John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"I never mean to hurt anybody!" she said. "It says in the Scroll that Love is the Founder, and all I ever mean to do is help people, like in the Infirmary and the Psych Clinic. How can you help them except to find out what it is they need and then give it to them, if you have it? But it always seems to do damage somehow, when I do it!"

"Now pfui on that," Max consoled her, and I too declared it unthinkable that so generous a heart could do other than good.

"Well, take that time in Uncle Ira's study…" She was clearly encouraged by our words, though her expression remained doubting. "He said in a way he thought of me as his daughter and in a way he didn't, and I naturally supposed he meant because he was really my great-uncle instead of my father. So when he started explaining what it was the boys wanted, there was no reason to think he wasn't just trying to help me. I still think he was; I know he was, even later on! He'd been working on some accounts that night, as usual, and there were double-entry ledger-sheets spread on his desk; when he drew some pictures on them for me, to show me what he was talking about, I was a little upset, but he had to do something like that because I was so stupid. But he couldn't draw right, he said so himself: the people in the pictures had the funniest expressions on their faces! I told him if his drawing of the girl's parts was right, then there must be something wrong with mine, the proportions were all different; but I said I was pretty sure mine must be okay because they were just like Miss Fine's, my language-tutor's, and when Miss Fine and I used to play with each other she always said mine were the nicest she'd ever seen."

Though her tone remained glib as a child's, Anastasia blushed furiously. Max also, but not I, though my blood pulsed.

"You see how dumb I was! I was going to show him then and there to make sure, in case Miss Fine had just been being polite, and I told him I couldn't for the life of me see why he was so angry at her, when my other tutors and governesses and maids had all done and said the same kind of things. I said if he promised not to be angry with Miss Fine I'd teach him all the games I'd learned to play — I liked him better than Miss Fine anyway, because she would bite sometimes; what's more he had whiskers, and I was sure they'd be fun — but I wasn't certain about men, he'd have to show me… He couldn't talk for a while: I thought he was shy, the way some of the maids were the first time I'd ask if I could play with them; I never dreamed what I was doing to the man. I even touched him…"

"Yi."

" Well ," Anastasia said, "to make a long story short, he gave me a good spanking, big as I was, and fired all the tutors and maids except an old cook and housekeeper who weren't any fun to play with anyhow. After that he wouldn't trust anybody to teach me unless he was in the room too, and every night he'd lecture to me in his study about how flunkèd my tutors and maids had been. I'd agree, and try hard to believe it, but I just couldn't understand what was wrong with something so nice."

"I know what you mean!" I exclaimed, thinking of my own difficulties with moral education. "I'm still not sure I understand!"

Her eyes were bright and yet wondering, as if she was pleased by my words but not certain she wasn't being baited.

"After all," she said, "it wasn't from some book I learned to do what I'd been doing, but from my cats and dogs and my teachers, so that it not only seemed like the naturalest thing in the University for people to take their clothes off and have fun with each other, but the passèdest thing, too, especially if the other person was old or not pretty or needed something very badly, and you pleased them so much. The first teacher I ever had explained that to me, and I loved her such a lot I guess I never could get her idea out of my head. She was the sweetest lady!"

"Not so young, I bet," Max ventured, and Anastasia confirmed his suspicion with a merry smile, though her eyes still shone with the earlier tears.

"Well, right or wrong, I couldn't feel ashamed of what I'd done, even though I was ashamed at having done something I should be ashamed of — you see the difference, don't you, George?" I nodded, hoping I did. "But at least I saw how I'd upset Uncle Ira, so I pretended to feel the same as he did about it. I was only sixteen or so when this happened with Uncle Ira, but I guess I'd become sort of an expert at guessing what people needed, sometimes even before they guessed it themselves; and being brought up the way I was, I couldn't help trying to please them, whether I understood what I was doing or not. If I'd been allowed to go out with any of those nice boys, I'd have seduced them before they ever got their nerve up to kiss me, and probably I'd've thought I was a real Graduate for doing it!"

This intuition, she went on, plainly showed her that while Ira Hector was honestly horrified by her behavior, he also relished chastizing her for it. In particular, she observed, it had done him a campus of good to administer that spanking: time and again he alluded to it; teased or threatened her, according to his mood, with the prospect of another, and never failed, when he kissed her good-night, to swat her playfully athwart the haunches "in case she thought he couldn't do it again if he had to." Finally one day when he was in a rage over political reverses (young Lucius Rexford, the chancellor-to-be, had just won his party's nomination and had pledged to break up the reference-book monopoly if and when he defeated the incumbent Reginald Hector in the final elections), she had deliberately perched on his lap and asked permission to attend the next Freshman Cotillion, knowing clearly what his reaction would be: quite as she had foreseen, his wrath leaped its bounds; with an oath he turned her over his knee (a feat he never could have managed without her cooperation), snatched up a ruler from his desk, and bestowed on her backside a swinging admonishment. Nay further, it being evening and she forewarned of his ill humor, she had donned for the occasion a summer night-dress which scarcely covered her at all, so that it was fetching flesh he smote, more often than not, until he was winded and could smite no more. Whereupon, marvelous to relate, he found his wrath spent with his strength: he begged her pardon, wept for what must surely have been the first time in his life, and astonished her utterly by granting her request. Moreover, he was quoted next day in the NTC newspapers as believing Lucky Rexford to be "not near as close to Student-Unionism as most so-called liberals are."

Needless to say, Anastasia thanked her guardian profusely for having chastised her, declaring that a good old-fashioned hiding was just what today's adolescents required now and then to confirm in them the old-fashioned virtues; the two went hand-in-hand, as it were, and she dearly hoped that whenever her behavior displeased him he would once more put her straight. He did, once a week at least, for a year or so thereafter, nor ever remarked, so far as she could tell, that her willfulest days coincided with his most irascible. He became, in consequence, less fearsome than his oldest subordinate could recall having known him, and showered privileges upon his ward — the more readily as she feigned herself loath to accept them…

"The truth was," she said with a sigh, "all I had to do, if a boy wanted to be alone with me after that, was ask Uncle Ira to please not leave us alone, and he'd say, 'Nonsense, I trust you absolutely — any girl who'd ask to be spanked just for dreaming a naughty dream!' (I used to do that.) So he'd leave us alone together, and of course I'd let the boy do whatever he pleased — it was just as nice as with girls, if not nicer, and the dear things were so surprised and grateful; it would almost make me cry to see how happy I could make them! Then afterwards Uncle Ira would want to know if anything had happened, and I'd blush and say that the boy had kissed me three times, or touched my breast when I wasn't watching out. And if I saw he needed cheering up himself, I'd start to cry and say I had to admit it had been kind of exciting, after all, and did it flunk me forever to have such a feeling? And he'd say, 'No, my dear, that's perfectly natural, and the Founder doesn't flunk you for feelings; it's what you do that counts. But the danger,' he'd say, 'is that you won't be able to keep your actions separate from your feelings.' And I'd kiss him and say, 'You're right, Uncle Ira: I need discipline!' Then out would come the ruler…"