John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

I pointed out to him — not however removing my eyes from Anastasia, on whom I smiled with mounting love — that had I said something stupid instead of wise, it would have made no difference.

"Quite! Quite! Absolutely!"

"We're about ready for the funeral," Stoker put in suavely. "I'm sure the Grand Tutor would like to say a Word of Passage over his friend before the cremation. It's the usual thing."

"Who cares whether it's usual?" Dr. Sear demanded. "George has taken care of that point very brilliantly."

"George," Anastasia pleaded, and blushed when I turned to her. "Let's go to my room. I'm all confused."

"He could even do that! " Dr. Sear affirmed. There was some excitement in his voice.

"Anything at all," Stoker laughed. "This one has it all over Enos Enoch."

"No, really, Maurice, it's actually a rather profound idea…"

"Kiss her, George!" Mrs. Sear commanded.

Anastasia frowned. "Don't, Heddy!" But I kissed her lips at once — marvelous they were, and marvelously pliant her whole body in my arms. It was by way of being my first full experience of human embrace, in its passionate form (a thing unknown in the herd), and the pleasure of it set me afire. I heard cheers from Stoker and others; Mrs. Sear it must have been who stroked our hair and necks as we kissed, and her husband murmured approval.

"Beautiful, beautiful. Figures on a vase."

With my hand in the small of her back I pressed her to my standing wrappered organ. She broke off the kiss then, but put her brow against my chin and said, "Think what you're doing!"

"A Bride of Enos," Dr. Sear remarked suddenly.

"Of course!" cried his wife. "Up on the dais! I wish I could paint it!"

"It's perfect," Dr. Sear insisted. "The will to believe and the will to be believed."

"I'll tell the band," Stoker said. "Why not use the funeral-couch?"

Mrs. Sear clapped her hands and embraced the two of us again. "I don't know which of you I envy more! Kiss me, George! Kiss me, Stacey!"

But it was Anastasia I kissed, lifting her chin in my hand.

"This is terrible," she whispered. "You'd be committing adultery ."

In fact I'd not been thinking so far ahead, and even now the word paled before the image. I sipped tears from the long-lashed brims of both her eyes. More faintly yet she said, "At least let's go somewhere else…"

For reply I swept her up, and a jubilant cry rose round about Dr Sear supported me with an arm about my waist; Anastasia hid her face in my shoulder. I had in mind no clear direction or intent; it was stirring enough just to hold her so. But Mrs Sear went before us and Stoker before her, opening an aisle through the guests, who whistled and applauded as we passèd. The roomlights darkened once again, and the floodlit dais gleamed ahead. Dr. Sear spoke quietly and clearly into my ear. "In the old days this was the execution-chamber of Main Detention; they use it for high official funerals now. There's a chute under the dais that leads to one of those natural ovens, like the ones you saw in the Furnace Room, and when a chancellor or vice-chancellor dies, they cremate the body from here and then sound the EAT-whistle to let the campus know. Maurice says the steam-boiler for the EAT-whistle is fired by the crematorium, but he's probably joking. Quite an honor for your late friend, actually, even though its unofficial."

But Anastasia from her slung perch disagreed. "It's just Maurice's idea of a party-joke, Kennard, and you know it. I think it's terrible the things he does in Founder s Hill."

Dr Sear gave a mild shrug and adjusted his spectacles upon a neat small bandage on the bridge of his nose.

"Never mind," I said thickly. It surprised me a little to hear the girl speak with such crispness of impersonal matters, from my very arms, when desire so filled my own breast, and liquor my head, that I could scarcely make a sound. I was to learn in time that this disconcerting ability was characteristic of her and shared by many of her sisters in female studentdom — whatever her scruples and misgivings, once seized up she made herself as comfortable as if I were her favorite parlor chair.

"Way for the Bride of Enos!" Mrs. Sear called. She snatched a bowl of pretzels from someone and broadcast them like largesse, curtsyed before us, danced from one side of the aisle to the other, and time and again kissed Anastasia's hair or the arms clasped round my neck. "Way for the Bridge and Groom!"

"Honestly!" Anastasia protested. But the extravagance of Mrs. Sear's ushering made her smile. Now the orchestra commenced a processional-piece:

"Oh, listen, George," she said; "they're playing the Alma Mater Dolorosa! I love that hymn." And indeed it was most moving to hear her sweet girl voice against the stately horns:

I reached the dais with tears in my eyes and gently set her upon its edge. The two guards grinned from their stations at the couch's head, where Stoker too came now to meet us.

"All set," he said briskly. "Heddy and Ken will get things ready while you're saying your piece, and we'll press a pedal at the head of the couch when you're finished. Now, do you see that pull-cord, George?" He indicated a black braided rope suspended from the ceiling at the foot of the couch. "When a red light comes on in the tassel it means the cremation's finished and the whistle's ready to blow. You pull it for one long blast."

"No more," Dr. Sear appended with a chuckle, "or they'll think it's an EAT-alarm up on campus."

Too stirred by the music and the solemn prospect to attend him closely, I let him assist me up onto the dais, whereat a comparative hush fell upon the room. From some corner came a half-hearted "Olé," bespeaking in the far dark Croaker; from somewhere else came a shatter of glass, a mild oath, and a woman's short laugh quickly shushed. But I was full of the sight of G. Herrold where he lay, arms folded now. The buckhorn, as ever, was in his hand; one dead eye was wide and the other shut, and his mouth was ajar as if to draw breath for bugling. The orchestra paused (I heard Anastasia behind me saying No, impossible, she'd die of shame even if I were ), then wound into a dirge:

The echo of the final chord caught Dr. Sear's voice still pitched loud."… can't be proved ," he was asserting; then he went on quickly in an audible whisper: "It's not the kind of thing you reason about, my dear: you believe it or you don't."

Stoker poked me in the side and advised me to "make it short" lest Croaker interrupt the ceremonies. While I pronounced Words of Passage over the body, he declared, he would turn on the closed-circuit Telerama, as was his wont at the end of a Spring-Carnival party, so that the assemblage could watch the Sunrise Service on Founder's Hill, and the first rays of morning strike Tower Clock.

I nodded shortly, almost angrily, neither knowing nor caring what closed-circuit Telerama might be. My eyes were strong with tears now, and I was obliged to clutch G. Herrold's fleece, as well as lean upon my stick for support. A long and desolating day had been this first of my Grand-Tutorhood, whose dawn seemed ages past! Stunned with liquor and fatigue, I leaned on my friend for the last time and felt to the full his responsibility for my life, and mine for his death. Now I resented Croaker and Stoker and Anastasia too, the chance encounter in George's Gorge and its fatal issue — which was to say, at last I was appalled by the monstrous ease of my seduction, my heartless casting-off of Max, my forswearing of every bond and precept to carouse at my savior's bier and lust for the tart who had brought him to it. Late in the day, late in the day, to come to mourning!