Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Hush,” come a half dozen voices at once. “They are going their Way, as we go ours,” whispers someone behind his right Ear. “They are not often out in the Rain, nor particularly helpful in a Slide.”

  Soon they have reach’d one Shore of the liquefied Peat-Flow, thro’ some Mirage blacker than the neighboring Night. “McEntaggart’s been after that Tath for a Year, and now ’tis his, for nothing.”

  “He kept still, and the Premises mov’d!”

  “Look out, here comes more of it!”

  “What, a Re-Peat!”

  In Irish perversity all a-quip, they set to work finding and cutting out Peat Sods not yet saturated by the Rain. Other countrymen appear now and then bearing Rocks, piling them laboriously against the Burst, thro’ the drizzling of the Night. Cottagers, daz’d, come wobbling down the Hill. Dawn finds the tops of the Hillsides obscur’d, each Shift-mate a wan Spectre in the Vaporous Bog.

  “Mr. Mason!”

  “Your servant, sir.”

  “ ’Tis the Well of Saint Brendan, if you please,— ”

  “Thought he was a Galway Lad.”

  No, he pass’d thro’ Cavan once, on his way to the Sea, looking for Crew, and from the spot where he slept, came forth the very water they drank in Eden, so lovely is it to taste,— now, in the general Relocation, has it vanish’d. “Tho’ we’ve Dowsers a-plenty, yet are all in Perplexity, not to mention humility, in begging the Application of your London Arts, in discov’ring and restoring it.”

  “I’ve the very thing,” Mason replies. Among his Equipment at the Pennycomequick Manor is the Krees from his Dream in Cape Town, which he has kept ever by him. “Have you water from this Spring?” He pours and rubs it over the Blade, returning to the Bog-burst, where immediately he senses a Traction, a warmth, a queer high whine along the Blade, tho’ ’tis none of these . . . “Here, I believe.”

  He helps them to dig. At no great Depth a Spring is encounter’d, whose Perimeter is quickly shor’d against re-collapse. One by one Countryfolk taste the Water. Some say it is the very Spring of the Saint, others say it isn’t. In fact, there is so wide a difference of opinion, that presently what will be the first of many Blows are exchang’d.

  In an ordinary Dream, Rebekah appears. “No need to feel pleas’d with yourself. What you found was not their sacred Well, but only a Representation of it.” He wakes up into a midnight sadness, trying to say, I have tasted it, yet he has not tasted it. Now he is afraid ever to, lest his Spring be discover’d as soil’d as the Holy Wells of Gloucestershire, and therefore the Krees, and therefore his Dreams.

  He prays to see her Face in the new Comet,— each night, this time, in terror of not seeing it. He tries to will it there, yet is amaz’d that for some Minutes now, he cannot even remember her Face. Yet at last arrives a clear night of seeing, so clear in fact that sometime after Midnight, supine in the Star-light, rigid with fear, Mason experiences a curious optical re-adjustment. The Stars no longer spread as upon a Dom’d Surface,— he now beholds them in the Third Dimension as well,— the Eye creating its own Zed-Axis, along which the star-chok’d depths near and far rush both inward and away, and soon, quite soon, billowing out of control. He collects that the Heavenly Dome has been put there as Protection, in an agreement among Observers to report only what it is safe to see. Fifteen years in the Business, and here is his Initiation.

  Now, nothing in the Sky looks the same. “As to the Comet,— I cannot account for how,— but there came this night, to this boggy Miasmatick place, an exceptional Clarity of the Air, . . . a sort of optickal Tension among the Stars, that seem’d ever just about to break radiantly thro’. . . . And there. In Leo, bright-man’d, lo, it came. It came ahead. And ’twould be but Prelude to the Finger of Corsica,— which now appear’d, pointing down from Heaven. And the place where it pointed was the place I knew I must journey to, for beneath the Sky-borne Index lay, as once beneath a Star, an Infant that must, again, re-make the World,— and this time ’twas a Sign from Earth, not only from Heaven, showing the way.”

  “Quite so. . . . Yet I’m not terribly sure this ought to be in your report,” says Maskelyne, “— objections from the Clergy,— readily imagin’d, whatwhat?— leaving aside the question of, actually, well what does it mean?”

  “No Idea. I was in a kind of Daze. Have ye never fall’n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each Night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe but in Motion,— gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever in their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and staysails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam’d Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen’d? Are they agents of the absented Guardian,— and are these Its last waves, last Beckonings, over the tops of the Night Trees? An Astronomer in such a State of Inquiry’s apt to write nearly anything. How about yourself?”

  “Of course there are things one wishes to leave in, often yearns to. Then again, there are things one leaves in,— ”

  “Wondrous! Let’s strike the Passage, by all means. Now, what about the part ’round July, where I compare the Aurora Borealis to jell’d Blood,— do ye want that out, too?”

  “I was just coming to that. They’ve been frightfully picky of late about that Word. No one knows why.”

  “What? ‘Blood’? Well. Too bloody bad, isn’t it?” The Octagonal room echoes with indignation imperfectly mock’d. “Bloody Hell, now ye come to it,— ”

  Maskelyne looks about nervously. “Pray ye, Mason. There’s ever someone listening.”

  “What of it? You arre the A. Rrr.,— arrre ye not? Tell ’em bugger off.”

  He receives a long Look from Maskelyne he can’t recall ever having seen before.” ’Tis not the same Office, as it was in Bradley’s day . . . and your own. There will nevermore be disputes like this current one over his Obs,— ’tis said it may run on for years.”

  His Obs. Mason, who perform’d many of these Observations himself, and is consequently in the middle of the Quarrel, snorts, but does not charge.

  “Instead of the old Arrangements, we’ve now a sort of . . . Contract . . . rather lengthy one, indeed . . . in return for this,—” gesturing ’round, yet keeping his elbow bent, as if unable to extend his Arm all the way, “— they own my work, they own the products of my thinking, perhaps they own my Thoughts unutter’d as well. I am their mechanickal Cuckoo, perch’d up here in this airy Cage to remind them of the first Day of Spring, for they are grown strange, this Cohort, to the very Wheel of Seasons. I am allow’d that much usefulness,— the rest being but Drudging Captivity.”

  “Hum. Difficult Life. Excuse me, what’s this thing where the Astronomer’s Couch us’d to be?”

  “ ’Tis styl’d, by the knowing, a ‘Péché Mortel.’ One of Mr. Chippendale’s. Elegant, don’t you think? Clive bought it for me,” defiantly, the small eyes tightening for some assault, the lips remaining steady.

  “Who? Clive of India?” is all Mason says.

  “I meant, ‘for the Observatory,’ of course,” replies Maskelyne.

  “What would you do with Mortal Sin? when you wouldn’t know it if it came over and bought you a Pint.”

  “I have learn’d to simulate it, however, by committing a greater than usual number of the Venial ones.”

  Mason, trying not to stare too openly, has just realized that Maskelyne, direct from the Astronomer’s Couch, is wearing his favorite Observing Suit, a garment of his own design that his brother-in-law the famed Clive of India sent him from Bengal, where the Nabob had had it cut and sewn with painstaking fidelity to a thirty-page List of Instructions from Maskelyne. It is a three-piece affair, everything quilted, long jacket, waistcoat, and tr
ousers, which have Feet at the ends of them, all in striped silk, a double stripe of some acidick Rose upon Celadon for the Trousers and Waistcoat, and for the Jacket, whose hem touches the floor when, as now, he is seated, a single stripe of teal-blue upon the same color, which is also that of the Revers. . . . It is usually not wise to discuss matters of costume with people who dress like this,— politics or religion being far safer topicks. The Suit, Mason knows, is but one of a collection of sportive outfits from the Royal-Astronomical Armoire, run up to Maskelyne’s increasingly eccentric specifications by the subcontinental genius Mr. Deep, and his talented crew, and shipped to him express by East Indiaman, “the third-fastest thing on the Planet,” as Mun lik’d to say, “behind Light and Sound.”

  Nevil seems to miss the life, sleeping or drinking in the daytime, starting to come alive around Dusk, quickening with the Evening Shift. He and Mason pace about, the window-lensed afternoon sun heightening the creases beneath their chins, amid motes of wig-powder drifting in the glare of the beams. He exhibits a morally batter’d Air, and is not shy about discussing its origins. Once more the Harrison Watch, like an Hungarian Vampire, despite the best efforts of good Lunarians upon the Board of Longitude to impale it, has risen upon brazen wings, in soft rhythmic percussion, to obsess his Position, his dwindling circle of Time remaining upon Earth, his very Reason.

  “It reach’d its Peak in ’sixty-seven. The B. of L. in its Wisdom kept insisting on one trial after another, finally they hung it around my neck,— new in the job, what was I suppos’d to do, say no?— to oversee trials of the Watch at Greenwich, for G-d’s sake, for nearly a d——’d Year.” Maskelyne had been observ’d glaring at the lock’d case, to which he held the key, apostrophizing the miserable watch within that could render moot all his years’ Trooping in the service of Lunars, with more of the substance of his Life than he could healthily afford, stak’d upon what might prove the wrong Side. “Were Honor nought but Honor’s Honor kept,” some thought they heard, “All Sins might wash away in Tears unwept. . . .”

  “Couldn’t believe it,” reported the room-steward Mr. Gonzago, “like watching Hamlet or something, isn’t it? Went on like that for weeks,— he wanted to break in, he didn’t want to break in, he spent hours with scraps of paper, elaborating ways to damage the Watch that would never be detected,— he liv’d in this Tension, visible to all, between his conscience and his career.”

  (“Bringing it to Greenwich upon an unsprung Cart over the London Lanes might have done the job alone,” Mason suggests to Maskelyne, none too gently.)

  Retir’d Navigators and Ship’s Carpenters crept up the Hill to witness this, feeling like Macaronis who’ve paid their threepence at Bedlam. “Yesterday, so vouches my Mate, Old Masky, he scream’d and rav’d for quite an Hour.”

  “Let’s hope he’s not too tired to give us some kind of Show.”

  “I’d settle for a London Minute . . . ?”

  “Look at my side of it,” Maskelyne would blurt at them (too passionately, as he saw right away). “That is,” untying his Queue and commencing to scratch his Head furiously and at length, “they’ve put me in an impossible Position, haven’t they, I mean it isn’t a Secret of State that I’ve an interest in Lunars, nor that this blasted Harrison Watch is the sole Obstacle, between your servant, and the Prize he has earn’d fairly, at the cost of his Vision, his sleep, his engagement with Society. Ordinarily I’m the last one that ought to be giv’n any Authority over it, let alone the Key permitting Access. Yet if you ask why, you will hear,— ‘We are ensuring his Honesty this way,— he dasn’t fiddle with it now.’ And, ‘If the watch comes thro’ despite Maskelyne’s Curator-ship, why then has it seen the Fire, and conquer’d it.’ How am I suppos’d to feel? The Burden upon me is more than anyone should justly be made to bear.”

  “Like being the Swab who holds the Anchor-Pool.”

  “Aye! The Purser of Time!”

  “He looks a bit furtive to me, what say ye, Boats?”

  “Like settin’ a Spaniel to guard the Prize Cock.”

  “Gentlemen,” Maskelyne, according to some, scream’d. “Why this unfriendly Attendance? Is it the per Diem, is that it? You wish,— what? sixpence more? A Shilling?”

  Sham’d, disappointed in him, the Veterans of Cartagena and Minorca began to move sighing and mutt’ring away.

  “I am of Mathematickal Mind,— ’twould be an afternoon’s work,— recreation, rather,— to devise a way to destroy the Watch’s Chances forever,—and yet there is bound to be some Enquiry,— wherein each of my moments, since I was laden with this impossible Duty, must be accounted for,— yet already too many have pass’d in solitude, unwitness’d by others, such as your good Selves,— a Blank Sheet that invites Fiction and her vulgar Friends, Slander and Vilification, to sport upon it.— ”

  “Dodgy.”

  “Then why not be hung for a Sheep as a Lamb?” Maskelyne continued. “— I often find myself asking, not of G-d, exactly, but of whatever might be able to answer the Question. If the World already believe me party to a Fiddle, when I’m not, you understand, then why not go in there with a Hammer, heh, heh, so to speak, and really do a Job?”

  “Classickal,” grumbles Euphrenia.

  “Easy to find fault with the Reverend Dr. Maskelyne,” her brother agrees, “though with our Eleventh Commandment, I must not speak ill of another Clergyman. His behavior toward Mason was ever consistent with that of a brotherly Rival for the love of, and the succession from, their ‘Father,’ Bradley. Did he, in posting Mason out of England, employ a Code,— to Cavan in order to put him once again among Ulstermen as he’d been upon the Pennsylvania frontier . . . to Schiehallion out of some mean desire to remind him of the error Cavendish pointed out, due to the Allegheny Mountains,— or, Cavendish being after all more Enemy than friend, were these rather simple Kindnesses in standing by an old colleague and ally? The long-winded Letters to Mason in the Field, tho’ surely meant to assert his personal Authority, may reveal nothing beyond the desire, out of resentments unvoic’d, to bore their Recipients into compliance,— at Cambridge he had been now and then upon the receiving end of a ‘Jobation,’ or lengthy Reproof, and perhaps this was his way of reasserting in his Life a balance (having been born beneath the Scales) that would otherwise have been set a-lop by an excess of Patience. It also appears that he did what he could to support Mason’s claim to Prize money from the Board of Longitude for his Refinements to Mayer’s Lunar Tables, whilst seeking none for himself. And he back’d the younger Harrison’s admission to the Royal Society, despite the ease with which his opposition might have been understood and excus’d. Nor was his Approach to the Longitude ever the most congenial to’ve taken,— the method of Lunars being by no means universally lov’d, its tediousness indeed often resented, and not only by Midshipmen trying to learn it,— many wish’d for a faster way, willing to cede to Machinery a form of Human Effort they could’ve done without.”

  Maskelyne fancied that, when he became Astronomer Royal, there might be an Investiture, a Passage, a Mystery . . . an Outfit. He began designing, with the utmost restraint and taste of course, ceremonial Robes for himself, bas’d upon the Doctors’ Robes at Cambridge, Rose upon Scarlet, a black Velvet Hat, Liripipes, Tippets, Sleeves to the ground,— decorated all over with Zodiackal Glyphs, in a subdued Gold Passementerie. But to whom could he show it? The Royal Society might not approve. The King might be offended. When, at all, might he have occasion to wear it? Perhaps an occasion could be proclaim’d. Star Day. Ev’ryone up all night. No flame allow’d. Food misidentified in the Star-light, Lovers a-tip, and some glamorous Stars, like the Pleiades, upon the Rise.

  And the King would place in his hands something preserv’d from the days of the Astrologers,— a Prism, an Astrolabe, a Gift of Power,— he would be sworn to secrecy. Of course he would use it wisely. . . .

  Mason has almost presum’d to think of them as
old Troopers by now, with the Transits of Venus behind them, Harrison’s Watch, battles budgetary and vocal lost and won,— weary veterans of campaigns in which has loomed as well the amiable bean-pole Dixon, secretly afraid of what they were all caught up in doing, as if at the Behest of the Stars, which somehow had begun to take on for him attributes of conscious beings (“Seen it before,” quoth Maskelyne, “— Rapture without a doubt,— for some reason Dissenters are particularly susceptible . . . “), attacked by Vertigo if he continu’d too long at the eye-piece, lost in terror before the Third Dimension, indeed running, when there was a choice, to Earth rather than to Fire, desperate to pretend all was well, face kept as clear as the bottom of a stream in August, nothing visible at the fringes of readability,— who knew him, truly? What might wait, at the margins of the pool, mottled, still, river-silt slowly gathering upon its dorsal side?

  At the end of the day, all Mason knows of Maskelyne, is how to needle him. “Maskelyne,— I cannot go,”— yet as if uncertain as to how much Maskelyne intends to make him plead. “That is,” he cannot help adding, “if it pleases Your Grace.”

  The Astronomer Royal is not prepared. “Again you renounce me,” he does not exactly intend to blurt, his scowl appearing slowly, like a blush. “Bloody infuriating, Mason.”

  “I know. Why not have another bowl of café au lait? And,— look ye here, a lovely iced bun.”

  “Here,— suppose you go to Scotland only as a sort of Scout,— look at likely possibilities, report back to us.”