by John Barth
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I’m ill.
TALIPED: I felt remorse
afterwards.
AGENORA: Nonsense: you did your duty. The wretch insulted you. As for his cutie-pie, she got what she deserved.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I’m iller.
TALIPED: Sure she did, but shucks, I’m not the killer type; I’m gentle as a lamb.
AGENORA: And twice as sexy, big boy.
TALIPED: Killing isn’t nice, even when it’s justified, and I would not have stabbed those fellows in the eye or carved initials in the girl’s behind unless I’d lost my temper.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Or his mind.
And I thought I was sick! He’s got some sort of complex!
TALIPED: Well, to make a long tale short, the Three-Tined Fork is where I blew my gasket. Perhaps I’m just a worry-wart—
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
A basket-case is what he is.
TALIPED: —but I must hear this shepherd-fellow tell me not to fear that it was old Labdakides I killed.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: How could you dream it was? The roads are filled with old Cadmusian topers and their staffs and pretty girlfriends. They ride out for laughs to Three-Tined Fork and tell hitch-hikers there a monster-story, just to throw a scare into them. We lose a lot of folks that way to angry strangers.
TALIPED: Your bad jokes will cost you dearly one day. That old fault in me of getting angry and assaulting those who cross me—it’s my tragic flaw, you might say—well, I have it still. You saw me threaten old Gynander. A word to the wise …
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: … is quite enough, sir. I apologize.
AGENORA: [TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
To me, too, if you know which side your bread is buttered on. A man no good in bed should be polite, at least.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Forgive me, Deaness.
AGENORA: You’re cute when you’re contrite.
TALIPED: I have the keenest interest in this shepherd’s testimony …
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
Here we go again. I hate this phony Go-to-any-length-for-Answers bit.
TALIPED: Perhaps he was embarrassed to admit that he ran off instead of fighting too.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Or that one man did in the Dean’s whole crew.
TALIPED: How nice of you to mention that!
AGENORA: Now look: You were alone at Three-Tined Fork. That shnook, the shepherd, said it was a gang that cut the Dean up. We all heard him say it. But so what if he says something different now? I told you once already, sweetie, how Labdakides turned off our poor kid early and beat the prophecy. So put your curly head to rest on that point, baby. We’ll ring the shepherd in to give his spiel, but nothing he can say will change the facts. Proph-profs are for morons. So relax.
TALIPED: Gee whiz, I hope you’re right.
AGENORA: I always am, sweetheart.
[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
Run along now, sport.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Yes, ma’am.
AGENORA: [TO TALIPED]
My little boy will have his little way.
Let’s go in, till the shepherd comes, and play.
When Taliped and Agenora went into the Deanery, the committee reconvened onstage, this time in a circle, and holding hands skipped gravely clockwise on the strophes and counterclockwise on the antistrophes of their quite perplexèd ode.
Department-heads like us are loath [STROPHE 1
To question old traditions;
We honor deans and proph-profs both,
Despite their oppositions.
The Dean’s our boss, and so we trust [ANTISTROPHE 1
Gynander was mistaken.
Yet proph-profs can’t be wrong; we must
Preserve our faith unshaken.
To question proph-profs doesn’t pay; [STROPHE 2
It leads to bold conjectures.
If students got that habit, they
Might criticize our lectures.
The Prophecy Department would [ANTISTROPHE 2
Go bankrupt. Heads would fall—
Department-heads, perhaps. No good
Can come from doubt at all.
Dear Founder, Whose most cagey hand [STROPHE 3
Arranges how things go:
Preserve us from all changes, and
Maintain the status quo.
Keep us from doubts, reforms,
imprudence, [ANTISTROPHE 3
New ideas, too;
And we’ll see to it that the students
Still believe in You.
“That was a right pretty thought there,” Peter Greene said. “I approve of that.”
I remarked to Dr. Sear that it looked to me as though Dean Taliped might really turn out to have done what the Proph-prof Gynander foretold, in which case he was certainly the flunkèdest man in the University.
“He is that,” Dr. Sear agreed. “But there’s more to it.” As Agenora came forth from the Deanery he added in a whisper: “The business of the ID-card comes up now. Very important.”
Agenora displayed some green branches and small bottles which she was carrying, and addressed the committee:
AGENORA: For Pete’s sake, simmer down, boys. Don’t you think I’ve been a dean’s wife much too long to stink my public image up? I know quite well the Proph-prof’s full of bull—but I won’t tell. I’ll go to Founder’s Hall and lay these sticks and perfume-bottles on him, as the hicks expect me to. That faker gets my goat, but Agenora doesn’t rock the boat. [Enter MAILMAN
MAILMAN: Excuse me, lady—
AGENORA: Well, now. Who’s this?
MAILMAN: A Handsome Mailman.
AGENORA: How about a kiss, handsome?
MAILMAN: Sure, kid.
AGENORA: Mmm. I think you’d better repeat the message, honey. Mmm.
MAILMAN: This letter here’s a special-delivery, ma’am; I guess I’d better get it to the right address, much as I’d like to neck awhile. You know we Handsome Mailmen can’t be stopped by snow or dead of night or housewives out to vamp us. I’ll see you after hours.
AGENORA: On this campus, love, you’ll see me when I want you to. I’m Mrs. Taliped.
MAILMAN: You are? Then you can take this letter for your husband, dear. It’s from his alma mater. Now, come here; that means my work’s all done and we can neck a little while before I have to trek along.
AGENORA: Hold on …
MAILMAN: That’s what I’m doing, girlie.
AGENORA: I’d better read this first.
MAILMAN: It says that early yesterday the Dean of Isthmus died. Heart attack. Now are you satisfied?
AGENORA: I see you like to read what you’re delivering.
MAILMAN: Here’s something else to set your husband quivering: as soon as he presents his ID-card at Isthmus College, folks there will regard him as their dean, as well as yours. I try to memorize these things in case some guy should ever rob the mail, you understand?
AGENORA: You bet I do, big boy. Let go my hand now; here comes hubby.
[TO TALIPED]
Hi there, Taliped. This Handsome Mailman just blew in and said your father down in Isthmus had a stroke or something and dropped dead.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I’m glad you woke up when you did, sir.
AGENORA: I’m not.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: This sad news is not without its brighter side …
TALIPED: Who’s dead? What’s this? What’s up? What does it mean?
AGENORA: It means, sleepyhead, that you’re the dean of Isthmus College now, and Cadmus too. It also means that anybody who believes the proph-profs is a bloody fool. I told you so. Don’t worry now that you’ll do in your dad. The old man had heart-failure.
TALIPED: He did?
MAILMAN: That’s right.
AGENORA: As for your mother’s tail, you’re not to worry over that again.
TALIPED: I’m not?
AGENORA: No.
TALIPED: Why not?
AGENORA
: Because half the men on campus, in their dreams, have slipped it in the place they first came out of. That’s no sin.
MAILMAN: She’s right. I’ve dreamt such things myself at times.
AGENORA: I’m sure you have, pet.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Dreams like that aren’t crimes, Dean Taliped.
TALIPED: Are you still here?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: AGENORA: Yes, sir. Those evil-minded proph-profs like to stir up trouble by pretending dreams come true. They don’t, so there.
TALIPED: It isn’t hard for you to talk that way, dear: you don’t have the curse.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [TO MAILMAN]
She hasn’t had for years.
MAILMAN: That’s nice.
TALIPED: The worse of those two prophecies might snag me yet: I can’t kill my old man, but I might get to my old lady, since she’s still alive.
MAILMAN: Is that your problem, Dean?
TALIPED: That’s one.
MAILMAN: Then I’ve got news for you. You don’t know me, but I know you from way back when. That nice old guy in Isthmus and his wife, that used to call you Sonny, weren’t your mom and dad at all.
TALIPED: They weren’t?
MAILMAN: No. You needn’t have skipped out.
TALIPED: Then who the flunk am I?
AGENORA: Please don’t shout; I have a headache.
TALIPED: What do you think I’ve got? Good news, he calls it! Don’t you see I’m not off the Proph-prof’s hook yet? Look, old man—
AGENORA: He’s not so old.
MAILMAN: [TO AGENORA]
You either, kid.
AGENORA: [TO MAILMAN]
You can put your mail in my box any time.
TALIPED: For Founder’s sake get serious, or I’m a goner! If they weren’t my folks, then why’d they raise me as their son? Why did they hide the truth from me?
MAILMAN: The Dean and his old lady kept their mouths shut ’cause they knew how shady your adoption was. And they promoted me so I’d shut up. Before I toted mail I was a shepherd, see, and once this guy I used to shep with, couple of months each season, in the hills near Dean’s Ravine—
AGENORA: Hey, that’s in Cadmus, isn’t it?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It’s between Cadmus and Isthmus campuses, I think.
MAILMAN: Well, anyhow, my buddy gave a wink at me one day and asked me if I knew what he had in his lunch-pail. I said, “Stew.”
That’s what he usually ate. He said, “Heck, no. I got a kid for sale, pal, and I’ll go halfies with you if you’ll fence him for me …”
AGENORA: That dirty doublecrosser!
MAILMAN: Well, he swore he couldn’t feed some flunking crow or eagle perfectly good merchandise, illegal or not.
TALIPED: How tenderhearted.
MAILMAN: What I did, since he was anxious to unload the kid, I bought him then and there at the wholesale price. I’d looked him over quick; he seemed in nice enough condition—maybe not too handsome, but I could get my money back and then some, I was sure, because the Dean was sterile and in the baby market. Man, I swear I’ll break that swindling shepherd’s neck if ever I lay eyes on him again! The clever bastard had the kid wrapped in a sheet, and when I took it off, I saw his feet were pegged together, and he was almost dead. Well, you can imagine what I said! But it served me right: I’d bought a kid-in-a-poke. I pulled the peg, and figuring the kid would croak by morning, sold him to the Dean that night at cost. Turned out the kid survived, and right after that I got this job as mailman. Neither dark of night nor sleet nor hail can stay me, but the ladies slow me down.
[TO AGENORA]
Bye-bye now, Deaness; next time I’m in town I’ll look you up.
AGENORA: You know my address, hon.
TALIPED: [TO MAILMAN]
Hey, wait! You mean to tell me I’m the one you bought and sold?
MAILMAN: Are your feet scarred?
TALIPED: They always have been.
MAILMAN: And your ID-card says Taliped Decanus, does it not?
TALIPED: Of course it does.
MAILMAN: And I guess you know what
Taliped means?
TALIPED: It means “swollen foot.”
MAILMAN: You’re It, then, pal.
TALIPED: By George! I never put two and two together until now!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: A mathematician you aren’t. But tell me how a woman like your wife can go to bed for nine years with a man named Taliped and never see his scars!
AGENORA: Listen, tootsie: you and your wife might like playing footsie, but when a fellow goes to bed with me, it isn’t his big toe I want to see.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: And yet you must have wondered—
AGENORA: Will you please get off my back?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: When old Labdakides and you—
AGENORA: Shut up!
TALIPED: Yes, do. Now, Mailman, tell me this: where’d he get the child to sell, this fellow up in Dean’s Ravine you shepped with?
MAILMAN: Beats me. It could have been some dame’s he’d slept
with.
But come to think of it, he didn’t look much like a shepherd—flashy clothes, no crook—I mean, he was one, but he never carried one. My guess is that some young unmarried co-ed had the kid and paid a fee to make it disappear, you know? If he had a regular little business going, it wouldn’t surprise me.
TALIPED: Now I’m really growing curious to interview this pair of shepherds. Can you fellows tell me where this crookless crook hangs out, and what’s his name?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I think, sir, that this fellow is the same you sent for while ago.
TALIPED: He gets around!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I noticed, sir, that Agenora frowned at everything the Handsome Mailman said. Perhaps there’s something on her mind.
AGENORA: Drop dead already! [TO TALIPED] Listen, sweetie, let’s forget this shepherd-type. Who needs him? I say let well enough alone.
TALIPED: Indeed I won’t. I’ll never get my clearance if I don’t correct my ID-card. The folks at Isthmus won’t give me the deanship if I miss this chance to find out who I am.
AGENORA: Who cares? I’ve got enough to think about. If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s your life-story.
TALIPED: I think you’re worried that some scrub-girl bore me. So what? It makes me an even grander guy, that I began so low and rose so high.
AGENORA: I need an aspirin. Maybe the whole bottle. Find out your name, and all the pills I’ve got’ll do no good. I’m going to hang this dress up on the clothesline now. It looks a mess. But please, lover, take my advice and flunk this ID-quiz. ’Cause if you don’t, we’re sunk. [Exits
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: What’s eating her? [Aside] As if I didn’t know.
TALIPED: Like all administrators’ wives, she’s so rank-conscious that she’d probably have the vapors to see it entered on my ID-papers that I’m some freshman co-ed’s son, who laid her math professor for a better grade. But I don’t give a flunk. I’m just as great no matter who my folks were. I can’t wait to learn the Answer! Who cares what it is, as long as it’s the Founder’s truth? Gee whiz!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside] Prepare yourselves to see things fall to pieces: The Dean believes his own press releases.
I was by this time entirely involved with Taliped’s resolve to learn his identity. I’d finished my popcorn, and began to eat the tasty box as the committee sang a brief and sprightly song of conjecture about Dean Taliped’s parentage, coming curiously to a full stop at each line’s end, whether the word was complete or not.
Whoopee! Hooray for truth! The un [STROPHE 1
examined life is not
worth living! Truth will make you free!
And other campus mot
toes of that sort. What is a coll [ANTISTROPHE 1
ege for if not to seek
the truth? Hooray for truth! Whoopee!
I’ll bet this time next week
end, when the moon’s full, we’ll be dan [STROPHE 2
/>
cing up in Dean’s Ravine,
where Taliped was transferred out
of Cadmus to the Dean
ery of Isthmus. Gosh! We won [ANTISTROPHE 2
der who his mom can be!
No doubt she was a trustee’s wife
or some such high-class fe
male whom the passèd Founder Him [STROPHE 3
self knocked up in the grass.
Dean Taliped’s the Founder’s son:
a most uncommon bas
tard! [ANTISTROPHE 3
“Hey, I never thought of that!” I whispered to Max. “Do you suppose—”
He met my eyes gravely. “No, my boy.”
Dr. Sear identified the approaching scene as the next-to-last, his favorite and the climax of the tragedy. It opened with Dean Taliped, the Committee Chairman, and the Handsome Mailman standing together as before, while from the wings a small old man was dragged in between two burly chaps.
TALIPED: The Campus Cops are on the job, I see. We’ll put the screws to this old boy till we squeeze out his answers or his worthless life.
[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
But first: is he the valet that my wife was speaking of? I don’t have time to torture ancient shepherds simply for the sport.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: You’re right; that would be wasteful. He’s the man, okay: Labdakides’s flunkey.
TALIPED: [TO MAILMAN]
Can
you say for sure that he’s your former pal?
MAILMAN: Former is right. That’s him.
