John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"By George!" I cried. "Do you know what I think? I think he enjoyed spanking you!"

There was a pause; Max allowed dryly that there might well be something to what I said. Anastasia looked perplexed from me to him, and he explained to her in an earnest tone that an examination of the sayings of Grand Tutors would reveal the quality of their insights to be not so much a complex subtlety as a profound and transcendently powerful simplicity, which the flunkèd sophistication of modern intelligences might confused with naïveté.

" I would've," she admitted. "That shows how naïve I am."

She went on with her story: "It was about this time that Maurice Stoker began coming to the house to see Uncle Ira — it was during the election campaign and just after, when Grandpa Reg had been defeated, and everybody was wondering what would happen to Uncle Ira's business. I thought Maurice was the most interesting man I'd ever seen: I liked the strong way he laughed, and I used to find excuses for coming into the study while they were talking, so I could see his black beard and those eyes of his, and I told Uncle Ira I thought Mr. Stoker must have the whitest teeth in the University. You know how young people are: when Uncle Ira said Maurice was a very flunkèd man who did naughty things to co-eds, and I mustn't even come out of my room while he was in the house or I'd get a spanking, I was scared to death and more curious than ever. So I used to wave to him from my window when he'd drive up on his big black motorcycle, and he never waved back, but just stood in the driveway with his hands on his hips, and smiled at me."

"I hate what's coming," Max groaned. "I hate this whole part."

Anastasia went on to say that she had wondered in addition whether her Uncle's threat was not in fact a kind of invitation to further spankings, though it did seem to her that he was more concerned about Stoker than about the procession of undergraduate young men — of whom, in these months, she made a very large number " so happy, pass their poor hearts," virtually under his nose, he being preoccupied with the threat to his reference-book monopoly. It came to pass that quite often Stoker himself was in a position to afford transportation to and from the house to these visitors of hers, so frequent were his business-calls there, and thus he'd soon possessed himself of the details of her peculiar philanthropy. ("Can you imagine? " Anastasia asked us, as incredulously as if the event had only just occurred. "He thought I was letting them make love to me because I liked it! I mean just for my own sake! He actually thought I was promiscuous — he still pretends to think so!" I shook my head at this presumption, and Max covered his eyes.) Not long afterwards, eavesdropping at the study door, she'd learned something of the nature of what business was between her guardian and the visitor with the curly beard: the new chancellor, it seemed, had been elected by a narrow margin, and so was particularly interested in a rapprochement with Reginald Hector (who whatever his limitations as a political administrator, was still revered in New Tammany College for his role in Campus Riot II); he could not of course expect his beaten opponent to accept a post in the new administration, but it was an open secret that he sought the ex-chancellor's support for certain controversial measures of policy with regard to WESCAC and the Quiet Riot. On the other hand, though Lucky Rexford was himself a wealthy man and a staunch supporter of the private-research economy, he felt obliged both by promise and by principle to make some gesture towards dissolving such monopolies as Ira Hector's, which had flourished under the former regime. Now it was known that however sincerely he deplored Maurice's activities, the Chancellor was bound to his alleged half-brother by Stoker's firm hold on the Power Plant and Main Detention. What Ira Hector proposed (for it was he, not Stoker, who had initiated the interviews), was to establish Reginald Hector as the figurehead president of his reference-book firm — in fact his brother badly needed some such employment, not having an iota of Ira's business-sense — in the hope that some quid pro quo could then be diplomatically arranged: he, Ira, would guarantee his brother's support for Chancellor Rexford's varsity policies; the Chancellor in turn could not only find grounds to spare the business headed by the lovable old professor-general, but might in addition see to it that Ira's counterparts in the textbook field were not spared. The scheme seemed a likely one, but as a cautious entrepreneur Ira was suspicious of the new chancellor's youth and the fact that Rexford's own fortune had been inherited, rather than earned in the rough-and-tumble of competitive research — both which factors might lead him to put principle above interest, as it were, and proceed the more vigorously against any organization which attempted to negotiate with him. To minimize that risk, it were preferable that the overtures to negotiation be made by the Chancellor himself, who however must needs be assured by some close and disinterested advisor that they would not be rebuffed. The man for that work was Maurice Stoker: Anastasia heard her guardian offer him a sizable inducement to attempt it. But Stoker, while admitting with a laugh that the plot's nefariousness appealed to him, and expressing his confidence that he could manage it with little difficulty, seemed not especially interested in the reward. This was the matter of their frequent meetings, which had reached an impasse: Stoker claimed frankly that he had wealth enough already, and desired only powers and pleasures, neither of which Ira Hector was able to offer him; Ira seemed unable to comprehend this attitude, or unwilling to believe in its sincerity, and so kept raising the amount of his bribe to no avail.

"It was the awfulest thing to listen to!" Anastasia said. "Maurice has a way about him… I don't know how he does it, but he seems to make everybody worse than they really are. I couldn't believe it was Uncle Ira I heard saying 'There's nothing on this campus can't be bought by the man who can pay the price.' Then Maurice began teasing that Uncle Ira liked to pretend to be selfish and hard-hearted, but actually he was a sentimental old do-gooder (which is just what I think!). The more Maurice teased him about founding the Lying-in Hospital and raising me out of pure generosity, the more Uncle Ira swore he'd done those things for nobody's benefit but his own. When Maurice saw how upset Uncle Ira was, he vowed he'd do that business with Chancellor Rexford for nothing, the day Uncle Ira could prove it wasn't simple good-heartedness with me and the Unwed Co-eds' Hospital."

"You see what a Dean o' Flunks he is?" Max cried to me — who was gripping my stick with anger.

"It got worse and worse," Anastasia declared. "After a while Uncle Ira was claiming he'd built the hospital just so he could interview the girls himself — he said he liked to ask them questions about how they'd gotten in trouble, and see them cry when they told their stories; he even said he liked to watch, in the delivery-room — I know it isn't true! And Maurice said so himself, that Uncle Ira was trying to sound flunkèd, because he was ashamed of his passèdness… Well, I burst in and said I'd heard the whole thing, and told Uncle Ira he should be ashamed of himself for such fibs, and Maurice for leading him on. Uncle Ira was furious, but Maurice just laughed and said 'What about her? Does she let you watch when the boys — [I can't say it; you know what I mean]?' Uncle Ira turned white — I did too! — but then he seemed to get hold of himself, and he said, 'Stacey, this man is a wicked liar who'll say anything that suits his purpose; but he also knows every flunkèd thing there is to know about people that they wish nobody knew of. So when he says you've been letting all those boys [you-know-what], he might be lying or he might not. I want you to tell me the plain truth now,' he said: 'if he's lying I'll throw him out, and Lucky Rexford can do his flunkèdest to break me to pieces. But if he's telling the truth, I'm going to thrash you like no co-ed on this campus was ever thrashed!'