by John Barth
“I’ll just try another sip, if you don’t mind …”
“Do!” Stoker urged.
“Thank you.”
Which observations, I went on to declare, led me to suppose myself at least as well hung as my most generous host and chauffeur, he being white-skinned under his soot. If not better, in view of his short stature. No offense intended.
“Show us!” Stoker cried. “Get the flashlight, Stacey!”
“George, don’t!” Anastasia’s angry plea came just in time, for I was nowise loath to test my supposition. “He’s only teasing you. He wants to make a fool of you.”
“Why? Because his is better? How do you know, till you’ve compared us?”
She tried over Stoker’s laughter to explain that I misunderstood the question, which was one rather of modesty than of fact.
“Ah,” I said appreciatively. “You mean I shouldn’t boast. Excuse me, I haven’t learned all your manners yet. But that makes sense. Excuse me, Mr. Stoker: didn’t mean to offend you.”
“No offense! No offense! Oh, what a party we’ll have tonight!”
Anastasia shook her head and tried again. “It’s not an offense to him, one way or the other! I mean, knowing Maurice, I guess he might be disappointed or something if his was smaller—but that’s not what I mean either!”
Stoker guffawed.
“It’s just not proper, in the presence of a lady!” she cried. Then she added quickly, “I don’t mean you meant anything naughty by it …” The labor of articulation made her frown. “I realize you were brought up differently, just as Croaker was …”
I protested (the liquor burning well from my throat to my belly) that I was not so ignorant of West-Campus manners as all that: had I not that same evening rebuked her for displaying across the Georgian River her own escutcheon? But plainly there was a crucial difference between the cases: my reproach had not been for the display of beauty as such—to which none could reasonably object without advocating that her face be covered as well, and her fine-modeled arms and dainty pasterns, not to mention all the countless other of nature’s charms, from rainbows to thistle-blossoms. Nay, it was the motive I protested, not the deed: her intent, as I’d mistaken it, to compromise the Grand-Tutorial chastity enjoined on me by Max …
“I knew it!” Stoker said triumphantly.
“But I had no such thing in my mind just now,” I said. “Naturally I’d be complimented if you thought all my parts were handsome, too-poor G. Herrold used to like them, rest his mind, and I’m pleased enough with them, I guess. But beauty’s not the point here: the question was a simple one of size. I can’t see where propriety comes in.”
“Don’t you understand, woman?” Stoker chided her. “That’s just how her mind works, though, George: she thinks you want to put it in her.”
“I do not!” Anastasia cried, at the same moment that I declared, “I do!” Not a little impatient at her consternation, I said, “Didn’t I make that clear? I’d like nothing better than to mate with you if I weren’t the Grand Tutor. Which I am! I don’t even know for sure if Max is right about this chastity business; I’ll have to decide for myself. If I decide he’s right, nobody can tempt me; if I decide he’s wrong, nobody can stop me.”
“Hear! Hear!” Stoker said.
I smiled gravely upon the excellent girl. “Especially I think it would be good to bite you in the belly, Anastasia—not really to hurt, you understand. Your belly is very attractive. Very.”
In a small and uncertain voice she said, “Thank you.”
“Provided you wanted me to,” I added, as a particular admonition to Stoker and by way of demonstrating what I took to be Grand-Tutorial judiciousness. “That’s something none of you seems to consider: to mate or whatever with a doe that’s not in heat—a girl I mean of course—is not right at all. No buck would ever do such a thing. You couldn’t make him.”
Stoker shook his head. “Stacey could make him. Everybody mates with her: chancellors, uncles, laundrymaids, billygoats—everybody! And yet she’s never been in heat in her whole life.”
“Isn’t that odd! Why do you suppose that is?” It was she I asked, but seeing she’d hidden her face at the disclosure, I tactfully changed the subject. “Do you remember what your goat-friend’s name was, that you mated with? I’m sure I’d know him if he was one of our studs.”
I was astounded to see her wail into tears; nor would she permit me to calm her with my hand, but pushed it from her withers as if I had offended her, and whipped her head from side to side.
“Now stop!” I told her. “I don’t see why you’re crying!” I rather wished Max were there to advise me, despite the pleasures of independence I’d been feeling; for though I found Maurice Stoker more interesting and challenging than repugnant, I had no illusions about his straightforwardness. Now he said, “What’s to see? You admit you used to bugger old Sambo back there, and then you tell my wife she’s not worth biting in the belly! Don’t you think the girl’s got feelings?”
“That’s all wrong! Don’t you believe him, Anastasia: he’s a regular Dean o’ Flunks, and I’m the Grand Tutor! I’d love to bite your belly. I really would!”
“Even Max could hardly object to that,” Stoker remarked.
“So what if he did? Anything I do, that’s what a Grand Tutor should do. If I bite your wife in the belly, it’s right to bite her in the belly!” Not to have Anastasia think my words mere idle rhetoric or dutiful apology, I went at her forthwith, sliding to my knees and boring my face past her hands into her midriff. Despite the sidecar’s jolting and for all her wrench and wriggle (which I took for a kind of pouting with the whole body), I contrived to fasten through the cloth of her shift upon a pinch of that admirable, most soft place, which I clenched gently but unremittingly in my teeth until her writhing ceased and her hands no longer thrust but only clutched my hair. I felt us wheel round a bend, but was that determined she must affirm the rightness of whatever I did—a rightness, it occurred to me as I bit, by definition—I’d not have let go even when we jerked now to a halt, had not the roar of other motors suddenly enveloped us. Relinquishing my tender gobbet I raised my head and blinked in a flood of light: we were drawn up on a graveled apron before a huge iron door, let into a steep dark hillside and guarded by a pistoled host, sooty as their master. They grinned, as did the riders thronging in from various roads to skid up near us, at the wide amazement on the face that rose from Anastasia’s lap. But the only laugh was Stoker’s, which, when the engines quit, the massive door gave back, iron and ringing as itself.
6.
“So we’re home!” Stoker cried. “Have to finish your meal later, old chap!” To the door-guards he shouted, “Open her up!” and to his aide on the nearest cycle (in which Max rode, but would not return my greeting), “Tell Sear we’ve got one dead Frumentian and one doped one he should have a look at. And a goat-boy, too, if he’s interested.”
The sharp-faced lieutenant nodded. At his command (not in our tongue) two guards with fierce-appearing dogs on leash opened a small metal box near the door and did something with their hands inside it. Engines were restarted; Stoker winked at me, handed me his flask once more, and started ours. With a grind the heavy door began to slide: smoky orange light streamed from the widening crack. I had time to notice through my bedazzlement, as I sipped, only that other such doors were visible in patches of yellow glare at various heights on the rock-face, and that a double row of bluish floodlights on tall poles, with a thick white pipe between, stretched out over flat ground to leftwards—a brilliant line straight to the horizon. Then we crunched forward on the gravel towards the door, the aide’s vehicle in the lead. The guards gave way before his and Stoker’s oaths; the dogs lunged at Max, were checked with effort, and snarled at me too as we went past them.
“They smell goat!” Stoker laughed.
I sat back in my place, stirred by the strange sights; wished Max were in less glum spirits; marveled at the rolling door. Anastasia’s solemn
eyes were on me. I grinned, perhaps wildly, and rubbed my hand over where I’d bitten her.
“Didn’t hurt, did it?” My attention was straining to assimilate the cavernous chamber we rolled into, hewn from the rock, dim-lit, and lined with pipes and large machinery. I scarcely caught her reply, delivered as it was almost in a whisper and with her eyes closed.
“Founder help me!”
“How’s that?” I leaned closer.
She half-opened her eyes. “Is it possible? I don’t even dare imagine …”
“What: that I’m the Grand Tutor? Of course I am.” All else I ignored now except her troubled eyes. “If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have said I was.”
“But how can a Grand Tutor … bite? I don’t understand it!”
I turned up my palms. “Me either. But I think there’s more than one road to Commencement Gate.”
She put her hand on my forearm. “Shouldn’t you be gentle and meek? And suffering? You’re very physical, George …”
“Sure I’m physical. Listen, Anastasia—” It was interesting to use her name. “Do you want to Graduate or not?”
“I do!” Her eyes filled with emotion. “I’m so ashamed of all the things that’ve happened to me. More than anything in this campus I wish I could find out what the Answer is!”
“So do I, and I intend to. Then I’ll Tutor, and on Commencement Day the wise will pass and the ignorant flunk. Don’t you believe that?”
The effort gave her visible pain. “I want to …”
I touched my lips gravely to her brow. “When you do, you’ll be my first Tutee, Anastasia. And the first Tutee will be the first Graduate. I swear it.”
I might have added, just fully appreciating it myself, that Max had not pre-empted that distinction; much as he needed, wanted, and endeavored to believe in me, he had yet truly to manage it. But the motors roared so now in the confines of the room, speech became impossible. For just that reason, perhaps, as Anastasia’s eyes considered my strange words, impulsively I said, “I rather love you, you know.”
Midway into the declaration the engines once more quit together, as on some signal—though why that one and no other should be so efficiently responded to, I cannot say—with the result that my latter words stood clear. Anastasia put her hand on my fleece and glanced towards Stoker, as did I. Had he heard me through the din? I wasn’t sure I cared; I myself could not have said what my words meant! But I was not easy at the way he beamed and whistled when the motorcycles parked now and their riders dismounted. A little crisply, as I helped Anastasia from the sidecar, I said, “You understand what I mean: the way Max loved all of us in the herd, because he was our keeper. A Grand Tutor loves the whole student body.”
“Belly and all, hey?” Stoker cried. He caught us each by the arm. “Let’s take a look around the Plant before we join the party.”
But Anastasia shook her head. There was dull irritation in her face and voice now. “I want to go to bed, Maurice.”
“Bed! We’ve got a Grand Tutor on our hands! How often does that happen?”
“Please,” I told him, “I hate to be a bother …”
“No bother!”
“Maurice—” Anastasia covered her eyes. “Croaker hurt me. Please let me go now.”
Her husband sighed. “Oh, all right. I’ll send Sear up to have a look at you.” But at her insistence that she had no need of doctors or medicines, only of rest, he shrugged and dismissed her with a cheerful smack on the posteriors. My heart was clutched with confusion.
“See how willful she is?” Stoker appealed. “And they say I mistreat her! Tell you what, George; you run along with her, cheer her up a bit. We can tour the Plant later.”
He spoke with his usual breezy authority and even gave me a little push after her, who was approaching a small door in the farther wall.
“Verboten!” Max cried from behind me. The word—I hadn’t heard it for years—halted me like a tether. Max too had stepped from his sidecar, and glared at me, his face drained. Heads spun around; the language of the order was apparently not unfamiliar to certain of the guards, in particular those with the dogs.
“Founder help her, George! She’s in his power, and we got to choose!”
I heard Stoker sigh beside me.
“One girl or the whole student body!” Max cried. “If they won’t take me in your place, I’m going to walk out of here until they stop me.” He turned his furious eyes on the officer near him, the long-faced one, who watched impassively. “Don’t give them another minute, Georgie. Come with me; this is a flunkèd place.”
I was divided as on that day when the shophar had summoned from the barn while Lady Creamhair lingered in the hemlock-grove. Max took a final look at G. Herrold’s body, murmured something in his beard, and spat at the officer’s feet—a thing I’d never have supposed him capable of. He turned and started for the great iron door, which was grinding shut. The guards who made to seize him were checked by a slight sign from the officer, who also with his hand bade the sentries halt the door where it was. Max paused in the narrow opening and looked back to me. His voice was terrible.
“Grand Tutor or goat!”
Stoker grinned; the guards stood by. The dogs growled through a small hum of machinery. Anastasia I saw had opened the small door and stepped into what I presently learned was a lift. I moved towards her, meaning to call, “Come with us!” But at my move she closed the door. Stoker signaled, and I turned, blanching, round: alas, Max had mistaken my step for a choice and gone; that door too shut.
Stoker clapped me on the shoulder. “Flunk ’em both, hey? Good for you! I’ll send a man after Max to see he’s all right. Splendid old fool, that Max—stubborn as a jackass! Convinced I’m the Dean o’ Flunks! I love to tease him about the Moishians and the Bonifacists; he believes anything …” Interrupting himself, he gave orders to his lieutenant to change out of uniform, overtake Max in an unmarked vehicle, and transport him to some hostelry of the College. The man saluted with a click of bootheels; Stoker led me towards the door behind which Anastasia had vanished.
“Come on, I’ll show you the Plant. Come on!” He laughed at my reluctance. “Max’ll be all right, and you’ll see Stacey later. She’s upset now because of what you said, but she’ll get over it. Quite a girl, isn’t she?”
“She’s—very nice.” I allowed myself to be led with him.
“Can’t say no to a soul! Oh, here, you’re probably thirsty …” He pressed the flask on me. “Take those dogs of ours, for instance: we got them from a kennel on the Siegfrieder campus, where they’d been trained to bite anything without blond hair and blue eyes. Let me go near, they’d take an arm off; but for Stacey they’ll roll over like pups, to get their bellies scratched. I mean the male ones, of course: can’t do a thing with the bitches; they’re jealous as the Faculty Women’s Club. Attaboy, George.”
The liquor was a welcome thing. One of Stoker’s aides pushed a button beside the lift-door, and we stood about waiting for it to open.
“No, really, she’s amazing, that woman.” Stoker’s eyes sparkled, and he spoke behind his hand in a mock whisper. “These Siegfrieders, you know—can’t beat ’em for cleverness. They’d trained these dogs to hump the Moishian co-eds in their extermination campuses. Ask your friend Eierkopf about it—didn’t I hear Max mention him? He’ll tell you it was all for the sake of science; but you know those Siegfrieders, what sports they are. I asked one of their officers once what would happen if a Moishian girl should whelp a litter by a purebred Siegfrieder watchdog: wouldn’t that mongrelize the class? And he said, ‘Vunce dot hoppens ve is condomps on der dogs puttink, same like ourselfs.’ He even showed me his orders from Der Oberbefehlshaber-Professor: Blausiegelen for enlistees, Superblausiegelen for officers. Some science! Here, I’ll have one too.”
He took a drink from the flask, wiped his sooty face with the back of his hand, and returned the liquor to me. Then with a great belch he resumed his anecdote:
“You can imag
ine what a time we had training that little habit out of the dogs! If Stacey hadn’t helped us taper ’em off—like narcotics in the Psych Clinic, you know?—the sons-of-bitches would’ve serviced every trustee’s wife that took a tour of the Plant!” He shook his head in good-natured despair. “Then we had to taper Stacey off; ‘Can’t stand to hear the poor things whimper,’ she used to say. No wonder the bitches don’t like her!”
At last the lift-door opened, and I was moved with Stoker and two or three guards into the elevator—the first I’d seen. Other guards, I observed, had lifted the still-unconscious Croaker onto a large wheeled table, which now they rolled away; a second of the same kind was drawn up to the sidecar wherein G. Herrold lay.
“They shouldn’t hate her, though,” I said thoughtfully, referring to the watchdog-bitches. For obvious reasons, the story of Anastasia and the dogs did not affect me as it might an ordinary human. “Don’t they understand she was only helping their mates?”
Stoker positively hugged me. At the same moment the lift began to rise. “She was! She was, George! Oh, wait till Sear meets you! We must tell Lucky Rexford’s wife and all the others not to be so unreasonable: Stacey’s only trying to help their poor husbands!”
“You wife is very sweet that way,” I said firmly. “Very generous.”
“Oh my, yes!” Stoker roared. “Generous she is!”
I knew I was being baited, but the strong liquor, perhaps, made me not care. “I wonder if you really appreciate her,” I insisted. “You think she does things for flunkèd reasons—at least you pretend to think so. But she doesn’t. She didn’t want Croaker to service her this evening; she was counting on you to rescue her in time. And you would have, if you’d seen how she trembled; she’s not big enough for him! Yet she was willing to let it happen, to keep us out of danger …”
