The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Eben! Eben! Dear God, wake up and hear me!”

  Ebenezer squinted and turned away. “I cannot bear the sight of you.”

  “Nay, Eben, listen! I’ve little time to speak ere they return, and must speak fast: Smith is no common cooper, but an agent of Captain Mitchell’s, that is in turn Coode’s chief lieutenant! There is a wondrous wicked plot afoot to ruin the Province with pox and opium, the better to overthrow it. Great brothels and opium dens have been established, and Malden’s to be the chiefest in this county. All this I learned by posing as Tim Mitchell, whose job it is on some pretext to journey through the counties with fresh stores of opium and to supervise the brothels.” Since Ebenezer displayed no apparent interest or belief, Burlingame went on to explain, in an urgent voice, that for some time Captain Mitchell had been scheming with Smith to ruin Ben Spurdance (who had been loyal both to the government and to his employer) in order to gain access to the strategically situated Cooke’s Point estate. He, Burlingame, on the other hand, had been seeking ways to subvert their scheme, although it was not until the occasion of Susan’s escape (which was, to be sure, designed by Captain Mitchell) that he had known for certain the location of the proposed new brothel and the identity of Mitchell’s Dorchester agent.

  “And ’twas not till we arrived in Cambridge, and Spurdance sought me out whilst you were strolling elsewhere, that I learned Susan was not loyal to the cause she served. They came to me together, in answer to a secret sign I made whereby our agents know one another, and whilst the Salter case was a-hearing, they told me they had found a way to undo Smith by the terms of his indenture, and had influenced Judge Hammaker to their end. We had the wretch near scotched, by Heav’n, with Susan’s testimony—but your judgment, of course, foiled our plan.”

  Ebenezer still made no reply, but tears ran from his squinted eyes and down the gaunt reaches of his face.

  “ ’Twas thus I dared show little sympathy for your loss,” Henry went on. “I befriended Smith at once and left you stranded in the corncrib to keep you out of danger till I’d left with him for Malden and learnt more of his plans and temper. I thought he’d beat poor Susan to a powder for betraying him, but instead he showed her every courtesy; ’twas not till some minutes past, when Susan told me you were here and I heard from Sowter the tale of John McEvoy and Tom Tayloe, that I saw the scoundrel’s plot, and for all my haste we arrived too late to stop you.”

  “It little matters now,” the Laureate said, closing his eyes. “I shall not live to see my father’s wrath, in any case.”

  “Why can I not refuse to have him?” asked Susan, who throughout Burlingame’s relation had been sitting tearfully on the floor beside Ebenezer’s writing table. “ ’Twould foil the contract and greatly please Mr. Cooke, I’m certain.”

  Burlingame replied that he doubted the former, since the contract would demonstrate to the court that Smith had complied with the marriage order as far as was in his power. “As for the latter, ’tis none of my affair, but I know no other way to care for Eben just now…”

  “It doth not matter to me any farther,” said Ebenezer.

  “Nay, don’t despair!” Burlingame shook him by the shoulders to stir him awake. “ ’Tis my opinion you should marry Susan, Eben, and let her nurse you back to health. I know your thoughts, and how you prize your chastity, but—i’faith, there is the answer! Thou’rt obliged to wed, but not to consummate the marriage; when thou’rt well again, and we have found a means to undo William Smith, then Susan can sue for annulment on the grounds thou’rt still a virgin!”

  Susan hung her head, but said no more. The voices of Smith and Sowter, laughing together, could be heard in the rear of the house, joined in a moment by the raucous voices of the cardplayers in the kitchen.

  “Lookee, Eben,” Burlingame said quickly. “I have a pill of Sowter’s here in my pocket—he is a physician, for all his knavery. Take it now to tide you through the wedding, and I swear we’ll see you master of this house ere the year is out!”

  Ebenezer shook off his lethargy enough to groan and cover his face with his hands. “I’Christ, that some god on wires would sweep down and fetch me off! ’Tis a far different course I’d follow, could I begin once more at Locket’s wine-house!”

  “Look alive, there!” William Smith called cheerily, and strode into the room with Sowter and the three women. “Stand him up, now, Timothy, and let’s have an end on’t!”

  “Marry come up,” cried one of the prostitutes, running to Susan, “I love a wedding!”

  “Aussi moi,” said Grace, “but always I weep.” She drew out her handkerchief in anticipation.

  “Ye’ll have to marry him where he sits,” Burlingame told Sowter, using the voice of Timothy Mitchell. “Here, now, Master Bridegroom; chew this pill and make your answers when the time comes. Stand here by your husband, Susie, and hold his hand.”

  “ ’Dslife!” the third prostitute exclaimed with mock alarm. “D’ye think he’s man enough to take her head?”

  “Curb your wretched tongue,” snapped Susan, “ere I tear it from your face!” She grasped Ebenezer’s hand and glared at the assemblage. “Get on with it, Richard Sowter, damn your eyes! This man is ill and must be got to bed at once.”

  The ceremony of marriage commenced. Though he could hear Sowter’s voice clearly, and Susan’s when she made her sullen responses, Ebenezer could not by any effort contrive to open his eyes, nor could he more than mumble when his turn came to repeat the vows. The pill he chewed was bitter on his tongue, but already, though no more clearheaded than before, he felt somewhat less miserable; indeed, when Sowter said, “I now pronounce ye man and wife,” he felt an impulse of sheer lightheartedness.

  “Sign the certificate quickly,” Smith urged him, “ere ye fall out on the floor.”

  “I’ll steady his hand,” Burlingame said, and virtually wrote the Laureate’s signature on the paper.

  “What is’t ye gave him?” Susan demanded, and with her thumb peeled open one of Ebenezer’s eyelids.

  “ ’Twas but to ensure he gets his proper rest, Mrs. Cooke,” Burlingame replied.

  At the sound of the name Ebenezer opened his mouth to laugh, and though no sound issued forth, he was delighted at the result.

  “Opium!” Susan shrieked.

  This news the Laureate found even more amusing than did the company, but he had no opportunity for another of the pleasant laughs: the fact is, his chair rose from the floor, passed through the roof of Malden, and shot into the opalescent sky. As for Maryland, it turned blue and flattened into an immense musical surface, which suavely slid northwestwards under seagulls.

  32

  A Marylandiad Is Brought to Birth, but Its Deliverer Fares as Badly as in Any Other Chapter

  “TO PARNASSUS!” cried the Laureate with a laugh, and the chair sailed over Thessaly to land between twin mountain cones of polished alabaster. The valley wherein he came to rest swarmed with thousands upon thousands of the world’s inhabitants, pressing in the foothills.

  “I say,” he inquired of one nearby who was in the act of tripping up the fellow just ahead, “which is Parnassus?”

  “On the right,” the man answered over his shoulder.

  “ ’Tis as I understood it to be,” the poet replied. “But what if I’d come up from the other side? Then right would be left, and left right, would it not? I’m only asking hypothetically,” he added, for the stranger frowned.

  “Right is right and be damned to ye,” the man growled, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Certainly from where Ebenezer stood, far removed from both, the twin mountains looked alike, their pink peaks lost in clouds. Beginning at a ridge just a little way up their slopes were rows or circles of various obstacles to the climbers. First he saw a ring of ugly men with clubs, who mashed the climbers’ fingers and caused them either to give over the ascent entirely or remain where they were; similar rings were stationed at intervals as far as Ebenezer could see up the mountainside, some arm
ed with hatchets or bodkins instead of clubs. Nor were the areas between these circles free of danger. Here and there, for example, were groups of women who invited the climbers from their objective; beds and couches, set beside tables of food and wine, lulled the weary who lay in them to a slumber deep as death; treadmills there were in abundance, and false signposts that promised the summit but led in fact (as could be clearly observed from the valley) to precipices, deserts, jungles, jails, and lunatic asylums. Countless climbers fell to every sort of obstacle. Those who managed to clear the first line of guards—whether by forcing through with main strength, by creating a diversion to distract attention from themselves, or by tickling, fondling, and otherwise pleasing the clubmen—more often than not fell to the women, the beds, the treadmills, or the false signposts, or if they escaped those as well, to the next ring of guards, and so forth. The lucky few who by some one or combination of these techniques passed safely through the farthest obstacles were applauded mightily by the rest, and it sometimes happened that the very noise of this applause sufficed to make the climber lose his grip on the alabaster and plunge feet foremost into the valley again. Others who neared the summit were felled by rocks from the same hands that had earlier applauded, and still others were not stoned but merely forgotten. Of the very, very few who remained fairly secure, some owed their tenure to the heavy pink mists that obscured them as targets; others to the simple bulk of the peak on which they sat, and others to the grapes and China oranges that they flung upon demand to the crowd below.

  The most important thing, of course, was to choose the proper mountain in the first place, but since by no amount of inquiry could he gain any certain information, Ebenezer at length chose arbitrarily and began to climb with the rest; doubtless, he reasoned, one learned as one climbed, and in any case, to reach the summit of either would be accomplishment enough.The first thing he discovered, however, was that the obstacles were much more formidable face to face than when viewed from afar as a non-climber: the ring of clubmen, when he reached them, were uglier and more threatening; the women beyond them, and the couches, more alluring; and the signposts quite authentic in appearance. It was, in fact, all he could do to muster courage enough to lunge at the nearest guards; but no sooner was he poised for the attempt than a voice commanded his chair to raise him to the peak, and without having climbed at all he found himself sitting among a group of solitary men on a pinnacle of the mountain.

  He singled out one of the oldest and wisest-looking, who was engaged in paring his toenails. “I say, sir, you’ll think me ridiculous to ask, but might you tell me which mountain this is?”

  “Ye have me there,” the ancient replied. “Sometimes I think ’tis one, sometimes the other.” He chuckled and added in a stage whisper: “What doth it matter?”

  “How did you get here, if I’m not too bold?” Ebenezer asked further.

  “That was no chore at all,” the old man said. “I was here when the mountain grew, I and my cronies, and we went up with it. They’ll never knock us down—but they might raise us so high they can’t see us any more.”

  “They’re applauding you down there, you know.”

  The old man shrugged his shoulders, Burlingame-like. “Ye can’t hear ’em so well up here. ’Tis the altitude and the thinness of the air, I’ve always thought. But I care not a fart one way or the other.”

  “Well,” said Ebenezer. “I surely envy you. What a view you have from here!”

  “ ’Tis in sooth a pleasant view,” the old man admitted. “Ye can see well-nigh the entire picture, and it all looks much alike. Tell ye the truth, I get tired looking. ’Tis more comfortable to sit here than to climb, if comfort’s what ye like. Climb if ye feel like climbing, says I, and don’t if ye don’t. There’s really naught in the world up here but clever music; ye’ll take pleasure in’t if ye’ve been reared to like that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, I always did like music!”

  “Really?” asked the old man without interest.

  Ebenezer leaned down to look at the strugglers far below.

  “Sbody, but aren’t they silly-looking!” he exclaimed. “And how ill-mannered, pushing and breaking wind on one another!”

  “They’ve little else to do,” the old man observed.

  “But there’s naught here to climb for: you’ve said that yourself!”

  “Aye, nor aught anywhere else, either. They’d as well climb as sit still and die.”

  “I’m going to jump!” Ebenezer declared suddenly. “I’ve no wish to see these things a moment more!”

  “No reason why ye oughtn’t, nor any why ye ought.”

  The Laureate made no further move to jump, but sat on the edge of the peak and sighed. “ ’Tis all most frightfully empty, is’t not?”

  “Empty indeed,” the old man said, “but there’s naught o’ good or bad in that. Why sigh?”

  “Why not?” asked Ebenezer.

  “Why not indeed?” the old man sighed, and Ebenezer found himself in a bed and Richard Sowter bending over him.

  “St. Wilgefortis’s beard, here is our bridegroom at long last! Doc Sowter’s oil-o’-mallow ne’er yet let mortal die!”

  “Marsh-mallow my arse,” said one of the kitchen-women, who appeared beside the bed. “ ’Twas St. Susie’s thistle-physic brought him back.”

  Sowter counted Ebenezer’s pulse briefly and then popped a spoonful of some syrup into his mouth.

  “What room is this, and why am I in’t?”

  “ ’Tis one o’ Bill Smith’s guest rooms,” Sowter said.

  “Opium!” the Laureate cried, and sat up angrily. “I recall it now!”

  “Aye, by blear-eyed old St. Otilic, ’twas opium Tim Mitchell gave ye, so ye’d have your rest. But ye was that ill to begin with, it came nigh to fetching ye off.”

  “He’ll be the death of me, by accident or design. Where is he now?”

  “Timothy? Ah, he’s long gone, back to his father’s place in Calvert County.”

  “False friend!” the poet muttered. He paused a moment and then fell back in anguish on his pillow. “Ah God, it escaped me I was wed! Where is Susan, and what said she of my illness on our wedding night? For I take it ’tis another day…”

  The kitchen woman laughed. “ ’Tis plus three weeks ye’ve languished ’twixt life and death!”

  “As for Mrs. Cooke,” Sowter said, “I can’t say how she felt, for directly we fetched ye to bed she was gone for Captain Mitchell’s in Timothy’s keep. Haply he did your labors for ye.”

  “Back to Mitchell’s!”

  “Aye, she’s legal-bound to drive his swine, ye know.”

  “ ’Tis too much!” Ebenezer cried indignantly. “For all she’s a hussy, the Laureate’s lady shan’t drive swine! Fetch her here!”

  “Now, don’t ye fret,” the woman soothed. “Susie’s run away twice already, to see for herself what health ye were in and make ye her wondrous thistle-physic. I doubt not she’ll do the same again.”

  “Three weeks a-swoon! I scarce know what to think!”

  “St. Christopher’s nightmare, friend, think o’ getting well,” Sowter suggested cheerfully, “then ye can roger Mistress Susan from matins to vespers, if ye dare. I’ll tell your father-in-law thou’rt back to life, but ’twill be some weeks yet ere ye have your health entire. Many a poor soul hath been seasoned to his grave.” He gathered up his medical paraphernalia and prepared to leave. “Ah yes, here is a present Timmy Mitchell left ye.”

  “My notebook!” the Laureate exclaimed; Sowter handed him the familiar green-backed ledger, now warped, worn, and soiled from its peregrinations.

  “Aye, ye lost it in the inn at Cambridge, and Tim brought it out when last he came for Susan. He said ye might have verses to write in’t whilst ye rest your six months out.”

  “Ah God, I thought ’twas stolen with my clothes!” He clasped it with much emotion. “ ’Tis an old and faithful friend, this ledger-book—my only one!”

  When he was left al
one he found himself still far too weak in body and spirit for artistic creation, and so he contented himself with reading the products of his past—all of which seemed remote to him now. He could, in fact, identify himself much more readily with the stained and battered notebook than with such couplets as:

  “Ye ask, What eat our merry Band

  En Route to lovely MARYLAND?

  which seemed as foreign to him as if they were another man’s work. Since he had happened to begin with the most recent entry and thence to work towards the front of the book, the last thing he read was a note for his projected Marylandiad, made while his audience with Lord Baltimore (that is to say, Burlingame) was still fresh in his memory: MARYLANDS Excellencies are peerless, it read; her Inhabitants are the most gracious, their Breeding unmatch’d; her Dwelling-places are the grandest; her Inns & Ordinaries the most courteous and comfortable; her Fields the richest; her Courts & Laws the most majestic; her Commerce the most prosperous, & cet., & cet. The note was subscribed, in Ebenezer’s own hand, E.C., Gent, Pt & Lt of Md.

  He lay back and closed his eyes; his head throbbed from the small exertion of perusing his work. “I’faith!” he said to himself. “What price this laureateship! Here’s naught but scoundrels and perverts, hovels and brothels, corruption and poltroonery! What glory, to be singer of such a sewer!”

  The more he reflected upon his vicissitudes, the more his anguish became infused with wrath, until at length, despite his weariness, he ripped from the ledger his entire stock of sea-verses, and using the quill and ink provided by his host he wrote on the virgin paper thus exposed:

  Condemn’d by Fate, to wayward Curse,

  Of Friends unkind, and empty Purse,

  Plagues worse than fill’d Pandoras Box,

  I took my Leave of Albions Rocks,

  With heavy Heart, concern’d that I

  Was forc’d my native Soil to fly,

  And the old World must bid Good-b’ye.

  No sooner were these lines set down than more came rushing unbidden to his fancy, and though he was not strong enough at the time to write them out, he conceived then and there a momentous project to occupy him during the weeks ahead—which, should he find no means of regaining his estate, might well be his last on earth. He would versify his voyage to Maryland from beginning to end, as he had planned before, but so far from writing a panegyric, he would scourge the Province with the lash of Hudibrastic as a harlot is scourged at the public post, catalogue her every wickedness, and expose her every trap laid for the trusting, the unwary, the innocent!