John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

As if understanding for the first time, she put her hands to her cheeks: her eyes widened, and she shook her head.

"Is that what you thought!" she cried, and put her hand on my arm to halt me. "I'm so ashamed! " It took her some moments to overcome her plain mortification. Then she said most earnestly, but scarcely able to look me in the face for embarrassment, "You mustn't think those terrible things! If I'd suspected for a moment … and Dr. Spielman, of all people…" She began again, more calmly: "My name is Anastasia Stoker (people call me Stacey) and I'm a nurse in the New Tammany Psych Clinic; that's why I knew about Croaker and Dr. Eierkopf and all. In fact it was my husband — he runs the Power Plant, and he's a very… unusual man, you'll see — he's the one who talked the Chief Psychiatrist into separating them, for their own good, or for experimental reasons or something, just to see what would happen. I guess that's why I felt responsible, in a way, when the trouble started. Those poor girls he attacked, and that dear little poodle, and we didn't know what he might do next! We knew he'd gone out towards the river, and Chancellor Rexford was especially worried because a famous Grand Tutor was on his way to the College and was supposed to be somewhere in this neighborhood — "

"So they did know ahead of time!"

"Of course: it was in all the papers. Didn't you see it?"

I explained that no newspapers were delivered to the goat-barn, and pressed her for more details, hoping thus to gauge the reception awaiting me at NTC. "Did they say what his name is, or what he looks like? What's he coming to the College for?"

"Shush," she warned merrily, "they might understand English!" She glanced back at the yellow-robed men, who of course paid no heed. "That's Him in the middle: the fat one. The others are Tutees or something. They wouldn't let the Chancellor send anybody to meet them, and they sit like that most of the time."

I pointed incredulously. "You think he's the Grand Tutor? When he wouldn't lift a finger to help you or G. Herrold?"

She wrinkled her brow at my ignorance. "Not our Grand Tutor, George! You have been in the country, haven't you? He's what they call The Living Sakhyan, from Outer T'ang College or somewhere over there. He's supposed to be descended from the original Sakhyan, and when the Student-Unionists took over His college, Chancellor Rexford invited Him here to tutor the Sakhyan refugees on West Campus. Think what the Student-Unionists would have said if Croaker had attacked Him!"

I could by no means share her alarm at this prospect, but I gathered with some satisfaction that no threat to me was implied by the newspapers she referred to, at least, and no competition of the sort I'd first imagined by the fat chap's being regarded as a species of Grand Tutor. Anastasia went on with her story:

"From what I knew about Croaker, I didn't think they'd ever be able to catch him without hurting him or getting hurt themselves, and in the meantime no telling how many girls he'd bother! Mr. Rexford was so upset at Maurice, he was talking about firing him, and I thought the best way to save the situation was to lure Croaker back somehow to Dr. Eierkopf. But Maurice (that's my husband) said the only way to do that would be to line up a lot of co-eds between the woods and Dr. Eierkopf's room — he's always saying naughty things. Anyway I knew Croaker liked me all right: every time they came by the Clinic he used to sort of purr, you know, like a friendly bear. It was so cute, and I don't believe there was anything bad in it at all, the way Maurice pretended; I'd just let him touch me or lick my hand or something, and then Dr. Eierkopf could usually move him along without any more bother…

"So I came along with the search party and got Maurice to let me come out on the bridge while they waited out of sight. I thought if Croaker was anywhere in the gorge he'd see me there and come when I called, and then maybe I could calm him down or draw him back to where the others were — they have something to put him to sleep with. Maurice said silly things the way he always does, about my knowing what would happen and actually wanting it to; but I learned a long time ago not to mind what he says. Besides, if it turned out I couldn't control Croaker, or the men didn't get there in time, it didn't seem to me it could be much worse than some other things I'd been through, and as long as it was me it wouldn't be some poor co-ed ruined for life." Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she clutched her arms across her breasts and sighed. "Which is how it turned out."

Where her husband and the others had got to she didn't know, unless mistaking G. Herrold for Croaker (as she herself had done at first) and seeing him drown, they had judged the danger past and gone to find the body. Certainly she did not believe that any man, even one so unusual as her husband, would stand idly by and see a woman assaulted — the men in yellow she expected, of course, and forgave, they being Commencèd Graduates. A trifle uncomfortably I praised her large-mindedness and courage, and she in turn thanked the Founder for my chance presence in the gorge, which if it had not spared her own awful raping after all, had at least spared her more, or worse. As she spoke, distressed by the memory, she bent her forehead to my chest (where cold water still dripped from the fleece) and I was moved to pat her hair to comfort her. Silky to the touch it was, the nape beneath finely downed! But her closeness stirred Croaker under me, and she quickly stepped back, remarking only that if she had the sodium pentathol herself I wouldn't need to keep my perch.

She concluded her tale by pleading with me not to imagine, as her husband surely would, that anything but concern for the safety of others had prompted her behavior. Ordinarily, for example, though a married woman and a registered nurse, she would have been far too modest to do more than call from the bridge. But even as G. Herrold had waded towards her she had spied Croaker leaping through the trees behind us, and fearing he might attack us she had put by shame and shift to make the urgenter summons. I asked her whether her husband wouldn't be very much upset at what had happened to her.

"Maurice upset? You mean angry, or jealous?" She shook her head ruefully. "Not him! He'll be unpleasant, but not upset. He's not like other men."

Indeed; I thought, he must not be. Anastasia went then to build up the fire for "The Living Sakhyan," who for all he would tend it himself or acknowledge her aid, had as well been dead. Very much moved, I went off with Croaker — uncertainly at first, then with more confidence as I learned how readily he responded to command now his lust was appeased. We crossed the stream easily above the bridge, where it was only waist-deep, and retrieved Max, whose alarm I quieted with some difficulty. He had of course witnessed the unhappy scene across the river, at first in despair, then in horror, at last in anxious wonder. But when I explained who Croaker was, and who were the bridge-girl and the men in yellow, and repeated Anastasia's account of her self-sacrifice for our sakes, he was more moved to pity even than I.

"That Maurice Stoker," he said bitterly, "I know him, all right. He's a real Dean o' Flunks." With the aid of my walking stick (which Max had retrieved) I'd made Croaker understand that he was to carry my advisor in his arms, as G. Herrold had done earlier in the day, and the three of us proceeded thus to make our final crossing. To what I'd heard from Anastasia, Max added that Maurice Stoker was reputed to be a half-brother to the present Chancellor, but had been disowned by the Rexford family, a worthy and distinguished one, as well as expelled from New Tammany College, many years previously, for advocating the violent overthrow of every administration between the two Campus Riots. A militant anti-Founderist and anti-Finalist, and a notorious intriguer in varsity affairs, he was reputed to have played a role in the great Nikolayan Revolution, in the rise of the Bonifacist Reichskanzler, and in terrorist movements in virtually every quadrangle of the University. Wherever disorder was, Maurice Stoker seemed to be also, whether to assist in an anti-administration riot (even against men who themselves owed their offices to his plotting) or to encourage with his presence so trifling a disturbance as the ritual spring panty-raids on co-ed dormitories in NTC. Yet no one, it seemed, understood the management of the great West-Campus Power Plant as he did, or the multifarious operations of Main Detention — the bureau in charge of counterintelligence as well as the detection and punishment of domestic miscreants and course-failers. Indeed, among the causes of Max's disenchantment with political life was the fact that even the best-intentioned, most high-minded administrators (including young Lucius Rexford himself, whom Max rather admired) seemed unable to do without Maurice Stoker; fear and despise him as they might, all came at last to terms with him; in the present administration as in its predecessor, though he was seldom to be seen on New Tammany's Great Mall, he retained his offices at the Power Plant to the north and Main Detention to the south.