Giles Goat Boy (110 page)

“Not so,” Leonid here commented from the sidecar. “I meant Mrs. Anastasia, he should see her through my eyes.”

“I figured that,” Greene said. “And soon’s I figured it, I felt the same durn way about
him
, Stacey/Laceywise.”

He had tried therefore to pull his cut short, and Leonid to thrust himself upon the glass, but one or both misjudging the distance, the stroke had fallen on Leonid’s face instead of his throat, and unfortunately slashed his patchless eye. Whereupon, stricken with remorse, Greene had snatched the vodka-bottle and stabbed out his own.

“The way they bloodied up the Living Room,” Stoker said, “you’d have thought it was the Amphitheater!”

He had arrested them both and administered first aid; amnesty or no amnesty, he declared, he was fetching them to Main Detention, where he meant to stay himself until Rexford should sober up and go “back where he belongs.” As for Anastasia, she might breed a barnful of billygoat bastards for all he cared.

Leonid said flatly: “He cares.”

“Yep,” said Greene. “Anybody can see that.”

Stoker responded with a jeer. “So there they sit, Goat-Boy: two blind bats! Are they passed or failed?”

Affecting as the grim tale was despite its teller’s sarcasm, and shocking the bloody sight of my former cellmates, I listened and looked without comment, if no longer without emotion. Yet it wasn’t pity I felt, or terror, not even responsibility for their present wretchedness. Stoker’s question had been mine since early on in his narrative, and had absorbed me entirely well before he asked it, fetching me from apathy into the intensest
concentration of my life. Indeed, my spirit was seized: it was not
I
concentrating, but something concentrating upon me, taking me over, like the spasms of defecation or labor-pains. Leonid Andreich and Peter Greene—their estates were rather the occasion than the object of this concentration, whose real substance was the fundamental contradictions of failure and passage. Truly now those paradoxes became paroxysms: I shut my eyes, swayed on Croaker’s shoulders, trembled and sweated. All things converged: I understood what I had done to Dr. Eierkopf with my innocent question about paleooöontological priority. That circular device on my Assignment-sheet—beginningless, endless, infinite equivalence

—constricted my reason like a torture-tool from the Age of Faith. Passage
was
Failure, and Failure Passage; yet Passage was Passage, Failure Failure! Equally true, none was the Answer; the two were not different, neither were they the same; and
true
and
false
, and
same
and
different
—Unspeakable! Unnamable! Unimaginable! Surely my mind must crack!

“What is it?” Greene asked. “What’s going on, Leo?”

“I can’t see, classmate.”

The troopers murmured at my strange countenance and behavior; Croaker rumbled, feeling my thigh-grip on his neck, and stood up in the sidecar.

“Don’t try to get loose!” No doubt it was Leonid Stoker warned, but his words struck my heart, and I gave myself up utterly to that which bound, possessed, and bore me. I let go, I let all go; relief went through me like a purge. And as if in signal of my freedom, over the reaches of the campus the bells of Tower Clock suddenly rang out, somehow un-jammed: their first full striking since the day I’d passed through Scrapegoat Grate. As all listened astonished, the strokes mounted—
one, two, three, four
—each bringing from my pressèd eyes the only tears they’d spilled since a fateful late-June morn many terms past, out in the barns.
Sol, la, ti
, each a tone higher than its predecessor, unbinding, releasing me—then
do:
my eyes were opened; I was delivered.

Dr. Eierkopf too the bells revived; at first sound of them he had sat up and clutched his head. On the sixth stroke he’d snatched off his new eyeglasses just in time, for the seventh shattered them, as earlier in the Belfry. On that eighth and last, blood spurted from his nose, his eyes rolled up out of sight, he shrieked,
“Ach, mein Grunder, ist geborsten der Schädelknocken!”
and collapsed again. Croaker bounded to his side, and I sprang down. The handcuffs fell at my feet.

“Halt!” a guard warned; Stoker drew his pistol. But I went in perfect sureness past him to the sidecar, and caught up his prisoners’ hands.

“Leonid Andreich!” I said. “Pete! Thank you and pass you!”

“It
is
George,” Greene said joyfully. “Hi there, George.”

“Hi,” I said. “Listen, Leonid: why are you going to Main Detention?”

“Because he’s under arrest!” Stoker snapped.

Leonid shrugged. “I talk again to Dr. Spielman; maybe turn him looseness yet.”

I gripped his hand. “Max doesn’t want that, classmate. But
you:
look—” I tapped his handcuff. “You’re free!”

He shook his head.

“Go back to Nikolay College!” I urged him. “That’s where you have to pass!”

“Selfishty, George.”

“Yes! And when
you’re
passèd, try to help Classmate X.”

“Forget it,” Stoker said dryly. “This afternoon Chementinski declared himself a failure to the Union and asked for execution. Said he loved his son more than he loved the brotherhood of students. I imagine they’ll oblige him.”

“What is this!” Leonid cried.

“Never mind,” I said. “Look: you and Pete have ended your quarrel. Re-defect! Tell your stepfather his confession was selfish: he wants them to kill him so he won’t have to kill himself. Then tell him
that’s all right!
Do you see?”

“George!” Leonid’s forehead wrinkled above the bandage. “Passness of me, that’s nothing! Even Classmate X, I love so, that’s nothing to pass! But the self of Studentness—
He
matters! And you teach me He’s flunkèd selfish! How He’s pass?”

“Probably He can’t,” I said. “Try and see.”

Red tears oozed into his bandage. “Failure is Passage, yes? No?”

I clapped him on the shoulder; the handcuff fell from his wrist.

“See here, now!” Stoker protested.

“Da!”
Leonid cried. “Tomorrow, after Max: redefectness!”

“I’ll take you to Founder’s
Hill
,” Peter Greene said, suddenly determined. “Look here: we’ll meet my daughter at the Pedal Inn and stay the night; tomorrow we’ll go to the Shafting together, for old Doc Spielman’s sake.”

“The flunk you will!” Stoker said. “You stay where you are!”

I took Greene’s hand. “What then, Pete?”

He swallowed a number of times. “I got right smart of work to do back home, George. Finish up inventory; try and set things right with Sally Ann …”

“Do you really think your marriage can be saved?”

He set his chin, and would I think have blinked had his eyes been unbound. “Prob’ly not. But what the heck anyhow, George! I’m going to start from scratch, what I mean
understandingwise
. Things look different to a fellow’s been through what I been through. I got a long ways to go.”

“Pass you!” I declared.

“Into first grade,”
he added wryly. “I might Graduate yet, one of these days. But the odds ain’t much.”

“They never are! Look for me at Founder’s Hill tomorrow.”

He now wept freely, and his wounded eye bled a little onto his cheeks. He supposed with a laugh that he’d have no more hallucinations, at least, and wondered aloud whether a mixture of blood and tears might be good for acne. “Come on,” he said then to Leonid; “I’ll show you the way to the Pedal Inn.”

“
Nyet
, friend; I know the way. I show
you
.”

“I’ll show you both,” I said; “I’m going back to Great Mall.”

Stoker fired his pistol into the air. “Flunk all this! Who the Dunce do you think you are, Goat-Boy? The Grand Tutor Himself?”

I regarded him closely. “Have your men drive them to the Infirmary first and then to the Pedal Inn. If Dr. Eierkopf’s all right, he and Croaker can wait in the Powerhouse until the Frumentians come tomorrow. Why don’t you take me to Tower Hall yourself?”

“You’re coming with me, all right,” he said, “but not to Tower Hall! Get in that sidecar!” He commanded his men to ignore what I’d said; Greene and Leonid
were
to be delivered to the Infirmary for treatment of their wounds and then left at the Pedal Inn—but not at my direction, only because that had been his plan all along. The amnesty, he explained crossly, forbade him the use of Main Detention. Similarly, Croaker and Eierkopf (who was stirring now as his roommate licked his head) were
to be taken to the Living Room, but purely because he, Stoker, hoped thereby to chase Rexford out; the guards were to see to it that Eierkopf directed Croaker to that end. As for me, if I thought he meant to chauffeur me to a tryst in the Belfry with his tramp of a wife, I had another think coming …

“I’m not the one she’s to meet there,” I interrupted pleasantly; “it’s Harold Bray.”

He managed to accuse me of jealousy and mendacity, but I saw he was alarmed.

“I’m going to drive Bray out,” I told him. “Among other things.”

“I’ll bet you are. So you can take his place!”

I shrugged. “One thing at a time.”

He glared at me furiously. “You’re as false as he is!”

“Bray’s not exactly a phony,” I said. “But he must be driven out. Would you like to do it yourself, before your wife services him?”

There I had him: except during his extraordinary “reform” back in March, Stoker had an aversion to Great Mall generally and a positive abhorrence of Tower Hall, its hub and crown. Yet for all his present soot and bluster he was not quite the Stoker of old: clearly he was distressed by My Ladyship’s new aggressiveness, and jealous of lovers she chose herself; he wanted the Belfry-tryst prevented, but could not deal himself with Bray (who I pointed out might well retreat with Anastasia into the Belly), and distrusted her with me. On the other hand he doubtless understood that if I
were
the Grand Tutor, I alone might manage Bray; and (less assuredly) of all healthy men on campus I alone might be the one not interested in cuckolding him at his wife’s invitation. Therefore he found himself, so I imagined, in the position of having to hope that I was what he declared I was not, and that I would overcome the temptations and obstacles he’d surely put in my way. His face grew livid with contradictions. As I gimped firmly into his sidecar, which Greene and Leonid had vacated, Tower Clock struck the half-hour.

“It’s getting on,” I observed. The troopers stood about expectantly.

“Move!” Stoker shouted at them.
“Achtung! Dunkelbier! Sauerbraten!”
He fired his pistol at the ground near their feet, and they scrambled cursing for their vehicles. Stoker swung onto his own, not neglecting to fart as he kicked the starter. As if in reply his powerful engine barked and spat. He let out the clutch, spun our drive-wheel in the dust, howled an obscenity at the troopers leaping clear of us, and threw back his head as we snarled down the road. But it was I who laughed.

I had come from Great Mall rapidly enough; returning, we fairly flew, by every trick and short-cut in the book: crossed through woods and fields and private lawns, took corners without a pause and stop-signs at full throttle. As if energized by our speed, Stoker resumed his usual baiting and other stratagems.

“So you still want to be Grand Tutor!” he shouted. “Now’s the time to make your play, while Rexford’s out of commission and everything’s upset!”

I smiled.

“Why not work together?” he suggested, and outlined at the top of his voice a plan for “taking over the College”: the Chancellor was in political disgrace and therefore vulnerable; only some extraordinary stroke of fortune—such as absolute Commencement by an undisputed Grand Tutor—might redeem his public image; but if Stoker himself had been disgusted by Rexford’s conduct in the Living Room, surely Bray would be more so, and would revoke his Certification. The thing to do, then, was get rid of Bray-for example, by exposing his intended adultery with Anastasia—and establish
me
as Grand Tutor; Ira Hector’s wealth and Stoker’s secret influence (but he would deny me publicly and affirm Bray, to sway student opinion contrariwise) could promote me to that office easily, given the present disorder and uncertainty in West Campus.
Then I would declare Lucky Rexford reinstated and Commencèd, and we three could run New Tammany as we wished.

“What you really want,” I said, “is to see your brother Commence.”

Stoker flushed and cursed. “Brother my arse! You should’ve seen him carrying on! Not that I care!”

I listened carefully to the quarter-hour chimes far in the distance and pointed when we came to a fork. “Bear left.”

Stoker bore right. We soon drew up to Main Gate, passed through and down the dim-lit Mall to where indigent students, as always, were badgering Ira Hector, even swatting him with their various placards. Coatless and shirtless in the cold night air, Ira sneezed and feebly called for help. Stoker paused nearby, at the bole of a leafless elm where The Living Sakhyan sat upon the ground.

“Why not help old Ira?” he challenged. “Then he’ll owe you a favor, and someday you can use him.”