Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  Admir’d in far-off E-do,—

  Na-bobs, Kings and Potentates too, all

  Gawkin’ at the shockin’ sort of things he’ll do, for

  A tuppenny, step up ’n’ he will do, you, too,—

  The Torpedo, Voo-

  -Ly Voo!

  Ev’ry Fop clear back to Philadelphia must be in Attendance this Evening, sporting bright glaucous Waistcoats, Suits of staggeringly tasteless Brocade, outlandishly dress’d Wigs, Shoes with heels higher than the stems of Wine-glasses, Stockings unmatch’d in Colors incompatible, such as purple and green, strange opaque Spectacles in both these shades and many others. They flourish Snuff-boxes and pocket-flasks about, and giggle without surcease. As to the Hats,— far better not even to open the subject. ’Tis as if to cross Schuylkill were to transgress as well some Rubicon of style, to fall from Quaker simplicity into the Perplexity, uncounted times broken and re-broken, of the World after Eden. “I can see it’ll take a lot to shock a crowd like this!” cries the Professor.

  All are pleas’d to hold the same Opinion, and cheer. At a gesture from his Exhibitor, Felípe stands straight up in his Tank and bows right and left. The Professor takes out an Antillean Cigar, bites the end off, produces two Wires, and with a supply of Gum attaches them precisely upon the Animal’s body. Felípe allows it, though like any train’d beast he will make a half-hearted Lunge now and then toward the busy pair of hands, his Jaws stretching wide enough to allow Spectators to marvel and shiver at the Ranks of Dirk-sharp Teeth. The Professor moves the free ends of the wires slowly together,— suddenly between them leaps a giant Spark, blindingly white, into which the intrepid Operator thrusts one end of his Cigar, whilst sucking furiously upon the other, bringing it away at last well a-glow.

  Mason stares, bedazzl’d. He is slow to respond to Dixon’s hand upon his shoulder, shaking him. “Not a good idea to be staring directly into that Spark . . . ?— Charles . . . ?”

  “Dixon,” a passionately inflected Hiss, directed to something just behind his eyelids, “I saw,— ”

  “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  “I saw,— ”

  “The Spark was too bright, Mason. All look’d away, but you.”

  In the hidden Journal that he gets to so seldom it should be styl’d a “Monthly,” Mason writes, “I saw at the heart of the Electrick Fire, beyond color, beyond even Shape, an Aperture into another Dispensation of Space, yea and Time, than what Astronomers and Surveyors are us’d to working with. It bade me enter, or rather it welcom’d my Spirit,— yet my Body was very shy of coming any nearer,— indeed wish’d the Vision gone. Throughout, the Creature in the Tank regarded me with a personal stare, as of a Stranger claiming to know me from some distant, no longer accessible Shore,— a mild and nostalgic look, masking, as I fear’d, Blood or Jungle, with the luminous Deep of his great Spark all the while beckoning. . . .

  “I can no more account for it than for the other Episodes. I do not choose these moments, nor would I know how. They come upon me with no premonition. Shall I speak with Dixon? Is it an hallucinatory symptom of a Melancholia further advanced than I knew? Should I seek the counsel, God help me, of the cherubick Pest, Cherrycoke? He will take down ev’ry Word he can remember. (Might it prove of use, in any future Claims for Compensation, to be recorded, at what’s sure to be impressive Length, as having sought Spiritual Assistance?)

  “How can I explain the continuing Fascination of the Torpedo? Were I it, I know I should have grown restless with the same set of Tricks night after night, and perhaps even disposed to Annoyance. But the Eel’s facial expression is strangely benevolent and wise,— we spend a few minutes each morning sitting together whilst I take Coffee,— the Creature gazing in silence, relax’d, Fins a-ripple, enjoying these Quiescent hours of his Electrical Day for as long as he may . . .”

  “For too soon the Charge,” as the Professor declaims each night, “growing irresistibly, will be felt along the line of his Spine, to be follow’d closely by the emergence, from the great Shade outside the sens’d World, of the Other,— El Peligroso, whose advent the mild-manner’d Felípe you see here is quite helpless to prevent.”

  Meals consist so far mostly of locally caught fish, though Felípe is far from particular, having lately for example acquir’d a liking for Salt Beef. “Return to his native Hemisphere,—” the Professor mumbling, “strange variations in Salinity as in Diet, yet perhaps ’tis magnetickal, for as is lately discover’d, the Needle’s Deflexion followeth, like Felípe, a Diurnal Cycle. . . .” Yet behind the patter lurks the unspoken possibility that outside, perhaps even just outside, the widening sphere of Felípe’s food interests, waits human Flesh.

  Abandoning the Tub, the Professor builds a larger circular Tank, and mounts it upon wheels, so that daily it may be situated directly upon the Line. Felípe then slowly rotates until his head is pointing north. Presently he has become the camp Compass, as often consulted as the Thermometer or the Clock.

  “ ’Cordin’ to this Torpedo, north’s over that way.”

  “Best keep an eye out tomorrow, next day, see if of Felípe changes his heading, we might be able to triangulate us in on to some big iron lode, quit this slavin’, make our Fortunes quicker than loggin’, quicker than Hemp-fields,— ”

  “Aye,” comments Squire Haligast, who has join’d the Party, “for without Iron, Armies are but identically costum’d men holding Bows, and Navies but comely gatherings of wrought Vegetation.”

  “Cap’n, when we’re rich, you can write all our business Letters.”

  “Put you in a sort of Booth, right out in front of the Mine, with a big sign overhead saying QUERIES.”

  “Shall I have a Pistol?” the Squire in a playful Tone.

  “Why, a Cannon if you’d like. Just run you one up straight from the Comp’ny Forge.”

  “Boys, Boys,” rumbles the imminent Overseer Barnes, “We aren’t quizzing with the Squire again are we, we know the consequences of that well enough don’t we by now?”

  “They are Lads,” says the Squire. “Having a dream together. No harm.”

  43

  When at the end of February they arrive at Newark, the Surveyors find secure behind the Bar a pile of Correspondence forwarded to them by Mr. Chew, wherein lies news both cheery and crushing. There is the Possibility of further Engagement in America, measuring a Degree of Latitude for the Royal Society. There is also a letter from John Bird, with news of Maskelyne’s elevation to H.M. Astronomer.

  “You were expecting me to scream, weren’t you?”

  “No,— no, Mason, tha being a grown Man and all,— ”

  “Actually, I’m quite reliev’d. Didn’t need that on my Mind, did I? Arh, arh! Let us be blithe about it, for goodness’ sake! What a wonderful Omen under which to begin the West Line,” Mason raising his Tankard with an abruptness advisable only in Rooms where one’s Face is known. “At the very moment he was elevated, I lay flat upon a Back that for all I knew was broken, in a desert place in New Jersey.”

  “We’re curs’d, you knew thah’ . . . ?” Dixon tries to bear down and attend closely. “And none could have foreseen,— ”

  “Oh, Maskelyne knew that Bradley was ill,”— Mason attempting to be chirpy is less easy to bear than Mason in blackest Melancholy,— “ev’ryone knew it, as ev’ryone knew that Bliss would come on only as Caretaker, for he as well was old, and ailing, yet there should be time enough left him, for each Aspirant to make his interest as he might. . . .”

  “Why aye, and yet you always knew he cultivated— ”

  “ ‘Cultivated,’— poh. Maskelyne caress’d, and slither’d, insinuating himself into an old man’s esteem,— for having done nothing, really, one more lad from Cambridge, clever with Numbers, tho’ none beyond that damn’d Tripos Riddling, who but happens to be Clive of fucking India’s, fucking, Brother-in-l
aw! Ahhr, Dixon! this seventh Wrangler, this bilious, windy Hypnotick in the Herbal of human character, this mean-spirited intriguer,— his usage of poor Mr. Harrison, and his Chronometer, how contemptible. Few are his ideas, Lunarian is his one Faith, to plod is his entire Project. He will never make any discovery on the order of Aberration, nor Nutation,— he is unworthy, damn him! to succeed James Bradley.” His face is wet, more with Spittle than Tears.

  “Eeh, Mason.” Dixon by now has learn’d to stay at a respectful distance, and not to rely too heavily upon Touch as a way of communicating. “You believ’d . . . Really . . . ?”

  “Oh well, ‘really,’— it’s like a Woman, isn’t it, you look at each other, you think Of course not, she thinks Of course not,— yet the Alternatives hang about, don’t they, like Wraiths.”

  “Eehh, City Matters, would I knoah anything about thah’?”

  “I was up there four years, I lost two women I lov’d, God help me. I lost Bradley, dear to me as well. Were Tears Sixpences, I’d have more invested in that miserable hilltop than Maskelyne could borrow, be the co-signer Clive himself. Well, let him never sleep. Let him pace those rooms, one after another, in the idled silence of the afternoons, till he hears the voices telling him he has no right there, and to go away. Let him stand at last in the Octagon Room, and shiver in the height of Summer. Let him fear to stay up for stars that culminate too late,— Aahhrrhh!”

  “Mason,— aren’t Maskelyne and Morton both Cambridge men? Wasn’t it Morton who put his name forward? They must have wanted one of their own . . . ?”

  “The last three A.R.’s were all Oxford men.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  Mason stares, then says slowly, “Yes, Dixon, there is a difference. . . . And he went in as a bloody Sizar, I could have done that,— don’t you think I was ‘one of their own’? What, then, the Bastard Son? The faithful old Drudge in the Background? Haven’t I any standing in this? Is that what this fucking exile in America’s about then, Morton and his fucking Royal Society,— to get me out of the way so that Maskelyne can go prancing up to Greenwich freed of opposition,— ”

  “So, Ah’m dragg’d along in the wake of your ill fortune, eeh, another bonny mess . . . ?”

  “Might teach you to take care whom your name gets attach’d to. Ahrrhh! Ruin!” He pulls his Hat over his Eyes, and begins to pound his Head slowly upon the Table.

  “According to this,” Dixon soothingly, as if ’twere a Fan, waving a Page, enclos’d with the letter, clipp’d from the Gentlemen’s Magazine of the December previous, “there were, it seems, ten, competing for the job,— Betts, Bevis, Short . . . so on. Any of those names light a Match?” Though reaching the outskirts of Forbearance, can he really continue? Yes, he ought to. Either Mason cannot admit there’s a Class problem here, or, even this deeply compromised, he may yet somehow keep Faith that in the Service of the Heavens, dramatic Elevations of Earthly Position are to be expected of these Times, this Reign of Reason, by any reasonable man. Very well, “Mason, you are a Miller’s Son. That can never satisfy them.”

  “What of it?” Mason snaps back, “Flamsteed was a Maltster’s Son. Halley was a Soap-boiler’s Son. Astronomers Royal are suppos’d to be social upstarts, for Mercy’s sake. And I’d friends in the Company,” inflecting this, however, with a Snort and a sidewise Tilt of the Head, assuming Dixon knows roughly how Sam Peach and Clive of India might sort out upon the Company’s own Chain of Being.

  “Did you and Maskelyne talk about any of this when you were together at St. Helena?”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Oh, off and on . . . ? And thee?”

  “Bradley’s Name may have come up.”

  “And Maskelyne,— may I speculate?— said, ‘Has he given Thought to a Successor?’ ”

  “Why, that’s amazing. You might have been there. What is it about you people, some mystickal Gift, I imagine.”

  “Ahnd,— he didn’t say, ‘Mason, though clearly I would welcome your support, I’m going to have this A.R. job with or without it,’ anything like thah’?”

  “Why are you trying to get me to re-live this? It was unpleasant enough the first time.”

  “So as to avoid it m’self, of course.”

  “I shall get thro’ this, Dixon.”

  “Were I thee, I should make him feel guilty ev’ry chance I got. Perhaps he doubts his own Worthiness. Tha must never make it too obvious, of course, always the dignified Sufferer,— yet there is no predicting what Advantage tha may build, upon his Uncertainty.”

  “Why bless me, Sir,— you are a Jesuit, after all. Sinister Alfonso, move aside,— sheathe that Stiletto, wicked Giuseppe,— here is the true Italian Art.”

  “I-o? Why, I am simple as a pony, Sir . . . ?— born in a Drift, a Corf for my cradle, and nought but the Back-shift for Schoolmasters there . . . ?”

  44

  Now, many is the philosophickal Mind,— including my own,— convinced that rapid motion through the air is possible along and above certain invisible straight Lines, crossing the earthly landscape, particularly in Britain, where they are known as Ley-lines. Any number of devout enthusiasts, annual Stonehenge and Avebury Pilgrims, Quacks, Mongers, Bedlamites,— each has his tale of real flights over the countryside, above these Ley-lines. Withal, ’tis possible to transfer from one of them to another, and thus in theory travel to the furthest reaches of the Kingdom, without once touching the Earth. Something is there, that permits it. No one knows what it is, tho’ thousands speculate.

  Here went we off upon the most prodigious such Line yet attempted,— in America, where undertakings of its scale are possible,— astronomically precise,— carefully set prisms of Oölite,— the Master-valve of rose Quartz, at the eastern Terminus. Any Argument from Design, here, must include a yearning for Flight, perhaps even higher and faster than is customary along Ley-lines we know. I try not to wonder. I must wonder. Whenever the Surveyors separate, they run into Thickets, Bogs, bad Dreams,— united, they pursue a ride through the air, they are link’d to the stars, to that inhuman Precision, and are deferr’d to because of it, tho’ also fear’d and resented. . . .

  — Wicks Cherrycoke, Spiritual Day-Book

  March is snowy and frozen, clear nights are rare, and the Surveyors need ev’ry one they can get for Azimuth observations to find out the exact Direction westward, to strike off in. Ev’rything upon the Ground, by April, as they’re about to begin the West Line, must be sighted thro’ a haze of green Resurrection.

  “There’ll be more out there than Stars to gaze at,” says Mr. Harland, who’s hired on as an Instrument-Bearer at five shillings a day. “Over Susquehanna,— once you’ve cross’d the York to Baltimore Road,— you’ll see.”

  “I grew up west of that Road,” adds Mrs. Harland, “and he ain’t just hummin’ ‘Love in a Cottage,’ either. ’Tis not for ev’rybody,— I know I lit East as soon’s I was tall enough to cry in the right Uncle’s ale-can, and it’s also how I met the Wild Ranger here, who’s never been west of Elk Creek. Maybe it’s not even for you, Johnny.”

  “Tho’ we do understand your Sentiments, Ma’am,” Mason advises, “we are legally restrain’d from intervening in anyone’s family business.”

  “Ah well, too bad, tried my best, fate is fate, Lord’ll provide,” she carols, bustling back into the House.

  “Took it awfully well, I thought,” says Mason.

  “Maybe not,” John Harland shaking his head as he follows her in. “Better go see.”

  “She never actually said she wanted him off the Crew,” Dixon notes.

  “It’s what she meant. You have to understand them, Dixon, they’ve this silent language, that only men of experience speak at all fluently.”

  “Then why is it I’ve lost count of how many of my evenings tha’ve ruin’d, with thy talk of Cannibalism, or Suicide, or B
ickering among the Whigs . . . ? anything, but what ‘they’ wish to hear?”

  “Unannounc’d blow.”

  Robert Boggs comes running by with fifty-weight of Harness hanging from each Shoulder. “Some Stranger over there by the Monument, acting peculiar.” Off he runs again.

  They go to see,— and there he is, up in the corner of Harland’s field, curiously prostrated before the chunk of Rose Quartz where cross the Latitude of the south Edge of Philadelphia, and the Longitude of the Post Mark’d West,— the single Point to which all work upon the West Line (and its eastward Protraction to the Delaware Shore) will finally refer. All about, in the Noontide, go Waggoners and Instrument-Bearers in Commotion, preparing for the Translation south to Mr. Bryant’s Field, and the Post Mark’d West. Swifts come out in raiding-parties, but avoid the luminous Stone,— Dogs wait at what they’ve learn’d is a safe distance from it.

  “Quite powerful,” when they have coax’d him back at last to their own regime of Light, “— where’d you boys find this one? Whoo-ee!” He has been trying to find what in his Calling is known as the “Ghost,” another Crystal inside the ostensible one, more or less clearly form’d.” ’Tis there the Pictures appear . . . tho’ it varies from one Operator to the next,— some need a perfect deep Blank, and cannot scry in Ghost-Quartz. Others, before too much Clarity, become blind to the other World . . . my own Crystal,”— he searches his Pockets and produces a Hand-siz’d Specimen with a faint Violet tinge,— “the Symmetries are not always easy to see . . . here, these twin Heptagons . . . centering your Vision upon their Common side, gaze straight in,—

  “Aahhrrhh!” Mason recoiling and nearly casting away the crystal.

  “Huge, dark Eyes?” the Scryer wishes to know.

  “Aye.— Who is it?” Mason knows.

  “The Face I see is a bit more friendly,— but then ’twould have to be, wouldn’t it, or I’d be in some other line of Work.”