John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"But Kennard said I mustn't," she declared. "He says we have to be grateful to Croaker for bringing us together after all these years, and that we ought to hope I'm pregnant! No matter what the baby looks like, he says, it's our child — Kennard's and mine — because of what Kennard did without stopping to think."

"Oh, Heddy!" Anastasia wept with delight and embraced her again, clearly as convinced of the fact and nature of Mrs. Sear's pregnancy as of her own — though neither was two dozen hours past! Time was getting on; I asked Mrs. Sear directly whether her husband was pleased to be dying.

She shook her head at once. "That's what I'm supposed to tell you, George. He says he doesn't regret for a minute doing what he did. He says that what he'd never seen till Croaker hit him, even though he thought he'd seen everything, was that a certain kind of spiritedness was absolutely good, no matter what a person's other Answers are. It doesn't have anything to do with education, he said to tell you, and it's the most valuable thing in the University. Something about Dean Taliped's energy, even at the end… He wants to know whether he's right."

"Oh, George!" Anastasia cried. "Pass him now, so Heddy can tell him!"

Stoker huffed. "He's out of his head."

I smiled at tearful Hedwig. "Please tell Dr. Sear that in my opinion his attitude is certainly sentimental, and that his cancer may very well have damaged his mind as well as his eyesight. But tell him also that he's a Candidate for Graduation, and congratulate him for me on being a father."

"Only a Candidate?" Stoker jeered.

I nodded. "Like yourself."

This retort so infuriated Stoker that Anastasia, still holding Triple-T, was obliged to step between us and command him to behave himself. Taking Mrs. Sear's arm I slipped away to the viewing stand, and added en route: "Of course, some Candidates are much closer to Commencement than others. Give your husband my love, Mrs. Sear."

"Goat-Boy!" It was Dr. Eierkopf calling, from the dignitaries' bleachers. There also I saw Chancellor and Mrs. Rexford, holding hands; the brothers Hector, amply coated; and Leonid Alexandrov, fidgeting as usual and looking restlessly to westward (though he could not see), where the sun fast sank upon the distant reaches of East Campus. Peter Greene was on the right, similarly bandaged, and flanked, to my surprise, by Stoker's secretary Georgina and a pretty young white girl whom I concluded must be Greene's daughter. But she was the very image of Chickie, that co-ed girl I'd watched disporting years ago with the Beist-in-the-buckwheat! The same uncombed locks; the taunty eyes! And if anything younger, though I her witness had aged seven years in body, thrice that in spirit, since the night I'd heard her beg to Be. She could not be the original Chickie, then; wry speculations came to mind once again about Miss Sally Ann — but I put them aside as immaterial to Greene's Candidacy and Assignment; also to attend Dr. Eierkopf, who, despite the bandage around his forehead and his general want of robustness, was fairly bouncing on Croaker's shoulders. Round about them, come to retrieve their errant colleague, sat the delegation of visiting scholars from Frumentius, in the colorful garb of their alma maters. Outfitted with cameras and clipboards, they appeared to be making a careful record of the proceedings.

"I'm Übertrittig, Goat-Boy!" he cried. "My eyes have been opened!" While Croaker croaked croaks of greeting and the Frumentian scholars sniffed my air, felt of my fleece, and made pictogrammatic notes, he reported shrilly that he was a skeptic no more in the matter of Grand-Tutoriality. For he had seen with his own two eyes (abetted, to be sure, by corrective lenses) wonders unexplainable by natural law and student reason: Harold Bray, not two hours past, had appeared on the Hill as it seemed from nowhere; he had changed color and physiognomy before their eyes, leaped over the reflecting pool — a distance of some dozen meters — in a single bound, walked up the vertical face of the Founder's Shaft as if it were a sidewalk, to rig ropes and pulleys for the main event, and then vanished, declaring from nowhere over the loudspeakers that he'd reappear at sunset.

"Wunderbar, Goat-Boy!" he exclaimed. "No tricks! No mirrors! Excuse you: that Bray, He's a real Grand Tutor!"

I smiled. "You believe you've seen a miracle, Dr. Eierkopf?"

"Ja wohl, boy! I believe because I saw one! Five-and-twenty, yet!"

From behind me, where I'd not observed his approach, Stoker scoffed. "You haven't seen anything, Doc. If it's miracles you want, George here can do better." He clapped my shoulder in feigned affection.

"Dean o' Flunks!" cried Eierkopf. "Heraus!"

"He's going to rescue Spielman off the tip of the Shaft at the crucial moment," Stoker announced to the stand at large, pointing at me with his index finger. "That'll prove he's the real Grand Tutor! He might even save the whole University in one whiz-bang, and Pass us all! Why not?"

With the exception of some of my Tutees, whose admission Bray seemed to have arranged for reasons of his own, the privileged spectators in the stands were people of position and influence, many of whom had sniffed disapprovingly at my aroma when I came near; they made it plain now that Stoker's rowdiness offended them on the sober occasion at hand, and called upon the Chancellor to have us both removed from the Hill. Rexford looked with some concern in our direction; his wife whispered something in his ear that made him frown. He let go her hand and consulted a forelock behind him, who glanced at us and nodded.

"Come on!" Stoker taunted me at the top of his voice. "Do some tricks! Show us you're the real G.T.!"

"Down in front!" someone called. At the same moment drums rolled, and I saw that the sun's lower limb had touched the horizon. A marching-band struck up a grave processional; way was made at the barricades for a vee of three black motorcycles, behind the foremost of which walked Max. Bent under the weight of a block-and-tackle rig, he moved with difficulty, but his face was alight. A gasp came from the stands: not at that pitiful spectacle, but at a sudden apparition at the base of the Shaft. One would have sworn its marble lines had been unbroken except for ominous ropes and pulleys; there were certainly no doors or other apertures in the masonry, or hiding-places on the little ledge around its base, and the whole monument was ringed by a moat or reflecting-pool said to be a meter deep and twelve wide — yet in an instant on that empty ledge stood Harold Bray, black-cloaked, his arms held out to the approaching victim!

"How does he do it, Goat-Boy? Show us the trick!" Stoker's tone was half jeer and half dare, but perhaps there was something else in his eyes. I turned my back on him and the others who now looked to see my reaction; bidding Anastasia to remain where she was with T.'s T.'s T., I made my way around to the opposite viewing-stand. Though not inconspicuously attired and scented, I was able to move without attracting great notice, owing to the crowd's preoccupation. As the guards led Max forth, Bray's cloak changed color with each rich chord the trumpets sounded: black to brown, brown to iridescent green, green to a white so like the Shaft's that the cloak seemed transparent, if not vanished — even the mortar-lines were replicated on it! Next he stepped from the ledge onto the surface of the pool and with a kind of sliding gait, as if the water were frozen, walked across to meet my keeper. The guards, no less amazed than the spectators, dismounted and examined the pool, even poked it with their billies to prove that there was no walkway just under the surface.

"Ja ja!" I heard Dr. Eierkopf cry, and his applause was taken up by the others. Even the Chancellor shook his head, much impressed; the professor-generals behind him elbowed each other excitedly; Telerama-men chattered wide-eyed into their microphones. Max looked about under his burden, perhaps for me, as the guards placed a portable walkway over the moat. Catching his eye or nose, I waved a discreet bye-bye and held up the shophar to reassure him that his last request would be honored. He nodded, but some dismay at Bray's performance still wrinkled his brow. Bray saw me then, if he had not before, and as if to taunt me with his prowess, uttered a sound not unlike choiring brass. The musicians put by their instruments, dumbfounded; everyone murmured astonishment except Anastasia and myself, who exchanged calm glances across the space between us, and Tommy's Tommy's Tom, browsing contentedly among discarded candy wrappers and cola cups.