John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"I know you're the Dunce's own cocksman," he said, "despite what Georgina tells me. But if you really believe it was Stacey in that alley, you're blind as a bat."

"Who was it then?" Greene said angrily. "And who was it owned up in court it was her own durn fault? Her twin sister?"

Stoker laughed. "Of course! Didn't George think once that he and Stacey were twins? Well she did have a twin, back in the Unwed Co-ed's Hospital where Ira Hector got her; but it was a twin sister …"

Greene held his ears. "Y'all quit, now!" But Stoker, inspired, went on to declare that Anastasia and her twin sister, though alike in appearance as his right eye to his left, were of contrary dispositions, to My Ladyship's frequent mortification. For while Anastasia was not only chaste but downright frigid — as Greene himself had observed, surely, by her demeanor in court and in the Visitation Room — her twin sister, raised in an orphanage, had early turned to vice, and was in fact a floozy!

"It's the Founder's truth," he vowed with a grin. "She's a hot one, that Lacey — Lacey's what they call her, from her black lace drawers — "

"She weren't wearing any drawers!" Greene cried — triumphantly but wretchedly, for despite his scorn he had begun to listen with a wincing care.

"Naturally she wasn't," Stoker replied, and as Leonid, Max, and I looked on astonished, he improvised a remarkable story: "Lacey's" notorious promiscuity, he declared, was commonly attributed to resentment of her luckier twin, whose reputation had indeed been damaged by Lacey's playing whore in her name. But in his own estimation — and he called on me, with a wink, to support his analysis — the unhappy girl's motives were more complex: indeed, it seemed to him that "Lacey's" wantonness but confirmed Anastasia's virgin chastity, and he wondered (that is, pretended to wonder) whether the girl didn't flunk herself deliberately — out of some hopeless love for her sister, say, or to set an instructive bad example.

I regarded Stoker sharply. "What a very curious idea. Like the Dean o' Flunks, you mean?"

"In black panties!" Stoker laughed. "Except when she doesn't wear any at all, to make Stacey look flunkèder."

"Foolishnish!" Leonid shouted, who had heard enough. "Stop this!"

But Stoker maintained with the same earnestness that his wife, for all her protestations of contempt for "Lacey's" misconduct, often took the blame for her errant twin — whether out of love, or guilt for her own comfortable childhood, or some perverse envy, he wouldn't venture to say, though he inclined to the last hypothesis.

"Pass her heart!" Leonid cried, tearful himself now with compassion. "That Mrs. Anastasia, all the time takes blame! I love, George!"

I nodded approval. He shook his great fist then at Stoker. "Dog pig! And falsifer!" Max and me also he accused of exploiting Greene's "stupihood," and declared that my account of Anastasia's behavior in court was the only true thing we'd said to his blue-eyed friend. "All these mirror, and virginicy, and Lacey-pant — bah! Stop this sisterness!"

Greene rubbed his orange beard. "I don't know, Leo. I don't much trust a durn mirror, one-way or two — . And it was kind of dark there, back of the Old Chancellor's Mansion…"

Leonid clutched him by the shirt-front. "Don't believe, Peter Greene! I have done! What word? My own self… 1 have love Mrs. Anastasia! No Lacey-pant!"

Greene choked and flung himself away. "Doggone you! You watch how you talk, now, Alexandrov!"

But Leonid pointed with great emotion to his trouserfly and said distinctly: "I have screw Mrs. Anastasia my own self! Passèdness her! Flunkhood me!"

Greene leaped at him with a groan and they wrestled to the floor, Leonid cursing Greene for a blindness fool and Greene Leonid for a patch-eyed liar, nose-on-his-facewise. In vain Max and I hauled at them, lest they carry their new Tutoring too far; despite his recent fat and sloth Greene was formidably strong, as was his adversary. By the time Stoker unlocked the cell and nonchalantly fired his pistol near their heads, each had a thumb at the other's good eye.

"No-good Student-Unionist!" Greene muttered as we drew them apart. "Telling filthy lies about the sweetest gal in New Tammany College!"

"Oy," Max said.

"Blind other eye!" Leonid jeered. "Can't see anyhow!"

"You're the one's blind," Greene retorted. "Can't tell a virgin from a flunking floozy!"

They would have set to again, but Stoker and I got between them and pushed Greene into the aisleway. Not that he gave a flunk which fool killed which, Stoker assured them; but he thought it a pity to waste the spectacle on so small an audience. "It's time I threw another party at the Powerhouse," he said. "I'll let you fellows entertain us with an eye-gouging contest. Winner gets Stacey, loser gets Lacey."

"He couldn't tell the difference nohow!" Greene said. "I wish I could give him my gosh-durn eyeball, let him see how blind he is!"

Leonid glared from the cell. "Me too you, if George didn't say selfish like Ira Hector."

"Say what you want!" Greene shouted. "Anyhow he's not a Founderless Student-Unionist. Ira's okay, when all's said and done!"

"Like you, hah?"

"When you come right down to it! What the heck anyhow!"

"Goodbye, Georgie," Max interrupted, and I realized that the cell was relocked, with only him and Leonid inside, "Founder help you, you should pass all now and don't fail anything."

I pressed the hand that fetched my purse and stick to me, urged him to remember that Failure and Passage were inseparable and equally unreal, and exhorted him to choose between the Shaft and freedom without considering the purity of his motives. Leonid too, his quick wrath gone, I shook warm hands with, and repeated my advice to him.

"All confuse," he sighed. "But I ask Dr. Spielman. Good luck you, Goat-Boy!"

Stoker acted surprised. "Did you think you were going somewhere, George?"

I smiled. "I'm going to visit your brother Lucky, among other things, to show him how to pass. Will you drive me to the Light House?"

Stoker threw his head back to hoot as in term past, but his laugh, owing perhaps to the iron acoustics, rang shrill. And he strode off, Greene trudging after, without attempting to rejail me. I wished Max and Leonid final peace of mind, and requested of them also that they do what they could to curb Croaker's appetites, either by instruction or by directly intercepting his food. For I saw the error of my flunking the "Eierkopf" in him and the "Croaker" in Eierkopf — as if the seamless University knew aught of such distinctions! — and therefore I would that he embrace and affirm what I'd bade him suppress, if he could be taught to.

"Yes, well," Max said dryly. "I think of something. I got a whole day."

"Want me to stick him in Solitary on bread and water?" Stoker had come part-way back after all, smirking, to hear me. I waved bye-bye to my cellmates and walked past him towards Peter Greene, who waited in the open gate at the end of the aisle.

"That's not a bad idea," I said over my shoulder. "But you shouldn't do it." In fact, I added lightly when he overtook me, he should rather try to thwart my plans for Croaker than further them, just as he should refuse the embrace which I hoped the Chancellor would soon proffer him.

"You don't need a pardon," Stoker said. "You need a strait-jacket, like Heddy Sear's!"

I smiled. "You shouldn't even drive me to the Light House, actually. Pete can do it. Anyhow, your brother will come to you, if you take my advice."

Greene allowed as how he'd count it an honor to chauffeur me, I'd so eased his mind; but he begged leave to seek out Anastasia first and apologize for having confused her with her flunkèd twin. As for Georgina —