by John Barth
I closed my eyes. No matter that accessory features of the dénouement were changed; it was the same old plot. As Croaker croaked and Hedwig wailed, I shrugged and swung myself off the sidecar, to make an end of it. No such luck: even before my death-wrench could sound the horn, I was hoist on mighty shoulders. The shophar flew; the rope went slack. I opened my eyes and found myself astride Croaker’s neck, as once in the Living Room. A swath of tumbled undergraduates marked his path from me to Hedwig, who now embraced upon the ground her comatose if not deceasèd spouse.
“Everybody keep your shirts on!” ex-Chancellor Hector cried over the loudspeakers. But the unfelled bystanders clambered over one another to safety. Several sooty guards had drawn their pistols and were advancing towards us; armed with my stick, which he must have espied near the sidecar, Croaker growled and made ready for combat. A young man whose dress and forelock suggested administrative responsibility stepped between us to warn the guards about intercollegiate repercussions and New Tammany’s varsity image. My mother, to perfect the scene, found her way at last onto the porch from somewhere inside the Old Chancellor’s Mansion, took one look about, and swooned; a ball of blue yarn rolled from her knitting-bag almost to Grandfather’s feet.
“For pete’s sake give me a hand, somebody!” he shouted, still in possession of the public-address system, if not his composure. “Flunk this arm of mine! Give me something to tie it up with!” This last, though broadcast, was snarled at his receptionist, who, despite the cold, at once began unbuttoning her uniform-blouse. The P.-G. snatched it from her before she could offer it, and ordered the doorguard to tie the sleeves behind his neck in the fashion of a sling. The forelocked vice-chancellor or administrative assistant, meanwhile, had commandeered a megaphone left behind by the fled cruel co-eds, and having begged the guards to hold their fire yet a minute, now implored me to check Croaker if I could: emissaries of his Frumentian alma mater were to fetch him next day, I was told, and with the University on the verge of C.R. III (if not already beyond it!), New Tammany needed all the colleagues it could get. Reports had it, he said, that Dr. Eierkopf was at the Powerhouse with Chancellor Rexford: would I guide Croaker thither, escorted by the guards, and arrange with Eierkopf to manage him until his recall?
“I’m busy being lynched,” I reminded him. The aide apologized for that miscarriage of justice, acknowledging that even New Tammany had its imperfections, and promised that if I’d steer Croaker safely off Great Mall and retire myself to the goat-barn for the time being, he’d do everything he could to get me reinstated, appealing Bray’s decision if necessary to the highest committees in Tower Hall.
The mob had retreated to a safe distance. Croaker croaked and handed me my stick, as if inviting governance; the guards stood ready to pistol him at the first threatening move. A white infirmary-vehicle with flashing headlight had swung into the dooryard, and medical-school functionaries hurried to attend the Sears and my mother. Reginald Hector had gone into the Mansion with his receptionist, but the latter now reappeared, an ROTC overcoat cloaking her bare shoulders; she flung in our direction her employer’s former wrapper, and pertly withdrew.
Forelock’s diplomacy gave way at last; fetching up the wrapper, he either tossed it to me or threw it at me, and cried, “Won’t this day ever end? Flunk everything!”
The wrapper was of fine angora, but ill-cut and worse-stitched. I smiled despite all at Granddad’s goatsmanship and Forelock’s distress—then put the noose from my neck, slipped into the familiar hide, and with a farewell glance at my swoonèd mom, sticked Croaker homewards.
Third Reel
1.
In fact—so our driver guessed as we sped in convoy from Great Mall—it was probably no later than half-past six. He hoped not, anyhow, for his detail was to go off duty at seven, and riot or no riot, he’d heard that the maddest party in the history of the Powerhouse was in progress, and he wanted not to miss the fun. Croaker I’d induced to ride in the sidecar, but I was obliged to remain on his shoulders. The streets and public buildings were dark, owing to the power-failure, and almost vacant because of the general emergency; despite the ragged navigation of the guards we made good time. My neck was sore, my stomach empty, my bladder full, and the wind of that longest night in the year chilled me through; but my heart was so entirely spent, my spirit sunk, that their despair was indistinguishable from peace. I felt no further pain at abandoning Max, Mother, and my hopes, nor chagrin at being spared yet again from lynching, nor pleasure at the thought of rejoining the herd. I felt concern no more for studentdom’s predicament, or my own. I felt nothing; was full of that positive sensation.
In perhaps an hour, so rapidly we traveled, we came to the top of that gorge where G. Herrold had expired—decades ago, it seemed. The moon shone cold on the beach and stream (which ran still now) and reflected upon a new span built on the old one’s piers. Its design was different, its termini the same—and so for all I knew or cared might be its fate, come next spring’s torrents. At the intersection where a right turn led down over it and thence to the barns, a left to the Powerhouse, pistol-shots rang out ahead. Our troop made a ragged halt and answered in kind, firing into the air. Then other shots sounded on the left, and almost simultaneously three headlights jiggled into view, one from before us and two from the left: motorcycles racing full-throttle. Nowise alarmed, the guards fell to wagering: their odds favored “the boss” (some called him “der Hauptmann”), who approached from the front, to reach the crossroads first, although the pair coming up on our left seemed rather nearer. And they knew their man, for with a recklessness that bespoke Maurice Stoker, “the boss” suddenly began shooting not into the air but at his competition—at the road ahead of them, in any case, where dust-puffs rose in their headlamp-beams and bullets rang from stones. The lead cyclist of the pair swerved for his life and spun into a shallow ditch, as Herman Hermann must once have done; the other slowed his pace appreciably, with the result that Maurice Stoker skidded into the crossroads, lit by our headlights, three or four seconds before his rival, another Powerhouse guard. Our detachment applauded their leader and hooted at their colleague’s timidity.
“See if Fritz is kaput,” Stoker bade the nearest of them, and pointed out with a laugh that not only had his “short-cut” from the Powerhouse been a potholed road, but he’d had two prisoners in his sidecar, whereas his competitors, on the better road, had had but one between them—fortunately not in Fritz’s vehicle. He glared up at me in the swirling dust, as if he’d been expecting to meet me, on Croaker’s shoulders, along his way (and indeed he had been, I later learned, my escorts having wirelessed the news ahead). His voice took an edge. “All’s fair in love and riot, hey, Goat-Boy?”
I had nothing to reply and was anyhow distracted, as were my escorts, by the sight of his passengers. Slumped in the sidecar and blindfolded, they started up at mention of my name. Pocket-torches focused on them, and I was doubly surprised: Peter Greene it was, and Leonid Alexandrov, handcuffed together; their coats and faces were as bloodstained as the linen that bound their eyes—not blindfolds after all, but bandages.
“Aren’t they a pair?” Stoker demanded of his troopers, but with a smolder in his tone meant for me. “And look at Hans’s.”
“Verdummt,” the other driver reported, flashlighting his unconscious passenger. Dr. Eierkopf’s head lolled over the sidecar-wale, a new pair of eyeglasses hanging from one ear. “Out-passed.” Hans held his nose and pointed to stains on the prisoner’s lab-coat, not of blood. The company laughed. Croaker stirred under me and sniffed the air, but seemed not to recognize his old roommate in that fallen state.
“Drunk and disorderly in the Living Room,” Stoker said. He cut his engine, dismounted, and aimed his torch to observe my expression. “Ate a kilo of Blutwurst, tried to force my wife’s virtue, and gummed the mustard off Madge’s rear end till the blood came. Then he threw up and passed out. But your pal Rexford’s still at it.”
“Untruthness,” Leonid
Andreich said calmly from the sidecar.
“Leonid’s right, George,” Peter Greene seconded—his voice uncharacteristically quiet also. “It was her took advantage of Doc Eierkopf—not that he give a durn. Lacey it was: the floozy-one.”
Awed by the bloody pair, the troopers listened silently, their engines stilled.
“Lacey no,” Leonid countered. “Mrs. Anastasia yes. Self-sacrificehood to needs of classmates.” Like Greene’s, his voice remained subdued, and both faced straight ahead as they spoke.
“Might be I was wrong about that Lacey business,” Greene admitted. “But Lacey or Stacey, it weren’t no sacrificeness. It was plumb floozihood.”
“Possible,” Leonid granted. “But I don’t think, how do you say, all-said-and-donewise.”
“I do,” Greene said. “Might be mistaken, though.”
“Also.”
Stoker heard them out with his hands on his hips, but when they fell silent he exploded with disgust. “Two hours ago it was fight to the death; now they’re buggering sweethearts!” He began to recount the fracas—ostensibly for the troopers’ amusement, but still with a sarcasm that I knew was for my benefit. He hadn’t felt like a party in the first place, he declared; he was sick of parties; it was the flunkèd Chancellor’s idea, who having punched his own wife in the mouth had kicked over the traces entirely and directed that an orgy be commenced at once in the Powerhouse Living Room, so that he might, in his own phrase, fiddle while New Tammany burned. And it was Anastasia whom he’d chiefly fiddled with, drunkenly calling her his sister-in-law …
“Don’t believe it, George,” Greene interrupted. “Mr. Rexford was drunk all right, and claimed Stoker was his brother; but it was Lacey floozied him.”
“Yes,” Leonid affirmed. “But Mrs. Anastasia. And not floozied.”
“All right!” Stoker shouted, and now glared directly at me. “Disgustingest thing I ever saw: Chancellor of the College boozing and wenching like a flunkèd sophomore! Bragging how he’d socked his wife! Telling everybody he’s my brother! And Stacey carrying on like a Furnace-Room whore!”
“Even with him,” Greene confirmed.
Leonid shook his head at the memory. “Even with us. Compassioncy!”
“Hot pants,” Greene corrected. “But what the heck anyhow.”
“Da. Irrelevanceness.”
That, Stoker went on, had been the matter of the quarrel between his prisoners, presently so amicable: Greene had chauffeured Anastasia to the Powerhouse at my request, and, eager as he was to reunite with his family at the Pedal Inn, had lingered on to drink a farewell toast or two with Leonid. The Nikolayan, determined to act selfishly but uncertain how, had left Main Detention not by his own skill but, like Croaker, under Rexford’s amnesty, which he’d judged it selfish to take advantage of, and made his way to the Powerhouse resolved to be a double agent for East and West. Encountering Greene at the orgy-in-progress, he had clinked glasses with his former cellmate, the one drinking vodka, the other corn. First they’d toasted Max, who’d elected not to leave Main Detention: “Decent a Moishian as ever deserved Shafting,” Greene had called him, and Leonid “the unselfnessest martyrty.” Next, with increasing sharpness, they’d saluted each other: “A durn fine Joe, for a Founderless Student-Unie”; “Lawlest Informationaler blind-bat, but I like okay!” And finally they’d drunk to Anastasia, who with tearful eyes and liquorous breath had offered to service both at once. “Passèdèdity!” Leonid had declared; “she make men classmates in love!” “You’re the blind one!” Greene had charged, “tell-a-floozy-from-a-Founderwise! This ain’t even Stacey!” Thereupon the toasts had turned to plain invective, so heated that neither availed himself of Anastasia’s offer or even noticed when she left the bar, “flung herself” (in Stoker’s words) again at the Chancellor, and finding him tabled with Madge, declared she was “running off” to meet another lover in the Tower Hall Belfry.
“Don’t think I don’t know who,” Stoker growled at me. “Not that I give a flunk!”
“He gives a flunk,” Greene said, surprisingly, and Leonid agreed.
“The flunk I do!” Stoker cried. “Any more than you wise-guys, or you’d have talked her out of leaving!” All they’d been concerned with, he said bitterly, was that his wife be seen as a Commencèd martyr (in Leonid’s case) or (in Greene’s) as a flunkèd floozy with a passèd virgin twin; the debate between them on this head, fired by alcohol, had grown so hot that it flared at last into a duel: they would fight to the death, they vowed, and the winner’s prize would be the loser’s good eye. The Living-Room bartender put their agreement in writing, the disputants each grasped a bottle by the neck and broke off its bottom, and armed with these ugly weapons they set to. For a time it was crouch and feint; the combatants, Stoker had to admit, were equally fearless, resolute, wary, and strong of arm, so that it seemed they might come to a bloodless impasse. Then Leonid had cried something in passionate Nikolayan and flung wide his arms, and Greene, believing himself insulted and attacked, had slashed in with the bottle. But even as he thrust he realized that his opponent was impulsively yielding the victory and offering his throat to be cut: the barkeep (himself a defected Nikolayan and rabid anti-Student-Unionist) reported later that Leonid’s exclamation had been “Better you should see the truth than I” or something to that effect—which he interpreted to mean that Leonid was afraid of what he might sec about his alma mater with two good eyes.
“Not so,” Leonid here commented from the sidecar. “I meant Mrs. Anastasia, he should see her through my eyes.”
“I figured that,” Greene said. “And soon’s I figured it, I felt the same durn way about him, Stacey/Laceywise.”
He had tried therefore to pull his cut short, and Leonid to thrust himself upon the glass, but one or both misjudging the distance, the stroke had fallen on Leonid’s face instead of his throat, and unfortunately slashed his patchless eye. Whereupon, stricken with remorse, Greene had snatched the vodka-bottle and stabbed out his own.
“The way they bloodied up the Living Room,” Stoker said, “you’d have thought it was the Amphitheater!”
He had arrested them both and administered first aid; amnesty or no amnesty, he declared, he was fetching them to Main Detention, where he meant to stay himself until Rexford should sober up and go “back where he belongs.” As for Anastasia, she might breed a barnful of billygoat bastards for all he cared.
Leonid said flatly: “He cares.”
“Yep,” said Greene. “Anybody can see that.”
Stoker responded with a jeer. “So there they sit, Goat-Boy: two blind bats! Are they passed or failed?”
Affecting as the grim tale was despite its teller’s sarcasm, and shocking the bloody sight of my former cellmates, I listened and looked without comment, if no longer without emotion. Yet it wasn’t pity I felt, or terror, not even responsibility for their present wretchedness. Stoker’s question had been mine since early on in his narrative, and had absorbed me entirely well before he asked it, fetching me from apathy into the intensest concentration of my life. Indeed, my spirit was seized: it was not I concentrating, but something concentrating upon me, taking me over, like the spasms of defecation or labor-pains. Leonid Andreich and Peter Greene—their estates were rather the occasion than the object of this concentration, whose real substance was the fundamental contradictions of failure and passage. Truly now those paradoxes became paroxysms: I shut my eyes, swayed on Croaker’s shoulders, trembled and sweated. All things converged: I understood what I had done to Dr. Eierkopf with my innocent question about paleooöontological priority. That circular device on my Assignment-sheet—beginningless, endless, infinite equivalence
—constricted my reason like a torture-tool from the Age of Faith. Passage was Failure, and Failure Passage; yet Passage was Passage, Failure Failure! Equally true, none was the Answer; the two were not different, neither were they the same; and true and false, and same and different—Unspeakable! Unnamable! Unimaginable! Surely my mind must crac
k!
“What is it?” Greene asked. “What’s going on, Leo?”
“I can’t see, classmate.”
The troopers murmured at my strange countenance and behavior; Croaker rumbled, feeling my thigh-grip on his neck, and stood up in the sidecar.
“Don’t try to get loose!” No doubt it was Leonid Stoker warned, but his words struck my heart, and I gave myself up utterly to that which bound, possessed, and bore me. I let go, I let all go; relief went through me like a purge. And as if in signal of my freedom, over the reaches of the campus the bells of Tower Clock suddenly rang out, somehow un-jammed: their first full striking since the day I’d passed through Scrapegoat Grate. As all listened astonished, the strokes mounted—one, two, three, four—each bringing from my pressèd eyes the only tears they’d spilled since a fateful late-June morn many terms past, out in the barns. Sol, la, ti, each a tone higher than its predecessor, unbinding, releasing me—then do: my eyes were opened; I was delivered.