by John Barth
Dr. Eierkopf too the bells revived; at first sound of them he had sat up and clutched his head. On the sixth stroke he’d snatched off his new eyeglasses just in time, for the seventh shattered them, as earlier in the Belfry. On that eighth and last, blood spurted from his nose, his eyes rolled up out of sight, he shrieked, “Ach, mein Grunder, ist geborsten der Schädelknocken!” and collapsed again. Croaker bounded to his side, and I sprang down. The handcuffs fell at my feet.
“Halt!” a guard warned; Stoker drew his pistol. But I went in perfect sureness past him to the sidecar, and caught up his prisoners’ hands.
“Leonid Andreich!” I said. “Pete! Thank you and pass you!”
“It is George,” Greene said joyfully. “Hi there, George.”
“Hi,” I said. “Listen, Leonid: why are you going to Main Detention?”
“Because he’s under arrest!” Stoker snapped.
Leonid shrugged. “I talk again to Dr. Spielman; maybe turn him looseness yet.”
I gripped his hand. “Max doesn’t want that, classmate. But you: look—” I tapped his handcuff. “You’re free!”
He shook his head.
“Go back to Nikolay College!” I urged him. “That’s where you have to pass!”
“Selfishty, George.”
“Yes! And when you’re passèd, try to help Classmate X.”
“Forget it,” Stoker said dryly. “This afternoon Chementinski declared himself a failure to the Union and asked for execution. Said he loved his son more than he loved the brotherhood of students. I imagine they’ll oblige him.”
“What is this!” Leonid cried.
“Never mind,” I said. “Look: you and Pete have ended your quarrel. Re-defect! Tell your stepfather his confession was selfish: he wants them to kill him so he won’t have to kill himself. Then tell him that’s all right! Do you see?”
“George!” Leonid’s forehead wrinkled above the bandage. “Passness of me, that’s nothing! Even Classmate X, I love so, that’s nothing to pass! But the self of Studentness—He matters! And you teach me He’s flunkèd selfish! How He’s pass?”
“Probably He can’t,” I said. “Try and see.”
Red tears oozed into his bandage. “Failure is Passage, yes? No?”
I clapped him on the shoulder; the handcuff fell from his wrist.
“See here, now!” Stoker protested.
“Da!” Leonid cried. “Tomorrow, after Max: redefectness!”
“I’ll take you to Founder’s Hill,” Peter Greene said, suddenly determined. “Look here: we’ll meet my daughter at the Pedal Inn and stay the night; tomorrow we’ll go to the Shafting together, for old Doc Spielman’s sake.”
“The flunk you will!” Stoker said. “You stay where you are!”
I took Greene’s hand. “What then, Pete?”
He swallowed a number of times. “I got right smart of work to do back home, George. Finish up inventory; try and set things right with Sally Ann …”
“Do you really think your marriage can be saved?”
He set his chin, and would I think have blinked had his eyes been unbound. “Prob’ly not. But what the heck anyhow, George! I’m going to start from scratch, what I mean understandingwise. Things look different to a fellow’s been through what I been through. I got a long ways to go.”
“Pass you!” I declared.
“Into first grade,” he added wryly. “I might Graduate yet, one of these days. But the odds ain’t much.”
“They never are! Look for me at Founder’s Hill tomorrow.”
He now wept freely, and his wounded eye bled a little onto his cheeks. He supposed with a laugh that he’d have no more hallucinations, at least, and wondered aloud whether a mixture of blood and tears might be good for acne. “Come on,” he said then to Leonid; “I’ll show you the way to the Pedal Inn.”
“Nyet, friend; I know the way. I show you.”
“I’ll show you both,” I said; “I’m going back to Great Mall.”
Stoker fired his pistol into the air. “Flunk all this! Who the Dunce do you think you are, Goat-Boy? The Grand Tutor Himself?”
I regarded him closely. “Have your men drive them to the Infirmary first and then to the Pedal Inn. If Dr. Eierkopf’s all right, he and Croaker can wait in the Powerhouse until the Frumentians come tomorrow. Why don’t you take me to Tower Hall yourself?”
“You’re coming with me, all right,” he said, “but not to Tower Hall! Get in that sidecar!” He commanded his men to ignore what I’d said; Greene and Leonid were to be delivered to the Infirmary for treatment of their wounds and then left at the Pedal Inn—but not at my direction, only because that had been his plan all along. The amnesty, he explained crossly, forbade him the use of Main Detention. Similarly, Croaker and Eierkopf (who was stirring now as his roommate licked his head) were to be taken to the Living Room, but purely because he, Stoker, hoped thereby to chase Rexford out; the guards were to see to it that Eierkopf directed Croaker to that end. As for me, if I thought he meant to chauffeur me to a tryst in the Belfry with his tramp of a wife, I had another think coming …
“I’m not the one she’s to meet there,” I interrupted pleasantly; “it’s Harold Bray.”
He managed to accuse me of jealousy and mendacity, but I saw he was alarmed.
“I’m going to drive Bray out,” I told him. “Among other things.”
“I’ll bet you are. So you can take his place!”
I shrugged. “One thing at a time.”
He glared at me furiously. “You’re as false as he is!”
“Bray’s not exactly a phony,” I said. “But he must be driven out. Would you like to do it yourself, before your wife services him?”
There I had him: except during his extraordinary “reform” back in March, Stoker had an aversion to Great Mall generally and a positive abhorrence of Tower Hall, its hub and crown. Yet for all his present soot and bluster he was not quite the Stoker of old: clearly he was distressed by My Ladyship’s new aggressiveness, and jealous of lovers she chose herself; he wanted the Belfry-tryst prevented, but could not deal himself with Bray (who I pointed out might well retreat with Anastasia into the Belly), and distrusted her with me. On the other hand he doubtless understood that if I were the Grand Tutor, I alone might manage Bray; and (less assuredly) of all healthy men on campus I alone might be the one not interested in cuckolding him at his wife’s invitation. Therefore he found himself, so I imagined, in the position of having to hope that I was what he declared I was not, and that I would overcome the temptations and obstacles he’d surely put in my way. His face grew livid with contradictions. As I gimped firmly into his sidecar, which Greene and Leonid had vacated, Tower Clock struck the half-hour.
“It’s getting on,” I observed. The troopers stood about expectantly.
“Move!” Stoker shouted at them. “Achtung! Dunkelbier! Sauerbraten!” He fired his pistol at the ground near their feet, and they scrambled cursing for their vehicles. Stoker swung onto his own, not neglecting to fart as he kicked the starter. As if in reply his powerful engine barked and spat. He let out the clutch, spun our drive-wheel in the dust, howled an obscenity at the troopers leaping clear of us, and threw back his head as we snarled down the road. But it was I who laughed.
2.
I had come from Great Mall rapidly enough; returning, we fairly flew, by every trick and short-cut in the book: crossed through woods and fields and private lawns, took corners without a pause and stop-signs at full throttle. As if energized by our speed, Stoker resumed his usual baiting and other stratagems.
“So you still want to be Grand Tutor!” he shouted. “Now’s the time to make your play, while Rexford’s out of commission and everything’s upset!”
I smiled.
“Why not work together?” he suggested, and outlined at the top of his voice a plan for “taking over the College”: the Chancellor was in political disgrace and therefore vulnerable; only some extraordinary stroke of fortune—such as abso
lute Commencement by an undisputed Grand Tutor—might redeem his public image; but if Stoker himself had been disgusted by Rexford’s conduct in the Living Room, surely Bray would be more so, and would revoke his Certification. The thing to do, then, was get rid of Bray-for example, by exposing his intended adultery with Anastasia—and establish me as Grand Tutor; Ira Hector’s wealth and Stoker’s secret influence (but he would deny me publicly and affirm Bray, to sway student opinion contrariwise) could promote me to that office easily, given the present disorder and uncertainty in West Campus.Then I would declare Lucky Rexford reinstated and Commencèd, and we three could run New Tammany as we wished.
“What you really want,” I said, “is to see your brother Commence.”
Stoker flushed and cursed. “Brother my arse! You should’ve seen him carrying on! Not that I care!”
I listened carefully to the quarter-hour chimes far in the distance and pointed when we came to a fork. “Bear left.”
Stoker bore right. We soon drew up to Main Gate, passed through and down the dim-lit Mall to where indigent students, as always, were badgering Ira Hector, even swatting him with their various placards. Coatless and shirtless in the cold night air, Ira sneezed and feebly called for help. Stoker paused nearby, at the bole of a leafless elm where The Living Sakhyan sat upon the ground.
“Why not help old Ira?” he challenged. “Then he’ll owe you a favor, and someday you can use him.”
I smiled and got off the motorcycle. “Is that a dare?” But before I went to Ira’s aid I bowed to The Living Sakhyan.
“Thank You for the disappeared ink, sir,” I said. “I signed my ID-card with it when I completed my Assignment at once, in no time.”
He appeared to be smiling.
“For pity’s sake, help!” Ira called.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said to The Living Sakhyan. “I’m going to go help the Old Man of the Mall.”
“Goat-Boy!” Stoker shouted from the motorcycle. “I dare you to help him! Understand? I’m daring you!”
To him also I bowed, but then waded into the circle of angry young students, most of whom “went limp” until they recognized me and then stood by while their spokesman explained their grievance. But a few, who had previously been standing on the fringe of the group with their backs turned, now moved in and commenced to swat Ira, not very violently, with their placards, perhaps in protest against the general détente.
“He’s as stingy as ever!” the spokesman said angrily. “He poisons the whole West Campus.”
“Didn’t he give everything to the P.P.F.?” I asked.
“Gave ’em the shirt off my back!” Ira cried. “Why d’ye think I can’t see to tell time? I’m a sick man!” He sneezed again and wiped his eyes, which were clotted with rheum. “Gesundheit,” said a student beating him.
“It’s night-time anyhow,” I observed to the group. “He can’t see our shadows to tell time by.”
“Ha!” Ira cried.
“That’s not the whole point,” said the student spokesman. “He’s pulled the rug out from under the Rexford administration. Ruined the economy.”
“Who cares?” another challenged. “The Administration’s corrupt anyhow. All power corrupts.”
“And knowledge is power,” said a third, whose sign bore the one word Ignorabimus. “So absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Look at Dr. Faustus. Look at Dr. Bray.”
They fell to arguing then whether Lucius Rexford was a liberal conservative or a conservative liberal, and became so preoccupied, I was able to spare Ira Hector further swats, for the present, simply by sliding him half a meter down the bench, out from under the swinging placards.
“I don’t owe you a thing,” he wheezed at once. “You owed me, for taking your fool advice this morning.” He had, I learned, instructed his agents to make over his entire estate and divers incomes to the Philophilosophical Fund, with the declared intention of Passing through poverty and ignorance, and burdening others with his wealth. But the result was that he stood to become wealthier than ever from tax-refunds, while the College went bankrupt for want of tax revenues. Half the student body would subsist on tax-free scholarships, all deductible by the Hector cartel. Moreover, his agents were abandoning him to take service with his brother, lately back from the goat-farms, in the mistaken conviction that Reginald was independently wealthy: why else would he have “resigned” from the P.P.F. directorship? Finally, the students whose tuition had been going to be paid by Lucius Rexford’s tax-supported grant-in-aid program now despised Ira, and had apparently stripped the clothes from his back when he offered them, gratis, the time of night.
“You said you gave them your shirt,” I reminded him.
He sneezed and cursed. “I’d like to see ’em try to get along without me!”
“They can’t,” I said. “Tell them that!”
I bent close to his ear. “Listen, Old Man: forget what I told you both times before. It was mistaken advice.”
He glittered his eyes. “Swindled me, did you? I figured you for a sharper! What’s your line this time?”
I smiled and bade him good evening.
“Hold on!” he called after me. “Don’t you think these rapscallions’ll start right in once you’ve gone? What kind of help is that? You owe me!”
It was indeed evident that at least some of the indigents only waited my withdrawal to resume their molestations—and a very few, of course, had never really left off. But though I’d deemed it flunkèd, in West Campus anyhow, not to assist him, I also recognized the final futility of assistance, and so tarried no longer.
“Wait!” he cried more desperately. “It’s earlier than you think; I can tell by the moonshadows! It’s only quarter till ten!”
Sure enough, Tower Clock sounded the three-quarter melody as he spoke, and if the coming hour was indeed ten, it was not so late as I’d have supposed. But that fact was of no importance to me.
“Ha!” the student leader exclaimed. “Hear that? Quarter till! Much obliged, old man!” And laughing at their adversary’s inadvertent gift, which it plainly chagrined him to have bestowed, they left him in peace, for the time being at least—except one small faction opposed to private charity and another to the forcible extortion of information, both of whom now laid on with their placards.
“Aren’t you going to re-advise him?” Stoker demanded sarcastically.
I knew what reply to make; but just then the Great-Mall streetlights—those not burned out earlier in the evening—flared momentarily, and I saw Reginald Hector, flanked by aides and receptionist, striding towards his brother’s bench. I stepped between them.
“You!” the ex-Chancellor cried, and his surprise at the sight of me quickly turned to irritation. “Look out of my way, boy; I got to save Ira from those beggars!”
“Your brother can’t really be helped, Grandpa,” I declared. “His case is hopeless.”
“Nuts,” he said, pushing past me. “That’s no-win talk. Nothing’s impossible!”
“Check,” the receptionist affirmed. “Up and at ’em, P.-G.”
“You have some begging of your own to do, is that it?” My gibe fetched him up, though I knew it to be no more than half true. He ordered his aides to proceed to Ira’s rescue, directing them with his slingèd arm, and then turned to me like a professor-general to a wayward freshman recruit, his chin thrust dangerously forth.
“I withdraw the remark, sir,” I said, before he could speak. “Your brother Ira can’t pass, but I do have some final advice for you. If you want it.”
“Hmp!” He glared at me squint-eyed for a moment, stroking his jaw. His aides, having driven off Ira’s three or four lingering molesters, found themselves beset now by the whole original company of demonstrators, almost united in their opposition to uniformed intervention.
“Contingency Three-A?” the receptionist called.
“Affirmative,” said the P.-G., and at her direction the aides began issuing articles of cold-weather clothing, warm thou
gh ill-fitting, to the demonstrators.
“Three-A Sub One!” Grandfather barked. At once the receptionist offered to deputize the bearded student leader as an assistant aide, or field supervisor of P.P.F. disbursements, at a high salary. He hesitated, considered the jeers of his out-of-classmates, but finally accepted the post, protesting to his fellows that one had to see the undergraduate revolution in its larger perspective, if one was not to be after all an ivory-tower naïf. “Even Sakhyan—” he started to explain.
“Three-A Sub Two!” the ex-Chancellor shouted triumphantly. His receptionist whispered something into the new aide’s ear, whereupon he exchanged his soiled-sheepskin jacket for a heavy olive topcoat with epaulets, bestowing the fleece upon Ira Hector. The students booed.
“Losers weepers!” Ira cackled. “Sauve qui peut! Possession is nine points of the law!”
“Keep your advice, boy,” Grandfather told me proudly. “I’ll get to Commencement Gate on my own two feet! Beholden to none!”
I made no objection. The students now were pelting their former spokesman with the gold cufflinks, desk-calendars, and ball-point pens distributed among them by the aides, and Reginald Hector went to issue fresh directives for this contingency.
“Tower Hall,” I said to Stoker.
He twitched his mouth. “I’ll bet you didn’t have any advice for the P.-G.”
“Better hurry,” I suggested, climbing into the sidecar. “It’s not getting any earlier.”
He started the motor, but deliberately tarried, watching the ex-Chancellor efficiently put down the demonstrators.
“Why didn’t you Certify him, if he’s passed?”
“I didn’t say he was passed.”
He grinned. “So Reg is as flunked as Ira.”
I smiled. “I didn’t say that either.”
“Nepotism!” Stoker taunted. “Same old story—not what you know, but who.” Tower Clock tolled ten.
“Your wife’s assignation is scheduled for eleven,” I reminded him, “but she may be there already. You know how it is when a woman’s in love. For that matter, Tower Clock may be wrong.”