John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Founder Omniscient!" I groaned, and ran with chill perspiration; was obliged to squat and feign interest in a low drawer of cards until I mastered my shivering. No mistaking her: it was Lady Creamhair, however drawn and silvered by unhappy terms!

Anastasia bent to me, frightened. "What is it, George?" I shook my head. Lady Creamhair's eyes — Virginia Hector's, it staggered me to understand! — had evidently not improved since our dim dear days in the hemlock-grove; seeing nothing familiar about us or untoward, she went on to her office.

"You're sure that's Virginia Hector, Anastasia?"

"Of course it is! What on campus — "

"And… she's your mother?" I leaned against the cardfile for support.

"Our mother, I hope!" She drew me hubwards. "Let's find out for sure, before she goes off somewhere."

But I held back yet a moment, flabbergast with memory and surprise. Poor dear Creamie! How I understood now your unwillingness to meet my keeper, or tell me your name; how I trembled at your old interest in me, your yen to pluck me from the herd, and — Founder, Founder! — your appall at my lust to Be, that drove you watchless from the grove!

"Anastasia…" I could scarcely speak. It was the empty Scroll-case now I leaned on, and drew her to me. Dutifully she resisted — until assured that it was a brotherly embrace. "I won't explain now, but… I've known that lady before, and I–I really think that you and I might be twins."

She hugged me enthusiastically — confounding my poor blood, which knew no longer what permissibly might rouse it. I suggested then that the shock of seeing me after so many terms might do her mother — our mother! — more harm than good unless properly prepared for; we agreed that Anastasia would go to her at first alone, draw her out upon the matters of our twinship and paternity while I listened from the doorway, and gently then introduce the facts of our acquaintance and my presence in the College proper. If Miss Hector found the news too distressing, I could present myself another time; if not, Anastasia would summon and introduce me. I stationed myself outside the door, and Anastasia knocked.

"Come in, please? Oh, it's you, dear."

I closed my eyes; her voice had still the querulous resolve in it that had fetched me in kiddish fury once at the fence, and soothed my adolescent stormings in the hemlock. Anastasia greeted her with a cheeriness perhaps exaggerated by the situation, declaring that she had a few daughterly matters to discuss, and that it had anyhow been too long since they'd last chatted.

"Oh. Well. Yes. Well. All this commotion lately…" Lady Creamhair clucked and fussed, not incordially, but as if permanently rattled. She seemed indeed in less possession of her faculties than formerly, and with rue I wondered how much hurt my ignorant assault might have done her. The two women exchanged commonplaces for a while — rather formally it seemed to me, for a mother and daughter, but at least with none of the ill-will that had rejected Anastasia in her childhood. Then presently, with apologies for "bringing up a sore subject," Anastasia declared that the recent appearance in New Tammany of two claimants to the title of Grand Tutor had revived many people's curiosity about the old Cum Laude Project and brought up again the unhappy matters of the "Hector scandal" and her illegitimate paternity —

"That's nobody's business," I heard Virginia Hector say firmly. From the sound I guessed that Anastasia went to embrace her then and declared affectionately that indeed it wasn't the business of anyone outside the family; but that she herself, of age now and a married woman, was surely entitled to the whole truth of her begetting.

"You know I've always loved you, Mother, and you must know it doesn't matter to me what the truth is; I just want to get it straight! One person comes along and says Dr. Eierkopf's my father — "

"Ha," Miss Hector said scornfully.

"— then another person says it's Dr. Spielman — "

The import of her "Hmp" at mention of this name I could not assess, though I listened closely.

"And you've said different things at different times yourself," Anastasia went on. "Even that I'm not your daughter…" Her voice grew less steady.

"Oh, now," Virginia Hector said. Anastasia repeated that her affection for her mother could not be diminished by the facts, whatever they were — at least she began to repeat some such sentiment, but was overtaken midway by tears.

"Now, now, now…" So like was that voice to the one that had gentled my two-score weepings in terms gone by, I could have wept again at sound of it. I yearned to burst in and beg my Lady Creamhair's pardon; must press my forehead to the frosted door-glass to calm me. Some minutes the ladies wept together. Then there was a snap of purses and blow of noses upon tissues, after which Virginia Hector said: "I have much to be forgiven, dear, Founder knows… No, no, don't be so kind; you've every right to hate me for the way I behaved when you were little. I flunk myself a hundred times over just to remember it, and when I think of you married to that beast…"

The thought brought more tears, as well it might, despite Anastasia's reassurances that none but herself was accountable for her choice of husbands. Happily, Miss Hector seemed unaware of the details of her daughter's life, before as well as after marriage, understanding only in a general way that it was less than serene and respectable. She was able therefore to recompose herself sooner than she doubtless would have had she known the hard particulars of Anastasia's history.

"I was awfully upset, you know," she went on presently, referring to the period of her daughter's infancy. "You can't imagine how it is to know that nobody will ever believe the truth, no matter what. Not even you. Not even now…"

Anastasia vowed she would, if only her mother would produce it; and so, after a number of unconvinced hums and clucks, Virginia Hector said clearly, almost wryly: "The truth is, I have never in my life… gone all the way with a man. Not once, to this day."

If I was slower to come to incredulity than Anastasia (whom I heard make an instant noise of dismay), it was not because I misinterpreted the phrase "gone all the way," but rather because my origin, my experiences, and my knowledge of Anastasia's past, for example, prevented me from grasping at once that by "never with a man" Miss Hector meant "never with a male of any species."

"When I learned I was pregnant, I blamed it on Max Spielman," she went on to say, "because I knew nobody would believe the truth, and I thought Dr. Spielman might love me enough to take the blame and marry me, even though he'd think it was another man's child. But he didn't, and that was that."

How I longed to tell her immediately the truth of Max's love and honor, so great that it was just her refusal to admit infidelity that had kept him from wedding her! But Anastasia — with a kind of tired incuriosity now, as if she knew in advance what the reply would be — asked then who was her father.

"Your father?" The question appeared to surprise Miss Hector; I tried to recall which word she'd accented, and couldn't. She announced then, as one might read from a page: "Max never would, and Eblis couldn't've if I'd wanted him to. It was WESCAC."

To hear this confirmation from the lady's own lips made me thrill; but Anastasia said disgustedly: "Oh, Mother!"

Miss Hector went on undaunted — indeed, unhearing: "Eblis warned me it could happen, and when they fed in the finished GILES he told me I was one of the ones WESCAC had in mind, you might say. I was in love with Max then, and as I said, I'd never gone all the way with anyone, though I suppose I would have with Max if he'd wanted to. Wait, let me finish…" Anastasia had made a little rustle of despair. "I'd been Miss NTC and Miss University, you know, just as you were — and, my sakes, weren't you lovely the day they capped you! Well…"