The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Just about this time Willi and Peter found that Katy would have no more of ’em, for all they bribed and threatened. And albeit none knows to this day how she contrived it, within the month she was the bride of Mynheer Wilhelm Tick himself, that little dreamed what he’d wed! The first the brothers knew of’t was when they found her in their house, by Wilhelm’s side, and their father said, ‘Willi and Peter, this little girl is your new mother. We love each other with all our hearts, and ye must cherish and respect her as ye would your own mother if she were alive.’

  “Then they were obliged to bow to Katy and kiss her hand, but as soon as Wilhelm was gone they turned on her, and held her by her arms, and said, ‘What have ye told our father, to turn his feeble head? D’ye think to steal his wealth and leave us none? What will he say when we tell him thou’rt a Bridewell whore with lashmarks on your back, and have been swived by every wight in Dorset?’ But Katy sniffed at their threats, for she had given Wilhelm to know she was an orphan and a virgin, and had been whipped by her heartless sister for not turning to harlotry. And to protect herself from harm, she threatened in turn that should they make a move to injure or malign her, she would complain to Wilhelm they were out to make him a cuckold. Thus they were obliged to stew in silence whilst their father doted shamefully on Kate, and jumped to please her slightest whim. On their wedding night she used every trick I’d taught her to make a man o’ Mynheer Wilhelm, with small success; for unlike Boccaccio’s leek—”

  “Boccaccio!” cried the Laureate. “How is’t you know Boccaccio? ’Tis too marvelous!”

  Mary laughed. “ ’Tis e’en more marvelous than ye think, as I’ll explain anon. Unlike Boccaccio’s leek, I was about to say, that hath a white head and a green tail, poor Wilhelm bore more likeness to the hound he called a dachshund, whose tail lags many paces behind his head and never can o’erhaul it. But by one means or another, Kate got him briefly starched, and then raised such a hue and cry ye’d have thought she was Pasiphae being rogered by the bull.”

  “ ’Sbody, madam! First Boccaccio and now Pasiphae!”

  “Old Wilhelm thought he’d got her maidenhead, and the more injury she feigned, the more he puffed with pride. Within the week he declared to Willi and Peter that inasmuch as Katy had brought him his first joy in years, he had altered the terms of his will and testament: one moiety of his estate was to pass to Kate, and the other to be divided between the boys.

  “This the wastrels could not abide, more especially since their father had taken to toiling so strenuously in the bed that his health was slipping fast; ’twould not be long ere he perished of the effort, and they would be done out of their legacy. But so like to theirs in craftiness was Katy’s disposition, she knew well what they schemed, and laid plans of her own to have the best of ’em.”

  At this point in her narrative Mary’s face lost its perpetual expression of good humor; lowering her head, she worried a pebble on the ground with an oat-straw.

  “ ’Tis here that Charley Mattassin steps on stage,” she said.

  “Ah,” Ebenezer’s face brightened. “The murtherous salvage Indian.”

  “Ye speak from ignorance,” Mary said sharply. “Methinks ye should have learned by now what folly it is to judge ere ye know the facts. Charley Mattassin was my lover, and the dearest lover e’er a woman had.”

  Ebenezer blushed and apologized.

  “Charley Mattassin!” she sighed, and narrowed her downcast eyes. “I scarce know how to make ye see him clear.”

  “I have heard already he was the son of a salvage king,” the poet offered, “and had a wondrous hatred of the English.”

  Mary nodded. “He was the son of Chicamec, that no white man hath seen and lived to tell it. His people are a kind of Nanticokes that call themselves Ahatchwhoops; they live to themselves in the wildest parts of the Dorset marshes, and move their town from place to place.”

  “Marry! Why doth the Governor not reduce ’em?”

  “Because he ne’er could find ’em, for one thing. Besides, their number is small, and they live entirely amongst themselves. ’Tis easier to forget them than to hunt ’em out and kill ’em at the peril of your life and member. These Ahatchwhoops never look for trouble, but when an Englishman falls into their hands they either kill him or make him more wretched than a eunuch.”

  Ebenezer shuddered at the thought. “ ’Twas perilous to take one for a lover, was’t not?”

  Now tears welled up in Mary’s eyes. “He was my first and only love, was Charley Mattassin. I was forty years old when I first saw him, and he no younger, but for the both of us ’twas love at first swiving. His father, Chicamec, had sent him on an embassy to another salvage king, Quassapelagh—”

  “Quassapelagh!” cried the Laureate, and caught himself on the verge of revealing his connection with that fugitive chief.

  “Aye, the famous Anacostin King that lately broke from jail. God alone knows what mischief lay behind the errand, but ’twas Mattassin’s first adventure amongst the English. His plan then was to cross the Bay direct in his canoe, but he got no farther than the straits off Tangier Sound ere a squall o’ wind drove him onto the Dorset mainland. ’Twas my good fortune I was going my rounds, and chanced to drive along a path beside the straits. Mattassin—he had no English first name then, of course—Mattassin had lost his canoe in the storm and, seeing he was in English country, had vowed to kill the first white man that passed and steal his horse. He hid himself in the bushes by the path, and when my wagon passed he sprang aboard and knocked me from the seat.

  “His first thought was to take my scalp, but on reflection he resolved to rape me first.” Mary’s eyes shone. “D’ye grasp it, Master Poet? I’d been a whore for twenty-eight years, all told. Some twenty thousand times I had been swived—give or take a thousand—and by almost that many different men; there was no sort or size of man I had not known, so I’d have sworn, nor any carnal deed I was not master of. I had been forced too many times to count, by paupers and poltroons, and more than once myself had been employed to rape young men.”

  “Stay,” Ebenezer exclaimed. “That is impossible!”

  “Don’t tempt me, dear,” Mary warned with a smile. “I know your thoughts, but naught’s impossible at the end of a pistol.” She laughed and wept at once. “I’ve not told ye yet the best of all: he was not tall, was Charley, but he was a sturdy wight, and strong in the muscles; yet when he set about to do his deed, I saw he had no more to do’t with than any pitiful puppy-dog! He was, I swear’t, less blest by half than most boys in their cradles, and withal he meant to soil the honor o’ Mary Mungummory! ’Tis as if ye took a bodkin to scuttle a frigate!

  “So struck was I by the sight of him, ’twas only his tomahawk reined in my mirth, and I’d no more have resisted, than would a plowhorse the assault of a flea. ‘Have done with’t, Charley,’ says I, making up the name for a tease, ‘I’ve two trappers and a sot-weed factor waiting up the path.’ Whereupon he set to work, and ’sbody, ere I knew what struck I was hollowing for joy!”

  The Laureate frowned. “I am not privy to such matters, but this hath an air of non sequitur, or some other of the schoolmen’s fallacies.”

  Mary breathed nostalgically. “I have known scholards a-plenty, but no phalluses like this!”

  “Nay, Miss Mungummory, you mistake my meaning!”

  “And you mine,” laughed Mary. “For you must know, sir, the wench that hath been twenty thousand times a harlot is no more a child: she could play Europa’s game and be none the worse for’t. But just as a blind man, lacking sight, grows wondrous keen of nose and ear, or a deaf-mute learns to hear with his eyes and speak with his hands, so had my Charley, unbeknownst to me, learnt strange and wondrous means to reach his end! Thus had good Mother Nature cleared her debt to him, after the fashion of the proverb: what she had robbed from Peter, she bestowed on Paul.”

  Ebenezer did not quite see the aptness of the saying, but he understood in substance what she meant.

&
nbsp; “ ’Tis past my knowledge what arts he practised, and past my power to tell my joy. Suffice it to say, there was enough o’ Mother’s blood in me that my heart was a castle, and of two hundred men not one had come in sight of’t. But my Charley, that had not even a lance to tilt with, in two minutes’ time had o’ertopped the breastworks, spanned the moat, hoist the portcullis, had his will of every crenel and machicoulis, and raised the flag o’ passion from the merlons of my keep!”

  “ ’Sheart!” the poet whispered.

  “ ’Twas some time ere I regained my proper senses, but when I was myself again I laid hold of his hair, summoned all the lusty lore my years had taught me, and so repaid him in his coin that for half an hour he lay nine parts a-swoon. The upshot of’t was, he ne’er saw town or father again, and got no closer to Quassapelagh than my wagon, wherein we lived thenceforth like hot-souled gypsies. I played the whore no more, but indented other girls to make my rounds, and clove to Charley like a silly bride.”

  “How is’t he did not lose his hatred of the English?”

  Mary chuckled and shook her head. “That is beyond my gifts to say. He was wondrous deep, was Charley, and sharp in the wits: in a month he’d learnt to read and speak our tongue like any gentleman; he made me scour the Province for books, and albeit I could not grasp the half of ’em myself, he always plumbed their meaning at a glance. ’Twas as if he’d thought the selfsame thoughts himself, and better ones. Yet for all they’d arouse him, he would not deign to read ’em himself, but set me to’t, albeit ’twas not long ere I’d have to stop and ask him what was meant by such-a-word.”

  “Indeed!” Ebenezer marveled. “ ’Twas thus you learnt to speak of Boccaccio and the Greeks?”

  “Aye. How he loved and loathed the lot of ’em, and myself as well! Read him half a tale or half a chapter out o’ Euclid, he could spin ye the balance from his head; and if it differed from the text, ’twas the author, like as not, that came off badly. Ofttimes I felt his fancy bore a clutch of worlds, all various, of which the world these books described was one—”

  “Which, while ’twas splendid here and there,” the Laureate interrupted, “he could not but loathe for having been the case.”

  “That’s it!” Mary cried, her eyes bright. “You have laid your finger on its very root and fundament!”

  Ebenezer sighed, recalling Burlingame. “I know a man who hath that genius, and that very manner: he loves the world, and comprehends it at first glance—sometimes even sight unseen—yet his love is flavored with contempt, from the selfsame cause, which leads him to make game of what he loves.”

  Tears ran freely down the harlot’s ruddy cheeks. “ ’Twas in like manner he looked on me,” she said. “He loved me—of that I’m sure—yet for all my bag o’ tricks I was merely woman, and but one woman. My Charley’s curiosity and imagination knew no such bounds: I often pleased him, but ne’er surprised him; naught could I do that he’d not already dreamt of.”

  “And would you say,” pressed the poet, much aroused, “that this cosmic love I spoke of was as strong in his flesh as in his fancy? What I mean, did he lust for aught that struck his eye, be’t man or maid or mandrake root, and yet despise the world for its meagerness of bedfellows?”

  “That and more,” Mary answered, “for so possessed was he with this same lust and fancy, he e’en despised himself that he could not fancy more! Marry come up, there never was the like of him in the history of the world!”

  But Ebenezer covered his face with his hands and shook his head. “There was and is, wondrous as’t may seem. My friend and former tutor, that till now I think I’d never fathomed, fits this picture marvelous well! Do you know the man they call Tim Mitchell?”

  Mary’s expression changed to alarm. “Are ye one o’ Mitchell’s spies, put here to draw me out?”

  Surprised, Ebenezer assured her that he was not, and declared further, observing her great apprehension, “I did not mean that Mitchell was my friend and tutor, but that just as this Charley is so like my friend in every way—save the color of his skin and that defect of his natural parts you spoke of—so this Tim Mitchell, that I met not three days past, doth in some respects remind me of my friend. Past that I know naught o’ the man.”

  “Thou’rt not his agent?”

  “I swear not. Why is’t you fear him so?”

  Mary sniffed and glanced about her. “No matter why. Yell learn soon enough if ye take him for a friend.” Beyond this she would say no more, and only with considerable entreaty could the poet persuade her even to return to the story, so uneasy had the name Tim Mitchell made her.

  “What hath your lover Charley to do with Kate and Mynheer Tick?” he asked. “ ’Twere cruel to leave so good a tale half-told.”

  “ ’Tis not far to the end of’t,” Mary grumbled, and with some reluctance picked up the thread of her story. “Kate soon got wind of how my life was changed, and lost no time in seeking out the cause of’t. I knew she’d set her cap for Charley directly she laid eyes on him, and so made every effort to avoid her. The plain fact is, ’twas not till he had killed her that I learned he’d been two months her lover.”

  “Nay!”

  “He told me so himself, along with many another thing, before they took him off to jail. Somehow Miss Kate had sought him out, and told him she was my sister. She was fair of face, as I was not, and her body was a sweetmeat, where mine was e’er a nine-course meal. But for all her conniving she was dull and gameless, and a sluggard in the bed, and spiteful, and a snot; and while Charley loved and hated me at once, he could only loathe a bitch like Kate, as even he confessed. In sooth, that is the explanation of’t.”

  Ebenezer nodded. “An hour ago I’d not have grasped your meaning, but it seems no paradox now. Why did he do the awful murthers?”

  “They hanged him for the lot of ’em,” Mary said, “but Kate was the only one he slew. The rest slew one another, albeit dear Charley was the engineer.”

  She explained that on becoming Katy’s lover, Charley had soon learned how matters stood in the house of Mynheer Tick, and for reasons not immediately clear had taken pains to gain the brothers’ confidence—not a difficult achievement, since they were regular patrons of Mary’s traveling brothel and knew no more than did its proprietress of his relationship with Kate. He guided them on hunting trips, raced horses with them, and at their invitation was a frequent visitor on the Tick estate, where he would drink and carouse on the lawn with Willi and Peter and slip away at intervals to cuckold Mynheer Wilhelm. It was not long before the brothers made known to him their fear and hatred of their stepmother, and Charley, with a laugh, at once proposed a double murder.

  Willi had cried, “Thou’rt not serious!”

  To which Charley had replied, “ ’Twould be quite easy. Peter could go down to the end of the path that runs through the woods behind the house, and hide himself in the junipers where you were wont to swive Miss Katy in the old days. Then Willi can send Katy down there on some pretext, whereupon Peter leaps upon her and kills her. In the meanwhile, ’twill be simple for Willi to murther old Wilhelm alone in the house. Do’t with a knife or tomahawk, and blame the Indians for’t.”

  Willi had applauded the plan at once, but Peter, though he expressed his readiness to scalp Kate, was less enthusiastic on the matter of parricide. “A common whore is no great loss, but can we not leave Father to die naturally, or from grief? He is old, and shan’t stand long ’twixt us and wealth.”

  Charley Mattassin had then replied, “Do as you wish, ’tis your affair; but methinks you’ll be no sooner rid of Kate than he will wed the next wench with art enough to fool him.”

  “Aye,” Willi had agreed. “Let’s kill him now. He hath no love for us.”

  At length Peter was obliged to overcome his reluctance, and left the drinking-bout to take up his station at the end of the path, carrying with him his hunting knife. But scarcely had he gone before Willi, the cleverer of the two, began to question the division of responsibilit
y.

  “ ’Tis nowise fair,” he complained to Charley, “that I be given the tasteless task of murthering Father, whilst Peter hath Katy to himself in the junipers and may do his list with her ere he doth her in.” And the longer he reflected, the less equitable seemed his lot, until at last, forgetting who had proposed the scheme, he commenced to blame Peter for it.

  “Check your wrath,” Charley had urged him then. “I planned it thus, and for a purpose: send Katy down to Peter, and then tell Wilhelm they are swiving in the junipers. Two of the three will soon be dead, and you’ve only to kill the third to have the whole estate yourself.”

  It did not take long for Willi to see the merits of this plan, and when a cursory search failed to discover his stepmother, he readily acted on the Indian’s next advice: “Tell Wilhelm anyhow, and I shall run to warn Peter that his father comes to shoot him. The result will be the same, and in the meantime you can search farther for the whore and take your pleasure on her.”

  Willi went off beaming towards his father’s accounting room, and Charley took a short cut through the marshes to the juniper grove where Peter waited, knife in hand. But so far from warning him of Wilhelm’s approach, the Indian said “Mistress Kate is hurrying hither and never looked more fetching. Since you mean to kill her in any case, why not have your will of her first? Drop your breeches, man, and stand in ambuscado.”

  “Peter needed no urging,” Mary Mungummory laughed, “for dull wits do not mean dull desires, and a clotpoll in the classroom may be brilliant in the bed: even as Charley left, the boy lowered his breeches, took cod in hand, and waited for his victim to arrive.”

  “But where was your sister whilst these machinations were in progress?” Ebenezer demanded.

  Mary clucked her tongue. “She was neither innocent nor idle, ye may be sure.” In fact, Mary explained, it was Kate, and not Charley, who had conceived the scheme to begin with. She had told him in detail of her fear of the brothers and of her life with Wilhelm—how, unable to aspire to natural intercourse, he obliged her to dance for him lasciviously every night in the accounting room, amid his tobacco-notes and business papers—and she had pledged to marry Charley and make him master of the Tick estate if he would aid her in disposing of the other legatees. Their trysting-place was a thick clump of myrtles some distance down the path behind the house: hither it was that she would slip away any hour of the day or night when she heard her lover’s signal—a high-pitched yelp like that of a fox or an Indian cur; here it was that she would linger while he caroused with the brothers, and wait for him to find pretext to join her; and here it was she lay this fateful evening, and watched the scheme unfold. She had seen Peter go down the path to the juniper trees and had even heard Charley urging him to rape before he slew; it was scarcely necessary for Charley to tell her, when immediately afterwards he joined her in the myrtles, that their conspiracy was under way. Moreover, their hopes were additionally confirmed a few moments later, for Wilhelm himself came stalking down the path, a pistol in each hand and anger in his face, clearly in response to Willi’s announcement. And when he met his trouserless son, they could hear quite clearly the string of Dutch curses he let fly.