by John Barth
“The things she’s been saying …” He scratched his pate ruefully. “And there’s always a flunking reporter around, you know.” He cast a brief sharp eye at me, wondering no doubt how aware I might be of his daughter’s new distress, and how much of her raving was true.
“Naturally Miss Hector’s upset,” I said. “Most unfortunate business back there in the Library.”
“Unfortunate! I’d like to get my hands on that freak of a Goat-Boy!” He seemed unsure of his ground—as I could well imagine he might be, whomever his daughter was presently claiming to be the GILES. Gruffly he thanked me—that is, Bray—for having Certified him earlier in the day: the quotation on his diploma—No class shall pass—he deemed so apt a summary of his philosophy that he meant to propose it as a motto for his favorite club, the Brotherhood of Independent Men. Rather, he hoped to do so if he had the wherewithal to maintain his own membership in that society, now that his brother had “pulled the rug from under the P.P.F.,” and the Executive Secretary’s salary with it.
“More of that flunking Goat-Boy’s meddling, so I hear,” he said crossly. “Not that I think half those rascals deserve a hand-out anyhow! But better dole it out privately than turn New Tammany into a welfare-college, the way Rexford’s been doing.”
“Your brother’s changed his mind about philanthropy?” I asked.
“Changed his mind! He’s lost it!” It had always been his own policy, he declared, to be beholden to no man; to look out for himself in order to be able to look out for others. In this he differed from his brother Ira, who gave alms in self-defense, as it were, or to further his own interests. They shared the opinion that the ignorant mass of studentdom by and large deserved its wretched lot; their own example proved that ambition and character could overcome any handicap; but there was no reason, Reginald felt, not to pity one’s inferiors. He thought it important that the College administration keep out of the charity-business, lest the worthless masses—already too dependent and lazy—come to think of free board and tuition as their due; and nothing would militate more favorably for Lucius Rexford’s sweeping grant-in-aid bill than the curtailment of the Philophilosophical Fund.
I could not help smiling. “Maybe the Goat-Boy will get to Chancellor Rexford, too,” I suggested. Reginald Hector declared with a sniff that he’d heard disturbing rumors to just that effect, adding that back in the days of C.R. II such a dangerous subversive would have been shot, at least under his command. Nowadays it was coddle, coddle—and look at the crime-rate, and the drop-out rate, and the illegitimate birthrate, and the varsity situation!
“The Goat-Boy won’t meddle any more,” one of the aides said from the hallway, and reported what he’d just heard from the crowd outside: that I had left the impostor EATen in WESCAC’s Belly.
“No!” Reginald Hector exclaimed happily, and slapped me on the back. “Why didn’t You say so, doggone You!” I confirmed that the false Grand Tutor was no longer a menace to studentdom, and explained the object of my visit: a final official endorsement of my Passage and Grand-Tutorship now that the pretender had been put down.
“Gladly, gladly! Give Your card here, sir; I’ll be glad to okay it!” He fished for a pen, found he’d given his away, and borrowed one from an aide. “I knew he was a phony—GILES indeed! As if there ever was such a thing!”
I smiled and handed him my Assignment-sheet. Within the circle of its motto, I observed, Bray had written Passage is Failure—alluding, I supposed, to those Certifications of his which I’d shown to be false. The presumption annoyed me until I remembered his dubious claim to accessoryhood back in the Belly, which I’d not had time to consider and evaluate.
“Mm-hm,” the ex-Chancellor said, holding it at various distances from his eyes. Perhaps he couldn’t make it out at all; in any case he only glanced at it hastily, nodding all the while. “Oh, yes, this is quite in order. Hum! I can sign it anywhere, I suppose?”
Calling his attention to the seventh and final task, I observed that no signatures on the Assignment-list itself seemed called for, only on the matriculation- (i.e., ID-) card—which too there was apparently no need for him to sign, only to inspect.
“Sure, sure,” he agreed at once, as if he’d known that fact as well as his own name, but had forgot it for half a second. “Unless You want me to initial it just for form’s sake …”
Inspecting the card myself as he talked, I saw that Bray had printed WESCAC in the “Father” blank and signed his own name as “Examiner.” I borrowed Reginald Hector’s borrowed pen, scratched through the name George I’d signed earlier, and after it, on the same line, printed GILES.
“Keep it, keep it,” he said of the pen, and took the card. Instantly he reddened. “What’s this?”
I offered the pen to its first owner, who, however, stepped back with a little embarrassed sign.
“Something wrong?” I asked the ex-Chancellor. “Here—initial it after my title, if you like.”
“I see,” he said, drawing the words out as if he’d caught on to a tease. “You examined Yourself! Why not? And You’re going to call Yourself the GILES because You are the Grand Tutor.” He scribbled RH at the end of the line. “Don’t blame You a bit! Darned clever idea, in fact—help put an end to that Goat-Boy nonsense. There You are, sir!”
Retrieving the two documents I said, “I am the GILES, Mr. Hector.”
“Of course You are!” he cried indignantly. “You’ve got every right to be! I was trying to tell that daughter of mine just a while ago, when Stacey brought her in all upset: she’s got to get that nonsense out of her head—”
“That she’s my mother?” I interrupted. “She is, Mr. Hector. I’m the real GILES, that you put in the tapelift twenty-one years ago.”
“Ridiculous.” He had been looking a rattled and somewhat fatuous old man; now his jaw set, and his eyes flashed in a way that must once have intimidated ranks of junior officers. In fact, the two aides withdrew at once. He was a military-scientist, he told me then curtly, not a fancy-talk politician or a philosopher with thick eyeglasses, and there were plenty of things over his head, he did not doubt: but be flunked if he didn’t know a racket when he smelled one, and in his nose, so to speak, this Grand-Tutor business stank from Belly to Belfry. What was my angle? he wanted to know. He’d gone along with Rexford and the others in recognizing my Grand-Tutorhood (which was to say, Bray’s) for the same reason he’d joined the Enochist Fraternity during his campaign for the Chancellorship; because he knew it was as important for “the common herd” to believe in Commencement as it was for riot-troopers to believe in their alma mater, true or false—a consolation for and justification of their inferior rank. And he’d hoped I was merely a clever opportunist; in fact he’d rather admired my “get up and git,” as he put it, and assumed I’d got what I was after: fame, influence, campus-wide respect, and a lucrative berth in the Rexford administration. But apparently I was after bigger, more dangerous game; had gone digging into great men’s pasts in search of paydirt, as it were, and turning up that libelous old gossip about his daughter and the GILES, had thought to extort something from him with it …
“So lay it on the line, Dunce flunk you, or I’ll break you in two!”
Despite the menace of his words and tone I saw he was alarmed—he was, for example, asking my price instead of calling a patrolman—and so I gathered he’d got the drift of his daughter’s and granddaughter’s recent experience in the Catalogue Room. In short, he knew the GILES was alive and about—whether in Bray’s person or in George the Goat-Boy’s—and had every reason to fear being brought to account for his old infanticide-attempt. I might have unmasked myself then; but a strategy occurred to me for gaining more truth from him before giving any in return. I was the GILES, I repeated, by WESCAC out of Virginia R. Hector: rescued from the tapelift by G. Herrold the booksweep, reared by Max Spielman as Billy Bocksfuss the Ag-Hill Goat-Boy, and come to Great Mall to change WESCAC’s AIM and Pass All or Fail All.
“No!�
�� he protested—but in awe now more than in denial.
“Oh yes.” However, I declared, he was not to suppose I sought either wealth or fame for myself or retribution for him; I had left the barn to Pass All or Fail All, and having that same day passed all my tests and the Finals, I wanted nothing from him but a true accounting of my birth and infancy before I went forth to my larger work.
He rubbed his strong chin suspiciously. “What about that George fellow, crashed the Grate this morning?”
“An impostor,” I said. “A false goat-boy.”
“I heard from Maurice Stoker he was out to make trouble. Founder knows he’s made plenty!”
“But not for you,” I pointed out. “Anyhow, I’ve taken care of him.”
He squinted at me afresh. “You’re really Virginia’s son? She was saying crazy things about that George fellow …”
My heart glowed; she had acknowledged me then, at last, after the shock of my old blind assault, and of seeing me again, had led her to deny me! My gratitude for this overcame any lingering grudge against Reginald Hector; I sat beside him on the desktop and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder.
“Mother’s not well,” I reminded him. “It upset her to see me again, after all these terms, and two of us claiming to be the GILES.” But could he really imagine, I asked him gently, that a Grand Tutor harbored vengeance in His heart for an act that could only have been misguided?
“You’re really Him?” he demanded once more. “That other fellow—I don’t know; I was almost afraid …”
Speaking from my heart, not from my mask, I assured him once more that he was looking at the same Grand Tutor he’d committed to the Belly, and asked him why he’d done it. Surely one didn’t murder to avoid a scandal? He shook his head and replied, glum with doubt and shame, that though “the scandal-thing” was no light matter when the reputation of leaders was at stake (since “men won’t die for a fellow they don’t respect”), two other considerations had led him—and me—to the fatal tapelift. The first was the strange device of my PAT-card, which he took to mean that I would pass or fail not everything, but everybody: in other words, that I’d be the Commencement or Flunkage of all studentdom, as the late Kanzler of Siegfrieder College, his adversary in C.R. II, had vowed to be. Considering Eblis Eierkopf’s role in the Cum Laude Project and past affiliation with Bonifacism, he’d adjudged it an unbearable risk that his own daughter might have given birth to another Kollegiumführer. Moreover, even supposing that she had not, he could not abide the thought of his grandson’s growing up as he had grown, and Ira, and to some extent Virginia also; better die ignorant than be an orphan in the University: nameless, by nameless parents got, and furtively brought to light!
“Never had a proper daddy myself, and never was one to Virginia,” he admitted; “her mother dead a-bearing and mine a tramp … I did what I could to keep the same from happening to Virginia. And I don’t know that I blame her, mind—but there she was: raped by a flunking Moishian, a flunking Bonifacist, or a flunking machine, one or the other, and half out of her head from it …”
“It was WESCAC,” I put in, “not Max or Dr. Eierkopf. And it wasn’t what you’d call a rape. You did put me in the lift, then, and push the Belly-button?”
“I did that,” he acknowledged firmly. “Founder forgive me if I shouldn’t have.” To a professor-general in time of riot, he declared, responsibility for the death of others was no novelty. The blood of hundreds of thousands could be said to be on his hands, he supposed, if one chose to look at it that way; flunk him if I would, he’d done his duty as he saw it, was beholden to none, would take his medicine with head held high. I assured him I had no mind to flunk him, not on that account at least; his deed was wrong, but I quite understood what led him to it and did not think his motives dishonorable, only wrong-headed, like his opinions.
He began to color.
“What I mean,” I said, “everybody speaks of your generosity and your brother’s selfishness, and I see their point, but it is his wealth behind the Unwed Co-ed’s Hospital and the P.P.F.—or was, anyhow. And behind you too, all your life …”
“Now, look here, young fellow! I beg Your doggone pardon—”
But, good officer that he was, he must have felt that Grand Tutors somehow outranked professor-generals, for when I raised my hand he fell silent. I was not condemning him or calling him a hypocrite, I explained, and would as leave save the matter for another conversation—but valid as was Enos Enoch’s dictum that students Commence or fail individually, never by classes, and admirable as was the virtue of self-reliance, I could not see that Reginald Hector exemplified either very well. How could he regard himself as beholden to none, when his brother had made possible his whole career, his famous philanthropy, even his marriage? Very possibly he had been a good professor-general and chancellor; very possibly his liberality was authentic—but those talents and virtues were empty abstractions without Ira Hector’s wherewithal and influence.
“You Certified me Yourself!” he said angrily.
I smiled. “But that was before you’d Certified me, so it isn’t quite valid.” If he really wished to show his self-reliance, I suggested—now that he was out of a job anyway—why did he not chuck all sinecures and go to the goats, as Max had done? I was speaking half in jest (and half seriously, for G. Herrold’s death, Max’s arrest, and my departure left the goats much in need of herding), but the ex-Chancellor clearly believed I was baiting him, and looked ready to strike me. His Tutoring, I decided, must wait, since the crowd outside would not. I reassured him that I had no intent to denounce him publicly or otherwise reveal either his old attempt on my life or his various dependencies on Ira Hector. The one I forgave, the other was his affair. Neither did I want anything from him, except possibly the answer to a final question …
“Ask it,” he grumbled. “I won’t stand for blackmail, but I’m obliged to You for letting sleeping dogs lie. What I mean, I’m not beholden, You understand, but when a fellow needs a hand, why, I’ll give him the shirt off my back.”
I thought of the hungry undergraduates upon whom he’d bestowed cufflinks and desk-barometers, but contented myself with inquiring whether Anastasia was my sister.
“Aha,” he said, as if spying some ulterior motive in the question, and his expression turned fatuous again. “I’d heard you two were sweet on each other! Well, don’t You worry, lad—Sir—I don’t believe Stoker’s filthy talk about her and that George fellow. He says Pete Greene’s lost his head over her too—fellow served under me in C. R. Two, heck of a fine Joe. But I’d never believe that flunking Stoker!”
Disturbing as was the suggestion that Anastasia was known to be “sweet on” Harold Bray, I merely demanded to know whether he meant then that she was not Virginia Hector’s daughter. He sighed and rolled another cigarette, shaking his head.
“She only had the one, poor Ginny: just Yourself. Me and Ira stood by in the delivery-room, hoping You’d be stillborn. I figured You’d be some kind of monster, if Ginny hadn’t been lying about the GILES-thing …”
Unaccountably my heart thrilled to the news that “My Ladyship” and I (so I began from that moment forth to regard her) were no kin. But I repeated Ira Hector’s assertion that he’d helped deliver her himself.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Reginald chuckled. “That’s Ira all over.” But the truth, he declared, was that Ira regularly “helped out” at the Unwed Co-ed’s Hospital simply to be helpful, and thus had taken part in a great many deliveries—it was, after all, his building. Anastasia’s parentage, however, would never be known: “The hospital records are confidential anyhow, and when we decided Ira should adopt a girl we had her papers destroyed. Ginny’s doctor was the only one who might have known, and he passed away twenty-some years ago.” In other words, Anastasia was an orphan, born to some luckless co-ed, left for adoption at the New Tammany Lying-In. When my disappearance from the tapelift, and G. Herrold’s garbled talk of finding a baby in the Belly, had l
ed Reginald Hector to fear that his plan had misfired, he’d judged the scandal of illicit pregnancy less dangerous than that of infanticide, actual or attempted. The fortunate coincidence of Dr. Mayo’s death at about that same time had made it possible to enter on the records that Virginia Hector had borne a daughter, Anastasia—whom Ira raised when Virginia refused to. Scandal there’d been, when the news gradually became known, but on the whole it had not much damaged the public image of Reginald Hector; people pitied him and censured Virginia (a double injustice of which he seemed yet oblivious), whose subsequent deterioration they were pleased to regard as her due; Max was got rid of, the Cum Laude Project quietly scrapped, and Eblis Eierkopf demoted to less sensitive researches. Anastasia had proved a delightful grandchild, and but for an occasional nagging fear that the GILES had not really perished (if the baby had been the GILES), Reginald Hector had put the unpleasant episode out of mind—until yesterday, when it had suddenly come back to haunt him.
“But look here,” he said at last, patting my shoulder, “if You really promise to let bygones be bygones, You can count on me to put in a good word for You with Stacey.”
When I asked what exactly he meant, he winked. “She had no business marrying that dirty-minded draft-dodger in the first place! But Stacey listens to her Grandpa Reg, and if I was to tell her the G.T. loves her … Not that You haven’t told her so already, eh?” He nudged me with his elbow.
“A Grand Tutor loves the whole student body,” I told him coldly, adding that if he felt so beholden to me as to pimp for his married granddaughter, he was flunkèd indeed, and had better heed my counsel about herding goats. Not to lose my temper further at his pandering to the image of Harold Bray, I turned my back on his expostulations and left the office. At that very moment, as if to remind me of urgenter business, the crowd outside set up a shout. But another came from behind me, like an answer to the first: a woman’s cry:
