John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

Nor was the grave varsity situation the only cause of Rexford's declining popularity. Stoker had returned to the Powerhouse with raped Anastasia after rescuing me from the noose, and in time had restored Furnace-Room output to three-quarters of its normal level; better than that he could not inspire Madge and the rest to do, by reason perhaps of his own loss of energy; even so, a part of the production was stored, or went up the Shaft in smoke, because New Tammany's power-consumption had dropped to fifty percent of normal. The decrease was owing not to reduced demands for power in the College — they had never been higher — but to the problems of distribution raised by Rexford's refusal to have any commerce with Maurice Stoker, whose presence he also forbade in the Great Mall area. This was the first of a series of prohibitions enacted by his administration in the following months: the ill-famed and short-lived "Open-Book Tests" designed to eliminate flunkèdness from New Tammany College. Dormitory-brothels were shut down, their madams prosecuted. Adultery was made a criminal misdemeanor and rape a capital felony on the one hand, while celibacy on the other — at least as represented by bachelor- and spinster-hood — was penalized by fines increased annually after age twenty-one. Homosexuals were flogged, irrespective of gender; flagellants were not. Although one glass of light wine was served with the evening meal in every dining-hall, drunkenness, even in the home, was punished severely, as were fights of any sort and even domestic altercations — wifebeating, in particular, was made punishable by long detention. Tower-Hall patronage was abolished; macing, graft, division of interest, and other abuses of office became grounds for expulsion from the College. Censorship was imposed upon all media of entertainment, communication, instruction, and artistic expression, with the aim of suppressing excess. Exotic dress, grooming, and behavior were condemned from all sides by billboards and Telerama messages, and — what was perhaps the most controversial measure of all — it was proposed that psychotherapy be made obligatory for extreme or intemperate personalities, to the end of schooling them in moderation. This last proposal the Chancellor ultimately vetoed as immoderate, though he himself had drafted it; but the press criticized him all the same — in guarded terms, out of respect for the censorship. So also did the rank and file of New Tammany undergraduates, who had used to adore him; they removed his sunny likeness from their walls and smirked at the rumors that Mrs. Rexford's vacation from Great Mall would be permanent. Yet they submitted to the Open-Book reforms to a degree bespeaking some basic sympathy with their spirit. Criminal violence became rare; so too did loud merrymaking. Sharp cheeses and unsliced rye bread disappeared from menus. Nearly everyone had a C average. Greene Timber and Plastics (in the owner's absence) developed a synthetic material said to be almost indistinguishable from real plastic, and a more efficient way of packaging containers. It was with a faint smile, a faint sigh, or a faint shrug that people nicknamed Tower Hall "Dead Center." No one was happy; on the other hand, no demonstrations were mounted or measures proposed to repeal the new laws.

The Chancellor himself was only moderately concerned about these developments; neither did it stir him to hear that the Founder's Scroll had got lost in the CACAFILE — which, reprogrammed by Mother's office in accordance with my directive, seemed to have declared every volume in the Library sui generis and would file no two in the same category. The evidence of student-opinion polls, the complaints of his party-leaders and lieutenants that he'd never win the next election, the declining wattage of the Light House itself — nothing much troubled him.

"He's not right bright these days," Stoker said. But he said it languidly, with none of his old high-spirited contempt, and though he had regrown his beard and reverted to his motorcycle-costume, his hair was barbered, his leather jacket greaseless — and a curly black forelock hung upon his brow. "I'm glad he's no kin of mine."

This as he returned me to my cell — to some cell, anyhow — from one of his offices, early in my confinement. I had testified in Max's behalf during his trial for the murder of Herman Hermann and conversed afterwards with Stoker for several hours, during which he told me most of the foregoing and other things as well, with a kind of bored persistence. He had been convinced, he said, that I was as much a fraud as Bray; for that very reason he'd taken my advice and ceased to define passage by his wholesale flunkèdness. His aim — which he pursued because he had no faith in it — was, I gathered, to lead the Chancellor and others to failure by no longer exemplifying and tempting them to it (thereby himself to fail, I suspected, and thus, by his inverted logic, to pass — the same end he'd originally pursued, only essayed now by transvaluated means); and he supposed he had succeeded. Shaven and suited, he'd gone to the Light House in order at once to embrace and to deny kinship with Lucius Rexford, whom he met returning from the aborted Summit Symposium. The two had made polite, if distracted, conversation, even toasted each other's health in Dry Sack; but though the Chancellor was astonished to see him there and gratified to hear that the claim of their fraternity would need be denied no more, Stoker had distinctly felt that for the first time Lucky Rexford disliked him in addition to repudiating him. To be sure, the Chancellor was distraught by the events at the University Council, by Mrs. Rexford's chilly announcement that she'd be dining out that evening, and (what Stoker hadn't been aware of) not least by my several counsels to him, which though he'd scoffed at them he couldn't forget. Nevertheless Stoker felt so clearly the distaste that took the place of Rexford's former envious rejection, he himself cut the interview short, and readily agreed to the Chancellor's suggestion that they meet no more. In a curious heat then, he had throttled through the Light-House gate with his company — not in excess of the posted speed-limits — just as Anastasia and I had happened to taxi past en route to the Library from Dr. Sear's. When shortly afterwards the crowd had gathered before Tower Hall, and he learned their purpose, he'd put his new persona to the further test I'd witnessed, soothing the demonstrators instead of inciting and clubbing them at once as was his wont. Bray's admonition there in the lobby — to "be himself, for Founder's sake" — accounted for his subsequent partial regression: who was himself? and for Whose sake did he do anything? Confused, he had retired to Main Detention, exchanged the business-suit for his customary garb, and returned to Great Mall just in time to stop the lynching.

"But why'd you stop it?" I asked him. "If you'd decided my Tutoring was false and Bray's was true…"

He shrugged. "Stacey's orders."

I could scarcely believe him. "You took orders from Anastasia?"

"I couldn't decide what was what," he said listlessly. "And Peter Greene humping her like that, it kind of upset me…"

I remarked that My Ladyship's sexual misfortunes had never previously dismayed him; he was even responsible for not a few of them.

He sighed. "That was before. You've seen how she is lately. I don't know, George: I think there's something wrong with our marriage."

I believed I knew what he meant, for though I'd seen Anastasia several times since being detained, and accounted for some features of her behavior as owing to my counsel and others to her misguided faith in my Grand-Tutorhood, I couldn't finally say I understood My Ladyship at all. Her permitting Harold Bray to service her in exchange for Certifying me I comprehended, revolting as was the idea; his later amnesty-offer and invitation to me to set right the damage I'd done I refused, assuming they were bought with the same coin. But when she brought my mother to visit me she was cold, even priggish, far beyond the simple chastity I'd enjoined on her. She was unsympathetic not only to the vulgar prisoners who shouted obscenities and exposed themselves to her in the Visitation Room — and whom she once must passively have comforted with her sex — but also to her husband, despite his having ceased to abuse her. If formerly she had embraced the hateful as well as the dear in studentdom, accepting indiscriminately lust with love and receiving upon her with equal compassion police-dogs and Grand Tutors, now she seemed as catholic in her rejection: would no more of me or even of Leonid (who truly, passionately loved her) than of Peter Greene, who professed disgust with her and all her gender.