Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  Ho groans. “Our heads, for a little indigestion?”

  “Why they call them ‘Heads of State,’ I suppose. . . .”

  “Hsi! we are in Danger! What do we do?”

  “Escape,” reckons Hsi. Looking Earthward, they now see below them a body of men in dark, gleaming Armor, gathering into columns in the damag’d light.

  “How,” inquires Ho, his voice higher than usual, “— fly?”

  “An excellent idea,” Hsi now producing a gigantick sky-blue Kite, of some strong yet light silk Stuff, strengthen’d with curious Bamboo Ribwork, furnish’d with apparatus for steering. “Quickly!” They can hear the clamor of Soldiers’ feet, echoing in the Stair-well.

  “But will it hold our combin’d weights?” cries Ho, as his colleague, having attach’d these Wings, now roughly embraces him.

  “Depends what you ate for Breakfast,”— as together they step from the Ærial platform into pure Altitude.—

  “Well, I had the rest of the Duck, about six Dumplings with Pork Sauce, then— Aaaagh!” as they go plummeting toward the Terrain below, clutching each other in terror as, above them now, upon the Platform they lately occupied, appear the first of their Pursuers, gazing after them in that afflicted light, with faces too small to read any more. They wait for Arrows. Above stares the black Disk of the Sun. . . .

  In the reduced Visibility, the Astronomers have lost all sense of how fast they’re falling,— indeed have no idea of how far they have already travel’d from the Palace and their Pursuers. It is really only after considerable time has pass’d, without having smash’d into the ground at high speed, that Hsi, the quicker of the pair, grasps that they have been gliding after all. By then the Lunar Visitor has begun to pass from the Sun’s Face, and the landscape to grow increasingly readable again.

  “Look!” Hsi pointing behind Ho, “some Army, and on the move! Look at that Plume of Dust!”

  “Where?” Ho turns to look. “And,— coming our way, too! what do you suppose it is?”

  “Wait,” it occurs to Hsi. “Ho, ’tis us. Elementary Opticks! If we can see them . . .”

  “Yes, yes?” Ho waits. Hsi waits for Ho. At length, “Oh of course, you mean,— then they can see us, too?”

  “For this, I am risking my life? Why don’t I just drop you off here? It would also make my escape that much easier.”

  “Suit yourself of course.”

  “And my arms are getting tir’d.”

  “Well, so are mine. Some embrace!”

  “All right then, off you go,” Hsi opening his arms abruptly. Ho clutches wildly back at Hsi but is already in midair, with nothing more to expect in the way of embraces, but the Wind of his Descent.

  So intently have the Astronomers been bickering, however, that Ho has fail’d to notice how closely by now their Craft has laps’d to Earth. In fact, he falls no more than ten feet, and that into a small, willow-fring’d Lake belonging to the lands of Lord Huang, a very rich trader with seven eligible daughters. As Ho flounders about in the Lake, his partner lands on top of him, and then the pair of Wings upon them both. . . .

  They haul themselves to shore and stagger about, soaking wet, beginning, as their relief at being alive fades, to argue again. “You just let me drop?” Ho recalls. “Much higher, and you would have murder’d me?— This is strange! I’m here talking to not just a murderer, but my murderer!”

  “I knew we were almost down,” Hsi says. “Do you really think I’d drop you any more than ten feet?”

  “Well,— I don’t know. Would you have dropp’d me,— twenty feet? People can get kill’d falling twenty feet.”

  “Not into the water.”

  “Oh! Suppose it had been but a giant reflecting-pool, and only Inches deep?”

  “I could see ’twas far deeper, by the color of the Water, not to mention Waves upon the Surface.”

  “So after this close assessment of our landing area, why did you not choose to share any of it?”

  “You seem’d more interested in screaming,— I was reluctant to interrupt.”

  “But you let me believe you were killing me.— When I hit that lake, I thought, so, this is it, here it is, the world of the Dead.— Hmm, wet. . . . Cold, too. They don’t let you breathe. So forth. Eventually realizing I was under Water, of course,— ”

  “Thank you, Ho,— but for the kind of help you need . . . your College must keep a list they can refer you to, and as I’ve said many times, there is no stigma, there are excellent remedial programs for cases like— excuse me, what are you doing?”

  “Pissing.” Somewhere out in the pale green Maze of the willows there’s a chorus of merry comment, from the daughters of Huang, who customarily go about ev’rywhere in Company. Soon Ho has wander’d out of Hsi’s sight, calling, “Girls! Girls! Here it is, over here!”

  About then their Father shows up with a platoon of arm’d retainers, demanding to know how Hsi has penetrated so far inside his Boundaries. Unable to come up with another story on the Spot, Hsi tells the truth. The Lord thinks he is confabulating, but the Eclipse part of it has his interest. “Stargazer, eh? Can you predict when the next Eclipse will happen?”

  “Of course. The Moon, you want Moon-Eclipses, I can do those too.”

  “I made more yuan on one deal today than you would ever have seen in your Life working for the Emperor,— all as the Result of your wond’rous Eclipse. A warehouse full of silk, let go for nothing, because its owner thought this was the End. If I’d known beforehand, I could have done more than one Deal like that. No wonder the Emperor wants your heads.”

  Reflexively Hsi grabs his Head, as if to assure himself of its continued Attachment. “Uh . . .”

  “Needless to say, this would pay quite well. Same deal for your Partner, of course. Where is he, by the way?”

  This is answer’d by a slow crescendo of Conversation, advancing upon them through the ornamental forest of Birches all around. “Keep those swords ready, Boys,” advises Lord Huang, beginning to betray some Annoyance. Out of the trees bursts a dishevel’d and uncontrollably giggling Ho, his arm around the eldest of the girls, who is kissing him passionately whilst her sisters, aroar and roseate and smudg’d, frolick about them.

  “Papa! This is Ho, and we wish to be married, this instant.”

  “Yes Papa, oh please,” chorus the rest, as Li gives Ho a push, sending him staggering in her Father’s direction. Ho’s robes are torn, upon all expos’d skin are fingernail scratches, there is green scum from the Lake clinging to his hair. He leers in a friendly way at Lord Huang but isn’t sure what to say.

  “Have we a Deal?” mutters the Lord to Hsi, who shrugs. “I see no problem, then.— Welcome to the Huangs, my boy. Ho, is it? You, like your excellent co-adjutor here, have pass’d into a new Realm. Your Emperor was answerable to Heaven,— here must we answer to the Market, day upon day unending, for ’tis the inscrutable Power we serve, an invisible-Handed god without Mercy.”

  In the weeks and years to follow, Hsi and Ho, ever one step ahead of the Emperor’s hir’d Blademen, travel far, gain respect, and make fortune upon fortune, not the least of their Successes being Erotick, at one time and another, in varying Combinations, too, some of them quite entertaining, with all seven Daughters. Hsi and Ho are frequently mistaken for one another,— in their early Careers an Inconvenience, in their later Years a source, ever fresh, of Occasion for Glee. Periodickally, one or the other, repenting of his life, makes Atonement to Heaven by forswearing Drink, or Gluttony, or Mah-Jongg,— as seldom, if ever, are both Astronomers repentant at the same time, at least one may pay his Duties close Attention. As a result, no longer do Hsi and Ho fail to plan for Eclipses, solar or lunar. Lord Huang, however, continues to extend himself upon a faith in the Astronomers ever in need of re-convincing, wagering ever more stupendous Sums upon the ecliptick Innocence of ev�
�ryone else, not only Silk-Merchants but presently Bankers, other Lords, and their Generals, until the terrible Day when Hsi or Ho, or both, whilst casting Calculations for an upcoming Total Solar Eclipse, with fingers Greas’d from the giant platter-ful of Dim Sum, which, having given their personal gold Chop-Sticks away as tokens of desire to the operatick Personage Miss Chen, they are absent-mindedly eating from by Hand, happen to mis-count enough critical Beads of the Abacus to throw their Prediction off by hours. Meanwhile, dress’d as a Chinese Sub-Deity in red, yellow, and blue and a number of Gem-Tones, having already commanded the Sun to darken, with no result, Lord Huang finds himself far from home, waiting before a fateful River-bank and a humorless Army. The contempt in the front ranks grows more and more open, as the loss of Huang’s credibility spreads backward thro’ the Host. The Sky continues as blank as a hir’d Astronomer’s face, the Sun as relentlessly beaming as an Idiot. In one version of the Tale, Huang is sav’d just in time, and in his rage banishes Hsi and Ho, who end their lives in the western Desert, beggar’d and holy, living on what few drops of water and grains of Rice the Day may bring them,— in the other version, Huang is assassinated by his own fretful Troops, whereupon the Sun at last begins to darken, the Army is smitten with Terror and Contrition, and the Astronomers, who appear to have been waiting but this Moment all their lives, are easily able to take over Huang’s Lands, Fortune, Army, and Harem of Daughters, who ageless as the Pleiades (which Chinese girls know as the “Seven Sisters of Industry”) attend the Star-Gazers faithfully till their Days be run.

  65

  All the month of November, Mason and Dixon run the East Line, 11 miles, 20 Chains, 88 Links from the Post Mark’d West in Mr. Bryant’s Field, now mark’d East as well,— eastward to the shore of Delaware, from which the five degrees of Longitude in the original Grant were to extend. It is a task they might have sub-contracted out to any of dozens of local Surveyors.

  “Industrious Pair,” speculates Capt. Zhang. “Unless you be, rather, jealous, to possess the Line in its entirety.”

  “As who would not?” Dixon replies. “Five degrees. Twenty minutes out of a day’s Turn. Time enough for all sorts of activities,— eat the wrong Fish, fall in love, sign an order that will alter History, take a Nap . . . ? A globe-ful of people, and not one is ignorant of the worth of twenty minutes, each minute a Pearl, let slip, one after the next, into Oblivion’s Gulfs.”

  “Or twenty-one minutes, if you add another Quarter of a Degree,” twinkles the Chinaman, “Crossing Ohio, as you might say. It was five and a Quarter Degrees that the Jesuits remov’d from the Chinese Circle, in reducing it to three hundred sixty. Bit like the Eleven Days taken from your Calendar, isn’t it? Same Questions present themselves,— Where’d that Slice of Azimuth go? How will it be redeem’d? Perhaps your five Degrees of Visto were meant to be a sort of . . . Repository?”

  The Surveyors exchange Grimaces. What now? Can he be serious? Have they another fictitious Spaniard in the Offing?

  “Wouldn’t each Degree simply’ve been widen’d by just a hair, to make up for the loss?” Dixon gently, in a voice Mason has heard him use with pack-horses that the Killogh brothers, their Pack-Men, vouch are “daft.” “So that in some way, so should I imagine, congenial to the Oriental Beliefs . . . ?, thy missing Degrees are distributed indistinguishably thro’out the Entirety of the Circle . . . ?”

  “And what may that slender Blade of Planetary Surface they took away, not be concealing?” Zhang dementedly on, oblivious, “— twenty-one minutes of Clock-Time, and eleven Million Square Miles,— anything may be hiding in there, more than your Herodotus, aye nor immortal Munchausen, might ever have dreamt. The Fountain of Youth, the Seven Cities of Gold, the Other Eden, the Canyons of black Obsidian, the eight Immortals, the Victory over Death, the Defeat of the Wrathful Deities? Histories ever Secret. Lands whose Surveys will never be tied into any made here, in this Priest-tainted three-sixty,— blue Seas, as Oceanick Depths, call’d into Being by Mathesis alone . . . without Shores, nor any but their own Weather blowing in from no-where upon the official Globe. . . .

  “Nor ought we to be forgetting the Heavens,— as above, so below!— Stars beyond numbering, Planets unsuspected, Planets harboring Life! Morally Intelligent Life! an extra sign of the Zodiack, tho’ of course running a bit narrower,— yet might it stretch out North to South, perhaps even all the width of the Semi-Circle,— a Dragon? a Pennsylvania Rifle? a Surveyors’ Line?”

  “Am I content with this? Was that your Question, Dixon?”

  “Ah didn’t say anything . . . ?”

  “Of course you did. You were muttering over there, I heard it.”

  “Happen I may have audibly wonder’d, how one with so much Investment in the matter of the Eleven Days, could be much offended when the Hysteresis be express’d in Degrees . . . ?”

  “And taken at the correct Scale,” declares Captain Zhang, “what is there to choose? both are Experiences of that failure of perfect Return, that haunts all for whom Time elapses. In the runs of Lives, in Company as alone, what fails to return, is ever a source of Sorrow.”

  “And a lively Issue among the Metaphysickal I am sure,” Mason attempts to beam, “the even yet more compelling Question, just now, however, being, Are you planning on growing particularly violent any time soon?”

  “You cannot shame me. I have lost Shame, as one loses a Bore at an Assembly, creeping behind, whispering, ‘You should have left her in Quebec. Your Fate was never to bide this long, amid this Continental Folly.— Folly that you, yourself, are now fallen into.’ ”

  “Sounds like half the Axmen,” notes Mason.

  “The half who aren’t past themselves over that Zsusza . . . ?” adds Dixon.

  “This quite exceeds, Sirs, the unsophisticated Grunting of Back-Woodsmen,— She was the captive Ward of my Life’s great enemy. Tho’ any sight of her, even at a distance, begin in Delight, soon enough shall his evil features emerge from, and replace, those belov’d ones . . . yet do I desire . . . not him, never him . . . yet . . . given such Terms, to desire her, clearly, I must transcend all Shame,— or be dissolv’d beneath it.”

  “And you’re doing an excellent job!” exclaims Mason, “Isn’t he, Lads?”

  They return to Harlands’ in early December, and get busy with the Royal Society’s Degree of Latitude. No telling if they’ll ever take the West Line west of Allegheny. All is in the hands of Sir William Johnson.

  “Pleasant Gentleman,” recalls Capt. Zhang. “Tho’ what in distant parts be judg’d Madness, the wanderer may not say, or even know.” Like others of the Party, he is apt now and then to drop in without prior Notice, at the Harlands’, who are ever happy to have the Company. Advent sees the forming of something near a Club, for the purpose of Discourse upon the Topick of Christ’s Birth, repairing after dinner to the Horse-Barn, Capt. Zhang and the Revd Cherrycoke being observ’d among those in faithful Attendance. The Astronomers prove less consistent, tho’ willing to pronounce upon points of Chronology, or Astronomy,— or both, such as the Star that brought the Magi.

  “ ’Twas either a Conjunction of Planets,” Dixon opines, “or a Comet.”

  “In seven B.C., according to Kepler, Jupiter and Saturn were conjunct three times,— and the next year, Mars join’d them,” Mason declares. “No one who was out at night could have fail’d to notice that. It must have been the most spectacular Event in the Sky.”

  “Again, in perhaps twelve B.C.,” Capt. Zhang points out, “appear’d the late Comet of ’fifty-nine, whose return to our Era Dr. Halley pre-dicted,—the Tail, taper’d ever toward the Sun, thus able to direct your Magi,— or perhaps mine,— after each Sunset, to the West.”

  “Gentlemen, surely,” the Revd, as mildly as he may, advances, “Christ was not born any time Before Christ?”

  “If,” says the Geomancer, “like all Christian nations, you accept the reckoning
of Dionysius Exiguus,— then, Herod died in four B.C.,— yet the Gospels have him alive when Christ was born,— the taxation decree that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem may’ve been as early as eight B.C. There are a number of these . . . strange inconsistencies.”

  “Unless the death of Herod be wrongly dated,— for Dennis the Meager, as we know him,— was an agent of God.”

  “God should’ve found another Agent,” remarks Dixon, in the same side-of-the-mouth delivery as Mason.

  “Mr. Mason!” the Revd turning to shake his Index.

  “I didn’t say that,” Mason protests, “— Did I?”

  66

  “Just talk, Stig. . . .” Spring Winds howl outside the Tent. Mrs. Eggslap is in an Emerald-green Sacque with Watteau pleats, all disarrang’d at the moment, as is her Hair. A stout Candle of Swedish Wax burns in a Candlestick of Military design.

  “To Thorfinn Karlsefni’s settlement at Hop,” relates Stig, who in lieu of smoking a Stogie, has begun to inspect his Ax-blade for flaws perceptible to him alone,— “at the mouth of one of the Rivers of Vineland, the Skrællings come, to trade pelts for milk. What they really want are weapons, but Karlsefni has forbidden anyone to sell them. Upon the second visit, Karlsefni’s wife Gudrid is inside the House, tending Snorri the baby, when despite the new Palisado and the Sentries, a strange, small Woman comes in, announc’d only by her Shadow, fair-hair’d, pale, with the most enormous eyes Gudrid has ever seen, and asks, ‘What is your Name?’

  “ ‘My name is Gudrid,’ replies Gudrid. ‘What is your name?’

  “ ‘My name is Gudrid,’ she whispers, staring out of those Eyes. And all at once there is a violent crash, and the woman vanishes,— at the same Instant, outside, one of the Northmen, struggling with one of the Skrællings, who has tried to seize his weapon, kills him. With terrible cries, the other Skrællings run away,— the Northmen decide not to wait their return, but to go out to them, upon the Cape. The Sea roars against the Land, the Sea-Wind bears away the cries of the Wounded, Blood leaps, Men fall, most of those slain are Skrællings, their Bodies splay’d and vaporous in the Cold. None but Gudrid ever saw the woman whose visit announc’d this first Act of American murder, and the collapse of Vineland the Good,— in another year Karlsefni’s outpost would be gone, as if what they had done out upon the Headland, under the torn Banners of the Clouds, were too terrible, and any question of who had prevail’d come to matter ever less, as Days went on, whilst the residue of Dishonor before the Gods and Heroes would never be scour’d away. Thereafter they were men and women in Despair, many of whom, bound for Home, miscalculated the Route and landed in Ireland, where they were captur’d and enslav’d.”