Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  Tenebræ surveys the Pair. Unpromising. She sits, and bends to a Patch of Chevron-Stitch’d Filling.

  Meanwhile, Mason and Dixon, a-jangle thro’ Veins and Reins with Caffeous Humors, impatient themselves to speak, are launch’d upon the choppy Day, attending, with what Civility they may summon, the often reckless Monologues of others.

  “The true War here is between the City and the back Inhabitants,— the true dying, done by Irish, Scots, Indians, Catholics, far from Philadelphia, as from any Ear that might have understood their final words. Yet is the City selling rifles to anyone with the Price, most egregiously the Indians who desire our Dissolution,— ”

  “The rivalry is withal useful to the British, our common Enemy, who thus gain the pretext for keeping troops forever upon our Land.”

  “Whilst their damn’d Proclamation Line, forbids to venture there those same back Inhabitants who took Ohio, at great suffering, from the French. These damn’d British, with their list of Offenses growing daily, have much to answer for.”

  “Oh, I tremble that Britain should ever have to reckon with the base cowards who left Braddock to die,— who will turn and flee at the stir of a feather, be it but upon some dead Turkey-cock. Oh,— let us by no means offer Offense to the scum of Hibernia, nor to the Jacobite refuse of Scotland, nor to any one of this mongrel multiplicity of mud-dwellers, less civiliz’d, indeed less human, than the Savages ’pon whom they intrude.”

  “Is he in here again? Someone, pray, kill him.”

  “Reason, Reason,— the Irish, Sir are school’d long and arduously in Insurrection, knowing how to take a Magazine, or raid a Convoy. Britain, tho’ evoke she the tenderest feelings, has made it so.”

  Thus does the Lunch-Hour speed by. Soon there’s a distinct feeling in the Rooms, of Afternoon. Maps have been brought and spread, Pigeons bearing Messages dispatch’d from under Roof-peaks by expert Belgians, resident here, to as far away as Lancaster County. Boys old enough to handle a Rifle are drilling out in Back. Younger brothers are active at the next Order of Minitude, with long Sticks, whilst down at the next, the Dogs run obsessively to and fro, all ’round the Edges, faces a-twist with Efforts to understand. Down the Street ’round the Corner, into the City at large, the Sailors grumble in their candle-less Ale-Hovels, the devout Man of Business looks ahead to an hour dedicated again to the Daily Question, the Child trembles at the turn in the Day when the ghosts shift about behind the Doors, and out in the Gust-beaten wilderness come the Paxton Boys . . .

  Steadily on they ride, relax’d, in Poise,

  Rifles a-thwart,— the dreaded Paxton Boys.

  With Hunters’ Eyes, and ancient Wrongs a-ranklin’

  They soon come vis-à-vis with Mr. Franklin,

  Whose Gaze behind empurpl’d Lenses hidden,

  Cannot be seen, and so may not be bidden.

  — Tox, “The Siege of Philadelphia, or, Attila Turn’d Anew”

  ’Tis too cloudy for Obs tonight. Mason frets at the delay. As soon as they shall have taken Measurements enough to yield trustworthy Mean Values of the Zenith Distances of Algol, Marfak, Capella, and their other Latitude-Stars,— allowing them at last to compute the exact Latitude of the southernmost point of Philadelphia,— they can pack up and go looking for the next Observatory Site, someplace in that same Latitude, to the west of here.

  “Can’t be too soon for me,” Mason mutters. They are returning to their rooms, from the Observatory. Tavern music and hoofbeats racket upon the brick, often for blocks.

  “I was hoping we’d yet be in Town when those ‘Boys’ ride in,” Dixon all but sighs.

  “Why? The worst sort of Celtick Degenerates? Their Ancestors ate human flesh,— as their Relatives continue to, no doubt. They’ve tasted Blood, they’ll shoot at anything, especially, ehm, Targets of bright Color which fail to blend enough, with the Environment. No, the best thing for this Party to do, is not dawdle, but simply get on with our Work,— basically, get out of this place, and if possible, lose the red Coat.”

  “Mason, reflect,— as we must go West, into the Forks of Brandy-wine,— and as these Barbarians of thine are advancing to the East, we are likely to meet them well before anyone in Philadelphia does . . . ?”

  Mason frowns. “Yet,— suppose we kept ever fifteen miles to the south,— any roads we’d have to cross leading up from the South, not down from Harris’s Ferry,— the main body then ought to pass by to the north of us.”

  “Unless they’ve Rangers out, maybe even looking for huz . . . ?” wistfully.

  “Then you’d have your Adventure, after all. Tho’ why should they bother?”

  “Dunno . . . ? Happen we’re par-ticularly the Intruders they can’t abide . . . ? What must we look like? A sizable Band of Arm’d Pioneers, working for the Proprietors . . . ? mystical Machinery they’ve never seen . . . ? Up far too late at night, gazin’ at the Heavens . . . ? Why, what would thee think, were it revers’d?”

  “Mightn’t someone explain to them,— ”

  “We’d have to draw within earshot, first,— if Tales I hear of their Rifles be true, why those German Gun-Smiths out there know how to send a Ball thro’ a Pretzel, any Loop tha fancy, from a Mile away.”

  “You seem curiously merry at the Prospect.”

  “Merrily curious, rather, as to who commands them? Shall they really come against their Mother-City? Is this what America’s going to be like? How, as a Quaker born, can I feel toward them any Sentiments, but those of grievous Offense,— yet how, as a child of the ’Forty-five, can my Heart fail to break, for the Lives they’ve been oblig’d to live? And such Inquiries along that Line.”

  They are just passing the Door of The Restless Bee Coffee-House, one of those remaining active all night, and, as little able to resist the sounds of Company, as to pass Nose-numb before the Perfumes of Celebes, they enter the Midwatch Disputancy.

  “Now then,” Mason’s Phiz presently wreathed in Delphic Vapors, “that’s if ye’ll excuse me,— counter-marching a bit, ‘the ’Forty-five’? What would you possibly know, let alone remember, pray, of that fateful Year? You were a Child,— out there in a Pit-Cabin, wi’ nowt but Spoil-Heaps to look at,— missin’ it all, was the Tale ye told me, Lad!— Arrh! Arrh! The blithe piping of Youth, ever claiming a parrt in History,— I love it!” Somehow another fervent Cup is in his Hand, from which he sips at length, before singing,

  “When Night was Day

  And Day was Night

  Who, then, was the Jacobite?

  “Eh? Of course you were far, far too young to appreciate those Grand Days of ’forty-five and -six, all too electrickal with Passion,— ”

  “Thee, Mason,— a Jacobite?”

  “Anyone who was seventeen that summer, young Dixon, was a Jacobite.”

  Dixon does recall a band of Riders, cloak’d and mask’d, who clamor’d into Raby in the middle of the night. “I was watching from a Pantry window, down at Fetlock-level. . . . Boots, the Hems of Cloaks,— Tartan Patterns flashing ev’rywhere, tho’ the Colors in that light were uncertain. Even now I believe that it was he . . . I could feel . . . something of such Moment . . . such high Purpose . . . I knelt, transfix’d. I would have done whatever he bade me. ’Twas the only time in my life I have felt that Surrender to Power, upon which, as I have learn’d after, to my Sorrow, all Government is founded. Never again. No more a Maiden as to thah’, and thankee all the same.”

  “How so? He and his Forces came, and went, upon quite the other side of England,— the Irish side, most convenient to French Transport.”

  “And yet, could our Wishes have brought him . . .”

  “Well. Our Wishes. However little I have to expect from my own, yet am I not grown quite so melancholick, as to in any way question those of others.”

  “Thoughtful of thee, Mason . . . ?”

  “ ’Twas e
ver Sun-rise, Dixon, in those times,— I recall less well the Nights,— each morning bringing us in fresh news,— sightings of him ev’rywhere. We chose to loiter near the Houses with Pine Trees by ’em, such being a Coded Welcome to any Jacobite on the Run, as a sign of food and Shelter within.”

  “In Durham, sometimes when the Wind was fair, we could hear the Bag-Pipes, far away . . . we had never heard Music like it before . . . some Lads, aye and Lasses, would travel Miles to hear it. . . . Ah didn’t much fancy it, sad to say, much too predatory, less accountable for how it sounded,— less human, the ever-inflated Bag allowing the Player to decouple Song from Breath. It never paus’d for Breath. Can you imagine how unsettling that may’ve been? Not as a Wild Creature in the night, for ev’ry Beast must roar, yet draw Breath,— whilst this . . . comes swelling, invisible, resistless. Something that has pass’d beyond the need for Breath.”

  “I remember,— ’twas how Wolfe’s Men came to Stroud. Without Bag-Pipes at the Van, playing that Musick forbidden to all other Scots to play since 1745, and thereby doubly damn’d,— a-chaunting and a-keening all their loss, failure, hatred, may I say, of England,— frightening village after Village into Submission,— the Brits would never have prevail’d in India . . . in their Spoliation of Scotland they had learn’d the Power of that Cry that never Breathes, the direct Appeal to Animal Terror, and converted it to their Uses, leaving Loin-cloths besmear’d all up and down the Tropickal World. And here were they, as those for whom they march’d, doing the same to the Vale of my Birth and Blood.

  “The Clothiers had made of children my Age Red Indians, spying upon them from the Woodlands they thought were theirs. We call’d them ‘the White People,’ and the House they liv’d in, ‘the Big House.’ Splendid boyhood, you might say, but you’d be wrong,— what I had imagin’d a Paradise proving instead but the brightly illustrated front of the Arras, behind which all manner of fools lay bleeding, and real rats swarm’d, their tails undulating, waiting their moment. I discover’d the Rulers who do not live in Castles but in housing less distinct, often unable to remain past Earshot of the Engines they own and draw their Power from. Imagine you’re out late on a Spring night, riding along, with your Sweetheart, an Evening trembling with Promise, all the night an Eden,— ”

  “Should we be discussing this?”

  “Yes,— because all at once one has blunder’d sheep-eyed upon yet one more bloody Mill,— a river turn’d to a Race, the Works lit up in the dark like a great hostelry full of ill-humor’d Elves. Any chances for a few sentimental hours nipp’d, as ever in Glo’rshire, as soon as they may arise. You, simple Geordie, inhabit a part of England where ancient creatures may yet move in the Dusk, and the animals fly, and the dead pop in now and then for coffee and a chat. Upon my home soil, the Ground for growing any such Wonders has been cruelly poison’d, with the coming of the hydraulick Looms and the appearance of new sorts of wealthy individual, the late-come rulers upon whom as a younger person I spied, silent, whilst holding savage feelings within. I was expell’d from Paradise by Wolfe and his Regiment. One Penetration, and no Withdrawal could ever have Meaning. My home’s no more.”

  Does Dixon catch an incompletely suppress’d Lilt of Insincerity? Something’s askew. “Thoo are in Exile, then . . . ?”

  “With London but the first Station. Then came the Cape. Then St. Helena. Now,— these Provinces. You were there, and are here. You must have seen it,— each time, another step further. . . .”

  “Away . . . ? Away from . . . ?”

  “Perhaps not away, Dixon. No. Perhaps toward. Hum. Hadn’t considered that, hey, Optimism? Exercise yer boobyish Casuistry ’pon that, why don’t ye? Toward what?”

  “I the Booby . . . ? I . . . ? When indeed,—” but how much further up-field can he bring that, before a Brush from one of Rebekah’s potent Wings? “Toward what, then . . . ?” yet in the tone of a Fop to a Bedlamite, concealing the demand, “Amuse me.”

  32

  “And they proceeded to trade Blows,” cries Pitt.

  “Hurrah!” adds Pliny, “— they roll’d over and over, smash’d the Furniture, Mason got a Black Eye,— ”

  “— and Dixon a bloody nose!”

  “And the others came running, their Coins a-jingle, some pass-bank Bully hastily recording their wagers upon narrow scraps of Elephant,— ”

  “Lomax,—” chides Euphie.

  “Boys!” their Parents call. “Bed-Time.”

  “Us. To bed?” queries Pitt.

  “Who should be listening to a Tale of Geminity,” explains Pliny, “if not Twins?”

  “Your Surveyors were Twins,—” “— were they not, Uncle?”

  “Up to a point, my barking Fire-Dogs,”— the Revd having thought it over,— “as it seem’d to me, that Mason and Dixon had been converging, to all but a Semblance,— till something . . . something occurr’d between them, in ’sixty-seven or ’sixty-eight, that divided their Destinies irremediably. . . .”

  “Separated them?” cry the Twins.

  “Perhaps this would be a good moment for us to abandon the Narrative,” says Pitt.

  “Best to remember them just this way,” agrees Pliny, “before an inch of that Line was ever drawn.”

  “Bed-time for Bookends,” calls their Sister. The Express Packet Goose-down is whistling all non-Children ashore, back to their stormwreck’d Jetty, back to their gray unpromising Port-Town. There to bide far into the Night, exiles from the land their Children journey to, and through, so effortlessly.

  “What about Indians?” asks Pitt, adhering to the Door-Jamb.

  “You did mention Indians,” mutters Pliny, around his Brother’s Shoulder.

  “Do the Surveyors get to fight anyone, at least?”

  “Anyone kill’d?”

  “A Frigate-Battle isn’t enough for you Parlor-Apes?” the Revd smiting himself upon the Cheeks in dismay.

  “Pontiac’s Conspiracy?” Pitt hopefully.

  “Broken, alas, whilst the Surveyors were in Delaware, running the infamous Tangent Line, with its Consort of correctional Segments.”

  “The Paxton Boys?”

  “No likelier. Whilst they rode whooping and shooting upon Philadelphia, the Surveyors were out in the Forks of Brandywine, well south of the Invasion Route, with a new observatory up, and the Stars nimbly hopping the Wires for them, as they gaz’d from someplace here upon Earth’s Surface, yet in their Thoughts how unmappable. . . .”

  “May we have Indians tomorrow, Uncle?”

  “Of course, Pitt.”

  “Pliny, Sir.”

  “The Younger.” Off they go.

  Tenebræ, now the youngest of the company, brings in fresh candles and fills the Tea-kettle and puts it upon the Hearth. DePugh and ’Thelmer observe her covertly as she moves seemingly unaware of the effect her flex’d Nape, her naked Ear swiftly re-conceal’d by a shaken Tress, her Hands in the Firelight, are having upon them.

  If Mason’s elaborate Tales are a way for him to be true to the sorrows of his own history (the Revd Cherrycoke presently resumes), a way of keeping them safe, and never betraying them, in particular those belonging to Rebekah,— then Dixon’s Tales, the Emersoniana, the ghosts of Raby, seem to arise from simple practical matiness. Who, if not Mason, at any given moment, needs cheering? A cheerful Party-Chief means a cheerful Party.

  “Directly before the Falmouth Packet sail’d,” he begins, one night as they wait for a Star, “William Emerson presented me with a small mysterious Package. . . .”

  “ ’Twill not be an easy journey,—” quoth he, “there’ll be days when the Compasses run quaquaversally wild, boxing themselves, and you, into Perplexity,— or happen the Stars be absented for fortnights at a time, with your own Pulse, as ever, a suite of changing Tempi. Then will a reliable Ticker come in handy. This one, as you see, is too tarnish’d and
wounded, for any British or French thief to consider worth an effort,— yet, Americans being less sophisticated, I’m oblig’d, Jeremiah, to enjoin ye,— be vigilant, to the point of Folly, if Folly it takes, in your care of this Watch, for within it lies a secret mechanism, that will revolutionize the world of Horology.”

  “Eeh! Calculates when she’s over-charging, and by how much, something like thah’?”

  “What it does do, Plutonian,” Emerson told him, patiently, “is never stop.”

  “Why aye. And upon the hour it sings ‘Yankee Doodle’ . . . ?”

  “You’ll see. ’Tis all in the design of the Remontoire.”

  “The first thing an Emerson pupil learns, is that there is no Perpetual-Motion,” said Dixon, “which I am in fact all these years later still upset about, Sir,— perhaps in some strange way holding thee responsible.”

  “What’re we to do . . . ? ’Tis a Law of the Universe,— Prandium gratis non est. Nonetheless, if we accept the Theorem ‘Hand and Key are to Main-spring, as Clock-train is to Remontoire,’ then the Solution ever depends upon removing time-rates from questions of storing Power. With the proper deployment of Spring Constants and Magnetickal Gating, Power may be borrow’d, as needed, against repayment dates deferrable indefinitely.”

  “Sir,— why would thee entrust to me anything so valuable, in so unruly a Country? If it got into the wrong Pocket,— ”

  “If anyone tries to dis-assemble it to see how it works, upon the loosening of a certain unavoidable Screw, the entire Contraption will fly apart into a million pieces, and the Secret is preserv’d.”

  “But the Watch,— ”

  “Oah, another’s easily built,— the Trick’s uncommonly simple, once ye’ve the hang of it.”

  “Then why aren’t these ev’rywhere? If we are arriv’d in the Age of Newton transcended . . . ? Perpetual-Motion commonplace . . . ? why’s it yet a Secret?”

  “Interest,” chuckl’d Emerson, cryptickally. “In fact, Compound Interest! Eeh, eeh, eeh!”