John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

Gimping hospitalwards, I scolded myself further for having let human upperclassness put me down. GILES, son of WESCAC, maternal grandson of Reginald Hector; laboratory eugenical specimen of the Grand-Tutorial ideal (no less rare even if false); protégé of Maximilian Spielman — and a goat, by George: a brawny-bearded bigballed buck! Stepkid of Mary Appenzeller; stallmate of Redfearn's Tom; lover of Hedda of the Speckled Teats; familiar of that late legendary sire of sires, Brickett Ranunculus, the very dean of studs — I should deny my pedigree and heritage, my gait my garb my scent? Infirmity! My one infirmity, I saw now, was having thought such goatly gifts in need of cure, and that infirmity was overcome. Studentdom it was that limped: hobbled by false distinction, crippled by categories! I returned unflinchingly the stares of male and female undergraduates thronging the sidewalks, and reasoned one strong step further: my infirmity was that I had thought myself first goat, then wholly human boy, when in fact I was a goat-boy, both and neither: a walking refutation of such false conceits. If I chose, withal, to comport me goatly now awhile, it was not to deny my humanness (of what was the GILES decocted if not the seed of the whole student body?) but to correct it, in the spirit of my new advisings. To that end, as I drew near the Psychiatric Annex of the great Infirmary I goated it the more — "went to the bathroom" where no bathroom was, as in pasture days; bleated twice or thrice at the passersby's dismay; and skipped up the marble entrance steps on all fours — the point being that I wasn't just Capra hircus, any more than the white-coat pair of watchers at the top were simply Homo sapiens.

"A wise guy," one of them said.

"I don't know, Bill," said the other.

"George Giles the Goat-Boy," I announced, rising proudly to shake hands.

They exchanged glances. "Come off it, pal," Bill said. "Let's see your matric card."

Pleased at the chance to demonstrate my point, I displayed the blank ID-card with a smile. "What difference does a name make, classmates? I am, that's all."

"What'd I tell you," his colleague said to him. Bill grunted.

I was surprised and pleased. "You've thought of it before? That none of us really has a name?"

"Some stinks worse'n others, though," Bill said. The two each took an elbow, and they led me inside. When I understood that the jacket they called for was for me, and strait, I protested I'd only come to visit Dr. Sear. Bill acknowledged again, grudgingly, that his companion's guess had been correct. "I knew he treated lots of them animal ones," he said in his own defense. "But I thought that there goat one was in Main Detention."

"He is," the other said, and explained patiently; "what there is, though, Bill, there's some thinks they're the ones that thinks they're animals! It's in their heads."

"You reckon Sear treats them ones too?"

Proud of his knowledge, Bill's companion pointed out that Dr. Sear was a diagnostician, not a therapist. "He just sees what bin they belong in, is all."

The waistcoat was fetched — a cross-armed canvas thing — but they offered not to bind me in it if I'd come quietly to Dr. Sear's office. I agreed, delighted to infer that the doctor had recovered from his dread affliction as well as from his suicide-attempt, and I endeavored to Tutor my gruff escorts no further.

Other orderlies waited with patients in Dr. Sear's corridor. One of the latter growled and snapped at me as he and his keeper took our place in the lift; I lowered my head to butt, bleated a warning, and hoofed the terrazzo floor. The disturbance brought Anastasia hurrying from the Reception Room with dog-biscuits.

"George!" Her eyes widened at sight of the strait-jacket. Refusing to hear the orderlies' story, she scolded them sharply for treating the Grand Tutor as a madman; they were flunkèd as her husband, she said, who'd detained me as a common felon. They grumbled apologies and unhanded me, cowed by her temper if not persuaded by her representation; still flushed with outrage, she nevertheless agreed not to report their misjudgment to Dr. Sear, and dismissed them.

"A regular nut-house," Bill said disgustedly to his colleague.

Anastasia led me into the Reception Room (where I was surprised to see my mother, placidly knitting) and at once hugged me and made tears — not at all the chilly woman she had been being! "I'm so glad You're out of Detention," she exclaimed, and although she added, "everything's so mixed up, I don't know what to do!" I was pleased to believe her glad of my release apart from any aid she might require. And her recaptured warmth so gratified me that I kissed her mouth. Nibbled her even, ardently, whereupon she drew back with her usual wonder, but did not oppose my doing it again. "Don't just allow me!" I rebuked her — still holding her against me. "Either stop me or join in."

She looked fretfully to Mother, who however regarded us with blank benignity and went on knitting.

"It doesn't come naturally to me, George," she complained. "And I'm all upset just now…"

Bracing my heart I asked whether Bray had serviced her. More tears ensued, and blushes; she wrung in her hands the forgotten biscuits. He had not, she thanked the Founder, summoned her as yet, owing to his busy schedule of appointments for Certification. But their rendezvous was set for the coming midnight, in the Belfry; he was to fetch her from the Living Room at eleven o'clock.

"No," I said. At once she flung her arms about my neck for joy. But I continued: "You go to him, Anastasia. You do the servicing."

She wept: she could not, not ever. Task enough to submit to every creature's lust, as I had bid her; if she could manage it at all, it was only at my order, and because I'd taught her how responsible she was for the lust she helplessly provoked; but she besought me not to make her take the initiative.

"You must," I said. "And not only with Bray. I want you to seduce people — even Stoker."

"Maurice?" If she was anguished before, now she was simply shocked. "You mean… make love to my husband? What would he think!"

His thoughts, I told her, were not important; her Commencement was, and it depended on her overcoming the false distinctions I had formerly burdened her with. Yes, she must seduce her own husband, overwhelm him with carnalities of every description, even Conscious Depravities. Moreover, for both their sakes she must cuckold him; commit fornications without his knowledge and against his wishes.

"That's impossible!" she protested. "You know how Maurice is!" But her eyes refilled as she remembered, visibly, that he'd been neither brute nor pander since my first false Tutoring, but so chaste and docile a spouse he'd often made her cross. "That would be adultery, George!"

This last was more than refusal, and setting the teeth of my spirit I insisted she deceive her husband, not only with Bray but with for example Dr. Eierkopf and any other creature who crossed her fancy or her path — male or female, human or hound-dog, even animate or inanimate. All discrimination must go by the board.

She shook her head. "That's flunkèd!"

"Failure is Passage," I reminded her. She objected no more, but admitted tearfully that Dr. Sear had just finished telling her the very same thing, apropos of "the Peter Greene business," and though she'd understood it from him no more clearly than from me, even when he applied my reasoning to his own case, she guessed she had no choice but to acknowledge her stupidity and try to obey without understanding, repugnant as was the notion of such lewdness. I asked what business of or with Greene she meant, as she seemed not to be alluding to the spring-term rape — and also how my advice to her had applied to Dr. Sear, for while I was pleased to see he saw my point about her "charity" and the need to invert my former Tutoring, I had not myself considered what ought to be his new prescription. By way of answer, she locked the hall-door and bade me come with her into the Observation Room. As we passed in front of my mother, that lady caught and kissed my hand, the first indication that she knew I was there, and smiled slyly to herself as always. I kissed her hair, and she put down her knitting to make Enos Enoch's hand-sign on her fallen chest.