Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Well I don’t know what you may have heard about what we call Justice up here,” his Solicitor advises him, “but don’t set your Hopes too high.— Just enjoy your Time in Town, visit the Shops, take in a Show. . . .”

  Hell, of late, has been growing so congested, that the Gentleman is happy enough to come up to Pennsylvania,— even Philadelphia in the Morning Rush seems to him a Prairie desolate,— and who even knows how many years this lawsuit may take? To him, as to the Deity, ’tis the blink of an Eye. “Damn’d Souls, you think I even like damn’d Souls? I go down to that Rout call’d ‘Processing,’ see them crowding in, more and more ev’ry day, I grasp the Situation, but don’t enjoy it? Who could enjoy it?”

  “Upon consideration, I think you’re better advis’d not to sue in any of our courts. You could get fried like a Fritter, and Counsel along with you. Don’t you have any, um, machinery for resolving this, out there in the Cosmos, wherever you come from?”

  “A legal system? Us? Ha, ha, ha. What for? We’re a Rubbish-tip, Sir! for all your worst Cases!— not that we get to pick or choose,— tho’ we do have to deal with the Consequences for Eternity, of course,— yet, there I go, complaining again . . . oh and by the way, I’m anything but ‘out in the Cosmos,’ no no, being but Earth’s D——l, local lad, working, in fact, for His Omnipotence these days, ha-hah yes, once an equal and respected Adversary, now but another contract employee. Ah, woe . . . and forget about Luncheon,— does he even write? once a century, maybe! If any of these damn’d Souls could see the misery I get, maybe they wouldn’t groan so much.”

  “Howbeit, Milord,— my best advice is, Drop the case.”

  “Suppose we just go for the money. He can keep his Soul, but posting this kind of Debit isn’t going to amuse my Commissioners.”

  “Style it an ‘Investment.’ Say the huge sum was to ensure his Corruption. You were developing a damn’d Soul.”

  “Already us’d that one too much, they shut me down a few sessions back, alas. But you seem like a Mortal of some ingenuity. Perhaps from time to time we could chat.”

  “Those would, of course, be billable Hours.”

  62

  In the Conoloways, on the Twenty-second of April,— the first point of Aries,— it snows all night, four inches of it upon the Ground when the Axmen wake, and merrily begin to form it into Missiles or stuff it down the backs of one another’s Breeches. Springtide. Mason puts his head out the Tent-Flap and is caught in an intimate Avalanche down the side of the Tent. Dixon has his hat knock’d off by a Snowball, and goes chasing Tom Hynes ’round the Cook-Waggon.

  “I dreamt of a City to the West of here,” Dixon tries to recall, scrying in his Coffee-Mug, the wind blowing Wood-smoke in his eyes, “at some great Confluence of Rivers, or upon a Harbor in some inland Sea,— a large City,— busy, prospering, sacred.”

  “A Sylvan Philadelphia. . . .”

  “Well . . . well yes, now tha put it thah’ way,— ”

  “I hope you are prepar’d for the possibility, that waking Philadelphia is as sacred as anything over here will ever get, Dixon,— observe you not, as we move West, more and more of those Forces, which Cities upon Coasts have learn’d to push away, and leave to Back Inhabitants,— the Lightning, the Winter, an Indifference to Pain, not to mention Fire, Blood, and so forth, all measur’d upon a Scale far from Philadelphian,— whereunto we, and our Royal Commission, and our battery of costly Instruments, are but Fleas in the Flea Circus. We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.”

  “Eeh, chirpy today . . . ? yet do I wish thee joy of thy dreams, Mason. I knaah the ones just before tha wake are most pleasant to thee,— having myself by then been long awake, from reluctance to re-visit the Horrors of my own, and so able to observe thee.”

  “How, then? Do I talk in my sleep, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Oh, aye. But tha needn’t worry, no one would make it out, ’tis all another Language.”

  “I’m talking, another Language, in my Sleep,— Dixon?”

  “Don’t see what the whim-wham’s about,— ”

  “Possession!— That is, somebody else’s soul, possessing my body, whilst I sleep,— that’s what it’s about!”

  “Why aye, whilst tha’re away dreaming, that’s what some would say, and others would add, What of it? Don’t squint, ask the Reverend. Tha’ve a Dream-body, what use to thee’s the solid one, for the time tha sleep? Here’s some wand’ring Soul who may have been centuries without sleep, who may’ve indeed forgotten what sleep feels like, who, had Winding-Sheets pockets to carry it, might’ve offer’d pounds of Gold, for even a quarter-hour’s rest . . . and here thy body is, as an Inn in the Wilderness, heated, drain’d, provision’d, and but for a beating Heart and a dormant Brain, vacant. Surely ’tis only the mildest of inconveniences— ”

  “Then tell me, Mirth,— where might this alien Ghost be, whilst I’m not dreaming? In what sort of humor?”

  “Busy looking for another Habitation, I’d imagine . . . ? Apprehensive . . . ?”

  “Well,— this won’t do, will it.”

  “Not if tha feel this way. Here,— why not have Captain Zhang ’round someday to stand just outside, listen closely, and see what he can make of it . . . ?”

  “Too intimate.”

  “Half the Camp hears it. Some take it for Indians. Axmen say, if so, ’tis a Nation they have not yet encounter’d.”

  Later in the day, as they emerge from a Woodline, Mason gesturing eastward to where the encampment has swung into view, a Flight of sail,— “Something waits, directly in the Path of our Parallel,— too sure of itself to feel oblig’d to come forward and meet us,— and Lo,— what is to become of this rolling Gypsy village we’ve brought with us?” Late sun, early Shadow in the tent-riggings. Pots a-clattering, kitchen smoke sucked out of Vents by the wind passing over. “None of this may be about either you or me. Our story may lie rather behind and ahead, and only with the Transits of Venus, never here in the Present, upon the Line, whose true Drama belongs to others,— Darby, Cope, Tom Hynes, Mr. Barnes, some new hire we don’t even see,— and when ’tis all done I shall only return to Sapperton, no wiser, and someday wake up and not know if any of this ‘happen’d,’ or if I merely dream’d it, even this very moment, Dixon, which I know is real. . . .”

  “Oh dear . . . ?”

  For a while, at any rate, it appears to be the Drama of Stig, the Merry Axman, with ev’ryone else scurrying ’round out of sight, switching Wigs and Coats, appearing in the Proscenium only when needed,— “and whom has Stig ever needed?” as Mrs. Eggslap is apt to sigh, even in his hearing. But Stig, working diligently upon his Ax-bit, requires as near to perfect clarity of mind as he may achieve. It is this apparently single-minded concentration that at length draws the Attention of Light-Fingers McFee, in the midst of whose rummaging thro’ Stig’s Sea-Chest, Stig makes his Entrance, Ax in Hand.

  “What is this?” he inquires.

  “Ha! What is this?” brandishing an un-roll’d Sheet of Parchment cover’d with elaborate Seals and antiquated writing in some other Language, possibly Swedish.

  Stig holds out his hand. “Give it.”

  McFee gazes at the Ax-Bit’s shining Edge, considering. “Indians!” he yells.

  “What does it mean, ‘Indians’?” Stig asks, of an empty Tent, for McFee has zipp’d away. Stig roars and chases after him, as they go kicking over Laundry-K
ettles, tripping over Tent-Guys and causing Tents to collapse, stopping at the Commissary to throw Potatoes and Onions at each other furiously for a full minute,— till in rides Capt. Shelby’s co-officer out here, Mr. Joseph (“Continuation Joe”) Warford, who detains them both, and after all have proceeded to the Cook-tent, has a look at the mysterious Parchment.

  “Hum. Swedish is it, Stig?”

  “Latin,” Stig replies.

  “Now then Stig, out with it,” demands Capt. Shelby, “— or them yingle-yanglin’ days is past and gone.”

  “Very well.— I am here on behalf of certain Principals in Sweden, who believe that the Penns, being secretly creatures of Rome, took illegally the original Svånssen land ’pon which Philadelphia would later come to sit,— and thus that the whole Metropolis has never ceas’d to belong, rightfully, to Sweden.”

  “What,— Swedish Jacobites!” exclaims Dixon, “sort of thing . . . why, Stig . . . ?”

  “Amid the glitter of your great World, the Flame of our cause may be easily overlook’d, . . . yet it burns hotly enough that certain Hands long accustom’d to Thievery durst not venture too close. Swedes have been here from the beginning, living among the Indians in peace, with no need to obtain their land falsely,— indeed, for Penn, Swedes were but another tribe of Indian, residing within his American Grant, whose Priority there he found no less irksome,— which is why, at bottom, there ever was a Boundary Dispute, and these Astronomers are come here at all.”

  “Stig,” cries Mrs. Eggslap, “I had no idea! why, you can talk! I’ll go bail for him gladly, Your Grace.”

  “Surely,” protests the Camp-Lawyer Mr. Barnes, “if this be a Swedish claim, ’tis advanced in a less than timely way, Sir.— Eighty years and more, Kings have come and gone. How do you expect to fare in this?”

  “I am but an Agent, Sir. For a greater View of Motive and Interest, beyond our own simple desire for Justice, you might ask among your Jesuitick acquaintance.”

  “If that’s a remark about me,—” Dixon in full truculency.

  “Gentlemen! Ladies!” cries the Justice of the Peace. “Must I read the Riot Act? I do so, I am told, most affectingly, having been compared indeed with Mr. Whitefield,— though I take in far less in donations, of course.” (This seems to many a blatant request for a Bribe, tho’ others maintain ’tis but innocent Joaking.) “Now then Stig, give us your account, man.”

  “Do any of you know,” Stig inquires, “what I have come down to you out of? The Frost eternal, the Whiteness abounding, beneath that all-night Sun? In the Royal Library in Copenhagen lies an ancient Vellum Manuscript, a gift from Bishop Brynjolf to Frederick the Third, containing Tales of the first Northmen in America, of those long Winters and the dread Miracles that must come to pass before Spring,— the Blood, the Ghosts and Fetches, the Prophecies and second Sight. . . . And the melancholy suggestion, that the ‘new’ Continent Europeans found, had been long attended, from its own ancient Days, by murder, slavery, and the poor fragments of a Magic irreparably broken.

  “To enter the Capes of Delaware, was thus, for me, to pass the Pillars of Hercules,— not outward, into the simple Mysteries of an open Sea, but inward,— branching, narrowing, compressing toward an Enigma as opaque and perilous as any in my Travels. All day we ascended, and at dusk, finally approach’d Philadelphia Irredempta, ceaselessly a-clamor in the torch-light, headlong, as if in continuous Arrival from the Future,— the mesopotamian Idyll of the Svånssens, as vanish’d as Eden.

  “As I stood among the hectic Mobility at Dock-Side, uncertain as to my next Step, a foreign Hand tapp’d at my mantle. A voice bade me good day, using my Christian name. I shiver’d, though I seldom do, ordinarily. ’Twas not a Voice I knew,— yet, terribly, I knew it well. Unprepared for any reception here, nonetheless I went with him through the necessary exchanges of Counter-seals and words that may never be written down and the like,— I stammer’d some kind of thanks for having been met. I can remember no longer what he look’d like. A closed Carriage approach’d,— ”

  “Hold,” cries Capt. Shelby, “— what is this,— Elect Cohens, Bavarian Rosicrucians? Come, Stig, admit it,— you’re not Swedish at all . . . are you?”

  “Sir,— ’tis for you to work out,— let us say, that my people are of the North, Northern and very White, so white in fact that you British to us appear as do Africans, to you.” He pauses, as one telling a Joak pauses for laughter, but all are silent, puzzling how white that might be. Stig presses on. “The first thing we learn to do, however, before we even learn to fish, is to impersonate Swedes,— for our Nation much prefer to remain unmolested, in return for sending south a few Emissaries now and then, like sacrificial youths and maidens, into the Sin-laden World, posing as Finns, Swedes, the odd Hungarian,— a Corps of Intermediaries for Hire, of whom I am honor’d to be one.”

  “Working as an agent for Swedish Jacobites unnam’d,” Mr. Warford writing vigorously.

  “My Contract runs for a year. By next year, Sweden, ‘Dusky Olaf,’ as we like to personify the place, may no longer wish to pursue his Claim. Then I shall have to be an A-gent for someone else.” His Eye-lashes Stirrings of Light, his Brow pale and trackless as an Arctic Shore. “No Question I shall find Work with some American Province. After Mr. Franklin’s success in London, Colonial Agents will be much in demand, as hard put to meet the Standards he has set.”

  “What I don’t quite grasp,” says Mr. Warford, “is how felling Trees all day is going to help the Swedes take Philadelphia back.”

  “Healthy Exercise,” replies Stig. “Learning the Pioneer Arts,— in particular, the production of Vistoes. Ya, Vistoes to us may prove quite important,— as the Shape of a Lance once held within it the Shape of the Tilting-Lists wherein ’twould be us’d, so do these Lancaster County Rifles, with an amazing Fidelity, create their own Vistoes of moving Lead, straight as a Ray of Light for a Mile or more,— quite terrible for the unfortunate Squirrel over on the next Ridge-line, who imagines he has found safety.”

  “You anticipate an arm’d attack against Philadelphia?”

  “Is that so fanciful? The Paxton Boys nearly succeeded last year, didn’t they? and those were Scots, Welsh, Irish,— southern Races. Imagine next time, a Band, similarly arous’d, of healthy Swedes.”

  “Should you be sharing their Intentions this way, Sir?”

  Stig shrugs genially. “Nothing is certain. Were the Time ever to come, the Continent should know.”

  “Aye, and you’ll fare as well as Braddock did,” declares Mr. Boggs, “for there’s no room for your European Anticks over here in the Woods.”

  “Braddock’s Vistoe was not wide enough,” declares Stig. “Correctly prepar’d for and executed, techniques from the Prussian Plains, where Science and Slaughter were ever fruitfully conjoin’d, remain unsurpass’d. . . .”

  “Tell ’em, Soldier!” adds Zsuzsa Szabó. “If it’s not fit for Cavalry, it’s not fit for war. The Future’s out West, not creeping ’round these Woods.”

  “Bugs in your Hair,” notes Eliza Fields.

  “Too much green in the Day-light, as Grease in the Candle-light,” adds Patience Eggslap. “Yet if it hadn’t been for Trees, I’d probably never have found Stig.”

  “Was I lost?” Stig inquires. “When?”

  Terrain begins to get “banky,” as Dixon styles it. There are not as many Settlements, Forges, Saw-mills, or planted Fields. The last Market-Roads are cross’d,— the three between Antietam and Conococheague, the Fort Bedford Road, and finally, Braddock’s Road,— Lingering prolong’d, gazing North and South, for whatever Traffick there might be,— each Road abruptly, too soon, behind them. They have enter’d that strewn and charr’d Theater of the late War, where Indians are still being shot by white men, and whites scalp’d by Indians, who yet pass upon their forbidden Trails, and watch invisibly from the Forests,— and there’s no one who can t
ell the Surveyors whether or not ’tis a District any more in reach of the Treaty of Paris than were Pontiac and his Armies the summer before the Surveyors arriv’d in America.

  Hickman, Gibson, and Killogh, veterans of Braddock’s Defeat, depress the Spirits of the Company with Tales of that Tragedy, of how the Bears came out of the Trees to feed upon the Corpses of English soldiers, “A Defile of Ghosts growing, with the Years, more desperate and savage, to Settlers and Indians alike. You’d not wish this Line to pass too close to them, I shouldn’t think.”

  “Do yese Damage,” nods Alex McClean.

  Their last ten-minute Arc-Segment, this time out, lands them about two miles short of the Summit of Savage Mountain, beyond which all waters flow West, and legally the Limit of their Commission. They set a Post at 165 Miles, 54 Chains, 88 Links from the Post Mark’d West and, turning, begin to widen the Visto, moving East again, Ax-blows the day long. From the Ridges they can now see their Visto, dividing the green Vapors of Foliage that wrap the Land, undulating Stump-top yellow, lofty American Clouds a-sailing above, and, “This day from the Summit of Sidelong Hill I saw the Line still formed the arch of a lesser circle very beautiful, and agreeable to the Laws of a Sphere,” as Mason records.

  “Yet,” he confides to Capt. Zhang, “this unremitting Forest,— it disturbs me. Far, far too many trees.”

  “Consider,” replies the Geomancer, “— Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten’d. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten’d. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling Apple,— and he was enlighten’d. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto is.”