John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"So you see, Bill, you got a momma and a poppa someplace; anyhow you did once. And it's not any poor scrub-girl, that her boyfriend got her in trouble and she tried to keep it secret; it's like you were found in a rare-book vault, you know, that nobody but an old grand chancellor and his viziers had got the keys to."

A dismaying thing occurred to me. "Then Billy Bocksfuss might not even be my right name!"

Max patted my leg — which owing to the hard oak tabletop had gone numb to pain and love-pats alike. "It was the right name for you when I got you, boy, but it's not your real one, the way you mean. You were an orphan of the storm, like me, that the student race made their goats. Your poor leg and foot were bunged up so by the tape-cans I didn't think you'd ever walk, even if nobody stole you away or killed you in the play-pound. And when I saw what a fine little buck you were growing to be on Mary Appenzeller's milk, I said, 'Well Mary, that's some billy we got ourselves, nein ? And it shouldn't surprise me he'll sprout two horns to go with that hoof of his…' "

Now he grasped hard my senseless limb. "Ach, Billy, I tell you, I loved you so from the time I saw you, and hated so much what us humans had done, if I'd had one wish it would have been you was a Ziegenbock for real! I wanted you to grow a thick fleece and big horns like Brickett Ranunculus, and be fierce and gentle the way he is, and so strong, and calm, and beautiful… you never would have to hate anybody!"

Thus it had come to pass (he concluded with the same rue that had commenced this history and got lost in its unfolding) he named me Billy Bocksfuss, and swearing George Herrold as best he could to silence, nursed me secretly for a year, after which he gave out that he'd found me one morning with the other kids in the play-pound and meant to raise me as his son. Among his apprehensions had been that the tabloids would make a campus sensation of the story, not a few of whose features recalled such legends as the founding of Remus College; but they had inexplicably buried the report in their back pages or ignored it altogether. Just as mysteriously, the Nursery School's Department of Student Welfare from Infancy to Age Six, whose chairman was a famously meddlesome lady, had made but a token inspection of my circumstances; the officials had asked Max politely to fill out a few forms legalizing my wardship and subsequently ignored us. With an uneasy kind of relief, then, Max had found himself free, to all appearances, to make a choice more difficult than the original "adoption":

"Every day I looked at the human school-kids that visited the barns," he said; "they were good children, pretty children, full of passions and curiosity: I'd ask one who he was, and he'd say 'I'm Johnny So-and-so, and my daddy's a gunner in the NTC Navy, and when I grow up I'm going to be a famous scientist and EAT the Nikolayans.' Then I'd ask Brickett Ranunculus, that was just a young buck then, 'Who are you ?' and he'd twitch one ear and go on eating his hay. There it all was, Bill. On one side, the Nine Symphonies and the Twelve-Term Riot; Enos Enoch and the Bonifacists! On the other side, Brickett Ranunculus eating his mash and not even knowing there's such a thing as knowledge. I'd watch you frisking with Mary's kids, that never were going to hear what true and false is, and then I'd look at the wretchedest man on campus, that wrote The Theory of the University and loves every student in it, but killed ten thousand with a single Brainwave! So! Well! I decided my Bill had better be a goat, for his own good, he should never have to wonder who he is!"

Max's long speech closed with such abruptness, was itself the end of so mattersome a history, I did not at first understand that he was done. But he set his mouth resolutely, closed his eyes, and stroked their brows with his thumb and index-finger. The hall was silent and still duskish — though outside the solstice midday must have been blazing. I could hear again the fountain chortling near the door. Poor Redfearn's Tommy, he was not forgotten, his corpse lay as large in my thoughts as in his pen — but it was bestrid gladiatorlike by a vaster fact, which wanted just this gurgled quiet fully to see. I raised myself up as far as I could without waking my legs.

"Then I'm not a goat? My sire and dam were both human people?"

As at the outset, Max replied only, "Forgive, forgive, Billy!"

"All this time I've been a human student, and didn't know it!"

" Ja ja ." Max was down on his knees now, so that all I could see of him was his old forehead pressed against the table-edge. "I should've seen what it would come to. But forgive, Billy!"

Alas, his revelations so possessed me, it was some moments until I noticed his misery. Then I leaned quickly to shower benedictions upon his hair. Still I couldn't share his tears; half a score of inferences and conjectures importuned me. Distinguished human parents! Dark intrigues in the highest places to destroy and save me! Rescued to Pass All Fail All !

As if summoned by these astonishments my rescuer himself now hove into view, sweeper in hand. "Y'all go 'long now," he ordered us with a grin. "I got to sweep this here table off."

That frizzled head, those great eyes, yellow-white, that had on first behold so frightened me — quite kindly they seemed now. And his gentle madness, it plucked at my heart.

"Five minutes yet," Max pled, rising. "I call for a wheelchair and fetch this boy to the Infirmary."

But I insisted I could manage. "I'm going to stand up and walk."

"Nah, Bill!" He made to stay me, but I gestured him off and swung half-around to sit on the table-edge, my legs hanging over. They pained sharply — not from their first deforming nor yet from Redfearn's Tommy's charge, but from the course of fresh blood that began to wake them. When I slipped myself off they buckled, and I was obliged to grasp the table for support.

"Too much at once," Max protested. "A little time yet!"

But I could not bear resorting to my old lope. For all the shocks that ran from hip to toe, I could flex the muscles once again, and was determined they must bear my weight from that hour on.

"Give me a hand, George."

"Yes, sir ." George Herrold readily put down his sweeper and supported me under one arm. "Y'all want to lay down," he scolded cheerfully, "you do it in the dormitory where you s'posed to, not in my stacks."

"I will from now on," I said.

His face still anxious, Max braced me from the other side, and I stood off from the table. The most difficult thing was to straighten my knees, which fourteen years of my former gait had crooked. But it was they, and my inner thighs, that Tom had struck, and I choose still to believe his blow was like a hammer's on a rusted hinge, to free the action. In any case I got them straight.

"You can let go now."

George Herrold did at once, with a chuckle, and stepped back. Max hesitated, stayed it may be by the sweat of excitement on my face; yet I had only to glance at him, and he too released me. As I had twice with Lady Creamhair and once alas before Redfearn's Tommy, I stood erect — but this time I didn't fall. A very paroxysm of unsteadiness shook me, surely I must keel; Max stood ready to spring to my aid. I so far compromised my aim as to rest one hand on George Herrold's shoulder. But I didn't fall.

"He good as new," my rescuer scoffed. "Ain't nothing wrong with this chile."

Max clapped his hands together. "Billy Bocksfuss! Look at you once now!"

It was a gleesome thrill, this standing ; my heart ran fast as when I'd teetered on those barrels in the play-pound. But at my name I felt displeasure, like a pinch. Breathlessly I said, "I don't want to be a Billy now, or a Bocksfuss , either one! I'm going to be a human student."