Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

  “There are others?” Mason perking up.

  “That’s what he said. All most effective and what we’d style ‘miraculous,’ down there,— tho’ perhaps not as much so, up here.

  “Thy trip to Scotland will be closely watch’d, Mason, from below. . . . ‘Once the solar parallax is known,’ they told me, ‘once the necessary Degrees are measur’d, and the size and weight and shape of the Earth are calculated inescapably at last, all this will vanish. We will have to seek another Space.’ No one explain’d what that meant, however . . . ? ‘Perhaps some of us will try living upon thy own Surface. I am not sure that everyone can adjust from a concave space to a convex one. Here have we been sheltered, nearly everywhere we look is no Sky, but only more Earth.— How many of us, I wonder, could live the other way, the way you People do, so exposed to the Outer Darkness? Those terrible Lights, great and small? And wherever you may stand, given the Convexity, each of you is slightly pointed away from everybody else, all the time, out into that Void that most of you seldom notice. Here in the Earth Concave, everyone is pointed at everyone else,— ev’rybody’s axes converge,— forc’d at least thus to acknowledge one another,— an entirely different set of rules for how to behave.’

  “We happen’d to be looking through a Telescope of peculiar design, for hundreds of yards around whose Eye-piece, Specula of silver, precisely beaten and polish’d to a Perfection I was assur’d had cost the sanity of more than one Artisan, were spread like sails for catching ev’ry least flutter of Luminosity, conveying to a central set of Lenses the images they gather’d in. With this Instrument one could view any part of the Hollow Earth, even places directly across the Inner Void, thousands of miles distant. Tho’ Light through the Polar Openings north and south varied as the Earth traveled in its orbit, ’twas never more than low and diffuse, hence the enlarged eyes of these inner-surface dwellers, their pale skins, their diet of roots and fungi and what greener Esculents they might go to harvest out in the more arable country ’round the Openings, though the journeys back inside were fraught with peril and inconvenience from arm’d Bands of Vegetable Pirates. Leaves in here were nearly black in color, fruit rare. The Wines,” Dixon shaking his head, “are as austere as anyone can imagine.”

  “You’ve not become a Grape person, Dixon?”

  “The damn’d Gout. Wine’s not as bad.”

  Mason bleakly exhales. “No Hell, then?”

  “Not inside the Earth, anyway.”

  “Nor any . . . Single Administrator of Evil.”

  “They did introduce me to some Functionary,— no telling,— We chatted, others came in. They ask’d if I’d take off as much of my Clothing as I’d feel comfortable with,— I stepp’d out of my Shoes, left my Hat on . . . ? They walk’d ’round me in Circles, now and then poking at me . . . ? Nothing too intrusive.”

  “Nothing you remember, anyway,” Mason can’t help putting in.

  “They peer’d into my Eyes and Ears, they look’d in my Mouth, they put me upon a Balance and weigh’d me. They conferr’d. ‘Are you quite sure, now,’ the Personage ask’d me at last, ‘that you wish to bet ev’ry-thing upon the Body?— this Body?— moreover, to rely helplessly upon the Daily Harvest your Sensorium brings in,— keeping in mind that both will decline, the one in Health as the other in Variety, growing less and less trustworthy till at last they are no more?’ Eeh. Well, what would thoo’ve said?”

  “So, did you— ”

  “We left it in abeyance. Arriv’d back at the Observatory, it seem’d but minutes, this time, in Transit, I sought my Bible, which I let fall open, and read, in Job, 26:5 through 7, ‘Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.

  “ ‘Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering.

  “ ‘He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.’ ”

  Upon the doorstep, horses waiting him in the Street, Mason grasps Dixon’s Hand. “If they don’t kill and eat me up there, shall we do this again?”

  “We must count upon becoming old Geezers together,” Dixon proposes. They are looking directly at one another for the first time since either can remember.

  “Let us meet next Summer. . . . You must come stay in Sapperton.”

  “I may not travel far.” Immediately reaching out his hand to Mason’s arm, lest Mason, in his way, take too much offense. “I wish it were not so.”

  Mason, as he long has learn’d to for Dixon, refrains from flinching. “No loss, perhaps,— thanks to the damn’d Clothiers, no one can guarantee what, if anything, swims in the Frome anymore,” avoiding any pro-long’d talk of Frailty, which he can see is costing Dixon more than his reserve of cheer may afford. “The Mills, curse them all. . . . Dixon, I shall be happy to see you wherever you wish.” He turns to the Straps securing the Transit Instruments, ignoring what is just behind his Eyes and Nose. “Mind thyself, Friend.”

  76

  “Now, Dr. Johnson, along with Boswell acting as his Squire, happen’d, in August of ’seventy-three, to be crossing into Scotland as well, upon their famous Trip to the Hebrides.”

  “More likely,” snorts Ives, “they didn’t pass within a hundred miles of Mason.”

  Yet (speculates the Revd), did all hesitate, upon the Border, at some rude Inn, just before taking the fatal Step across into the Celtick Unknown? . . . Sitting at a table, drinking Ale, observing the Mist thro’ the Window-Panes, Mason forty-five, the Cham sixty-four. “You seem a serious young man, with Thames-side intonations in your Voice, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Sir, I saw you at The Mitre Tavern, once.”

  “Royal Society, are you.”

  “As your own Intonation already implies, Sir, not bloody likely, is it? tho’ I have contracted with them, and more than once.”

  “You’re the Star-Gazer, what’s his name.”

  “Mason,” Boswell informs him.

  “Damme ’f that’s not it exactly,” says Mason. “Thankee, Gents, altho’ this time I am come upon an Errand of Gravity.” He explains to them his search for a Scottish Mountain, suiting as many as possible of Maskelyne’s Stipulations.

  “Hum . . .” Boswell’s gaze bright’ning, “he’s Clive of India’s Brother-in-law. Do you suppose the Nabob wants to buy a Mountain?”

  “Good Lord,— Maskelyne, working in Confidence, as a Land-Agent? I never thought of that.”

  “Then you are not as corrupted as you believe you are, at least according to the creases of your Phiz, Sir,” somewhat brusquely announces Dr. Johnson. “Such relative Innocence may be a sacred Asset, yet a secular Liability. May you ever distinguish the one from the other. Oh, and Mason?”

  “Your Servant.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Of what, Sir?”

  “Of the Attention you’ll be getting up there, if your Principal’s illustrious Relation becomes widely known,” warns Mr. Boswell, himself a Scot.

  “Upon the Map I carry,” declares Dr. J., “nothing appears, beyond here, but Mountains,— in Practice to examine them all is a task without end,— and ev’ry Scot you meet will be trying to sell you at least one, that he,— and ignore not ‘she,’— happens to know of. These people are strong, shrewd. Be not deceiv’d by any level of the Exotick they may present you, Kilts, Bag-Pipes sort of thing. Haggis. You must keep unfailing Vigilance.”

  Mr. Boswell bows elaborately, whilst keeping his Eye-balls upon the Roll.

  Out there in the Fog brimming and sweeping now over Ridge-tops and into the Glens, somewhere it waits, the world across the next Line, in darkness and isolation, barren, unforgiving, a Nation that within Mason’s lifetime has risen to seize the Crown, been harrow’d into submission, then been shipp’d in great Lots to America. “I imagine there’s yet a bit of . . . resentment about?”

  The Doctor sn
orts. “The word you grope for is Hatred, Sir,— inveterate, inflexible Hatred. The ’Forty-five lives on here, a Ghost from a Gothick Novel, ubiquitous, frightfully shatter’d, exhibiting gallons of a certain crimson Fluid,— typickal of the People, don’t you see.”

  “Aye, he means me,” sighs Mr. Boswell. He picks up the Bone remnant of a Chop and gestures with it. “Soon he will commence with the Cannibalism-Joaks, pray you, miss it not, ’tis more hilarious than may at first seem likely. All his lifelong Enmity, emerging at last in this way. No one knows why, but he intends to go to the Hebrides, to the furthest Isle, to view the Dark Ages upon Display.”

  “The uncomplicated People, laboring with their primitive Tools,” gushes Mason, “— the simplicity of Faith, lo, its Time reborn.”

  “ ’Tis fascinating, this belief among you Men of Science,” remarks Dr. J., “that Time is ever more simply transcended, the further one is willing to journey away from London, to observe it.”

  “Why, Mason here’s done the very thing,” cries Boswell. “In America. Ask him.”

  Mason glowers, shaking his head. “I’ve ascended, descended, even condescended, and the List’s not ended,— but haven’t yet trans-cended a blessèd thing, thankee.”

  “The Savages of America,” intones the Doctor, “— what Powers do they possess, and how do they use them?” As if here, at the Edge of the World, they might confide what no one would ever say aloud in London,— with Boswell a-bustle to get it all scribbl’d down into his Quarto.

  The abruptness of the Doctor’s Question reminds Mason of himself, addressing the Learnèd English Dog, a dozen years ago . . . his mouth creeps upward at the corners, almost achieving an Horizontal. “Would that my co-adjutor Mr. Dixon were here,” says Mason (missing Dixon as he speaks), “for the Magickal in all its Occurrences, to others of us how absent, was ever his Subject. . . . Potions, Rain-Making, the undoing of Enemies remote,— that Mandeville of Mohawks would be sure to enlighten you. I can myself testify to little beyond the giant Mounds that the Savages say they guard as Curators, for some more distant Race of Builders. I have fail’d to observe more in them, than their most impressive Size, tho’ Mr. Dixon swears to Coded Inscriptions, Purposive Lamination, and Employment, unto the Present Day, by Agents Unknown of Powers Invisible.

  “Yet appropriately enough, what compels me out under the Elements once again now, is yet another damn’d Species of Giant Mound,— and after hoping I’d seen my last in America. Woe, it seems I’ve acquir’d a Speciality,— and the Elevated, the Chosen, go on assigning me to these exercises in large-scale Geometry. This Mountain I’m about to seek must be regular as a Prism, as if purposely constructed in days of old by Forces more powerful than ours . . . powerful enough to suggest that God (whatever that may be) has not altogether quit our own desperate Day.”

  “You’re not pleas’d with His Frequency of Appearance,” frowns Johnson. “Sir, be wary,— for the next step in such Petulance, is to define Him as some all-pervading Fairy-Dust, and style it Deism.”

  “D’ye think I wasn’t looking, all that long arse-breaking American time? Mounds, Caverns, things that went across the Sky?— had you seen one of those, ’twould’ve made y’ think twice. . . . Even giant Vegetables,— if it had to be,— seeking Salvation in the Oversiz’d, how pitiable,— what of it, I’ve little Pride, some great Squash upon the Trail-side? I’ll take it, won’t I.”

  “I’d’ve been happy with the Cock Lane Ghost,” Johnson mutters.

  “Happy,” Mason nods. His eyes far too bright. “You were ill-treated, Sir, in that matter.”

  “Be careful to note, Boswell, how even a Lunatick may yet be civil. Thank you, Sir. Or is it Your Holiness?”

  “I?” All but pleading for someone’s Judgment of madness, as if desiring to be admitted to that select company, select as the Royal Society, which did not want him, either.

  “I had my Boswell, once,” Mason tells Boswell, “Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam’d Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev’rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you,” twirling his Hand in Ellipses,— “you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I’m not prying.”

  “Had one what?”

  “Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir,— I mean, of your own. Well you couldn’t very well call him that, being one yourself,— say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev’ry spoken remark,— ”

  “Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,— think,” armsweep south, “as all civiliz’d Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl’d Gambler, the Barmaid’s Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness?”

  The Mountain he finds for Maskelyne will be too regular to be natural,— like Silbury Hill, it will have the look of ancient Earth-Work about it. And ’twill be Maskelyne who goes to Schiehallion, after Mason refuses the Assignment again, and becomes famous for it, not to mention belovèd of the Scots people there, the subject of a Ballad, and presently a Figure of Legend, in a strange Wizard’s turnout bas’d upon an actual Observing Suit he will wear whilst in Perthshire. A plaid one, in fact, of Maskelyne’s own Design,— “A Tartan never observ’d in the World,” he explains, “that no one Clan up there be offended.”

  “Or ev’ry one,” Mun is quick to point out.

  Mason will go back to waking day after day in Sapperton, piecing together odd cash jobs for the Royal Society, reductions for Maskelyne’s Almanack,— small children everywhere, a neat Observatory out in the Garden, a reputation in the Golden Valley as a Sorcerer, a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, who once climb’d that strange eminence at Greenwich, up into another level of Power, sail’d to all parts of the Globe, but came back down among them again,— they will be easy with him, call him Charlie, at last. Another small-town eccentric absorb’d back into the Weavery, keeping a work-space fitted out someplace in the back of some long Cotswold house, down a chain of rooms back from the lane and out into the crooked Looming of those hillside fields.

  77

  So when they meet again, ’tis in Bishop, and any third Observer might note in an instant the deterioration the Year intervening has brought to each,— Dixon’s pronounc’d limp and bile-stain’d Eyeballs, Mason’s slow retreat, his steps taken backward, only just stubborn enough to keep facing the light, into Melancholy.

  Increasingly ill at ease with change of any kind, be it growing a year older or watching America,— once home to him as the Desert to a Nomad upon it,— in its great Convulsion, Mason has begun to dream of a night-time City,— of creeping among monuments of stone perhaps twice his height, of seeking refuge from some absolute pitiless Upheaval in relations among Men.

  ’Twas Stonehenge, absent ’Bekah and Moon-Light. The Monuments made no sense at all. They were not Statues,— they bore no inscriptions. They were the Night’s Standing-Stones, put there by some Agency remote not in Time but from caring at all what happen’d to the poor fugitives who now scurried among them, seeking their brute impenetrability for cover. Whoever their Makers had been, they were invisible now, with their own Chronicles, their own Intentions,— whatever these were,— and they glided on, without any need for living Witnesses.

  Were this but a single Dream, wip’d out as usual by the rattling Quotidian, Mason might even have forgotten it by now. But it keeps coming back,— more accurately, he return’d to it, the same City, the same unlit Anarchy, again and again, each time to be plung’d into the middle of whatever has been going on in his absence. At first he visits fortnightly, but within the year he is journeying there ev’ry night. Even more alarmingly, he is not always asleep . . . out of doors against his will, a City in Chaos, the lights too few, the differences between friend and
enemy not always clear, and Mistakes a penny a Bushel. Reflection upon any Topick is an unforgivable Lapse, out here where at any moment Death may come whistling in from the Dark.

  “Well Hullo, Death, what’s that you’re whistling?”

  “Oo, little Ditters von Dittersdorf, nothing you’d recognize, hasn’t happen’d yet, not even sure you’ll live till it’s perform’d anywhere,— have to check the ’Folio as to that, get back to you?”

  “No hurry,— truly, no hurry.”

  “You ’cute Rascal,” Death reaching out to pinch his Cheek. . . . Some times Mason wakes before traversing into the next Episode,— sometimes the bony Thumb and Finger continue their Approach, asymptotickally ever closer, be he waking, or dreaming something else.

  “Their visits,” wrote the Revd, on unnam’d Authority, “consisted of silence when fishing, fever’d nocturnal Conversation when not. Though even beside the Wear, or in it, are they ever conversing. In their silences, the true Measure of their History.”

  Mason arrives one day to find Dixon sitting there with giant Heaps of Cherries and Charcoal. “Have some,” offering Mason his choice.

  “Excuse me. The Gout is eas’d by things that begin with ‘Ch’?”

  “Why aye. They don’t know that down in Gloucestershire?”

  “Chicken?”

  “In the form of Soup, particularly.”

  “Chops? Cheese? Chocolate?”

  “ ’Tis consider’d an entertaining Affliction, by those who have not suffer’d it.”

  “Oh, Dixon, I didn’t mean,—” Ev’ry turn now, a chance for someone taking the hump. “Here, your Cushion,— may I,— ”

  “First thing!— is, you mustn’t touch . . . the Foot, thank thee. Bit abrupt, sorry, yet do I know this, by now, like a County Map,— where the valleys of least Pain lie, and where the Peaks to avoid. Ev’ry movement has to be plann’d like a damn’d Expedition. . . . Meg Bland is the only mortal, nothing personal, who may even breathe too close to it.”