John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"So listen here," Max said, "you got to hear this: how did the lost Professor in the Campus Cantos find his way through the South Exit and around to Commencement Gate?"

"He had the former director of the Poetry Workshop to show him," I replied.

"So! And in the Epic of Anchisides, that this same director wrote himself, how does Anchisides know how to get through the Nether Campus? Wouldn't he have ended up flunkèd like the rest if it wasn't the Lady from Guidance went along with him?"

I saw his point: it was not a disgrace that I had no notion how to reach New Tammany and only the vaguest of what business was mine there. On the contrary, neither Laertides nor any other of the wandering researchers could have completed their field-projects without special counselling. I wanted an advisor, that was all; to do the hero-assignment was my function, not to choose it…

"Or even to understand it," Max added when I made this point. "Look at Dean Arthur and Excelsior, his magic quill: do you think he knew why it always wrote the right answers? He should care!"

Yet one doubt remained to me: I could not recall that Sakhyan or Maios or Enos Enoch had needed the service of a guidance counselor. Did what applied to wandering researchers apply as well to Grand Tutors? But to my query Max replied at once, "It depends! Take in the New Syllabus where Enos Enoch cures the crazies; you know why He did it?"

"Well, He wanted the poor undergraduates to get on with their studies, and I don't suppose there was any Psych Clinic in those days."

"Not just that! What it says, He did it That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the Advisor, saying, Himself took our infirmities … Now, then! Suppose Enos Enoch hadn't read the Old Syllabus, like you haven't?" The fact was, he declared, Enos Enoch like other Grand Tutors had had His advising as it were in advance, and did what He did in many cases precisely because He knew it to be prescribed that "A Grand Tutor shall do such-and-so." It was not the fulfillment of predictions that made Enos Enoch Grand Tutor; it was the prior condition of Grand Tutorhood that led Him to search out the predictions and see to it they were fulfilled.

I felt free now to halt in the road and embrace my old keeper, whom G. Herrold set down to that end. And I simply asked, "Will you advise me, Max?"

He could scarcely answer, so delighted was he — and I no less — that we were after all to be together yet awhile. Rubbing his eye, he managed presently to say, "What you think I been doing? Oh boy. Oh boy. You don't know what it means, Georgie, a Moishian to believe the Grand Tutor's on campus!"

I reminded him that we were not yet on the main campus of New Tammany College, and that he had better get on with his job, and we three with my journey, unless there was work to be done in the woodland where we were.

"Just one business, right here," he replied. And clutching my arm with one thin hand to steady himself, with the other he removed from his waist the token of herdsmanship he'd so long worn there: the withered testicles of Freddie, his old foe, and the leather cord they hung on. "Tie these round your wrapper," he advised me. "It's you that's the Good Goatsman now, with a bigger herd than I ever looked after." I did what he bade me, and he said very seriously, "What these mean, George, if you ever had any faun in you before — any stud-buck in your blood sometimes, you know? Well, you got to cut it off from now on, or you're not the Grand Tutor. No more Heddas, and no more Lady Creamhairs, whatever went on out there."

I blushed and agreed, relieved enough to think that my past misadventures in deed and dream (of which my advisor had only partial knowledge) need burden my conscience no longer. Firmly I decreed non grata in my memory the images of Hedda and Lady Creamhair; also those of Chickie with the dimpling buttocks who more lately had frisked there, and Becky's Pride Sue; not to mention G. Herrold from whom I had learnt more than half-nelsons, and who watched these goings-on with his grave amusement. No more hot grapples in the asphodel; bye-bye to hemlock pursuits and the studly matter of my dreams. No more to aspire to Being was my firm resolve: right gladly I belted the amulet before me, and believe that I would on Max's advisement have added my own twin troublers to dreadful Fred's.

"I'll show you the way to New Tammany," he pledged, "and how to get past Main Gate and the Entrance Exam. Then we got to sneak you down to WESCAC's Belly, you should change its AIM. Peace on Campus!"

This last burst from him, an impassioned cry. Never had I seen such exaltation in my keeper; it stirred and hushed my own spirit, and at the same time made me a bit uncomfortable.

"Well," I said, "let's go on."

The stock-barns of my youth, I now discovered, were situated on a high plateau, much farther from New Tammany proper than I'd supposed — unless for some reason the route Max chose was not the most direct. All day we wandered down a twisting hill-road, through stands of oak and rocky fields, resting often for Max's sake. G. Herrold had brought with him a great piece of Manchego, which at midday we washed down with spring water. Using the length of my former pasture as a measure, I guessed we had gone a dozen kilometers, no more, by late afternoon, when abruptly we came upon a gorge or strait defile between two mountains. "The backdoor to West Campus," Max described it; a river debouched from the canyon's throat into a valley west of us, where I saw a considerable lake. We tarried some while on the cliff-edge to watch the play of late light on the rocks, the more impressive as the sun descended quite into the chasm's mouth. Then we made our way down, resolving to cross before dark and find shelter on the far shore.

But at the bottom we were dismayed to see our road cut off: the stream, not apparently deep but fast indeed, was swollen and empowered by the springtime torrents we had seen along the way; it had carried off central piers of a wooden bridge that spanned it. Alas, I had been something impatient at the progress of the day — no more adventuresome thus far than any stroll about the pasture — but there came now on us a spate of alarums and surprises that sweetened the memory of uneventfulness.

Our end of the bridge had washed out with the center. As we stood where it used to stand, debating what to do, G. Herrold all at once broke into his song:

" 'One more river,' say the Founder-man Boss…"

His eyes were wide as on the day I had first seen them; following his gaze across the rapids we beheld a young woman in shift and sandals on the farther bank, who must just have appeared where the road came from a willow-grove there. She walked out on the bridge to its broken end, a stable's-length from us, watching us the while as steadily as we her.

"Maybe she can tell us where another bridge is," Max said. "Hush up, G. Herrold, George can ask once."

But G. Herrold, so far from obeying, cried out "Hal-looyer!" and stepped to the water's edge. The woman looked from him to us; then she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out something over our heads. Two syllables, a long and a short, over and over; a plaintive sweet appeal:

"Croa-ker!" she seemed to cry. "Croa-ker!"

"What's it about?" I asked my advisor. But couldn't stay to hear his opinion, inasmuch as G. Herrold shouted again "Hallooyer!" and commenced to wade into the shallows, heedless of socks and sandals. I called him to stop and hobbled after, but was arrested by a further astonishment: quite daintily, as who should raise her skirt-hem from the mud, upon her next clear cry the lady girl fetched up her shift — nor halted at knee, but hoist it high as would go. Sturdy she stood there, feet apart and privates bare as milch-nan's to the breeze, sweetly calling, "Croaker, croaker!" From so striking a picture nothing less than G. Herrold's madness could have drawn me; but he forged and stumbled toward her headlong through the rapids, which drove now against his legs as against the bridge-piles.