by John Barth
That impression, and others equally subjective and qualitative, I gained principally during the tactile stage of my examination, which followed upon the metrical. “Feel me,” Anastasia directed, and closing my eyes at her instruction, I explored with my fingertips all her surfaces and apertures, comparing their textures, temperatures, moistnesses, firmnesses, viscosities, and the like; then I covered the same ground, as it were, with the soles and toes of my bare feet, a curious sensation, and finally disrobed myself for maximum-surface contacts, at the first of which (my back to her front) I ejaculated approximately two meters across the Treatment Room.
I would have proceeded then to mount her, in defiance of my own programme, but that some of my senses had yet to make her complete acquaintance; and having ejaculated I was able to put by lust and do her bidding with more clinical detachment. Once I’d come to know her from head to foot with my elbows, knees, ears, hams, testicles, and shoulder-blades, I sniffed and tasted her, in that order, with similar thoroughness. These final researches were less novel to me, inasmuch as the goats make liberal use of nose and tongue, both to greet old acquaintances and make new ones, and to investigate their general environs. But of course they are without toes and recessed navels, for example, and use neither soap nor artificial scents; obviously too the difference between their diet and a lady human co-ed’s (more than the difference in species) made my degustation of Anastasia no mere repetition of my former converse with Hedda O.T.S.T. or Redfearn’s Tom. I familiarized myself, olfactorially and gustatorially, with her hair-oil, earwax, tears, saliva, snot, sweat, blood (from a pinprick on her left forefinger), lymph, urine, feces, skin-oil, vaginal secretion, and finger- and toenail parings—I had had no lunch, and my stomach rumbled loudly—and then stood by for further instruction.
“Biographical knowledge, psychological knowledge, medical knowledge …” She sat cross-legged upon the examination-table and told the list on her fingers. “Fluoroscopic knowledge, physiometrical knowledge, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory … We forgot auditory! Use Kennard’s stethoscope.” She fetched it from a countertop and prettily gave me to listen in upon her heartbeat, respiration, and intestinal chucklings, all more subdued than my own. She strained but could not fart; on the other hand, she had a surprising knack for bringing up belches at will, a trick she’d learned at ten and never forgotten. All the while she chattered matter-of-factly about the question of carnal knowledge, the last item on her improvised list. Many of our investigations, she acknowledged, were distinguishable from amatory foreplay only by their motive, and though she intended to postpone actual copulation with me until she’d asserted herself with Stoker and Bray, she knew that Dr. Sear’s bookshelves contained a library of erotica wherein was catalogued such a staggering variety of sexual practices, stunts, and exquisitries as to make ordinary genital intromission seem as tame as shaking hands; would it be out of order, she wondered, for me to acquaint myself with her by means of fellatio, cunnilingus, heterosexual sodomy, flagellation, reciprocal transvestism, and whatever like refinements and experiments we could discover or invent, other than simple coitus?
“Let me be the man,” her chest boomed into the stethoscope, “and You be the woman.”
But I put down the instrument and shook my head. “I don’t know, Anastasia. I don’t see—”
I was interrupted by a vigorous pounding on the one-way mirror. Anastasia first gasped and snatched about her for cover, then thought better of it, let go the sheet she’d half torn from the examination-table, and beckoned with her finger at the unknown pounder, with the other hand displaying her pudenda in the manner of those carven shelah-na-gigs which she must have noted upon my stick. Peter Greene burst into the room, all crimson face and orange hair and blinking eyes; he it was who’d pounded; but he’d not come at her beck—nor to berate her, though he cried, “I seen what you was up to, Lacey Stoker, what I mean lewdwise! Trying to flunk the Grand Tutor!” Anastasia blushed red as Greene, either at his rebuke or at her nakedness before him; but she contrived to stay her ground, put her hands on her hips, and regard him with her eyes half closed and her head half turned—a really quite provocative stance, considering how unnaturally it came to her. Greene got to the point of his alarum.
“The whole durn place has gone kerflooeyl” he announced to me. “Crooks and loonies running all over! It’s the end of the University!”
Dr. Sear, it appeared, had gone to the Women’s Chronic Ward to arrange a weekend leave for his wife, and Greene had gone with him as far as the Infirmary lobby, intending to visit his own wife’s suite of rooms. But they’d found the place in uproar over an astonishing executive order just issued by Chancellor Rexford: not only had a general amnesty been declared for everyone in Main Detention, but the Infirmary had been directed to turn loose every mental patient who was not also a physical invalid. The consensus of the Infirmary staff was that Rexford himself had lost his mind—there was talk, for example, that not only the Open Book Tests were going to be repealed, as most people wished, but every administrative regulation concerning gambling, prostitution, cheating in the classroom, narcotics, homosexuality, and pornographic literature and films. They shook their heads—but there was the order, and to everyone’s surprise Dr. Sear, so far from countermanding it, had declared he understood and approved of the Chancellor’s position; orderlies and campus patrolmen he’d directed to protect the bedridden (like Mrs. Greene); then he’d gone personally to see to it that every door and gate in the Psychiatric Annex was put open. Many of the staff had fled; the halls and lounges, Greene reported, were a pandemonium; the patrolmen had several times been obliged to pistol the violent, in self-defense. Of Dr. and Mrs. Sear, Greene had heard no more; having bribed the police to double their guard at Miss Sally Ann’s door, he’d returned at considerable risk to apprise me of the danger.
“And your mom, too, pass her mind,” he added; “ain’t her fault she’s touched in the head. A fellow’s got a duty to his mom.” But at Anastasia he curled his lip. “They can have the likes of you, for all I care. Serve you right!”
Too alarmed by the news to heed his insult, Anastasia rushed into the Reception Room to see that Mother was safe, and then began hastily redonning her white uniform. “Those poor patients!” she exclaimed. “Maybe I can tranquilize some of them.”
Indeed the situation seemed perilous. Mad bangs and screams came from the hallway; a chap, white-gowned, galloped sideways into the office, scratching under his ribs, and made hooting water on the wall-to-wall carpet.
“Oh, yes, well,” my mother murmured. He sprang at her even as I at him, but changed course at sight of me and leaped through the window instead, smashing first the pane and presently himself, as the office was many stories high. Mother resumed her knitting. Other unfortunates thrashed about in the vicinity of the doorway.
“Lock the door,” I bade Greene. He stiffened.
“ ’Scuse me, George, sir. No disrespect intended, but I can’t go against the Chancellor of my native college, true or false. My only regret, alma-materwise, is that I don’t have but one life to give for—”
“Let’s get out, then,” I said, for pleased as I was at Rexford’s following my advice, I recalled Leonid’s fiasco in the Nikolayan Zoo and feared for our safety. My Ladyship protested that her first responsibility was to the patients, and Greene that the likes of her were disgraces to their uniforms, say what one would. I bade the former to keep in mind that everyone’s first responsibility was to the Founder—which was to say, to one’s own passage, not always to be attained by charitable works—and declared to the latter my wish that he escort Mrs. Stoker not only out of the Infirmary but all the way to the Powerhouse.
“No!” Anastasia objected. “If everything’s going to pieces, then I don’t care about my Assignment! I’m going with You.” And Greene muttered that I should not ought to take him from Miss Sally Ann’s bedside for the sake of no floozy.
“It’s for Miss Sally Ann’s sake you have to,�
� I said; “for the sake of all the patients. I want this floozy out in the Powerhouse where she belongs, so she won’t take advantage of helpless people. Do you think you’ll be okay with her?”
Anastasia saw my motive and protested.
“I’ll be okay,” Greene said, and wiped his palms grimly on his trouser-thighs.
“No, please, George …” said Anastasia.
“She may try to seduce you,” I warned him, for her benefit. “She’s awfully aggressive. Not like her sister.”
“George …”
With a fierce squint Greene took her arm. “You come along with me. Don’t try to flooze me none, neither.”
More gently I took my mother’s elbow; clucking and smiling, she bagged her yarn and obediently rose.
“At least give me a minute to fix my hair!” Anastasia said. Her tone had changed, was newly resolute and guileful, as was her face. I surmised, not without mixed feelings, that what had been at odds—her wish to assert herself as I’d advised and her wish to go to Tower Hall with me instead of to her home with Greene—were now in league: she would attempt to bribe Greene with her favors. And though I myself had urged such initiative upon her, the twinge I felt was not owing entirely to the danger of her succeeding and thus following me into the Belly. To assure myself that I was not jealous, or envious of Greene, I smiled and winked at her, as if to say, “I see right through you, and wish you luck.”
She saw and understood me, I’m sure, but regarded me coolly.
“Watch out for the nuts,” Greene advised me.
Anastasia patted her hair, and slipped her arm primly under his. “He hasn’t any. I’m glad I’ve got a man to take me home.”
Greene blushed, no less than I, who was shocked by her unwonted coarseness as well as stung by the insult. Certainly it was but part of her strategy! Yet when I pretended to suppress a grin, she turned from me coldly and whispered something in Greene’s ear that did nothing to lighten his color. As I bade them goodbye I found myself reminding her, against my better judgment, that if things turned out badly in the Belly she might not be seeing me again.
“You don’t say,” she said. “Bye-bye, then. Oh, Peter, would you fasten me in back? I can’t reach the hooks.” She turned her lovely nape to him.
“Hmp,” Greene said.
“And I’ve mislaid my darned purse in the Treatment Room somewhere! Would you help me find it?”
Full of confusion I ushered Mother from the office; and the womanly chuckle I heard behind me, and Greene’s half-hearted complaint, as he shut the hall door, that he wasn’t supposed to shut any doors, it was against orders, smote me with an ireful doubt which—small comfort!—abetted our safe exit. For the first madman who loped up, unfortunately woofing, I butted with such force that he knocked a second down, and our way was clear to the lift. And in the lobby, where demented undergraduates and faculty of both sexes swung from light-fixtures, raced in wheelchairs, coupled on the carpet, shat in typewriters, or merely stood transfixed in curious attitudes, I laid about ruthlessly with my stick, cut an angry swath, and roughtly gimped through bedlam with my mother. I could not have explained my fury, or told why, when it occurred to me that Love and Hate must be in truth distinctions as false as True and False, that sagacious reflection nowise clarified my mind or calmed my spirit.
I hailed the only taxi at the Annex door and bade the driver take us to Tower Hall. Newsboys hawked in the fading afternoon: Power Lines Moving Together: Fear Riot Near; Rexford Raps Mrs., Raises Roof. The tidings brought me no pleasure. Through a small loudspeaker in our sidecar came further news: so-called “Moderate” elements were resigning from the Administration to protest the Chancellor’s recognition of extremists;Ira Hector for example had been offered the post of Comptroller, and Rexford had not only acknowledged Maurice Stoker as his half-brother, but gone to spend the weekend with him at the Power Plant. “ ‘It may be necessary to have these people around,’ complained one resigning official, ‘like spies and grafters—but one mustn’t officially approve of them …’ ” The new corrective headgear issued to Power-Line guards, the reporter went on to say, was intended to remedy the faults of the “heads-up” collar by fixing the wearer’s eyes down at his feet; but looking down from that height seemed to make the guards dizzy, and the drop-off rate was as high as before.
“What the heck anyhow,” I said, snapping off the speaker: “Failure is Passage.”
“A-plus,” said Mother.
Not until we drew in sight of the Library did I realize that I had no means to pay our fare. I glanced at the driver, hoping to gauge his charitableness, and saw what I’d been too disconcerted to observe before, why he was the only cabbie in the madhouse drive. His uniform was white, beltless and buttonless, his eyes were aglint, his grin was euphrasic. Alarmed, I commanded him to stop the motorcycle.
“Stop the cycle,” he squawked like a parrot. “Stop the cycle.” His grip on the handlebar was fixed now as his expression; the Mall-street fetched us straight over a curbstone, across Tower Hall Plaza, through clusters of alarmed undergraduates, and into a yew-hedge flanking the entrance, where we came to rest. The engine stalled. “Yes, well,” Mother remarked. The driver sat erect and beaming as ever, though yew-twigs pressed against his face, even into his mouth.
“Thtop the thycle,” he repeated. I helped Mother out and left him to iterate his message to the gathering crowd—the sight of which, understandably, caused a small shudder in me.
In the Library things were more calm; I composed my wits and reviewed the situation. That My Ladyship and I had exchanged roles in the Treatment Room—she the Tutor, I the Tutee—was not displeasing. But her final behavior mystified me, and behind the turmoil of my heart stood a stiller but impenetrabler mystery, that I had felt briefly in my arms: what was it that looked through the optics of that respiring female organism and said “I love you”? And to what did those voweled noises speak? To what refer? I. Love. You. The idea was as preposterous as it was dark! No, I’d not seen through My Ladyship, no more myself, and if that was my infirmity, it was yet to be overcome; indeed, it had overcome me. Very well (I reminded myself as we went up to the Cataloguing Office, Mother pressing the lift-button out of habit), then I had failed that part of my Assignment, even on my own terms, and Failure is Passage. But elation was fled, even grim satisfaction; I began to feel desolate. If only Mother were not demented, I thought, and Max not detained (if indeed he still was, after the amnesty): how good it would be to discuss the problem with them!
We passed through the spoke-filed room, in whose hub the empty Scroll-case stood. It being Saturday afternoon and nearly dinnertime, only a few scholars were about. The door to Mother’s former office was locked, and bore a small sign that read CACAFILE OUT OF ORDER. It occurred to me that I had no clear reason for coming there anyhow: it was Bray I wanted; no, not even Bray: WESCAC. No, not even WESCAC: death. So far had my spirits, unaccountably, plunged! To Re-place the Founder’s Scroll, to Pass the Finals, to do single combat with WESCAC and what it represented—it was of no importance, I could not even think, my mind was on My obscure Ladyship. I had come from Infirmary to Library out of habit, like Mother, following the order of my spring-term Tutorship. Humming, she fetched from her knitting-bag a key—someone must have forgot to collect it from her—and unlocked the door. The faulty console in the corner began winking, as if roused from sleep.
“Would you care for something to read?” Mother asked automatically.
“No—no thank you, ma’am.”
She ignored the new nameplate on her desk and eased herself into the swivel-chair as though ready for work, though the office lights were out and she still had her coat on. “Well, you look around and let me know if you want anything, sonny. There’s nothing like a good book.”
My heart lifted not a little; I kissed her hair. Again, from her innocent darkness, she had illumined me!
“Listen carefully, Mom,” I said; “Can you call for the Founder’s Scroll? I want to pu
t it back in its case.” Whatever fugitive notion I’d had earlier concerning this item of my Assignment gave way before a true inspiration: Had not Enos Enoch and a hundred other wayfaring dons of fact and fiction taught, by their own example, that the Way to Commencement Gate led through Nether Campus? Was not my answer, Failure is Passage, but an epigrammatic form of that same truth? Replace the Founder’s Scroll had seemed, in the spring, the simplest and clearest imperative of all, and yet the bafflingest, since the Scroll had not been lost; and my response to it had seemed, even at the time, the most specious of my Tutorhood—though to be sure they’d all been incorrect.It was fitting, then—stirringly so!—that on this round, so to speak, when I’d “solved” the first five problems with a deliberate speciousness, the rule of inversion would hold equally for the sixth, and make my re-placement of the Scroll not only bonafide but profoundly significant. It had not been misplaced, that was the point; but it was now, for I had misplaced it last time around—and so could re-place it! Things had to be lost before they could be found, broken before they could be fixed, infirm before they could be well, opaque before they could be clear—in short, failed before they could be passed! True, I could not at once discern how this remarkable insight quite applied to Ending the Boundary Dispute, which I’d not begun; nor had I truly “fixed” the Clock I’d broken, for example, or seen to my satisfaction through My Ladyship—but these doubts were nothing, shadows cast by the very brilliance of my illumination; I ignored them. Failure was Passage! No past fiasco, no present triumph; the spring made possible the fall!