John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"But," he grinned sadly. I had indeed a but or two, not unrelated to my program for ending the Boundary Dispute, but before I could think of a respectful way to voice them the Chancellor said, "They tell me you've seen a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Stoker recently." I acknowledged I had, remembering suddenly and with interest an insinuation of Stoker's: that Lucius Rexford was among those to whom Anastasia had granted — more accurately, not denied — her favors. The image of Mrs. Rexford's coolness on the verandah recurred to me. "Excuse the personal question," the Chancellor went on: "we've all heard how he abuses his wife; even beats her. Did you get the impression that she loves him?"

I considered for a moment — not so much the yes or no demanded by the question, but how I might turn my response to more pertinent account.

"Do you think it's ever right for a man to strike his wife, sir?"

"What?" He frowned sharply. "Well, no. No, of course not." Whether or not he saw the difference between his question and mine, he answered at once, blushing vigorously, and added before I could think how to ask it: "Or be unfaithful to her, either. It's indefensible — especially if his wife is loyal and affectionate."

"And Stoker's not your brother, is he, sir? You agree that his way of life is flunkèd, don't you?"

Because I saw his eyes begin to flash dangerfully, I hastened to modulate to a less personal and particular application of my general point, the same I'd endeavored to make to Max, Peter Greene, Dr. Eierkopf, and Croaker — even, half-wittingly, to Anastasia, and perversely to Ira Hector and Stoker himself: that apart from the question of whether the grounds of their Certifications were valid or the Certifier was authorized, I was not convinced that themselves quite measured up to those several standards after all. Just as I'd found on the one hand Stoker's Dean-o'-Flunkhood and Ira Hector's selfishness equivocal, and likewise on the other Anastasia's vulnerable magnanimity, Max's scapegoatery, Greene's innocence, Eierkopf's asceticism, and Croaker's appetitiveness, so I suspected that Lucius Rexford was not so entirely free of Stokerishness, so to speak, as we both might wish: I dared guess he had lost his temper with Mrs. Rexford on occasion, perhaps even had struck her — surely not more than once or twice — as well as sampled at least upon one occasion the extracurricular pleasure of Anastasia. Obversely, his condemnation of extremism and disorder, as manifest in Stoker, had never been more than mild; it was his partisans and associates who shouted down the gossip of their fraternity.

Not to speak of these things directly, I praised instead his speech of the morning and the philosopher Entelechus on whom he'd drawn, and with whose thought I had a passing acquaintance, thanks to Max. Then I made bold to suggest that the principle of moderation and compromise lost its meaning if it too was compromised and moderated. Entelechus himself, I happened to recall, had warned against "means in the extremes" — by which he meant that one was not to lie, cheat, steal, rape, or murder even discreetly, but to eschew those vices altogether. Just so (I spoke in as objectively illustrative a tone as I could manage) with adultery, wife-beating, drunkenness, and violence of all sorts; the question was not when, with whom, how much, or how often, but whether at all in any case; and the answer was No.

"There's the U.C. building ahead," the Chancellor observed. His voice was glum.

I begged him in that event to hear me out, as I'd only been illustrating what seemed to me to be the correct Entelechian approach to the Boundary Dispute.

"Our present policy isn't Entelechian?" His tone was amused: New Tammany's strategy, he said, had been to do business of every sort on as many fronts as possible with the Nikolayans; to involve the affairs of the two colleges so subtly and extensively that détente would be the actual state of intercollegiate affairs regardless of theoretical contradictions, and riot would become tantamount to economic as well as physical suicide. The long-standing Boundary Dispute — now virtually an institution, with its own budget, offices, officers, rituals, and publications — provided the occasion and machinery for innumerable other connections with Nikolay and the lesser Student-Unionist colleges: to name one cynical example, the Departments of Espionage and Counterintelligence on both sides would be seriously handicapped without such points of contact as the conference-table; and the secret diplomacy essential to any serious intercollege business would be unmanageable without a convenient "front" like the Boundary Dispute.

"If it didn't exist we'd have to invent it," Mr. Rexford said, only partly in jest. "But it's much better to use a language that's already been worked out, don't you agree? The Nikolayan delegate, for example, the fellow who calls himself Classmate X — suppose he says his college will refuse to pay its dues to the University Council as long as New Tammany blocks the admission of T'ang College. What he means is, they don't want T'ang in either, but it wouldn't be nice to say so, so if we'll keep blocking T'ang's admission and let Nikolay save face by reneging on their debt, they won't interfere with our extension-work in certain other colleges. We know this is what he means, and Classmate X knows we know it; so our delegate agrees by denouncing people who don't pay their bills and by threatening not to pay our own — which means we will pay, since we've got more to lose than the Nikolayans do if the U.C. folds up, but it'll be hard to push the appropriation through a conservative Senate, so they'll have to lay low on the Power Line at least until after the next election." He smiled. "All this must sound very cynical to somebody raised on a goat-farm by Dr. Spielman."

"I'm afraid it does indeed!" I exclaimed. But the Chancellor maintained that, lamentable or not, such were the political realities; he declared that the best political scientists were those to whom these multiple meanings were so clear that they truly went without saying; to whom the symbolic use of varsity political language was such second nature that they felt neither cynical nor hypocritical about the disparity between their public statements and their actual policies: for them, and their fellow-initiates, there was no disparity; they never confused symbol with referent.

"That's not Entelechian!" I protested. "Excuse me, sir: that's Dean-o'-Flunkish! You sound like Maurice Stoker!"

He had for a moment put by the reserve that characteristically went with his good humor; now it was stiffly in place again. "I suppose, from a Grand Tutor's point of view…"

"From Entelechus's!" I insisted. "From your own, sir!" We had drawn up by this time before a many-storied glass slab, where throngs of students and policemen awaited the Chancellor's arrival. A small herd of black-gowned dignitaries came down the entrance-steps towards us; a uniformed ROTC officer opened our sidecar door and snapped to attention with a fixed salute. But the Chancellor half-raised a hand to stay the greeters, smiled his most mischievous smile at me, and said, "Obviously we mustn't EAT each other. How would you handle the Boundary Dispute? Take a whole minute if you need to."

I drew a breath. "I'd separate the Power Lines."

"What?" His expression was offended.

"Adjourn the Symposium," I said. "Double the distance between the Power Lines. Tell WESCAC to separate its circuitry completely from EASCAC's."

He declared I was joking, but reclosed the sidecar door for a moment; those outside shifted about and consulted their wristwatches.

"It's like Stoker, or the Dean o' Flunks, or a terrible disease," I argued; "if you do business with these things, they always win. Extreme in the mean is what you've got to be, and not compromise even for a second with Flunkage, or let opposites get confused. An arch won't do between True and False; they've got to be cut with an edge as sharp as the Infinite Divisor, and separated."