Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  “Maurice has never done anything like it before!” she said. “Coming right to the Infirmary and taking me out to eat! He’d even shaved, and bought a necktie!” Moreover—what I agreed was unimaginable—he had treated her with courtesy; had opened doors for her, praised her coiffure (as she reported this she touched her hair, still incredulous), dined with her in almost gentlemanly fashion, and finally announced that he wanted her advice: Didn’t she agree that he should drop in at the Light House and publicly deny kinship with Lucky Rexford?

  “I swear that’s what he said, George—and so mildly!” Any moment, she declared, she had expected him to end the cruel pretense and become his normal self again. Had he but smashed even a little porcelain, called out a few obscenities, or pinched the waitress’s behind, she might have dined with some small appetite despite the novelty of the occasion. As it was, she could eat nothing, and trembled with worry that she had displeased him in some way. His question she could scarcely comprehend; not until they rose from table did she venture to say, “Whatever you think, dear”—and that only to terminate the suspense, for she was certain that as soon as she took the bait of his polite inquiry he’d perpetrate some characteristic outrage in the tea-room. He had been drawing out her chair as she replied, and when he took her elbows then she’d closed her eyes and waited, almost with relief, to be assaulted upon the table or otherwise indignified—but he had gently ushered her out, expressing his pleasure in her company and his hope that they might have lunch together more often.

  “Did he go to the Chancellor’s Mansion then?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I was so rattled, I can’t remember what he said after that.” Seeing my sharp interest, she asked whether I knew what might have “come over” her husband.

  “I have an idea,” I admitted. “He and I had a little conversation this morning …” I considered whether to tell her that Maurice Stoker’s apparent good behavior, if it was the result of our talk in Main Detention, was more flunkèd in its way than his former immoderacies; but I wasn’t certain I could rehearse that difficult argument clearly, and so I simply cautioned her instead not to be seduced, by his new gentleness, out of her new chastity.

  She frowned. “But suppose he … wants me for something, George? Or asks me to … do something for somebody? I am his wife …”

  Upon consideration I agreed that she might permit him a limited amount of dignified sexual converse with her person, so long as it was with her express consent and involved no force, degradation, perversion, or other abuse. “But not with anyone else, Anastasia,” I repeated firmly. “And not just to please him. If you’re in heat, or want to breed a child, then okay.”

  “I don’t seem able to have children,” she reminded me. “I guess it’s lucky, considering.” But the thought—of either her barrenness or her past promiscuity—so saddened her that for the rest of the ride she fiddled with a strand of her hair and contemplated the evening traffic. The lights along the boulevards were less bright than they’d been the night before; they appeared at times even to flicker. As we passed the Light House I saw people gathered along the iron fence, some bearing placards whose messages I couldn’t make out in the poor light. A black wedge of motorcycles roared from one of the entrance-drives and sped by us; I was almost certain that the leader was Stoker himself—but bare-chinned, and wearing a light-colored suit! Anastasia happened to be staring glumly in the opposite direction, and I said nothing lest at sight of him she change her mind about going with me.

  On the esplanade before Tower Hall was another crowd, standing about as if in expectation; one could hear a common buzz of displeasure every time the streetlights winked.

  “Something screwy going on,” our driver ventured. He took us around to the rear of the building; Anastasia put by her melancholy reverie to pay our fare (which I’d not understood was required) and brightened a little as we approached the enormous wing that housed New Tammany’s Central Library stacks and offices.

  “I can hardly wait for you to meet Mom after all these terms!” she said, taking my arm. We went through an entrance-door over which was engraved THE TRUE UNIVERSITY IS A COLLECTION OF BOOKS, and made our way through vast high-ceilinged reading rooms, sparsely peopled by reason of the uncertain light.

  “I know something’s wrong at the Powerhouse,” Anastasia fretted. A lone student rushed past us in the corridor which led to the Cataloguing Office; as we looked behind to see where he might be going in such haste, he caught himself up for a second and glanced back at me with an expression of indignant disbelief, as if angry at having to credit his eyes. I blushed, not knowing why I should, and gave Anastasia’s hand a brotherly pat.

  At the end of the corridor was a large domed room entirely given over to rows of catalogue-files laid out like the spokes of a wheel. In its hub, beneath a suspended sign which declared THE FINAL SCIENCE IS LIBRARY SCIENCE, a large metal-cornered glass case stood empty but for its black-velvet bed. Anastasia gasped.

  “It is gone!”

  She meant the Scroll, ordinarily exhibited there. I twinged with distress: if it had been lost or stolen, to restore it to its place could take Founder knew how long! I insisted we learn what happened to it before pursuing our private business—which might have to be put aside anyhow if duty called.

  “Maybe that’s what the excitement’s about,” I suggested unhappily.

  There being however no one in the room except ourselves, Anastasia pointed out that her mother was in the best position to answer this question as well as the other, since her office was adjacent to the card-files; she proposed we go to her at once, before she too should join the apparent exodus from Tower Hall; Anastasia would introduce me merely as the new Candidate for Grand-Tutorhood, and I could interview our mother undistracted on the matter of the Scroll before we disclosed our other concerns. I saw no alternative and so agreed, though with some misgivings; the gossip one had heard about Virginia Hector’s unhappy condition inspired no confidence in her as an accurate reporter.

  “Wait.” I caught her arm. “Here comes someone else.” A door from the corridor had opened and shut, and sharp heels clicked down the aisle next to ours. The lights blinked out entirely for two seconds; in the pause one heard a surge from the crowd outside. The clicking hesitated also, then resumed with the light. But I laid a finger to my lips and drew Anastasia two steps back into our aisle, because while the sound bespoke a woman’s tread, it called to my mind the clickish voice of Harold Bray, and I wanted a moment to consider a half-formed notion that accompanied his hateful image: the texts of his false Certificates were cited by their bearers as coming not simply from the Old or New Syllabus, but specifically from the Founder’s Scroll; assuredly there were transcriptions of the document which he might have consulted, but my antipathy put nothing past him. If one began with the assumption that he was a fraud and then looked for the motive of his imposture, it seemed far from unimaginable to me that he might make use of his position to deliver secret information to the Nikolayans, for example, or to steal a priceless treasure like the Founder’s Scroll …

  The interloper—in fact a female person of a certain age—emerged now into the center; Anastasia left off regarding me quizzically and smiled.

  “Come on: it’s Mom.”

  She would have hailed or gone to her, but when the elder woman paused beside the case at sound of us and peered to see who we were, adjusting a pencil in her silver hair, light flashed from the point-cornered lenses of her eyeglasses. I gripped Anastasia’s arm and very nearly swooned.

  “Founder Omniscient!” I groaned, and ran with chill perspiration; was obliged to squat and feign interest in a low drawer of cards until I mastered my shivering. No mistaking her: it was Lady Creamhair, however drawn and silvered by unhappy terms!

  Anastasia bent to me, frightened. “What is it, George?”

  I shook my head. Lady Creamhair’s eyes—Virginia Hector’s, it staggered me to understand!
—had evidently not improved since our dim dear days in the hemlock-grove; seeing nothing familiar about us or untoward, she went on to her office.

  “You’re sure that’s Virginia Hector, Anastasia?”

  “Of course it is! What on campus—”

  “And … she’s your mother?” I leaned against the card-file for support.

  “Our mother, I hope!” She drew me hubwards. “Let’s find out for sure, before she goes off somewhere.”

  But I held back yet a moment, flabbergast with memory and surprise. Poor dear Creamie! How I understood now your unwillingness to meet my keeper, or tell me your name; how I trembled at your old interest in me, your yen to pluck me from the herd, and—Founder, Founder!—your appall at my lust to Be, that drove you watchless from the grove!

  “Anastasia …” I could scarcely speak. It was the empty Scroll-case now I leaned on, and drew her to me. Dutifully she resisted—until assured that it was a brotherly embrace. “I won’t explain now, but … I’ve known that lady before, and I—I really think that you and I might be twins.”

  She hugged me enthusiastically—confounding my poor blood, which knew no longer what permissibly might rouse it. I suggested then that the shock of seeing me after so many terms might do her mother—our mother!—more harm than good unless properly prepared for; we agreed that Anastasia would go to her at first alone, draw her out upon the matters of our twinship and paternity while I listened from the doorway, and gently then introduce the facts of our acquaintance and my presence in the College proper. If Miss Hector found the news too distressing, I could present myself another time; if not, Anastasia would summon and introduce me. I stationed myself outside the door, and Anastasia knocked.

  “Come in, please? Oh, it’s you, dear.”

  I closed my eyes; her voice had still the querulous resolve in it that had fetched me in kiddish fury once at the fence, and soothed my adolescent stormings in the hemlock. Anastasia greeted her with a cheeriness perhaps exaggerated by the situation, declaring that she had a few daughterly matters to discuss, and that it had anyhow been too long since they’d last chatted.

  “Oh. Well. Yes. Well. All this commotion lately …” Lady Creamhair clucked and fussed, not incordially, but as if permanently rattled. She seemed indeed in less possession of her faculties than formerly, and with rue I wondered how much hurt my ignorant assault might have done her. The two women exchanged commonplaces for a while—rather formally it seemed to me, for a mother and daughter, but at least with none of the ill-will that had rejected Anastasia in her childhood. Then presently, with apologies for “bringing up a sore subject,” Anastasia declared that the recent appearance in New Tammany of two claimants to the title of Grand Tutor had revived many people’s curiosity about the old Cum Laude Project and brought up again the unhappy matters of the “Hector scandal” and her illegitimate paternity—

  “That’s nobody’s business,” I heard Virginia Hector say firmly. From the sound I guessed that Anastasia went to embrace her then and declared affectionately that indeed it wasn’t the business of anyone outside the family; but that she herself, of age now and a married woman, was surely entitled to the whole truth of her begetting.

  “You know I’ve always loved you, Mother, and you must know it doesn’t matter to me what the truth is; I just want to get it straight! One person comes along and says Dr. Eierkopf’s my father—”

  “Ha,” Miss Hector said scornfully.

  “—then another person says it’s Dr. Spielman—”

  The import of her “Hmp” at mention of this name I could not assess, though I listened closely.

  “And you’ve said different things at different times yourself,” Anastasia went on. “Even that I’m not your daughter …” Her voice grew less steady.

  “Oh, now,” Virginia Hector said. Anastasia repeated that her affection for her mother could not be diminished by the facts, whatever they were—at least she began to repeat some such sentiment, but was overtaken midway by tears.

  “Now, now, now …” So like was that voice to the one that had gentled my two-score weepings in terms gone by, I could have wept again at sound of it. I yearned to burst in and beg my Lady Creamhair’s pardon; must press my forehead to the frosted door-glass to calm me. Some minutes the ladies wept together. Then there was a snap of purses and blow of noses upon tissues, after which Virginia Hector said: “I have much to be forgiven, dear, Founder knows … No, no, don’t be so kind; you’ve every right to hate me for the way I behaved when you were little. I flunk myself a hundred times over just to remember it, and when I think of you married to that beast …”

  The thought brought more tears, as well it might, despite Anastasia’s reassurances that none but herself was accountable for her choice of husbands. Happily, Miss Hector seemed unaware of the details of her daughter’s life, before as well as after marriage, understanding only in a general way that it was less than serene and respectable. She was able therefore to recompose herself sooner than she doubtless would have had she known the hard particulars of Anastasia’s history.

  “I was awfully upset, you know,” she went on presently, referring to the period of her daughter’s infancy. “You can’t imagine how it is to know that nobody will ever believe the truth, no matter what. Not even you. Not even now …”

  Anastasia vowed she would, if only her mother would produce it; and so, after a number of unconvincèd hums and clucks, Virginia Hector said clearly, almost wryly: “The truth is, I have never in my life … gone all the way with a man. Not once, to this day.”

  If I was slower to come to incredulity than Anastasia (whom I heard make an instant noise of dismay), it was not because I misinterpreted the phrase “gone all the way,” but rather because my origin, my experiences, and my knowledge of Anastasia’s past, for example, prevented me from grasping at once that by “never with a man” Miss Hector meant “never with a male of any species.”

  “When I learned I was pregnant, I blamed it on Max Spielman,” she went on to say, “because I knew nobody would believe the truth, and I thought Dr. Spielman might love me enough to take the blame and marry me, even though he’d think it was another man’s child. But he didn’t, and that was that.”

  How I longed to tell her immediately the truth of Max’s love and honor, so great that it was just her refusal to admit infidelity that had kept him from wedding her! But Anastasia—with a kind of tired incuriosity now, as if she knew in advance what the reply would be—asked then who was her father.

  “Your father?” The question appeared to surprise Miss Hector; I tried to recall which word she’d accented, and couldn’t. She announced then, as one might read from a page: “Max never would, and Eblis couldn’t’ve if I’d wanted him to. It was WESCAC.”

  To hear this confirmation from the lady’s own lips made me thrill; but Anastasia said disgustedly: “Oh, Mother!”

  Miss Hector went on undaunted—indeed, unhearing: “Eblis warned me it could happen, and when they fed in the finished GILES he told me I was one of the ones WESCAC had in mind, you might say. I was in love with Max then, and as I said, I’d never gone all the way with anyone, though I suppose I would have with Max if he’d wanted to. Wait, let me finish …” Anastasia had made a little rustle of despair. “I’d been Miss NTC and Miss University, you know, just as you were—and, my sakes, weren’t you lovely the day they capped you! Well …”

  She herself had been a vain creature, Miss Hector was afraid, as flattered by WESCAC’s election as by the student body’s in terms before; and though she wouldn’t for a minute consent to the sort of thing that “Eblis” hinted at, any more than any self-respecting girl would have, she’d found herself feeling self-conscious and a little proud whenever she walked past WESCAC’s facility in the laboratories of the Cum Laude Project—as if the computer knew it was she and would have whistled if it could. Then one fateful spring evening she’d stayed late to file some data-papers for Dr. Eierkopf at the laboratory (where she’d worke
d during a temporary furlough from her Library post), and being the last to leave except for the night security-guards, had crossed the hall from her office to make certain that the door to the computer-room was locked …

  “It was, just as it should have been,” she said. “And I started to go; but then—maybe I thought I heard something peculiar, a singing-noise or something; maybe not, I don’t know. Anyhow I came back to the door, and for some reason or other I unlocked it and went inside … just to check, I suppose; or maybe some impulse … I was upset about Max’s attitude, I remember …”

  Her narrative grew less coherent here, until she’d got herself inside the computer-room and closed the door behind her—for what reason, she didn’t recall or couldn’t articulate, any more than she could explain why she’d not turned the lights on, or why she’d left the doorway and approached the main console, which whirred quietly as always, day and night, and winked on every side its warm gold lights, as if in greeting.

  “I thought I’d just sit in the control-chair a minute,” she said; “it was awfully peaceful in there; you’ve no idea. I could’ve dozed right off—maybe I did, for a second or two. But then … oh dear, it’s not easy to describe how it was!”

  The task indeed was difficult, and though her voice rose with a quiet joy as she spoke, so that every word came clearly through the door (despite an increased noise, like cheering, from the crowd outside), I cannot say I followed precisely her account. She had felt a kind of warmth, it seemed—penetrating, almost electrical—that tingled through every limb and joint and relaxed her utterly, as though all the muscles in her body had melted. This sensation had come on quickly, I gathered, but so subtly that she’d not at first realized it was external, and credited it to her fatigue and the extraordinary comfort of the molded chair. Only when the panel-lights ceased to wink and began instead to pulse together in a golden ring did she associate her sensation with WESCAC; even then she failed to comprehend its significance: her first thought was to move lest the tingling be some accidental radiation. But she did not, or could not, even when the whir changed pitch and timbre, grew croonish, and a scanner swung noiselessly down before her; even when, as best I could make out, the general warmth commenced to focus, until she’d thought her lap must burn.