She saw and understood me, I'm sure, but regarded me coolly.
"Watch out for the nuts," Greene advised me.
Anastasia patted her hair, and slipped her arm primly under his. "He hasn't any. I'm glad I've got a man to take home."
Greene blushed, no less than I, who was shocked by her unwonted coarseness as well as stung by the insult. Certainly it was but part of her strategy! Yet when I pretended to suppress a grin, she turned from me coldly and whispered something in Greene's ear that did nothing to lighten his color. As I bade them goodbye I found myself reminding her, against my better judgment, that if things turned out badly in the Belly she might not be seeing me again.
"You don't say," she said. "Bye-bye, then. Oh, Peter, would you fasten me in back? I can't reach the hooks." She turned her lovely nape to him.
"Hmp," Greene said.
"And I've mislaid my darned purse in the Treatment Room somewhere! Would you help me find it?"
Full of confusion I ushered Mother from the office; and the womanly chuckle I heard behind me, and Greene's half-hearted complaint, as he shut the hall door, that he wasn't supposed to shut any doors, it was against orders, smote me with an ireful doubt which — small comfort! — abetted our safe exit. For the first madman who loped up, unfortunately woofing, I butted with such force that he knocked a second down, and our way was clear to the lift. And in the lobby, where demented undergraduates and faculty of both sexes swung from light-fixtures, raced in wheelchairs, coupled on the carpet, shat in typewriters, or merely stood transfixed in curious attitudes, I laid about ruthlessly with my stick, cut an angry swath, and roughly gimped through bedlam with my mother. I could not have explained my fury, or told why, when it occurred to me that Love and Hate must be in truth distinctions as false as True and False, that sagacious reflection nowise clarified my mind or calmed my spirit.
I hailed the only taxi at the Annex door and bade the driver take us to Tower Hall. Newsboys hawked in the fading afternoon: Power Lines Moving Together: Fear Riot Near; Rexford Raps Mrs., Raises Roof. The tidings brought me no pleasure. Through a small loudspeaker in our sidecar came further news: so-called "Moderate" elements were resigning from the Administration to protest the Chancellor's recognition of extremists; Ira Hector for example had been offered the post of Comptroller, and Rexford had not only acknowledged Maurice Stoker as his half-brother, but gone to spend the weekend with him at the Power Plant. " 'It may be necessary to have these people around,' complained one resigning official, 'like spies and grafters — - but one mustn't officially approve of them…' " The new corrective headgear issued to Power-Line guards, the reporter went on to say, was intended to remedy the faults of the "heads-up" collar by fixing the wearer's eyes down at his feet; but looking down from that height seemed to make the guards dizzy, and the drop-off rate was as high as before.
"What the heck anyhow," I said, snapping off the speaker: "Failure is Passage."
"A-plus," said Mother.
Not until we drew in sight of the Library did I realize that I had no means to pay our fare. I glanced at the driver, hoping to gauge his charitableness, and saw what I'd been too disconcerted to observe before, why he was the only cabbie in the madhouse drive. His uniform was white, beltless and buttonless, his eyes were aglint, his grin was euphrasic. Alarmed, I commanded him to stop the motorcycle.
"Stop the cycle," he squawked like a parrot. "Stop the cycle." His grip on the handlebar was fixed now as his expression; the Mall-street fetched us straight over a curbstone, across Tower Hall Plaza, through clusters of alarmed undergraduates, and into a yew-hedge flanking the entrance, where we came to rest. The engine stalled.
"Yes, well," Mother remarked. The driver sat erect and beaming as ever, though yew-twigs pressed against his face, even into his mouth.
"Thtop the thycle," he repeated. I helped Mother out and left him to iterate his message to the gathering crowd — the sight of which, understandably, caused a small shudder in me.
In the Library things were more calm: I composed my wits and reviewed the situation. That My Ladyship and I had exchanged roles in the Treatment Room — she the Tutor, I the Tutee — was not displeasing. But her final behavior mystified me, and behind the turmoil of my heart stood a stiller but impenetrabler mystery, that I had felt briefly in my arms: what was it that looked through the optics of that respiring female organism and said "I love you"? And to what did those voweled noises speak? To what refer? I. Love. You. The idea was as preposterous as it was dark! No, I'd not seen through My Ladyship, no more myself, and if that was my infirmity, it was yet to be overcome; indeed, it had overcome me. Very well (I reminded myself as we went up to the Cataloguing Office, Mother pressing the lift-button out of habit), then I had failed that part of my Assignment, even on my own terms, and Failure is Passage. But elation was fled, even grim satisfaction; I began to feel desolate. If only Mother were not demented, I thought, and Max not detained (if indeed he still was, after the amnesty): how good it would be to discuss the problem with them!
We passed through the spoke-filed room, in whose hub the empty Scroll-case stood. It being Saturday afternoon and nearly dinnertime, only a few scholars were about. The door to Mother's former office was locked, and bore a small sign that read CACAFILE OUT OF ORDER. It occurred to that I had no clear reason for coming there anyhow: it was Bray I wanted; no, not even Bray: WESCAC. No, not even WESCAC: death. So far had my spirits, unaccountably, plunged! To Re-place the Founder's Scroll, to Pass the Finals, to do single combat with WESCAC and what it represented — it was of no importance, I could not even think, my mind was on My obscure Ladyship. I had come from Infirmary to Library out of habit, like Mother, following the order of my spring-term Tutorship. Humming, she fetched from her knitting-bag a key — someone must have forgot to collect it from her — and unlocked the door. The faulty console in the corner began winking, as if roused from sleep.
"Would you care for something to read?" Mother asked automatically.
"No — no thank you, ma'am."
She ignored the new nameplate on her desk and eased herself into the swivel-chair as though ready for work, though the office lights were out and she still had her coat on. "Well, you look around and let me know if you want anything, sonny. There's nothing like a good book."
My heart lifted not a little; I kissed her hair. Again, from her innocent darkness, she had illumined me!
"Listen carefully, Mom," I said; "Can you call for the Founder's Scroll? I want to put it back in its case." Whatever fugitive notion I'd had earlier concerning this item of my Assignment gave way before a true inspiration: Had not Enos Enoch and a hundred other wayfaring dons of fact and fiction taught, by their own example, that the Way to Commencement Gate led through Nether Campus? Was not my answer, Failure is Passage, but an epigrammatic form of that same truth? Re-place the Founder's Scroll had seemed, in the spring, the simplest and clearest imperative of all, and yet the bafflingest, since the Scroll had not been lost; and my response to it had seemed, even at the time, the most specious of my Tutorhood — though to be sure they'd all been incorrect. It was fitting, then — stirringly so! — that on this round, so to speak, when I'd "solved" the first five problems with a deliberate speciousness, the rule of inversion would hold equally for the sixth, and make my re-placement of the Scroll not only bonafide but profoundly significant. It had not been misplaced, that was the point; but it was now, for I had misplaced it last time around — and so could re-place it! Things had to be lost before they could be found, broken before they could be fixed, infirm before they could be well, opaque before they could be clear — in short, failed before they could be passed! True, I could not at once discern how this remarkable insight quite applied to Ending the Boundary Dispute, which I'd not begun; nor had I truly "fixed" the Clock I'd broken, for example, or seen to my satisfaction through My Ladyship — but these doubts were nothing, shadows cast by the very brilliance of my illumination; I ignored them. Failure was Passage! No past fiasco, no present triumph; the spring made possible the fall!