John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"It's a lie!" cried Ira. "Arrest them, Stoker!"

"Hey, a cop!" the same student warned, apparently seeing Stoker for the first time. "Go limp!" The others rebuked him for having extorted by force the information they needed, not because robbery was against the law — everybody knew that the laws were made to protect the privileged — but because the use of force was contrary to the principles of their group. "So I'm a Student-Unionist infiltrator," the fellow laughed. "We got what we wanted, didn't we?" He warned Stoker not to touch him or he'd shout Brutality.

"Go flunk yourself," Stoker growled, still evidently preoccupied with our debate. "The day I touch you, you'll have plenty to holler about."

Some of the students then fell to arguing whether the forcible expulsion of violent elements from their ranks would violate the principle of non-violence; others, whether nonviolence as a means had not become an end in itself with them, and thus a contradiction of its own premise that ends never justified means. The dispute was heated but peaceful; no agreement was reached.

"Hey, look," someone interrupted: "it's the GILES! Let's go limp over there and ask Him."

It seemed that my lynching and detention, so far from shaking their confidence in me, had redoubled it. In fact (as I observed when they flopped around The Living Sakhyan's elm), I was now as much their hero as He — perhaps more so, considering their emulation. Beards they'd had before, but now they all wore sandals like mine and fleecy coats — sheepskin, admittedly, and cut too short to be worn without trousers, but the closest they could come to a mohair wrapper. What's more, they leaned upon their staves as upon a crook, as well as using them to carry placards. These last were blank.

They greeted me respectfully but enthusiastically. Had the Administration seen its error and pardoned me? they wanted to know. Was I aware how many folksongs and free-verse poems my lynching had inspired, despite the Administration's efforts to suppress them on grounds of obscenity? Did I know of the "sleep-ins" staged in my behalf and wrongfully slandered by the right-wing press as "sleep-arounds," though the only fornication had been by neo-Bonifacist provocateurs of both sexes? Did I approve of Carte-blanchisme, their current cause, which aimed at nothing less than Freedom From Everything?

"That's not what it means to me," objected one of their number. "To me, Carte-blanchisme is a blanket protest against the great Nothing."

This interpretation struck many of his classmates as heretical and was therefore warmly applauded, though one bright fellow remarked that "the great Nothing" was exactly what Sakhyanism aimed at, and a brighter observed that, since the great Nothing was equivalent to Everything, and Freedom From Everything meant Freedom For Everything the two interpretations of their cause were not mutually exclusive.

"Syncretist," someone muttered.

"Look here," I said cordially, and they fell silent at once. "I'm much obliged for your good opinion of me, even though you're mistaken. I'm not the Grand Tutor; I failed my Assignment before because I took WESCAC on its own terms. That's what I want to consult The Living Sakhyan about, if you'll excuse me…"

They withdrew a little way, but begged permission to listen in on the dialogue, and I found the lot of them too lively and agreeable, on the whole, and their admiration too nattering, to refuse them. I was surprised to see that my denial of Grand-Tutorhood disturbed them not at all; of course I denied it, they exclaimed in whispers; Grand-Tutorhood was a concept, like any other; if I didn't deny it I wouldn't be Grand Tutor! Didn't my criticism of WESCAC make that clear? They alluded to the parable of Milo and Sophie the heifer: to pass, one must flunk the Examiner…

As at our previous encounter, I was impressed by their acuteness; indeed, I remembered now that some of their remarks in that earlier term could be said to have anticipated my present position. They'd understood some things better than I — though perhaps less well than I did now — and their commentary on my remarks invariably enlarged my understanding — to the point where I felt that same commentary vaguely deficient.

"It seems to me, sir," I said to The Living Sakhyan, "that WESCAC really is the Dean o' Flunks, as I used to think when I was a kid…"

"Didn't I tell you?" someone whispered triumphantly. "Attack the terms of the problem!" And before his classmates could shush him he alarmed me (since the slogan he quoted was exactly what I had in mind) by adding, "But isn't it only WESCAC's old MALI circuitry that that would apply to? How can Wescacus malinoctis be a symbol of Differentiation?" It was an objection I'd not myself considered. Fortunately another student hissed, "So what's this MALI and NOCTIS? Another set of arbitrary categories!"

This silenced the troubled one, and eased my own mind. "He'll reinterpret the terms of His Assignment," the same fellow said confidently. I decided to do just that, with The Living Sakhyan's aid.

"It says Fix the Clock," I began. "Before, I thought fix meant 'repair,' but Dr. Eierkopf's gadget seems to have stopped the clock completely, so I guess I was mistaken. What does it mean?"

My admirers fell again into the disputation they could never resist, and with the help of The Living Sakhyan's silence I was able to overhear them. My spring-term fiasco, they understood, had been a deliberate bad example, for pedagogical purposes; it went without saying that I'd known all along that fix could as easily mean "fix in position," for example, to one not bound by conventional assumptions — was that not what my pretended failure to repair the clock had in fact accomplished? I listened amazed. Moreover, they pointed out to each other, by thus fixing the escapement in position I'd been able to complete my Assignment "in no time," so to speak; surely the implications of the metaphor were clear!

"But if it goes without saying that He knew all this," the troubled fellow inquired, "why's He asking The Living Sakhyan?"

"Because it does go without saying!" another said. "You don't hear The Sakhyan answering, do you?"

Delightedly I pressed on: "End the Boundary Dispute: Now obviously I was wrong to think that meant make our Power Lines clearer, wasn't I? Did WESCAC mean some other kind of Boundary?"

I managed to catch just the words"… all arbitrary" behind me, but that was enough. I demanded of The Living Sakhyan ("Rhetorically, man," they said, "rhetorically!"): "Could it mean that the boundary between East and West Campuses is arbitrary and artificial, and ought to be denied? Should we abolish the Power Line?"

They applauded this suggestion as vigorously as limpness permitted. I was emboldened to ask whether they understood that had The Living Sakhyan answered either yes or no, He'd have affirmed the Boundary's reality, and thus answered falsely. Several nodded, and were at once rebuked by their cleverer classmates, who snapped, "Don't answer!" I had just presence enough of mind to smile and say no more.

In like manner I reviewed the whole of my Assignment with T. L. Sakhyan's aid. Overcome Your Infirmity, we decided, must mean affirm my limp and goatliness — a happy imperative! See Through Your Ladyship was more difficult, since the students knew nothing of my connection with Anastasia; but their whispers of "revisionist psychology" and "normal bisexuality," though meaningless to me, put me in mind of Dr. Sear and his fluoroscopic diversions. Should I literally make My Ladyship transparent? In any case, when I said, "I'll see Dr. Sear about that one," they laughed knowingly. In theory, the fifth task was also problematical: Re-place, because of its curious hyphen, seemed still to me to mean "Return the Founder's Scroll to its place" and not, as the students suggested, "Replace it with something better" — though "its place" clearly meant its source rather than its proper location in the Library stacks. However, by interpreting source to mean, not the sandy Moishian cave where the Scroll was found, but the mind and body of studentdom whence its teachings sprang, I was able to satisfy both the students and myself: recalling to them the East-Campus table-grace about "eating Truth," I asked The Living Sakhyan whether I should make a meal of the Founder's words!