John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"You'll be a fine man," she told me when we parted for the day. "My, but doesn't he smell sweet now, and don't I love him!" She'd been combing my hair; here she stooped to face me, and I found myself kissed in the mouth.

The shophar sounded. "Bye-bye!" we called to each other, again and again across the fields. My wrapper was stiff and coarse next to my skin. "Bye-bye!" Hordes of blackbirds swept northwestwards; swallows sprang from the barn to dive in the last light. I pursed my lips; I kissed my arms. A queer pain smote me, while the ragged swifts went chittering high up.

Already the lights had come on. The heat in the barn, when I entered, was most oppressive, and I drew back my head at the stench of ammonia rising from the peat-litter. A cry hung in my throat; stung still, I saw through swimming eyes Max hasten toward me.

"What now! What now!"

Frowning alarm, he would embrace me; but his odor, strong as truth, was in my nostrils, and I thrust him off.

"Flunk you! You stink!"

Like two blows of a staff my curse fell on him, drew him up short, and made him sway. Now my heartsgate swooningly let flood an utter lake of pain. "I hate this!"

"Hum!" Max tugged at his beard and fiercely nodded. I rose up to strike him: like a buck well-broken to harness he made no jump away — only watched my fist and flinched in upon himself to take the blow. I hit him on the breastbone; we each fell backwards, sitting hard in the peat. Max laid his hand on the struck place. We sat for some moments, breathing loudly.

Presently I said, "I wish I'd died before I said those things."

Max shook his head. "What I know, now you wish you didn't say it."

I was too empty for tears. "I'm sorry I hit you."

"I know that."

"Can you forgive me?" I asked it pretty sullenly.

"Sure I can. But I don't, sir. Not till it's good for you."

A small resentment came then and gave us strength to pick ourselves up from the floor. Bitterly consoled I said, "I see you don't love me," and Max was enabled to put his arm across my shoulders.

"Idiot. Too much. I love you is what. Forgiveness you don't ask for like a present; you win it like a prize."

I believed that then. How sharp the smell of him was. He chuckled at the flare of my nostrils and pressed me to his bucky fleece.

" Ja he hates that stink now, and washed it off him. You said it right, Billy, what that is: that's the stink of the flunkèd, the stink of the Moishians, and the stink of the goats. Three stinks in one. May you learn to love it one day like the goyim love their Tripos."

His reference I did not understand, but his manner made us right. We curled up to a meal of oilcake and water — the first food we'd shared in weeks — and when he asked me directly whom I had been seeing that had altered my speech, my opinions, and my scent, I told the full tale of my relations with Lady Creamhair. Max nodded and shook his head, more in sad acknowledgment than in surprise or disapproval. I recounted for him that day's contretemps, Lady Creamhair's ultimatum, and my resolve — more grim by now than heartfelt — to leave the herd forever.

" Ach ," Max marveled when I was done, "one day they're kids, next day they're stud-bucks. I declare."

"I'm going to keep my promise," I said. "It's all settled."

Stern pity came in his eyes. "Nothing's settled, Billy. You don't know what settled is yet. Never mind settled !" He sniffed and sighed. " So, it's her or me. Ja , well, I think that's so."

I pleaded. "What am I, Max?"

We regarded each other earnestly. Max said, "What you're going to be I got no idea. But a goat is what you been, and you been happy."

His words touched my heart. But, I declared, I was happy no longer.

"Who is, but a kid on the teat? You think I was happy when they called me a Student-Unionist and spit in my face? You think the Amaterasus were happy to be EATen alive in the Second Riot? Let me tell you this about unhappiness, Billy: nobody but human people knows what the word means."

Doubtless Max saw then as clearly as I did later the ruesome enthymeme hanging like an echo in his pause. And how came it he had alluded in the last ten minutes to more mysteries than had perplexed me in as many years? Tripos, Amaterasu, Second Riot — - it was most assuredly no lapse, but a change of policy that flung those terms like doleful challenges to my curiosity. With care I considered — I don't know what — and then respectfully inquired, "What is a Moishian?"

His features softened. "Yes, well. The Moishians is the Chosen Class."

"Chosen for what?"

His reply was matter-of-fact. "To suffer, dear Billy. Chosen to fail and suffer."

I pondered these words. "Who chose you to do that?"

Max smiled proudly. "Who's going to choose you to be a goat or an undergraduate? My boy, we chose ourselves. It's the Moishians' best talent: WESCAC puts it on our Aptitude Cards when we matriculate. I'll tell you one day."

I understood: he was not putting me off, but clearing way for more pressing inquiries. And though my curiosity was strong, it was no longer pressed. Great doors had quietly been opened; there stretched the wide campus and everything to be learned. But quite so, I had to learn everything, and those doors I felt were open now for good; there was no rush. I felt suddenly exhausted and relieved.

"Well," I asked him. "Are Moishians the same as goats?"

"Not all goats is Moishians," he replied with a smile, "but all Moishians is a little bit goat. Of course, there's goats and goats."

Now I wanted to know: was I a Moishian?

"Maybe so, maybe not," Max said. He fetched out his aged penis and declared, "Moishe says in the Old Syllabus, Except ye be circumcised like me, ye shall not Pass. But in the New Syllabus Enos Enoch says Verily, I crave the foreskin of thy mind."

For a moment I was gripped by my former anguish, and cried out, "I don't understand anything!"

"That's a fact. But you will. A little at a time." He hugged me tenderly and by way of a first lesson explained what, without realizing it, I had really been trying to ask: How had he come to exchange the company of men for that of the goats?

"This Enos Enoch, Billy: ages ago he was the shepherd of the goyim, and I like him okay. He was the Shepherd Emeritus that died for his sheep. But look here: he told his students Ask, and you'll find the Answer; that's why the goyim call him their Grand Tutor, and the Founder's own son. But we Moishians say Ask, and you'll keep on asking … There's the difference between us." And Max said further: "The way the campus works, there's got to be goats for the sheep to drive out, ja? If they don't fail us they fail themselves, and then nobody passes. Well I tell you, it's a hard and passèd fate to be a goat. Enos Enoch, now, he didn't want them in his herd; he drove out the goats from the fold and set them on his left hand, so he could be a good shepherd to the sheep. Okay, Billy. But when the time came that the goyim drove me out I thought about this: 'Who's going to look after the goats?' And I decided, 'Max Spielman is.' "

"I see why Lady Creamhair didn't want you to know about her," I said. "No wonder you hate people."

But Max denied it. "I don't even hate the Bonifacists in Siegfrieder College, that burnt up all the Moishians in the Second Riot. What I mean, I hate them a little, because studentkind has got to do some hating, and to hate them for that — it's a way of loving them, if you think about it. But the ones I really love are the ones the haters hate: I mean the goats." In a surpassingly gentle voice he observed: "Tonight you came home full of joy that you were a man instead of a goat, hey? And the first thing you said was Flunk you, and the second was I hate …" He sighed. "That's why I came to the goats."