The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “We stayed some days there in her chamber, sending out for food till our hire was spent; when we went down again together to the street, ’twas with a certain pact between us, that lasted till the night o’ your wager with Ben Oliver.”

  “In plain English,” remarked the Captain, “ye was her pimp.”

  “In plainer,” McEvoy replied without hesitation, “we twain were to the arts o’ love like the hands o’ the lutist to his music: together, at our proper work, we could set Heaven’s vaults a-tremble; all else was the common business of survival, to be got o’er by whatever means were most expedient. I’d no more have quarreled with her arrangements than I’d quarrel with the sum o’ history, or cavil at the patterns of the stars.”

  “For all that,” Bertrand remarked, “thou’rt no nearer Maryland now than when ye started, and this night shan’t last forever.”

  “Let him tell on,” the Captain said. “ ’Tis either a tale or the Shuddering Fearfuls in straits like these.”

  “Aye, John, tell on,” Ebenezer encouraged. “How is’t you knew Joan Toast had followed me? And how is’t you fell into Tom Tayloe’s hands?”

  “Tayloe! Ye’ve heard o’ Tom Tayloe and me?”

  Ebenezer explained the circumstances of his acquaintanceship with the corpulent seller of indentured servants. McEvoy was vastly amused; indeed, he laughed as heartily at the news of Tayloe’s indenture to the cooper William Smith as if he were hearing the story in Locket’s instead of a prison-hut, and the Captain was moved to observe, “Methinks ’tis he should be merry, not you, sir; he hath the better bargain after all!”

  “Aye and he hath,” Ebenezer agreed. “But e’en were we not here in the very vestibule of death, ’twould ill become us to jest at the man’s bad luck.”

  McEvoy laughed again. “What humanists death hatches out of men! Ye have forgot what a worthless wretch Tom Tayloe was, that preyed on masters and servants alike!”

  “A wretch he might have been,” the poet allowed, “and deserving of your prank; but his time is no less mortal than our own, and to rob him of four years of’t is to carry the jest too far.” He sighed. “I’Christ, when I think of the weeks and years I’ve squandered! Precious mortal time! I begrudge every day I spend not writing verse!”

  “And I every night I slept alone in London,” Bertrand said fervently.

  “As for that,” the Captain put in, “what matter if a man lives seven years or seventy? His years are not an eyeblink to eternity, and de’il the way he spends ’em—whether steering ships or scribbling verse, or building towns or burning ’em—he dies like a May fly when his day is done, and the stars go round their courses just the same. Where’s the profit and loss o’ his labors? He’d as well have stayed abed, or sat his bum on a bench.”

  Although Ebenezer stirred uneasily at these words, remembering his state of mind at Magdalene College and in his room in Pudding Lane, he nevertheless reaffirmed his belief in the value of human time, arguing from the analogy of precious stones and metals that the value of commodities increases inversely with their supply where demand is constant, and with demand where supply is constant, so that mortal time, being infinitesimal in supply and virtually infinite in demand, was therefore infinitely precious to mortal men.

  “Marry come up!” McEvoy cried impatiently. “Ye twain remind me of children I saw once at St. Bartholomew’s Fair, queued up to ride in a little red pony cart…”

  He did not bother to explain his figure, but Ebenezer understood it immediately, or thought he understood it, for he said, “Thou’rt right, McEvoy; there is no argument ’twixt the Captain and myself. I recall the day my sister and I turned five and were allowed an extra hour ’twixt bath and bed. Mrs. Twigg would set her hourglass running there in the nursery; we could do whate’er we wished with the time, but when the sand had run ’twas off to bed and no lingering. I’faith, what a treasure that hour seemed: time for any of a hundred pleasures! We fetched out the cards, to play some game or other—but what silly game was worth such a wondrous hour? I vowed I’d build a castle out of blocks, and Anna set to drawing three soldiers upon a paper—but neither of us could pursue his sport for long, for thinking the other had chosen more wisely, so that anon we made exchange and were no more pleased. We cast about more desperately among our toys and games—whereof any one had sufficed for an hour’s diversion earlier in the day—but none would do, and still the glass ran on! Any hour save this most prime and measured we had been pleased enough to do no more than talk, or watch the world at work outside our nursery window, but when I cried ‘Heavy, heavy hangs over thy head,’ to commence a guessing game, Anna fell straightway to weeping, and I soon joined her. Yet e’en our tears did naught to ease our desperation; indeed, they but heightened it the more, for all the while we wept, our hour was slipping by. Now bedtime, mind, we’d ne’er before looked on as evil, but that sand was like our lifeblood draining from some wound; we sat and wept, and watched it flow, and the upshot of’t was, we both fell ill and took to heaving, and Mrs. Twigg fetched us off to bed with our last quarter hour still in the glass.”

  “Which teaches us—?” questioned McEvoy.

  “Which teaches us,” Ebenezer responded sadly, “that naught can be inferred to guide our conduct from the fact of our mortality. Nonetheless, if Malden were mine, I’d set Tom Tayloe free.”

  “But in the meanwhile I may laugh at him all I please,” McEvoy added, “which—philosophy be damned—is what I’d do in any case. D’ye want to hear my tale or no?”

  Ebenezer declared that he did indeed, although in fact his interest in McEvoy’s adventures waned with every speeding minute of the night, and he felt in his heart that his digression had been considerably more germane to their plight.

  “Very well, then,” the Irishman began; “the fact of’t is, I had at first no mind at all to come to Maryland. When Joan Toast left me I knew we were over and done—’tis her wont to give all or naught, as well ye know—yet no folly is too immense for the desperate lover, nor any contrary fact so plain that Hope cannot paint it to his colors. To be brief, I feared she’d follow ye off to Maryland, and in order to intercept her I took lodgings in the posthouse, put on my grandest swagger, and gave out to all and sundry I was Ebenezer Cooke, the Laureate of Maryland…”

  ‘ ’Sheart, another!” Ebenezer cried. “Maryland hath an infestation of laureate poets!”

  “ ’Twas a wild imposture,” McEvoy said good-humoredly. “Heav’n knows what I meant to do if Joan Toast sought me out! But in any case my tenure was wondrous brief: I had scarce raised a general toast to the Maryland muse ere a gang of bullies burst in with some tale of a stolen ledger-book, and being told I was Master Eben Cooke the poet, they straightway hauled me off to jail.”

  “La, now!” laughed Bertrand. “There’s a mystery cleared, sirs, that hath plagued me these many months whene’er I thought of’t! When I came to the posthouse to hide from Ralph Birdsall’s knife—that I wish I’d suffered, and been a live eunuch instead of a dead one!—what I mean, when I asked about for the Laureate, I heard he’d been fetched off to prison. ’Twas that very tragedy inspired me to take his place and flee to Plymouth; yet when Master Eben found me on the Poseidon, he vowed he’d ne’er been set upon by Ben Bragg’s men and thought me a liar. Doth this news not absolve me, sir?”

  “No fear of that,” replied the poet. “ ’Tis too late in the day for aught but general absolution. There are some small lacunae yet, as’t were, in the text of your pretty tale—but let them go. What did you then, McEvoy? I pray you were not held long for my little theft.”

  “Only till the following morn,” McEvoy said, “when Bragg came round and saw he’d hooked the wrong fish. By then I’d lost my taste for farther nonsense; I resolved to quit my search for Joan and commence the mighty labor of forgetting her. I returned to my old pursuits among the wealthy, but though I had some small success at first, my years with Joan had spoiled me: the ladies felt a small scorn in my rutting, belike,
or heard some certain coldness in my voice… In any case I was soon unemployed and anon was driven to lute it on the street-corners for my living, by Botolph’s Wharf and the Steel Yard, and Newgate Market, where my life began. What I earned I spent on whores, to no avail: when a man hath lain a thousand nights with his beloved and no other, he knows her from crown to sole with all his senses—every muscle, every pore, every sigh; every action of her limbs and heart and mind he knows as he knows his own. Put some other wench beside him in the dark: her mere displacement of the air he feels at once as an alien thing; the simple press of her on the pallet is foreign to his senses; her very breathing startles him, so different in pitch and rhythm! She puts out an ardent hand: his flesh recoils as from some brute-o’-the-forest’s paw. They come together: i’Christ, how clumsy!—their arms, that would embrace, knock elbows or can find no place to lie; their legs entangle, that would entwine; their chins and noses will not fit. He would caress her: he pokes her ribs instead, or scratches her with a hangnail. Some amorous word or gesture takes him by surprise: he is unmanned, or like a green recruit, shoots his bolt ere the issue is fairly joined. In short, though he hath been to his beloved a master lutesman upon his lute, now he finds he hath bestrode a violincello, whereof he knows not gooseneck from f-hole; he hits no string aright, fingers blindly to no purpose, and in the end hath but a headache from his plucking.”

  The whole company, despite their position, were amused by this apostrophe; but the Irishman resumed his discourse in a sober voice:

  “Seeing that whores were not my medicine, I turned to rum and soaked myself to oblivion each night. My hands grew clumsy on the lute, my voice thickened and cracked, my ear went dull, and every night required more rum than the night before; so that anon I could not beg enough to drink on, and had perforce to turn to theft to gain my ends. Then one night—’twas a full three months after your departure—a sailorman gave me a shilling to sing Joan’s Placket Is Torn for him, and when I had done, declared himself so pleased that he filled me with rum at his own expense. ’Twas my guess he had some queer design—and little I cared, so he let me drink my fill! But I was wrong…”

  “God help ye, then,” the Captain muttered. “I can guess the rest: Ye was spirited off?”

  “I fell senseless in some inn near Baynard’s Castle,” McEvoy said, “and woke fettered in the ’tweendecks of a moving ship. At first I had no notion whither we sailed or to what end I had been kidnaped, but anon some among us, that went unfettered, declared they were redemptioners bound for Maryland and explained ’twas not uncommon for a certain sort of captain to fill out his cargo with wharf rats like myself and the half-dozen others who had waked to find themselves leg-ironed to a ship.

  “Presently the first mate made us a speech, whereof the substance was that we were in his debt for being saved from our old profligacy and ferried without charge to a land where we might build our lives anew, and that any man of us who honored this obligation and pledged himself to act accordingly would be freed of his leg iron then and there. All the rest were glad enough to swear whatever lying pledge he pledged ’em, but when I saw that this pious first mate was the very wretch who had undone me the night before, I let fly such a grapeshot of curses that he ruined my mouth with his boot and swore he’d starve me into virtue or into Hell ere the voyage was done.

  “Now a man like me, that hath been an orphan beggar all his life and feels neither shame nor poverty, is as free a man as any thou’rt like to find, and ’tis no wonder he grows most jealous of his liberty. ’Tis true I’d been jailed not long since for petty stealing, and once ere that when I posed as Laureate; but both times ’twas my own misdoings brought me to jail, and since by liberty is meant one’s rights, ’tis no loss of liberty to be justly jailed for crime. Contrariwise, ’tis a gross offence against liberty to be fettered against one’s wishes and for no just cause, and the wights who swore that scandalous oath to shed their leg irons, so far from gaining any liberty thereby, did but surrender the dearest liberty of all—the right to rail against injustice.”

  “There is much wisdom in what you say,” Ebenezer remarked, considerably impressed by McEvoy’s words and humbled anew, not only by his suspicion that under similar circumstances he would not have displayed such integrity, but also by his conviction—no less disquieting for its present irrelevancy—that McEvoy was far more worthy of Joan Toast than was he, and had been so from the beginning.

  “Wise or foolish, ’twas my sentiment in the matter,” McEvoy said, “and albeit I tasted the whoreson’s leather oft and oft in the days that followed, at least ’twas ne’er by licking his boots I learnt the flavor. He did not quite starve me to death as he had promised, whether because he took such pleasure in kicking me or because he was loath to let me perish unrepentant. I was moved from the ’tweendecks into the hold lest I start a mutiny by my example, and I ne’er saw daylight again till the end of the voyage, when they fetched me up on deck to sell with the rest.”

  “Whereupon,” Ebenezer put in, “if Tayloe told me aright, you straightway leaped into the river and made for your liberty—but they fished you out.”

  “Aye, and saved my life, for I learned too late I had not strength enough to swim ten strokes. And on reflection it seemed a fair choice to go with Tayloe; I judged his brains to be as swinish as his manner, and guessed ’twould be no great matter to outwit him at the proper moment. I only wish my friend Dick Parker had been less rash—but I’ve not told ye about Dick Parker, have I? No matter: we swim in an ocean of story, but a tumblerful slakes our thirst. Besides, the night’s nigh done, is’t not? To conclude, then, gentlemen; I bartered Tom Tayloe for a horse, as Eben hath told—and a foundered jade at that, but worth a score o’ servant-brokers—and since I’d learnt I was in Maryland I resolved to ride out privily to Cooke’s Point, merely to satisfy myself that Joan was there and happy in her choice.” He laughed. “La, what rot is that? I rode out in hopes she’d had her fill of innocence! I knew my wretched case would move her to pity and I prayed she might mistake that pity for love. ’Twas a desperate piece o’ wishing and proved false in two respects: her plight, I found, was far more wretched than mine, but neither pox nor opium nor cruelty, nor the face o’ death itself—how much less pity!—could turn her from her course once she had set it.

  “I did not tarry: Tom Tayloe, I supposed, would turn the country inside out to find the fugitive that gulled him. I resolved to make my way to Virginia, if I could find it, or Carolina, and haply join some crew o’ pirates. To this end I joined company with a runaway Negro slave that had been chained with me in the ship’s hold—one o’ Parker’s chief lieutenants, he was, named Bandy Lou, that had learnt a mickle English. ’Twas his idea we make for Bloodsworth Island, which he had heard was a-swarm with fugitives like ourselves. We didn’t know they love a white man as the Devil loves holy water, and when we learned it, ’twas all too late: Bandy Lou they welcomed as a brother, but me, for all his pleadings, they trussed up and put aside against the day—”

  “Hi there!” the Captain interrupted. “What’s that I hear?”

  McEvoy left his sentence unfinished, and the prisoners strained to listen. From far off in the marshes came a series of sharp cries, like the cawing of a crow, and the guard outside their hut responded in kind.

  “Some new arrivals to the grand Black Mass,” McEvoy murmured. “They’ve been coming in every night this week.”

  The signal cries were repeated, and then in the distance the prisoners could hear a deep, rhythmical mutter, as of many men rumbling a soft chant as they marched. The sentry outside sprang up and cried to the slumbering village some terse announcement, which effected an immediate stir among the huts. People chattered and bustled about the square; sharp orders were issued; new logs clumped and crackled on the fire; and the chant grew clearer and stronger all the while.

  “I’faith, ’tis like no Indian song I’ve heard before,” the Captain whispered.

  “Nay, ’tis a black man’s c
hanting, by the pitch and rhythm of’t,” McEvoy replied. “I heard Dick Parker and Bandy Lou sing the like of’t in the ship’s hold, and the Africans hereabouts have done the same for the last few nights. ’Sheart, but it makes the hackles rise! ’Tis no good news for us, me-thinks.”

  “Why is that?” Ebenezer asked sharply.

  “They have been waiting for their two chief men to smuggle across the Bay,” McEvoy said. “One is the leader of the blacks, and the other’s the strongest of the salvage kings that the Governor hath unseated. That much I know from Bandy Lou, that whispered to me some days back through the wall of this hut. They’ve ne’er been reckless enough to sing so loud before: I’ll wager ’tis their majesties have come to town, and the circus is ready to start.”

  And indeed, as the new arrivals filed into the common, the villagers took up the chant, cried out wild cries, beat drums to mark the rhythm, and—as best the prisoners could judge from sound alone—commenced some vigorous dance around the fire. Bertrand sucked his breath and moaned, and Ebenezer began to tremble involuntarily in every limb. Not even McEvoy could quite preserve his self-control: he fell to intoning oaths and curses in a hissing whisper, like paternosters recited with teeth on edge.

  Only Captain Cairn remained calm. “ ’Twere folly to wait for their tortures,” he declared soberly. “We’re all dead men at the end of the chapter, why should we suffer ten times o’er for their heathen pleasure?”