John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

I kissed Max's own long hair at this fresh testimony of his goodness, and he mine; yet even as I chid him, most gently, for so long keeping from me his hypothesis of my parentage — which seemed a quite probable one, everything considered — and assured him that I was far more touched by his generous adoption of me than disturbed by the likelihood of having been sired by the hateful Eierkopf — even as I spoke, it occurred to me that the story had not after all been to the point. Just the contrary! Had he not set out by means of it to explain an actual suspicion on his part that I might be of uncommon parentage? That my brash claim to herohood might be not without some foundation? But if I was in truth the child of Dr. Eierkopf and Virginia Hector, my getting was by no means extraordinary; it was merely irregular.

Some minutes were required to make my point clear, for Max had quite forgotten, as unhappily he came frequently to do in this period of his life, what he'd set out to demonstrate, and then only with difficulty understood that he had not demonstrated it.

" Ja, so, what I mean," he said then, "that's what I thought when G. Herrold brought you here, you were Virginia's kid by Eblis; what I guess, that's what I wanted you to be. And sometimes yet it slips me now and again you aren't, I have trouble remembering. But the fact is, she never had a son: she had a daughter, that she left to her uncle Ira Hector to raise. I heard that somewhere a long time ago, I forget where. It was a daughter she had."

I closed my eyes and tried to assimilate this new disclosure.

"Well, then — we're back where we started! The gate's still open!"

"No." Max shook his head firmly. "No, it's not open, either. No." He seemed now to have his mind once more in order. "It was that GILES business made me wonder, once I knew you weren't Virginia's and Eblis's kid, and when you started this Hero nonsense. An old man's foolishness, Georgie, is all! You see yourself now you're not any Grand Tutor, but just a good boy with a regular life's work to do. You got a little badness in you and a little dumbness, pass your heart, like we all got."

With considerable effort (for he was fatigued by so much recollection, and regarded his point as now quite established) I wrung this final information from him: Among the bizarre features of the Cum Laude Project in the month just prior to its abandonment was the preparation by WESCAC, under Eierkopf's supervision, of a highly secret something known as "the GILES" — Max could or would not go farther than to explain that the word was an acronym for Grand-tutorial Ideal, Laboratory Eugenical Specimen. What that phrase meant (it had as well been in sheep-language for all it conveyed to me), and whether the attempt to prepare this same GILES was successful, and what in that event its purpose was — these things I was not to learn until later. But I gathered there was an uncertain connection between this mystery and my pretension to the office of Hero.

"I don't say more than this," Max said: "there's things about the early days of Heroes and Grand Tutors. And when you took it in your silly head you were one yourself, I remembered these things and some others, that a person could stretch them and say they fit. So I thought up a couple experiments to prove what was what, I'll tell you about later. But they've proved, George — they've proved — what you know your own self now: that you're a good boy, and a human student, and that's all."

I supposed he was referring to the occasions when I had behaved stupidly or displayed a capacity, however slight, for actual flunkèdness, as in the matter of Redfearn's Tommy and of Becky's Pride Sue. It did not anger me to imagine, in the light of his confession, that Max may actually have encouraged such behavior, may even have arranged the circumstances of my temptation, perhaps in collusion with G. Herrold and (who knew?) with Lady Creamhair. That possibility was clearly beside the point; whatever experiments he had performed were for my own enlightenment and benefit, and had achieved their purpose. A Grand Tutor was very wise; a Grand Tutor was very good. Whatever the mysteries and portents of my birth, whatever formal prerequisites to Herohood I might coincidentally have met, I could not call myself very wise nor very good. Chastened, I took the conclusion to my heart, merely asking leave for the day's instruction to get used to the feel of it there.

What remained of the morning I spent introspecting about the pasture, deaf to G. Herrold's plea to wrestle in the cool March sun; after lunch I retired to the hemlocks with pencil and paper, thinking to map out as it were the road before me by noting down the few clear signposts I had passed. Perched on a high stump I began with NEITHER WISE NOR GOOD, which I printed out in fair block capitals at the page-top. But when I considered inscribing beneath it PASS ALL FAIL ALL and the Maxim SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS ALWAYS BAD NEWS, I could not at once decide which merited second place, and, unable to care intensely, I fell soon into reverie. My fingers toyed with the paper; I had seen human visitors nibble, in my kidship, colored ices from paper cones, and had been wont to fashion any sheet I found into that form before I ate it. Such a cone I fashioned now, scarcely aware; but I had not the appetite of childhood days. Instead of eating it, therefore, idly I set it atop my head, and brooded the afternoon away thus perched and capped.

That night I dreamed the strangest dream of all. In our old meeting-place Lady Creamhair sat on the ground. It was dark night, not picnic time; yet the famous basket rested in her lap, and I squatted at her feet as in terms gone by. But we did not eat. As a child makes a comic mouth, she hooked her forefingers into the basket-lids and spread them wide. She bade me look, and I beheld in that dark chamber no peanut-butter sandwich, but a strange, a baleful host. I saw a man with wings and one with tail. An ancient leaned upon his crook. A lady girl did nothing. I saw a body with two heads, one atop the other. I saw a single head with two bodies, winking and blinking. Still other eyes I saw, seeing me: a bodiless pair that neither blinked nor moved nor changed their cast. A man was there who vanished when I looked, yet whom I saw when I looked away. And others, a multitude of shadows, men and women, sheep and goats — they hushed about, melting and shifting. They beckoned to me, all, inviting, threatening — except the lady girl forlorn and patient. I yearned to her. How was it I had not till then suspected what the basket held? I would go to that folk, not meant for eating. No matter the peril, I would press into their country, whence whooped to me a most clear call now. Tekiah! The goats swarmed over all. Tekiah!

Though I was sensible of no waking or change of scene, I got up from my cot and stood in the dark barn at last entirely clear. Max was not in his stall, nor was G. Herrold. No matter! My old wrapper I shucked off for good, and fetched from its storing-place in the supply-room a new one G. Herrold had made against the day I should matriculate: a long and splendid cape it was, of white-bronze fleece, sewed from the hides of two most dear to me, Redfearn's Tom and Mary V. Appenzeller. Even as I drew it round my shoulders (over a clean wool underwrap) and took pleasure in the proud hang of it, I heard the buckhorn call again, not far distant.

I did not tarry even to pack a sandwich; merely I wound the watch upon its lanyard around my neck, found out my necessary stick, and left the barn. In the east a faint light shone that would presently be dawn; in the west a fainter from the thronging halls of New Tammany College, immeasurably distant. I shivered a moment by the gate, until through the quiet came a different blasting call: a whistle of far-off power, urgent! Whereat I shook no more nor wondered, but sprang the latch, and guided by what tooted through the fading stars, set out a-tap down the hard highway.