John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

She clutched the handrail and shook her head. The door opened upon a virtually empty lobby. I was obliged to lead her from the lift, and we stood uncertainly under the eyes of a distant receptionist and two orderlies at the revolving exit-door. Unease dispelled my cramps and detumesced me.

"Mind," I said to reassure her, "the only thing that's certain is that I'm the Grand Tutor and you're Miss Hector's daughter. All the rest, even this GILES business, is only conjecture."

"Oh, George, this is awful!" Her voice was faint with horror; yet even on the verge of swooning she evidently saw how my expression clouded — as I feared, against my better judgment, that she might be simply loath to own a goat-boy for a brother — and she begged me to believe that it was purely the memory of our public "union," as she called it, that appalled her. "All those people!"

I thought it perceptive of me to observe: "If I understand human propriety, they're scandalized already by our Memorial Service, aren't they? A little extra scandal won't much matter. Besides — I don't want to sound vain, but I am the Grand Tutor…"

Her eyes swam now with appreciation of this comfort, instead of shame. Warmly she said — and I thrilled to hear it — that she could think of no man on campus whom she'd prefer as a brother, though she knew herself unworthy of sistership to a Grand-Tutor-to-be… I bade her end such deprecation of herself; of course she was worthy, I insisted — or would be if she'd but accept from me a single bit of Tutelage; to wit: let no man, woman, or other beast mount her or in any wise know her carnally, not even her husband, from that hour forth, that no invidious double-entendre be read into the motto on her spurious diploma: Love thy classmate.

"Ordinarily I wouldn't include your husband," I said, as if I dispensed such prohibitions daily. "But your marriage is such an… unusual one that your motive in mating with him might be the same as your motive in mating with Croaker, or Mrs. Sear, or — or Harold Bray, for all I know…"

This last I tossed in off-handedly, but I was unspeakably pleased to hear her protest that she had not "united" with Bray even once, whatever he might have said to the contrary.

"He hasn't said anything, as far as I know," I confessed.

"He'd better not. I know he's a great man and all, but ugh!"

I was emboldened to add, less from vanity than by way of firming my own resolve, that even if I should summon her myself, in my capacity as Grand Tutor of the Western Campus, and bid her conceive a child by me, say, to carry on my work when I should pass away — even then, and knowing as she must that such undergraduate whimsies as the incest-taboo were void before that grand imperative, she was to refuse me.

Wide-eyed she whispered: "Okay."

"I do love you, you know, Anastasia," I said, not at all abashed now. "And I'm not a bit sorry about the Memorial Service in the Living Room…"

"You aren't?"

"Of course not. You were perfectly beautiful, I thought; and, needless to say, it was delightful to climb you. It doesn't matter whether Stoker was baiting me or not, or whether we're related: we were innocent. I swear to you as Grand Tutor: it was an okay service."

The color returned to her face now; she dabbed with a tissue at her eyes and thanked me wholeheartedly for clearing her conscience on that point. I admitted to her finally that, being above human prejudices by virtue of my calling as well as my background, I could not but continue to lust for her on sight, as the most serviceable lady girl I'd ever seen; at the same time I judged it improper for a Grand Tutor to play favorites among his Tutees — as my becoming her particular lover would surely be interpreted. Therefore I welcomed, albeit with a pang of regret, the possibility of brotherly love between us, and the added constraint that siblingship would impose (however artificially) upon our intercourse.

Anastasia listened with glowing eyes. "You're sweet," she murmured, and rising impulsively on tiptoes, bussed my cheek. "I've needed a brother to straighten me out, from the beginning!"

The prospect which had so alarmed her only a few moments previously seemed now to delight her quite as much as that of Dr. Sear's connubial husbandry. "I can't wait to see Mom!" she exclaimed. "I'll make her 'fess up this time!" Her face was alight. "I know what! Friday's her night to work: I'll go with you to the Library, and we'll kill two birds with one stone!" Her mother, she reminded me, was an assistant director of filing and cataloguing in the Central Library: an office she'd attained on her own merits before the misfortune of her illegitimate pregnancy and subsequent instability, and held since as a kind of sinecure thanks to the influence of her father, the ex-Chancellor. Thus it was she whom I'd be applying to in any case for authorization to re-place the Founder's Scroll. Anastasia proposed to accompany me there and take the opportunity to "get to the bottom of this sister -thing," as she put it. Already she was a-bubble with questions and conjectures: if we were twins, or even just siblings, she couldn't imagine why I hadn't been raised along with herself; how could anybody not want their own little baby? On the other hand, if something had "taken me away" at birth (of one thing Anastasia was certain: it could never have been our mother's wish), that circumstance went far, she thought, to explain Virginia Hector's subsequent lapses of reason, and even her rejection of Anastasia — by what mechanism of psychology I did not grasp. But why had "Uncle Ira" and "Grandpa Reg" never mentioned a brother? And if, as it now appeared, neither Dr. Spielman nor Dr. Eierkopf was our father, who on campus did I suppose was? And whatever could have happened to spirit me away?

"Let's hurry, George! Aren't you thrilled to pieces? Oh, darn…" She snapped her fingers. "I really must call Maurice. Only take a sec."

She hurried off to telephone the Powerhouse from the receptionist's desk, and I availed myself of the respite to herd my scattered thoughts and address them to the work at hand — more important by far, to my mind, than the details of my genealogy. Mother or no mother, sister or no sister, I had Finals to pass, an impostor to rout, and studentdom to tutor from its error. Re-place the Founder's Scroll. With humble pride, not unmixed with awe, I remarked how clearly each new task, so far from exhausting me, left me stronger for the next; how, for the man of sure vocation, nothing is gratuitous, and the merest happenstance is fraught with meaning. Dr. Sear's observation about the Library's classification-problem, now I considered it, pointed clearly to the sense of my task — a sense altogether harmonious (as Sear could never have guessed) with the rest of the Assignment. What had my day's work proved, if not the necessity of clear distinction? And what were my labors but a series of paradigms, or emblems of this necessity? To distinguish Tick from Tock, East Campus from West, Grand Tutor from goat, appearance from reality (or whatever contraries were involved in seeing through My Ladyship) — all these tasks, like my sundry concomitant advisings, were but ways of saying, "Passage is Passage, Failure Failure: let none confuse them." All that was wanted to put the Founder's Scroll in its place was sharper definition, I was confident — and eager to tackle the problem, I grew impatient at the little delay, for it began to seem not impossible that I might request Examination that same evening, and thus complete my Assignment in a single day — as close to "no time," surely, as anyone could demand!

After a few minutes Anastasia reported, with some concern, that Stoker had not appeared at the Powerhouse all day, nor had his new secretary at Main Detention seen him since mid-morning; the former office was particularly alarmed because of some threatening situation in the Furnace Room — I trembled to imagine it — that required his management. At least, however, she was free to go with me; we left the Infirmary after a brief dispute with the orderlies (who wanted proof of my discharge from custody and only reluctantly accepted my Clean Bill of Health and Anastasia's endorsement in lieu of the regular form), and as we rode Librarywards in a double-sidecar taxi, Anastasia explained what had disturbed her at luncheon.