John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"See if Fritz is kaput," Stoker bade the nearest of them, and pointed out with a laugh that not only had his "short-cut" from the Powerhouse been a potholed road, but he'd had two prisoners in his sidecar, whereas his competitors, on the better road, had had but one between them — fortunately not in Fritz's vehicle. He glared up at me in the swirling dust, as if he'd been expecting to meet me, on Croaker's shoulders, along his way (and indeed he had been, I later learned, my escorts having wirelessed the news ahead). His voice took an edge. "All's fair in love and riot, hey, Goat-Boy?"

I had nothing to reply and was anyhow distracted, as were my escorts, by the sight of his passengers. Slumped in the sidecar and blindfolded, they started up at mention of my name. Pocket-torches focused on them, and I was doubly surprised: Peter Greene it was, and Leonid Alexandrov, handcuffed together; their coats and faces were as bloodstained as the linen that bound their eyes — not blindfolds after all, but bandages.

"Aren't they a pair?" Stoker demanded of his troopers, but with a smolder in his tone meant for me. "And look at Hans's."

"Verdummt," the other driver reported, flashlighting his unconscious passenger. Dr. Eierkopf's head lolled over the side-car-wale, a new pair of eyeglasses hanging from one ear. "Out-passed." Hans held his nose and pointed to stains on the prisoner's lab-coat, not of blood. The company laughed. Croaker stirred under me and sniffed the air, but seemed not to recognize his old roommate in that fallen state.

"Drunk and disorderly in the Living Room," Stoker said. He cut his engine, dismounted, and aimed his torch to observe my expression. "Ate a kilo of Blutwurst, tried to force my wife's virtue, and gummed the mustard off Madge's rear end till the blood came. Then he threw up and passed out. But your pal Rexford's still at it."

"Untruthness," Leonid Andreich said calmly from the side-car.

"Leonid's right, George," Peter Greene seconded — his voice uncharacteristically quiet also. "It was her took advantage of Doc Eierkopf — not that he give a durn. Lacey it was: the floozy-one."

Awed by the bloody pair, the troopers listened silently, their engines stilled.

"Lacey no," Leonid countered. "Mrs. Anastasia yes. Self-sacrificehood to needs of classmates." Like Greene's, his voice remained subdued, and both faced straight ahead as they spoke.

"Might be I was wrong about that Lacey business," Greene admitted. "But Lacey or Stacey, it weren't no sacrificeness. It was plumb floozihood."

"Possible," Leonid granted. "But I don't think, how do you say, all-said-and-donewise."

"I do," Greene said. "Might be mistaken, though."

"Also."

Stoker heard them out with his hands on his hips, but when they fell silent he exploded with disgust. "Two hours ago it was fight to the death; now they're buggering sweethearts!" He began to recount the fracas — ostensibly for the troopers' amusement, but still with a sarcasm that I knew was for my benefit. He hadn't felt like a party in the first place, he declared; he was sick of parties; it was the flunkèd Chancellor's idea, who having punched his own wife in the mouth had kicked over the traces entirely and directed that an orgy be commenced at once in the Powerhouse Living Room, so that he might, in his own phrase, fiddle while New Tammany burned. And it was Anastasia whom he'd chiefly fiddled with, drunkenly calling her his sister-in-law…

"Don't believe it, George," Greene interrupted. "Mr. Rexford was drunk all right, and claimed Stoker was his brother; but it was Lacey floozied him ."

"Yes," Leonid affirmed. "But Mrs. Anastasia. And not floozied."

"All right!" Stoker shouted, and now glared directly at me. "Disgustingest thing I ever saw: Chancellor of the College boozing and wenching like a flunkèd sophomore! Bragging how he'd socked his wife! Telling everybody he's my brother! And Stacey carrying on like a Furnace-Room whore!"

"Even with him," Greene confirmed.

Leonid shook his head at the memory. "Even with us. Compassioncy!"

"Hot pants," Greene corrected. "But what the heck anyhow."

" Da. Irrelevanceness."

That, Stoker went on, had been the matter of the quarrel between his prisoners, presently so amicable: Greene had chauffeured Anastasia to the Powerhouse at my request, and, eager as he was to reunite with his family at the Pedal Inn, had lingered on to drink a farewell toast or two with Leonid. The Nikolayan, determined to act selfishly but uncertain how, had left Main Detention not by his own skill but, like Croaker, under Rexford's amnesty, which he'd judged it selfish to take advantage of, and made his way to the Powerhouse resolved to be a double agent for East and West. Encountering Greene at the orgy-in-process, he had clinked glasses with his former cellmate, the one drinking vodka, the other corn. First they'd toasted Max, who'd elected not to leave Main Detention: "Decent a Moishan as ever deserved Shafting," Greene had called him, and Leonid "the unselfnessest martyrty." Next, with increasing sharpness, they'd saluted each other: "A durn fine Joe, for a Founderless Student-Unie"; "Lawlest Informationaler blind-bat, but I like okay!" And finally they'd drunk to Anastasia, who with tearful eyes and liquorous breath had offered to service both at once. "Passèdèdity!" Leonid had declared; "she make men classmates in love!" "You're the blind one!" Greene had charged, "tell-a-floozy-from-a-Founderwise! This ain't even Stacey!" Thereupon the toasts had turned to plain invective, so heated that neither availed himself of Anastasia's offer or even noticed when she left the bar, "flung herself" (in Stoker's words) again at the Chancellor, and finding him tabled with Madge, declared she was "running off" to meet another lover in the Tower Hall Belfry.

"Don't think I don't know who," Stoker growled at me. "Not that I give a flunk!"

"He gives a flunk," Greene said, surprisingly, and Leonid agreed.

"The flunk I do!" Stoker cried. "Any more than you wise-guys, or you'd have talked her out of leaving!" All they'd been concerned with, he said bitterly, was that his wife be seen as a Commencèd martyr (in Leonid's case) or (in Greene's) as a flunkèd floozy with a passèd virgin twin; the debate between them on this head, fired by alcohol, had grown so hot that it flared at last into a duel: they would fight to the death, they vowed, and the winner's prize would be the loser's good eye. The Living-Room bartender put their agreement in writing, the disputants each grasped a bottle by the neck and broke off its bottom, and armed with these ugly weapons they set to. For a time it was crouch and feint; the combatants, Stoker had to admit, were equally fearless, resolute, wary, and strong of arm, so that it seemed they might come to a bloodless impasse. Then Leonid had cried something in passionate Nikolayan and flung wide his arms, and Greene, believing himself insulted and attacked, had slashed in with the bottle. But even as he thrust he realized that his opponent was impulsively yielding the victory and offering his throat to be cut: the barkeep (himself a defected Nikolayan and rabid anti-Student-Unionist) reported later that Leonid's exclamation had been "Better you should see the truth than I" or something to that effect — which he interpreted to mean that Leonid was afraid of what he might see about his alma mater with two good eyes.

"Not so," Leonid here commented from the sidecar. "I meant Mrs. Anastasia, he should see her through my eyes."

"I figured that," Greene said. "And soon's I figured it, I felt the same durn way about him, Stacey/Laceywise."

He had tried therefore to pull his cut short, and Leonid to thrust himself upon the glass, but one or both misjudging the distance, the stroke had fallen on Leonid's face instead of his throat, and unfortunately slashed his patchless eye. Whereupon, stricken with remorse, Greene had snatched the vodka-bottle and stabbed out his own.