John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

looking daughters and the brightest sons

on campus, right?

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: You have the corniest puns;

I'll vouch for that.

TALIPED: The boys can get along

without me, but I think it would be wrong

to leave the girls behind.

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Another play

on words, and naughty, too.

BROTHER-IN-LAW: The girls will stay

with me. No use to complicate things further.

You are their dad and brother; if you were their

lover too, we'd never get things straight.

[Enter KIDS]

Make your goodbyes short; it's getting late.

TALIPED:[TO KIDS]

Poor kids! You've got a rugged row to hoe.

You won't have any boyfriends, 'cause they'll know

your daddy was your brother. Boyfriends hate

to hear such things as that about a date.

KIDS: Some big brother you turned out to be.

You're pretty sexy, though.

BROTHER-IN-LAW: I think that we

should stop right where we are.

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Me too.

TALIPED:[TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]

Are you

still here?

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Where else?

BROTHER-IN-LAW: Well, girls, say toodle-oo

to Taliped. It's time for him to go.

KIDS: Toodle-oo, Pops.

TALIPED: No!

BROTHER-IN-LAW: Yes.

TALIPED: No!

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Yes.

TALIPED: No!

Leaving my pretty girls behind is quite

the hardest thing on campus!

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I was right:

He can't resist a dirty joke.

BROTHER-IN-LAW:[TO KIDS]

Get lost

now, girls.

KIDS: Okay.

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Bye-bye.

TALIPED: No, wait!

BROTHER-IN-LAW: You've bossed

us long enough, pal; I'm in charge here now.

You weren't too good at deaning anyhow.

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:[Aside]

A good administrator's hard to find.

TALIPED:[Aside]

/ might take up proph-profflng, now I'm blind.

"That's my Grand Tutor!" Dr. Sear whispered proudly. "Poor blind Taliped and his fatal ID-card, stripped of innocence! Committed and condemned to knowledge! That's the only Graduation offered on West Campus, George — and, my dear boy, we are Westerners!"

"I beg your pardon, sir?" Stirred by the pitiful sight of Dean Taliped being led from the orchestra, and wondering too what was keeping Max, I but half-heard what he'd said.

"We have to plumb the depths of experience," he went on very seriously. "If there's such a thing as Graduation, it's not for the innocent; we've got to rid ourselves of every trace of innocence!"

"Why is that, sir?" The stage was cleared now except for the Chairman, whose committee was forming a semicircle behind him, facing the audience.

"We all flunked with the first two students in the Botanical Garden, George; we're committed to Knowledge of the Campus, and if there's any hope for us at all, it's in perfecting that knowledge. Ye would be like Founders, the Old Syllabus says, with knowledge of Truth and Falsehood. Very well, then we've got to be like Founders, even if the things we learn destroy us…"

I was not uninterested in this line of reasoning, especially since it was expounded with such uncommon intensity by the usually blasé doctor-whose eyes, however, as he spoke, flashed curiously more like Maurice Stoker's than like any founder's eyes. But now the Committee Chairman chanted the epilogue directly at us, and because of the extraordinary events that followed upon it, I wasn't able to draw my companion out further on his theory of Graduation.

"So take a look at Taliped Decanus," invited the Chairman:

The hot-shot Answer-man who nearly ran us

on the rocks. We envied Taliped

the old dean's chair and Agenora's bed;

he solved the monstrous Riddle, cracked the Quiz,

and found out whom he'd humped and who he is.

Look where his Answers got him, and rejoice

that you don't know who you are, girls and boysl

Don't be too optimistic, vain, or proud;

every silver lining has a cloud.

Let no man be called passèd from this day,

until he painlessly has passed away.

He bowed; then as he turned to his committee our applause became a rush of dismay, for a great white figure fluttered out of the black sky onto the stage. Whether on wires or by some other means, one could not tell; two large somethings waved from his shoulders as he descended, and disappeared as if tucked in when he lit in the orchestra. Though like the others he was gowned in white, his costume had a different cut: long-skirted in the style of a ceremonial vestment, but tight-cuffed, high-necked, and buttonless on the order of a doctor's tunic. The chorus of committee-members seemed as surprised as we by his appearance; they gave way, some in plain alarm, and the actors who had played the roles of Taliped and Agenora thrust their heads out from the Deanery to see what was causing the commotion.

"There's no machina in the script!" Dr. Sear exclaimed.

"Failed!" the white figure declared, in an oddly clicking way. Holding a mask to his face like one of the principles in the play, he pointed accusingly at Taliped. "Taliped Decanus and his sort are flunked forever! Tragedy's out; mystery's in!" He removed the mask and tossed it behind him, revealing a round, black-mustachioed countenance.

"For pity's sake," Dr. Sear exclaimed. "It's Harold Bray."

"I'm your Grand Tutor!" the man on the stage said loudly. At once there was an uproar in the audience, partly mirthful, over which he shouted, "I'll show all of you who believe me the way to Commencement Gate! I'm the way myself, believe me!"

"He is not!" I protested to my companions. "I am!"

"His name's Harold Bray," Dr. Sear explained, evidently amused and impressed. "Minor poet, half dozen other things. Used to do some kind of therapy-work in the Clinic, too. What do you suppose he's up to?"

Bray went on: "I'm the Tutor WESCAC announced. If anyone doubts it, I invite him to talk things over personally with me in my office. I've come to pass you flunkers all, and to prove I'm the one who can do it, I'll walk into WESCAC's Belly and come out unEATen. See if I don't! See for yourselves!"

"Remarkable chap, actually," Dr. Sear beamed — every bit as interested in Harold Bray as he had been in me. "Came to New Tammany a few years ago, goodness knows where from. Fancy him the Grand Tutor!"

"He can't go into WESCAC's Belly," I insisted. "I'm the only one who can do that!" I looked back for Max.

Now Bray stepped forth from the orchestra into the aisle of the Amphitheater, raising his arms to left and to right.

"Come on!" he clicked. "All you folks who need Commencing, come on to me!"

There was near-pandemonium in the audience, everyone shouting to his neighbor and crowding this way and that. Those who wished only to leave the theater pressed against those — a growing number — who thronged already down towards the man in white: some on their knees, some carrying children in their arms, who it seemed to me were up past their bedtimes. Greene was on his feet next to the aisle up which the pretender came; Dr. Sear leaned back and surveyed the spectacle with a little smile, lacing his fingers about one knee.