John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

Though entirely sensible of the edge in his inquiry, whether it was the Infirmary proper or the Psychiatric Annex I wanted chauffeuring to, I ignored it and supposed aloud that my friend Dr. Sear, being a practicing radiologist and psychotherapist as well as director of the Psych Clinic, might have offices in both places. I would try the main building first, in hopes of a directory; he need not wait.

"Need not need not," the surly fellow grumbled, and sped off almost before I'd climbed out onto the sidewalk in front of the Infirmary. But I was in too fine spirits to report him. By contrast with the first two articles of my Assignment, this third seemed to me now light work both to interpret and to satisfy: having seen such demonstration in the past few days of the infirmities of others, moral and intellectual as well as physical, I could quite agree that a bonafide Graduate must be free of them, and a Grand Tutor exemplify their opposites. The injunction to overcome my infirmity had thus a ready allegorical sense, such as I'd sought in vain to discern in its fellows: just as passage was passage and failure failure, defined each by strict distinction from the other, so was it with their corporal emblems, health and infirmity. That I was physically in good condition my Clean Bill of Health would be proof enough, which Dr. Sear had written for me early that same day; I needed but to fetch it from his office, or a copy if Mrs. Sear had delivered the original to Harold Bray at Scrapegoat Grate. As there was no infirmity to be remedied, I could be said to have overcome at least that part of the Assignment at once, in no time. But not to leave anything to chance, I went so far as to acknowledge that the term might be regarded metaphorically, or that WESCAC's standards might be narrowly human — in which cases any residual "goatliness" in my character, say, might by an effort of bigoted imagination be considered an infirmity; or my "limp," though it ceased to exist when I reverted to all fours. With the former I could not reasonably be taxed, it seemed to me: I'd left the herd in spirit long before my physical departure. But as I floated up to Dr. Sear's offices in the Psychiatric Annex, I resolved to consult him about my old leg-injuries, if only for an affidavit that they were neither "correctable" nor "crippling," properly regarded.

This aim fled before confusion a moment later, when I stepped from the lift into a dim hallway down which a young man scrabbled at me on hands and knees — in itself no very alarming spectacle to one of my history, but the fellow barked most savagely besides, and growled, and bared his teeth. Old instincts seized me: with a panic bleat I sprang onto the back of an upholstered chair nearby, and when the creature nipped at my ankles I flung my stick at him. At once he scrambled after it, clamped it in his jaws, and trotted back (the word is a flattery: his gait had neither grace nor rhythm), waggling his hindquarters. He seemed content enough; indeed, as if in invitation to further romp, he dropped the stick before the chair and sat up bright-eyed, lolling his tongue. But I was too frightened yet to give up my perch. There were two others seated along the hallway, to whom I appealed for help now I had a moment: alas, the one (an elder gentleman) sprang down on all fours himself and darted for the stick as soon as my harasser dropped it; and when the ensuing barky tussle fetched them up against the chair of the other (a co-ed lady girl), she turned side to them, arched her back, threatened with her nails, and hissed.

I made use of the diversion to dash across the corridor (on all fours myself, for speed's sake, being stickless) into an office marked with Dr. Sear's name. It was a Receiving Room, empty, at the rear of which a little hallway was, opening, I presently learned, into the doctor's treatment- and observation-chambers. To this latter I retreated from the dog-men, who tumbled through the entrance-door I'd neglected to close, and I was distressed to find the dim room occupied by a long lean lunatic: what but madness would lead one to stand with his face cupped against a wall? Even as I called to him for help my heart misgave me — then leaped up, when he turned my way, to behold that he was Peter Greene, and that he had been peering through a little window into the adjacent room. My pursuers bounded at him; I cried warning; but Greene, undismayed, said, "Down, fellows," and pacified them with bone-shaped biscuits from his pocket. The creatures retired each into a corner to gnaw their prizes, and I retrieved my stick, which they'd fetched in.

"They don't bite," Greene assured me — in an offhand tone, as though preoccupied. They and the female in the hall, he said, were patients of Dr. Sear's awaiting diagnoses, whom Anastasia had asked Greene to mind for a moment while she assisted the doctor with an emergency case. To this end he'd been supplied with dog-biscuits — the cat-young-lady was not troublesome, it seemed, unless rubbed the wrong way — and instructions to keep the patients in sight; but the alarming behavior of Mrs. Sear, whose appearance in the office constituted the emergency, had so intrigued him that he'd neglected his duty in order to watch through the one-way glass of the Observation Room.

"Sear's going to have a chat with me soon's he finds time," he reported. "But he's been busy all afternoon, so I been sitting here watching Miss Stacey work, and too durn love-struck to say a word to her, conversationwise."

"Mrs. Stoker," I reminded him. I had been going to wonder aloud how came it that human studentdom considered it a sign of madness for one of their number to behave caninely, and a sign of intelligence in a dog to act like a human, for though I had no love at all for dogdom, I suspected a snobbery in this attitude that for aught I knew might extend even to goats. However, Greene's invincible obtuseness provoked such annoyance in me, and the news of Mrs. Sear's condition such curiosity, I put that wonder by and went to the observation-window, less dim now than formerly.

"She come in a-flailin' and a-flounderin'," Greene confided, "and a-sayin' things would curl your hair. First off I took her for some kind of nut, the way she carried on — said the durnedest things to me you ever heard! But Miss Stacey explained it was Sear's own wife, that had a mental illness, and they took her in there to calm her down."

The square of glass I had pre-empted was too small to serve us both. Greene added hopefully, "Last I looked, they couldn't hold her still on the sofa."

A glance revealed to me that this objective had now been attained; Hedwig Sear lay calmly on the leather couch embracing Anastasia, while the doctor petted them both. A sexualler connection was plainly to come, and I was a little stung, not by jealousy, disgust, or indignation, such as a normal undergraduate might have been, but by unhappy surprise that it was Anastasia who seemed to be taking the initiative. Fidgeting beside me, Peter Greene flipped a wall-switch, and voices from the Treatment Room rustled through a loudspeaker above us.

"I'll get the door," Dr. Sear said briskly, "before some idiot barges in."

Anastasia called over her shoulder: "Better see that Mr. Greene's all right, too, don't you think?" Her voice, at least, was mild as always.

Peter Greene jubilantly punched my shoulder. "What's that if it ain't pure love?"

"Look here, Greene…"

"Pete. Okay?"

I had meant expostulation, not invitation to the window — indeed, though I turned to him, wondering how the situation was to be handled, I endeavored to block the scene from his view with my head. Then above Mrs. Sear's moans, ever more amorous, Anastasia nervously asked, "What about the window, Kennard? Do you think anybody might look in?" and the doctor's wry response — that it would disabuse Greene of an illusion or two if he did happen to watch — inspired me to turn the uncomfortable situation to pedagogical account.