Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Not this side of the River, nor this side of York and Baltimore Road. ’Tis all ours now. They answer to us here.”

  “What’s the complaint?” demands Oily Leon. “We’re out here as a Picket for Philadelphia,— we’ve clear’d them a fine safe patch, from Delaware to Susquehanna. Now may they prance about foolish as they may.”

  “Aye, Penns, handing us and our children about like Chattel,— ”

  “Damme,— like Field Slaves!”

  “— dared they ever leave England and come here, they should find harsher welcome than any King.”

  “Here’s a Riddle,— if a cat may look at a King, may a Pennsylvanian take aim at a King’s enforcer?”

  “Sir!” The murmuring is about equally divided, as to whether this is going too far, or not far enough.

  “Their Cities allow them Folly,” a German of Mystickal Toilette advises the Astronomers, “that daily Living upon the Frontier will not forgive. They feed one another’s Pretenses, live upon borrow’d Money as borrow’d Time, their lives as their deaths put, with all appearance of Willingness, under the control of others mortal as they, rather than subject, as must Country People’s lives and deaths be, to the One Eternal Ruler. That is why we speak plainly, whilst Cits learn to be roundabout as Snakes. Our Time is much more precious to us.”

  “What. Our Time not precious!” guffaws a traveling sales Representative. “Why, you’re welcome, Cousin, to try and get thro’ twenty-four Hours of Philadelphia Time, which if it don’t kill you, will cure you, at least, of your Illusions about us.”

  “Excuse me,” says Dixon, “I meant to ask . . . ? Whah’s thah’ smoahkin’ Object in thy Mouth, thah’ tha keep puffin’ on?”

  “Not much Tobacco where you Boys are from? Down Chesapeake, why they’ve nothing but.— Endless Acres, Glasgow shipping fender-to-fender in the Bays, why Tob’o, Hell, they use it for money! Smoke your Week’s Pay! This form of it, Sir, ’s what we call a ‘Cigar.’ They come in all sorts, this particular one being from Conestoga, the Waggon-Bullies there style it a ‘Stogie.’ The Secret’s in the Twist they put into the handful of Leaves whilst they’re squeezin’ it into Shape. Sort of like putting rifling inside a Barrel, only different? Gives the Smoke a Spin, as ye’d say? Watch this.” He sets his Lips as for a conventional, or Toroidal, Smoke-Ring, but out instead comes a Ring like a Length of Ribbon clos’d in a Circle, with a single Twist in it, possessing thereby but one Side and one Edge. . . .

  (“Uncle?”

  “Hum? Pray ye,— ’tis true, I was not there. Yet, such was the pure original Stogie in its Day. . . .”)

  Tho’ nothing much has been said, the Surveyors are surpriz’d to discover that ev’ryone’s been saying it for several Hours. The only thing that has grown clearer is Jabez’s motive in offering to be their Guide. Soon Lamps are lit, and the Supper-Crowd has come in, and Mason and Dixon, no closer to having seen the site of the Massacre, Heads a-reel with smoke, return to their Rooms.

  Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever ’tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.

  “Yet must the Sensorium be nourish’d,” Mason, insomniack, addresses himself in a sort of Gastrick Speech he has devis’d for Hours like these,” . . . as the Body, with its own transcendent Desires, the foremost being Eternal Youth,— for which, alas, one seeks in vain thro’ the Enthusiasts’ Fair, that defines the Philadelphia Sabbath,— the best Offer heard, being of Bodily Resurrection, which unhappily yet requires Death as a pre-condition. . . .”

  He finds himself pretending Rebekah is there, somewhere, and listening. She has not “visited” since St. Helena. Mason cycles back to the Island, a Memory-Pilgrim with a well-mark’d Itinerary Map, to recapitulate Exchanges in the Ebony Clearing, the empty Wall’d Patch, the Lines at Dawn before the Atlantick Horizon. . . .

  The next Day, he creeps out before Dixon is awake, and goes to the Site of last Year’s Massacre by himself. He is not as a rule sensitive to the metaphysickal Remnants of Evil,— none but the grosser, that is, the Gothickal, are apt to claim his Attention,— yet here in the soil’d and strewn Courtyard where it happen’d, roofless to His Surveillance,— and to His Judgment, prays Mason,— he feels “like a Nun before a Shrine,” as he later relates it to Dixon, who has in fact slept till well past noon, as Shifts and Back-shifts of Bugs pass to and fro, inspecting his Mortal Envelope. “Almost a smell,” Mason quizzickally, his face, it seems to Dixon, unusually white, “— not the Drains, nor the Night’s Residency,— I cannot explain,— it quite Torpedo’d me.”

  “Eeh! Sounds worth a Visit . . . ?”

  “Acts have consequences, Dixon, they must. These Louts believe all’s right now,— that they are free to get on with Lives that to them are no doubt important,— with no Glimmer at all of the Debt they have taken on. That is what I smell’d,— Lethe-Water. One of the things the newly-born forget, is how terrible its Taste, and Smell. In Time, these People are able to forget ev’rything. Be willing but to wait a little, and ye may gull them again and again, however ye wish,— even unto their own Dissolution. In America, as I apprehend, Time is the true River that runs ’round Hell.”

  “They can’t all be like thah’ . . . ?”

  “Go and see,— and d——‘d if I’ll share any more Moments like that with you.”

  “Eeh! As it suits thee. ’Tis how to suit myself, that’s the Puzzle. Quaker Garb will send them into a war-like Frenzy, whilst the Red Coat will strike them sullen and creeping, unable to be trusted at any Scale . . . ?”

  “You might go as Harlequin,” Mason replies, unsooth’d, “or Punch.”

  Dixon has a fair idea of how little Mason cares for this Continent. He himself has been trying to keep an open Mind. Having been a Quaker all his Life, his Conscience early brought awake and not yet entirely fallen back to sleep, he now rides over to the Jail as to his Duty-Station, wearing a Hat and Coat borrow’d of Mason. He is going as Mason.

  He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss’d their Marks, and chipp’d the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans’d. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav’d this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came?

  Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch’d and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar’d him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,— the publick Executions and Whippings, the open’d flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites. . . . Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen’d here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,— that at the end no one understood what they said as they died. “I don’t pray enough,” Dixon subvocalizes, “and I can’t get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,— yet could I kneel, and would I pray, ’twould be to ask, re
spectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar’d the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl’d some other way, by someone a bit more credible. . . .” He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

  Returning to their Rooms, he finds Mason reclin’d and smoking, looking up guiltily from a ragged Installment of The Ghastly Fop.

  “When were tha thinking of leaving this miserable Place?”

  “My Saddle-Bags are pack’d, I merely take the time waiting you to satisfy myself that the shockingly underag’d Protasia Wofte has not yet succumb’d, before the wicked Chymickal Assaults of the Ghastly F.”

  “Whom are we working for, Mason?”

  “I rather thought, one day, you would be the one to tell me.”

  “My Bags are never unpack’d. May we do this without Haste, avoiding all appearance of Anxiety?”

  “I am cool,” Mason replies.

  In the Instant, both feel strongly drawn by the Forks of Brandywine, Mrs. Harland’s Bean Pies and Rhubarb Tarts, the Goose-Down Bedding, the friendliness of the Milk-maids, the clement Routine of Observation. Gently they disengage from Lancaster. Each Milestone passes like another Rung of a Ladder ascended. Behind,— below,— diminishing, they hear, and presently lose, a Voicing disconsolate, of Regret at their Flight.

  35

  Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,— Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin. . . . Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers,— nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,— her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,— that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,— not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,— rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

  — The Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History

  “Why,” Uncle Ives insists, “you look at the evidence. The testimony. The whole Truth.”

  “On the contrary! It may be the Historian’s duty to seek the Truth, yet must he do ev’rything he can, not to tell it.”

  “Oh, pish!”

  “Tush as well.”

  “ ’Twasn’t Mr. Gibbon’s sort of History, in ev’ry way excellent, that I meant,— rather, Jack Mandeville, Captain John Smith, even to Baron Munchausen of our own day,— Herodotus being the God-Father of all, in his refusal to utter the name of a certain Egyptian Deity,— ”

  “Don’t say it!”

  “What,— seek the Truth and not tell it! Shameful.”

  “Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Hadn’t we enough of that from the old George?”

  “Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir’d, or coerc’d, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish’d, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev’ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. As Æsop was oblig’d to tell Fables,

  ‘So Jacobites must speak in children’s rhymes,

  As Preachers do in Parables, sometimes.’

  Tox, Pennsylvaniad, Book Ten of course. . . .”

  “Hogwash, Sir,” Uncle Ives about to become peevish with his Son, “Facts are Facts, and to believe otherwise is not only to behave perversely, but also to step in imminent peril of being grounded, young Pup.”

  “Sir, no offense meant. I was but pointing out that a single Version, in proceeding from a single Authority,— ”

  “Ethelmer.” Ives raises a monitory Eye-brow. “Time on Earth is too precious. No one has time, for more than one Version of the Truth.”

  “Then, let us have only Jolly Theatrickals about the Past, and be done with it,— ’twould certainly lighten my School-work.” Mr. LeSpark’s Phiz grows laden with Menace.

  “Or read Novels,” adds Euphrenia, her tone of dismissal owing more to her obligations as a Guest than her real Sentiments, engag’d more often than she might admit, with examples of the Fabulist’s Art.

  As if having just detected a threat to the moral safety of the company, Ives announces, “I cannot, damme I cannot I say, energetically enough insist upon the danger of reading these storybooks,— in particular those known as ‘Novel.’ Let she who hears, heed. Britain’s Bedlam even as the French Salpêtrière being populated by an alarming number of young persons, most of them female, seduced across the sill of madness by these irresponsible narratives, that will not distinguish between fact and fancy. How are those frail Minds to judge? Alas, every reader of ‘Novel’ must be reckoned a soul in peril,— for she hath made a D——l’s bargain, squandering her most precious time, for nothing in return but the meanest and shabbiest kinds of mental excitement. ‘Romance,’ pernicious enough in its day, seems in Comparison wholesome.”

  “Dr. Johnson says that all History unsupported by contemporary Evidence is Romance,” notes Mr. LeSpark.

  “Whilst Walpole, lying sick, refus’d to have any history at all read to him, believing it must be false,” declares Lomax, gesturing with his Brandy-wine Glass.

  “As if, at the end, he wish’d only Truth? Walpole?” Euphie plays an E-flat minor Scale, whilst rolling her eyes about.

  “What of Shakespeare?” Tenebræ still learning to be disingenuous, “Those Henry plays, or the others, the Richard ones? are they only make-believe History? theatrickal rubbish?” as if finding much enjoyment in speaking men’s names that are not “Ethelmer.”

  “Aye, and Hamlet?” suggests the Revd, staring carefully at the youngsters in turn.

  Her eyes a lash’s width too wide, perhaps, “Oh, but Hamlet wasn’t real, was he?” not wishing to seem to await an answer from her Cousin, yet allowing him now an opening to show off.

  Which Ethelmer obligingly saunters into. Of course he has the Data. “All in all, a figure with an interesting Life of his own,— alas, this hopping, quizzing, murderously irresolute Figment of Shakespeare’s, has quite eclips’d for us the man who had to live through the contradictions of his earthly Life, without having it all re-figur’d for him.”

  “Then, did he ‘really’ have a distant cousin named Ophelia,” Tenebræ inquires, a shade too softly to be heard by any but Ethelmer, “and did he, historically, break her Heart?”

  “More likely she was out to break his,— being his foster-sister actually, working on behalf of his enemies, tho’ with no success. A minor figure, who may have charm’d Shakespeare into giving her more lines than she merits, but who does not charm the disinterested Seeker.”

  “Did he love anyone, then? besides himself, I mean. . . .”

  “He ended up marrying the daughter of the English King, ’s a matter of fact, and later, in addition, the quite intimidating Hermuthruda, Queen of Scotland.”

  “What about that Stage strewn with Corpses?” wonders Uncle Lomax.

  “Two wives!”

  “Barbary Pirates take as many as they wish,” twinkles Euphie.

  “O Euphrenia, Aunt of Lies,” Tenebræ shaking her Finger in pretended sternness.

  “Mercy, Brae,— I was nearly one myself. Hadn’t been for the old Delusse, here, you’d be calling me ‘Ayeesha’ now. Had to run the Invisible Snake Trick that time, none too reliable in the best o’ Circs. . . .” She plays a sinuous Air f
ull of exotick sharps and flats. The Company redeploy themselves in the direction of Comfort, as the moistly-dispos’d Uncle Lomax steers again for the Cabinet in the corner, presently returning with a bottle of Peach Brandy.

  Upon his first Sip, the Revd reels in his Chair. “Why bless us, ’tis from Octarara.”

  “Amazingly cognizant, Wicks.”

  “I once surviv’d a Fortnight, Snow-bound,” replies the Revd, “upon little else. ’Twas at Mr. Knockwood’s, by Octarara Creek, in the terrible winter of ’sixty-four– ’sixty-five, when, after four years, the Surveyors and I once more cross’d Tracks. . . .”

  ’Twas a more tranquil time, before the War, when people moved more slowly,— even, marvelous to say, here in Philadelphia, where the bustling might yet be distinguish’d from the hectic. There were no Sedan Chairs. Many went about on foot. Even Saint Nicholas was able to deliver all his Gifts, and yet find time for a brisk Pint at The Indian Queen.

  I was back in America once more, finding, despite all, that I could not stay away from it, this object of hope that Miracles might yet occur, that God might yet return to Human affairs, that all the wistful Fictions necessary to the childhood of a species might yet come true, . . . a third Testament. . . . I had been tarrying over Susquehanna, upon a Ministry that had taken me out among the wilder sort of Presbyterians, a distinct change from the mesopotamian Mysticks of Kutztown or Bethlehem. A bug-ridden, wearying, acidic Journey. Among these folk,— good folk, despite litigious and whiskey-loving ways,— I was not welcome. In my presence dogs howled, milk turn’d, bread failed to rise. Moreover, a spirit of rebellion was then flickering across the countryside, undeniable as the Northern Lights, directed at Britain and all things British, including, ineluctably, your miserable Servant. What we now style “The Stamp Act Crisis” was in full flower. The African Slaves call’d it “the Tamp.” Unusual numbers of Riders were out ev’ry Night. The Province seem’d preparing for open warfare. Whiteboys and Black Boys, Paxton Boys and Sailor Boys,— a threat of Mobility ever present.