John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Go on and say it!" Anastasia challenged me. "Tell me I'm flunked, like Maurice does!" She shook off my arm and went to Mrs. Sear, who in a fresh fit of disequilibrium seemed about to roll off the couch.

"That isn't what I meant," I assured her, though privately I was not at all convinced that it wasn't at least partly true: when she bent to steady Mrs. Sear, for example, and that surprising person at once thrust a hand into her crotch, Anastasia wept for sheer distress at this new unpleasantness, but would neither leave the importunate woman nor remove the hand.

"Demonstrate your humanity, George," urged Dr. Sear. "If the goat-thing's not to your taste, do something à trois. Mrs. Stoker will let you."

I saw his point, and was not unwilling to implement it in some measure for the sake of my several objectives. But I was less assured than he of Anastasia's readiness to cooperate in a display of Conscious Depravity, and therefore I told her straightforwardly what was ahoof:

"Peter Greene's watching along with Dr. Sear, Anastasia." At this news she would indeed have fled had I not gripped her pretty shoulders from behind, and Mrs. Sear her escutcheon from before.

"Peter schmeeter," said Mrs. Sear.

I held Anastasia long enough (against Mrs. Sear's best efforts to tumble us onto the couch) to tell her of Greene's mad conviction that she was virginal; his resolve to wed her despite both their spouses, and his inability to see the flunkèd aspects of his own nature — such as the "innocent" voyeurism he was enjoying presently as on certain past occasions. In addition I informed her of the third and fourth articles of my Assignment — Overcome Your Infirmity and See Through Your Ladyship — - and declared she could abet my completion of both projects, and do Peter Greene an ultimate service as well, by granting me a certain immediate license in the Conscious-Depravity way. All this in her ear, as I gripped her around the chest.

"Oh, George!" she complained — and pinched, perhaps, by Mrs. Sear, she jerked back against me. Very nearly I ejaculated, at touch of those perfections; feeling me against them she flinched away, but did not otherwise endeavor to wrest free. "I don't understand!" she wailed.

But I understood a number of things, some for the first time. It was clear to me now that I (and alas, not I alone!) could do virtually anything I pleased with Anastasia, not because she was a passèd martyr to the needs of others, on the one hand, or on the other a self-deluding nymphomane, but because she simply had not the will to assert her wishes over another's. Protest she might, refuse never — at least in the matter of carnal demands. This revelation (for so it was to me, however banal or evident, perhaps, to one raised since birth among humans) illumined in a flash not only the aforementioned articles of my Assignment, but the present situation. My "infirmity," I saw, was neither gimp nor goatness, but the limited insight into human natures unavoidable in one so late discovering his own. "Overcoming" it, then, must consist in just such illuminations as the present. Nay, the two labors were one: to "see through My Ladyship" could only mean to understand Anastasia; that is, to divine the inmost heart of one fellow human — a task impossible without the gift of insight. Divination now achieved, it was I felt certain the accomplishment — "at once, in no time" — of both parts of my Assignment, Q.E.D. Though I might still, for the record, ask a Clean Bill of Health from Dr. Sear (and perhaps a professional confirmation of my analysis of Anastasia), it seemed to me that my principal business there was finished, most satisfactorily. It remained only to demonstrate my thesis to Peter Greene and my "humanity" to Dr. Sear. In a friendly way I said, "Let's undress you, Anastasia," and fetched her firmly couchwards.

She fretted: "I don't want to, George!" But Mrs. Sear, in better reach of her now, said, "Hot dog," joined me with a will in the couching, and, kneeling over her on the cushion, attacked the fasteners of her uniform.

"This is awful!" Anastasia said crossly, and covered her eyes. "I don't see the need of this at all!"

I implored her to trust me, as she had once before at the Memorial Service. My plan was a token mounting of Hedwig Sear, for though I sharply craved Maurice Stoker's wife (the more at sight of her darling flanks again) and had no appetite whatever for Kennard Sear's, WESCAC's suggestion that I might be Anastasia's brother restrained me from following my desire — for her sake, who I imagined would share the prevailing undergraduate view of incest. To service a female person whom I found repellent was surely enough to prove my humanity; more so in my own estimation than to embrace one whom — despite our possible consanguinity and the obligations of Grand-Tutorhood — I had almost said, I loved.

"What Mr. Greene must think!" Anastasia moaned. As Hedwig Sear bent to bite her I remarked with an ardent pang the welt of my own teeth on her belly. Ah, it was true. Once hatched, the thought would not take wing, but stayed a-fledge there in my fancy: I loved Anastasia! And not as my relative or Tutee, but as a human lady girl. And I suddenly dreaded not only that we might be kin but that I might for aught I knew be… not lovable. Horrid possibility! That she admired me was evident; alas, her admiration like her sweet legs embraced many another, and had little to do with love. And Founder pass me, in the yearbooks of campus history what Grand Tutor ever took a mistress?

"George?" It was a rebuke, timid but positive. Anastasia's eyes were on my hands, which I had laid upon Hedwig's haunches. Whether by my problematical insights (How my infirmity was overcome!) or Mrs. Sear's aggressiveness, I had found myself unmanned, so to speak, and been obliged to temporize with idle foreplay. The woman ignored me, but Anastasia sat up now sharply and declared she didn't like what was happening at all and intended to leave.

"Oh, not now!" Dr. Sear entreated — from the doorway, where he appeared unaccompanied. "I was just about to join you."

Relieved enough at the interruption, nevertheless I frowned as I lowered my vestment and asked where Peter Greene was.

"Poor chap couldn't take it, I'm afraid," the doctor said pleasantly. "White as a sheet when I went in, and your remark about his voyeurisme did the trick. I gave him a sedative for fear he'd faint or commit mayhem, and he went right off to sleep. Like a five-year-old, actually. Very low threshold." He touched the small of my back with one hand and patted Anastasia's troubled cheek with the other. "Fine of you to help," he told her: "I think we really might have jarred some foolishness out of the fellow." Smiling at his wife he said then, "Mind if I cut in? Then we'll all have dinner."

Mrs. Sear did not reply: upon Anastasia's sitting up she had gone glassy-eyed, and slumped now quite insensible upon the dark beacon of George's Gorge, that had called G. Herrold to his end.

Anastasia shook her head. "I don't like this Conscious Depravity business. It's been a very upsetting day!" Awed by my feelings, I watched her fasten up her clothes once more. Dr. Sear gave me an amiable wry look — an invitation, as I thought, to exercise my will upon her as I knew I could. But I said that I too had spent a toilsome day, by no means over, and had no appetite except for food. He shrugged, lit a cigarette, and repeated his dinner invitation.

"A drink will perk Heddy up, and we'll ask Greene to come along if we can wake him."

Anastasia at first declined on the grounds that her husband, who "hadn't been himself at all" during lunch, might be expecting her at home, and that she would anyhow be ashamed to face Peter Greene for some time. But I pressed her to come with us, as I had serious matters to discuss with her: Max's predicament, her Certification by Bray — and our relationship. At this last she raised her eyes, as did Dr. Sear his far less liqueous ones. I blushed.