Giles Goat Boy

by John Barth

  “It seems gradual when I tell it,” she said, “but it must have been very quick. Because just when I opened my mouth—to call for help, I guess, because I felt fastened, even though I guess I wasn’t—anyhow, I just had time to draw one deep breath … and it was over.”

  “Over?” Anastasia echoed my own surprise; though she’d heard the story all her life, and assumed it was some unhappy delusion of her mother’s, she’d evidently not heard it till now in such detail.

  “It was all over,” her mother repeated. “In no time at all. The scanner went away; the panel-lights and the humming went back to normal; I could move my arms and legs again. I’d have thought I dreamt the whole thing—just as everyone else thinks I did, if they believe I was there at all—but I still felt tender from the heat. You know. And when I went to get up I felt some wetness there—all of a sudden, this wetness. And as soon as I felt it, and moved, and felt it clear on up, I realized something had gone all the way—and it would have to be the GILES.”

  Despite her certainty, however—which I was in better position to share than Anastasia—Miss Hector had said nothing of the marvelous incident to anyone, even when the GILES was found missing next morning and Dr. Eierkopf had pressed her closely on her evening’s work. Not until the fact of her pregnancy was unquestionable—and unconcealable—had she confessed it in a panic to her father, the then Chancellor; and not until he insisted that an abortion be performed at once, lest the scandal bring down his administration, had she realized the extraordinary value of what she carried. She’d told Reginald Hector the truth then, and been denounced as a liar; had persisted and been accused of hysteria; and finally, with the consequences I’d heard of from their victim, had chosen to name Max as the man responsible.

  “But it wasn’t Max, and it wasn’t Eblis, or any other human person,” she said quietly, when Anastasia voiced a discreet incredulity. “It was WESCAC. And it was the GILES, Founder pass us! Your Grandpa Reg knew it, too, in his heart—why else would he fire Eblis and end the Cum Laude Project? But he’d never admit it—even though the doctor had to dilate the hymen to examine me.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “Indeed he did,” she insisted. “If he hadn’t passed on he’d tell you himself: old Dr. Mayo. It was the baby itself that finally broke it, being born; before that it was just stretched a little—not near enough for a man, you know.”

  In response to further questions from Anastasia, she affirmed what I knew already: that the birth had taken place secretly one winter night in Ira Hector’s hospital for unwed co-eds, with Ira himself presiding. And then, to my unspeakable delight, she went on to confirm what Max and I had once imagined (along with many an alternative) long before, out in the barns:

  “Your Grandpa Reg was so afraid of the scandal, he didn’t know what to do! When I wouldn’t have an abortion, he kept changing his mind, all the time I was pregnant: one day I’d have to give it out for adoption anonymously; the next day we’d have to put it away secretly somehow; then it was no, there’d be worse trouble if that ever got out: we’d have to keep it and take the consequences, or call it Uncle Ira’s foster-child …” So mercurial was he on the subject, she said, and desperate to avoid exposure of their shame, she came to fear he might take measures to destroy the child without her knowledge …

  “Grandpa Reg?” Anastasia cried. “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing!”

  No more could she, Miss Hector replied, until he’d announced a few days after she gave birth his decision to do exactly that.

  “I found out then it wasn’t just the scandal,” she explained. “It had to do with his own mother abandoning him and Uncle Ira, and how hard their childhood was; and my mother dying when I was born, you know, and Papa afraid some fellow would take advantage of me, like they had his mother …” Anastasia made a sympathetic noise. “He didn’t want my child to go through what he’d gone through. Maybe there were other reasons, too.”

  In any case she’d pled vainly with him to relent, and scarcely dared let the infant out of her sight lest it be made away with. Then, just before the Cum Laude facility was dismantled at the Chancellor’s order, a message for her had been brought to the New Tammany Lying-In by an unidentified person who said only that it had been read out on one of WESCAC’s printers.

  “It was just three words,” Virginia Hector said: “Replace the GILES! I thought and thought, and finally I decided that since WESCAC knows everything, it must know how to solve my problem too. So the night Papa came to get the baby I told him he could have it, that I’d changed my mind—but I said he’d have to get rid of it the way I wanted him to.” Having disclosed her plan, she said—but not her motive—and convinced Reginald Hector of its expediency, she’d bundled the baby in the blanket, left the hospital, and entered Tower Hall by the Chancellor’s private door.

  “Old Dr. Mayo had passed on during my pregnancy,” she said, “and in the mix-up afterwards I’d had the WESCAC-man at the hospital do the regular Prenatal Aptitude Test on the baby. He thought it hadn’t worked, because all the PAT-card said was Pass All Fail All; and I didn’t understand it either, but when Papa and I went into the military-science stacks in the Library—to the part where nobody’s allowed except chancellors and professor-generals?—I took the PAT-card along, in case it meant something. I folded it up in the baby’s blanket, so Papa wouldn’t know it was there; then I gave him the baby, and he put it in the Diet-tape lift and pressed the Belly-button so that WESCAC would EAT it.”

  “He didn’t!” Anastasia cried. Then her appall gave way to confusion: “How is it I wasn’t EATen, then, if you sent me down into the Belly?”

  It took some while for Virginia Hector to comprehend the nature of her daughter’s misunderstanding, which was of course quite apparent to me; what wasn’t evident however, even when her mother made it clear that she’d been speaking of a male child, the GILES Himself, I was pleased to see Anastasia question next: how came it that she had been spared, and I condemned? Miss Hector grew vague; seemed not readily to understand the question …

  “It had to be twins you had, didn’t it?” Anastasia persisted. “Uncle Ira never mentioned any brother of mine—I see why, now!—but he always liked to tell how he’d helped deliver me himself …”

  “Well. Yes. Naturally.” But Miss Hector’s tone bespoke a fuddledness.

  “Then how come we weren’t both EATen?”

  Instead of replying directly to the question, Lady Creamhair declared sharply that no one had been EATen: the whole hope of her strategy, she said, was that WESCAC would recognize its own and not only desist but contrive my preservation when she restored me to it.

  “It was a terrible risk,” she admitted proudly. “An awful risk! But I was right: they never found him, dead or alive! And I happen to know for a fact he didn’t die: my Gilesey’s alive, this very minute! Of course, we mustn’t ever tell Papa …”

  Forgetting her original question now in her excitement—as did I, quickened to the heart by these disclosures!—Anastasia flung her arms about her mother (as I inferred) and confessed that she’d not only learned of her brother’s existence, just that day, but had actually met him. “He’s on Great Mall right now!”

  “No, no,” Virginia Hector protested, distracted into an odd air of serenity. “That isn’t so, you see.”

  Anastasia laughed. “It is so, Mom! If you ever watched Telerama you’d have seen him yourself this morning, at the Turnstile Trials.”

  Her mother still declined to believe her—I knew well why—and began to ramble. Anastasia demanded good-humoredly to know whether she’d recognize me if she saw me.

  “Well, yes, my, no, gracious. Children change so … Dear me, yes! No, I’d know my little Giles, yes indeedy; a mother doesn’t forget. There was even a birthmark under his little hiney, down on his leg, a little dark circle. No sirree!”

  As she went on in this vein I made use of the mirror on my stick to examine the back of my legs, and though the light was p
oor, and my hands unsteady, I satisfied myself that there was indeed, on the back of my left thigh, about halfway to the knee, a mark such as she described!

  “I brought him with me, Mom!” Anastasia said triumphantly. “He’s right outside!”

  “Oh my, dear me, no …”

  “Dear me, yes! And wait’ll you see who he is! George?”

  Considering Lady Creamhair’s obvious distress, I thought it imprudent to reveal myself before she’d had time to assimilate the news of my presence in the College proper; but Anastasia, ignorant of our sore past, summoned me again. Even so I might have fled, for the present: but I heard a sound behind me and saw at the Scroll-case the white-caped figure of Harold Bray. Luckily he seemed not to have observed me. My hands perspired with anger at the sight of him. How he had got in so silently I couldn’t imagine; the noise that alerted me proved to be the clack of a key against the glass case as he unlocked it. There was a large black cylinder in his other hand—the Founder’s Scroll, I did not doubt, or some false copy which he meant stealthily to put in its place! Yet so brazen was he, Anastasia’s call seemed not in the least to alarm him; he didn’t even glance our way. The lights flickered, the crowd hummed; for half a second I considered whether to challenge him, exhibit myself to Lady Creamhair, or hide from both until a better moment. Then Anastasia opened the door, our mother clucking behind her, and said, “There you are! Did you hear it all?” She hugged my arm. “Here he is, Mom: hug each other!” That same moment she saw Bray, and joyfully invited him to witness our reunion. No help for it then: I turned to Miss Hector … Lady Creamhair … my mother … put out a hand to shake, and said, “How d’you do, ma’am. Nice seeing you again.”

  I might have gone on to apologize once more for having tried to mount her at our last meeting, but clearly she was hearing nothing. She opened and closed her eyes, smiled and squinted, shook her head.

  “Oh no, indeed. No indeedy,” she said, stunned into mildness.

  “Billy Bocksfuss,” I reminded her tersely, and glanced to see where Bray was. “The Goat-Boy, you know. George nowadays. I apologize—”

  “Kiss her!” Anastasia insisted, drawing us together.

  Bray’s voice clicked jovially towards us down the aisle: “What is it, Anastasia? Reunion, did you say?”

  “Oh my, no,” Virginia Hector said. “Oh well! My!”

  “The Goat-Boy himself,” Bray said. “Good evening to you, Miss Hector; I hope the noise outside hasn’t disturbed you. A most upsetting situation.”

  He put his arm familiarly about Anastasia’s waist as he spoke; even whispered something in her ear, whereat she quickly lowered her eyes and drew in her lips.

  “Stop touching her!” I demanded. “Take your hands off my sister!” I blushed, whether at the term or from anger at Bray. Anastasia colored also, but clearly with pleasure, and went obediently to her mother’s side.

  “What’s this I hear?” Bray’s tone I judged to be amused.

  “Goodness me,” Miss Hector sighed at the same time; but the whimsicality in her voice verged upon hysteria.

  “Lady Creamhair—” I began again. At once she shut her eyes fast, and set her mouth against the name. “You know who I am. You knew all along!”

  “Oh no sirree Bob …”

  Touching her arm I reminded her, as Anastasia looked on amazed, of our seasons in the hemlock-grove, of her endless patience and wondrous solicitude; I fully understood, I declared, why she’d done what she’d done in my infancy, and so far from thinking ill of it, thanked her from the heart for having saved my life. What grief I’d occasioned I begged her to charge to my want of sophistication, especially to my ignorance of our true relationship.

  She wouldn’t open her eyes. “Oh. Gracious. Hm. Well.”

  “But we both know who I am now!” I said warmly, and turned to defy the pretender. “I’m the GILES, and this is my passèd lady mother!” I looked to her to tell him so; but though tears started now behind her pert spectacles, she smiled and shook her head still.

  “Well. Now. No. I don’t suppose—”

  “Really,” Bray tisked at me, “you go too far! We’ve all been much too patient with you, I’m afraid; if you only knew what trouble you’ve caused today! The clockworks, and the Power Lines … Enough’s enough!”

  I heartily agreed, adding that directly I’d seen to the Founder’s Scroll’s re-placing and had passed the Finals, I meant to present my ID-card to my mother for signing, and the campus would know once for all who was the GILES and who the impostor.

  “They will indeed!” Bray chuckled. “The Scroll, by the way, you can forget about: it’s back in place now. I took it out front at Chancellor Rexford’s suggestion and read off a few Certifications to reassure the crowd. But you can’t be serious about this GILES nonsense …”

  I turned my back on him and bade Lady Creamhair and Anastasia to come with me. If there was an unruly herd of undergraduates to be calmed, their Grand Tutor was the man to calm them, and I would leave no mother or sister of mine in the odious, if not criminal, company of a base impostor.

  Bray pursed his lips and shook his head. “If you choose to deliver yourself up to a mob which wants nothing better than to tear you to pieces, I suppose that’s your affair. But I most certainly won’t permit my mother and sister to be lynched with you.”

  “Your mother and sister!” I exploded. At the same time Anastasia cried, “Lynched!” and Lady Creamhair laid two fingers to her cheek and said. “Oh. Well.”

  Bray assured me levelly that I had a fair chance yet of escaping with my life if I listened to reason; it was to that end exactly he’d stopped at sight of me instead of returning at once to the work of calming the crowd. To Anastasia then, who asked him what the trouble was, he reported dryly that Tower Clock had stopped, for one thing, thanks to some disastrous move of Dr. Eierkopf’s of which it was known only that I had advised it; further, that Eierkopf himself was reportedly paralyzed from head to toe, that Croaker was once again amok, that the Power Plant was in grave trouble for want of supervision, that the Nikolayans were threatening riot at the Boundary, that WESCAC was rumored to be in danger of failing for lack of power, and that Chancellor Rexford, so far from making an appearance to calm the student body’s alarm, would see no one, not even his highest advisors. General panic and breakdown of the College seemed imminent, and as my presence appeared to be the single common factor in these several crises, the crowd’s fear was turning to wrath against me.

  “Ridiculous!” I protested. But the lights winked again, and my heart misgave me. “You stirred them up yourself!”

  Bray ignored me. “As for the rest,” he said to Anastasia: “it’s good you know now I’m your brother and the GILES, but that fact changes nothing between us—do you understand me?”

  Anastasia objected faintly, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and I very loudly. He’d said nothing of their kinship thitherto, Bray explained, out of concern for Miss Hector’s state of mind, which was known to be precarious—witness her agreeing that he and Anastasia were twins, when in fact they were of different ages and had different fathers. Nor did he approve of proclaiming the truth thus bluntly to her now, but my pretenses forced his hand—another item in my daysworth of ill deeds.

  “I won’t hear this!” I shouted. “Get on out of here!”

  “We’d all best get out,” he said flatly, “before they come in after you. Tell Anastasia I’m the GILES, Mother, so she’ll believe it. We’ll try the Chancellor’s Exit.”

  Lady Creamhair (so I still thought of her, and would ever think) hemmed and chirped, quite glazed now; then she said with surprising distinctness: “He’s my Gilesey. Yes he is.” And lest anyone mistake her reference she shook her finger at me and added: “Not you.”

  “Mom!” Anastasia cried.

  Lady Creamhair shook her head firmly. “That’s a naughty young man.”

  Bray beamed.

  “She’s upset,” I said to Anastasia. “And no wonder! But just look
here …” I lifted my infirmary-gown enough to display the dark disc on my leg. “Look here, Mother: there’s proof, if you need it.”

  Now the dear lady’s murmurs became a plaint: “Oh. Oh.” Anastasia clapped and bounced. I glared at Bray, and was pleased to take his expression for chagrin. But in fact it proved a curious concentration, like a man’s at stool; he even grunted and grew red. Then he sniffed and smiled—I am obliged to say sweetly—and turning up the back hem of his cape and tunic, exposed a brown left knee, gaunt and hairless, in the crook of which however was undeniably a browner spot. Too low, surely, and something wanting in definition—but a round brown birthmark after all! Anastasia caught her breath; Virginia Hector whimpered; I could have wept for frustration.

  “Flunk you! Flunk you! Flunk you!” I shouted.

  “Please,” he said: “Not in front of Mother. I’m still ready to help you.”

  Poor Lady Creamhair now grew quite incapable; I flunked the hour I had agreed to this confrontation. Anastasia—no less confounded but still in command of her faculties—led her away toward the Chancellor’s Exit and Reginald Hector’s offices, next door to Tower Hall. This was Bray’s suggestion, and further to infuriate me he asked whether I did not affirm its prudence.

  “You should go with them,” he advised me. “I’ll try to pacify the crowd till you’re safely out.”

  Angrily I replied that neither he nor I was going anywhere until the issue between us was resolved.

  “You go ahead,” I told Anastasia. “I’m going to end this right now, one way or the other.”

  Bray bristled and said: “Pah.”

  Virginia Hector’s growing delirium permitted no tarrying; Anastasia cast us a troubled last glance from the doorway. “You won’t fight?”