious for him, like any father!”

  I thought I detected a color in what I could see of his face. In the metal-lest tone he said: “Listen, Goat-Boy: A man sacrifices his only son—the one thing he loves—exactly to keep from being selfish. That man is no father.” He snapped something in Nikolayan, and the party moved gate-wards.

  “Self-discipline is selfish, too!” I called after. “You can’t escape yourself, Dr. Chementinski! You couldn’t even if you could!”

  “Did he say Chementinski?” one reporter asked another, and then asked me directly, while his colleague hurried after Classmate X. I confirmed that the Nikolayan representative to the U.C. and the famous defector Chementinski were the same man, and explained briefly how I knew, insisting that Max was wholly innocent of the plot and that Leonid, while guilty of intent to kidnap, had altogether repudiated that intention, as witness his remaining in a cell which he could easily walk out of if he chose to. Everyone pressed after Classmate X then, despite his refusal to comment or uncover his face. Even some of his colleagues, it seemed to me, scowled now as questioningly at him and each other as hostilely at the press. At last he lost his temper, jammed his hat upon his head, and reached inside his coat. Reporters scrambled for cover; aides went for their weapons—but it was an ID-card instead of a pistol that X whipped forth. He waved it at the Telerama lenses.

  “Does it say Chementinski? Nyet!”

  Those who were near enough admitted that only an X was visible on the card, though obviously that fact in itself proved little. Coming up behind, I flipped out the magnifying lens on my stick and thrust it over the shoulders of several reporters, bidding them look again closely.

  “Nyet!” Classmate X snatched the card away, but not before at least two reporters saw, or claimed to have seen, imperfectly eradicated characters on both sides of the X. Moreover, examining his glitter-eyed, fierce-beaked face, for once publicly uncovered, a cameraman was moved to recall that though the features were otherwise much altered, Chementinski the traitor-scientist had had metal-capped bicuspids like Classmate X.

  “The better to EAT you with!” X shouted, as impassioned as his stepson now, “This means Riot!” It was his aides then who led him, one at each arm, out to the motorcade on the mall. I entered the Light House.

  A number of the Chancellor’s assistants were in the entrance-hall; they wore gray suits and had similar youthful faces, but their forelocks were combed back now, and instead of bustling they lounged about in leather chairs and window-seats. I approached the nearest and announced my wish to see Chancellor Rexford at once. He turned from the window, smiling slightly, and congratulated me upon my release from Main Detention. The voice, though lifeless, was unmistakable.

  “You’re the Chancellor!” I couldn’t conceal my surprise: without his grin, his white suit, his springy force and forelock, he seemed blander than his aides. His face was tired but placid; he looked ten years older.

  “I won’t be, next term, if the polls mean anything,” he said, shaking my hand. “Assuming there is a next term.”

  I’d expected a less cordial reception, in view of the consequences of my former advice, but though no one actually welcomed me into the Chancellor’s office, no one forbade my entering it, either. And Rexford, while neither pleased or displeased to see me, was polite, even respectful. He dismissed his aides and postponed several appointments at my request, so that we could talk.

  “You needn’t tell me,” he sighed from behind his desk. “Bray had no business Certifying me, and you were right to call me flunked.” He stared gloomily at a photograph of his wife upon the mantelpiece. “But I feel even flunkèder now—not that it matters, extremely. You talked to X?”

  I affirmed that I had, but as I prepared to disclose Classmate X’s true identity, two telephones on the desk rang simultaneously, a red and a white. He answered the red first, listened gravely to the message, and said, “Again? You’re sure? Well, we’ll have to think about that. Don’t want to do anything rash.” He made a memorandum—what appeared to be a tally.

  “Another guard fell off the Line,” he told me, and picked up the white telephone. “We’re pretty sure the Nikolayans are tapping our power at night, too. They may even be advancing their line.”

  To the white telephone he made similar responses, though more personal. “Please be reasonable, dear,” he said. “You really ought to give this more thought …” But his caller hung up.

  He tisked ruefully and put back the receiver. “I guess that’s that. Either your advice about women was wrong or it came too late.” He’d been skeptical at first of my sundry counsels, he said, but they’d stuck in his mind, and though it went against the grain of his temperament to eschew compromise, he’d had to acknowledge himself guilty of occasional secret “deals” with Classmate X, Ira Hector, and Maurice Stoker; he had, moreover, tolerated moderate amounts of graft, academic dishonesty, prostitution, and other campus vices as unavoidable in a large college, and very infrequently had allowed himself a fit of anger, a drink too many, or an extracurricular night of love, usually with Anastasia Stoker. Upon his return from our ill-fated trip to the U.C. building last spring, his wife had announced plans for a short vacation, alone; and smitten with bad conscience (as well as distraught by the failure of the Summit Symposium), he’d confessed these past errors, begged her pardon, and vowed to lapse from passèd fidelity no more. When word reached him (during his wife’s absence) that Bray had passed me for flunking his own diplomates, Rexford determined to follow my advice to the letter: to purge himself of every trace of immoderation and renounce absolutely all traffic with flunkèdness—if his administration could not pass the “Open Book Test,” let it fall! His subsequent measures I’d heard about in Main Detention, and their unhappy consequences, all except one: when Mrs. Rexford had at last returned from her long holiday he’d not even scolded her, much less struck her, though everything suggested she’d been unfaithful. On the contrary, he’d proposed they attend together a course of lectures called The Problems of Marriage in a Changing University.

  But while he prided himself on having achieved perfect reasonableness and self-control, he did not feel Commenced. Not because things were going wretchedly—he knew that Right was right and Wrong wrong regardless of consequences—but because his heart’s desires hid yet from the light of reason. That the Powerhouse threatened to explode from overproduction, while Great Mall flickered and WESCAC flagged for want of power; that West Campus was losing the Quiet Riot, and his administration its popularity; that people suspected him of kinship with Stoker since Stoker had ceased to oppose him; that Classmate X had just announced a new advance of the Nikolayan Power Line and Mrs. Rexford a new vacation, perhaps with a friend and perhaps permanent—all these he might accept as the price of Truth. But the truth was, when he saw Stoker lounging at the gate in a motorcycle-jacket he had the strongest wish to hear him taunt as in the old days, “Flunk you, Brother!” When he saw Anastasia, despite her recent coldness and his perfect restraint, he still tumesced; yet he loved his wife so, her disaffection notwithstanding, that the rumors of her infidelity smote him with jealous rage: gladly would he strike her down—and pick her up, and madly kiss away her bruises …

  “But that’s lunacy, of course,” he finished dryly. “I’ll do nothing of the sort. If she and X won’t debate these things with me, reasonably and openly—that’s that. I’ll sit here and wait for the EAT-whistle.”

  “Assuming there’s power enough to blow it,” I reminded him. “And somebody worried enough to pull the cord.”

  He laughed a little sheepishly. “There’s plenty of power. The trick is to get it to Great Mall without dealing with Stoker. Nothing to lose our heads about, I suppose …”

  “But it is!” I asserted. “All these things are, sir! Stoker is your brother! And I’m no Grand Tutor! I was completely wrong before!”

  The Chancellor frowned and glanced towards the door. “Calm
down, now …”

  “No! That’s just what you shouldn’t do!” I strode about the office, gesturing with my stick. “There isn’t really any boundary between East and West Campuses: all students are classmates! This nonsense about Informationalism and Student-Unionism—”

  “Look here, now, Mr. Giles; I insist you calm yourself.” Rexford fiddled nervously with a combination paperweight-flashlight on his desk, clicking the switch on and off. It didn’t light. “Maybe from the Founder’s viewpoint the Power Line is artificial and unreal, but we’re not the Founder. Remarks like those may be harmless in the classroom, but out on the campus things aren’t so simple.”

  “Exactly!” I agreed. “That’s why it was a mistake to be absolutely reasonable, and the rest.”

  “I admit it’s not easy. All the same—”

  “That’s the Answer!” I cried. “East and West, temperate and intemperate—they’re all the same!”

  “Mr. Giles,” the Chancellor protested, consulting his wristwatch. “I’m the chief executive of a busy college, and much as I’d like to reason these things out with you—”

  “There isn’t time!” I finished for him. “And besides, you don’t feel like being reasonable! That’s splendid!”

  He saw nothing very splendid about it, Rexford declared; but as he did not after all order me out, I explained to him briefly what I took to be the essence of my former error, and how I’d come to understand that East and West Campuses, goat and Grand Tutor, even Passage and Failure, were inseparable and ultimately indistinguishable.

  “You talk like The Living Sakhyan,” the Chancellor scoffed. “Be reasonable, now: what do you propose?”

  My first proposal, I told him, was to cease being reasonable—as if there were a floodlit Boundary between Reason and Unreason! Did his stubborn insistence upon reason at any price not prove the fallacy of such distinctions?

  “So we should surrender to the Nikolayans?”

  “Not surrender,” I said, “embrace.”