Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

the Trees a-glare to the last slightest Twig,— Nerve-Lines of concentrated Light.

“Along with some lesser Counts,” the Revd is replying,” ’twas one of the least tolerable of Offenses in that era, the worst of Dick Turpin seeming but the Carelessness of Youth beside it,— the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity.’ That is, I left messages posted publicly, but did not sign them. I knew some night-running lads in the district who let me use their Printing-Press,— somehow, what I got into printing up, were Accounts of certain Crimes I had observ’d, committed by the Stronger against the Weaker,— enclosures, evictions, Assize verdicts, Activities of the Military,— giving the Names of as many of the Perpetrators as I was sure of, yet keeping back what I foolishly imagin’d my own, till the Night I was tipp’d and brought in to London, in Chains, and clapp’d in the Tower.” “The Tower!” “Oh, do not tease them so,” Tenebræ prays him. “Ludgate, then? whichever, ’twas Gaol. It took me till I was lying among the Rats and Vermin, upon the freezing edge of a Future invisible, to understand that my name had never been my own,— rather belonging, all this time, to the Authorities, who forbade me to change it, or withhold it, as ’twere a Ring upon the Collar of a Beast, ever waiting for the Lead to be fasten’d on. . .

Labels as clips for chains...

Once, the only reason Men kept Dogs was for food. Noting that among Men no crime was quite so abhorr’d as eating the flesh of another human, Dog quickly learn’d to act as human as possible,— and to pass this Ability on from Parents to Pups. So we know how to evoke from you, Man, one day at a time, at least enough Mercy for one day more of Life. Nonetheless, however accomplish’d, our Lives are never settled,— we go on as tail-wagging Scheherazades, ever a step away from the dread Palm Leaf, nightly delaying the Blades of our Masters by telling back to them tales of their humanity. I am but an extreme Expression of this Process,—

Dogs.

Indifferent to Visibility, wrapt in the melancholy Winds that choir all night long, persists an Obsession or Siege by something much older than anyone here, an injustice that will not cancel out. Men of Reason will define a Ghost as nothing more otherworldly than a wrong unrighted, which like an uneasy spirit cannot move on,— needing help we cannot usually give,— nor always find the people it needs to see,— or who need to see it. But here is a Collective Ghost of more than household Scale,— the Wrongs committed Daily against the Slaves, petty and grave ones alike, going unrecorded, charm’d invisible to history, invisible yet possessing Mass, and Velocity, able not only to rattle Chains but to break them as well. The precariousness to Life here, the need to keep the Ghost propitiated, Day to Day, via the Company’s merciless Priesthoods and many-Volum’d Codes, brings all but the hardiest souls sooner or later to consider the Primary Questions more or less undiluted. Slaves here commit suicide at a frightening Rate,— but so do the Whites, for no reason, or for a Reason ubiquitous and unaddress’d, which may bear Acquaintance but a Moment at a Time.

Mason returns from these Excursions dejectedly mindful, like any moral Tumbler, that when Murder is too inconvenient, Self-sacrifice must do,—

The first peripheral impression Mason had of it was of course a star-gazer’s,— thinking, Why, the Moon isn’t suppos’d to be out, nor full, nor quite this bright shade of yellow, nor for that matter to be growing in size this way,— about then smoaking belatedly where he was, and what was about to happen. “Ahr! Mercy!” He threw his arms in front of his Face and succumb’d before the cylindrickal Onslaught, with a peculiar Horror at having been singl’d out for Misadventure . . . The Victim of a Cheese malevolent,

Is Mason going to get angry and into a fight? Will he stand and announce, “This is none of God’s judgment,— to be offended as gravely by Calendar Reform as by Mortal Sin, requires a meanness of spirit quite out of the reach of any known Deity,— tho’ well within the resources of Stroud, it seems.”

Indeed, one look at the place is enough to reconcile Fr. Maire to the possibility of having to leave it.

They saw white Brutality enough, at the Cape of Good Hope. They can no better understand it now, than then. Something is eluding them. Whites in both places are become the very Savages of their own worst Dreams, far out of Measure to any Provocation. Mason and Dixon have consult’d with all it seems to them they safely may. “Recall that there are two kinds of electricity,” Dr. Franklin remark’d, “positive and negative. Cape Town’s curse is its Weather,— the Electrick Charge during the Stormy season being ev’rywhere Positive, whilst in the Dry Season, all is Negative.” “Are you certain,” Dixon mischievously,” ’tis not the other way ’round? That the rainy weather— ” “Yes, yes,” somewhat brusquely, “whichever Direction it goes, the relevant Quantity here, is the size of the Swing between the two,— that vertiginous re-polarizing of the Air, and perhaps the Æther too, which may be affecting the very Mentality of the People there.” “Then what’s America’s excuse?” Dixon inquir’d, mild as Country Tea.

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.

Dogs.

There is a Post-Script in Emerson’s self-school’d hand, exclamatory, ending upon a long Quill-crunching Stop. “Time is the Space that may not be seen.— ” (‘Pon which the Revd cannot refrain from commenting, “He means, that out of Mercy, we are blind as to Time,— for we could not bear to contemplate what lies at its heart.”)

Tho’ nothing much has been said, the Surveyors are surpriz’d to discover that ev’ryone’s been saying it for several Hours.

Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever ’tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.

He sees where blows with Rifle-Butts miss’d their Marks, and chipp’d the Walls. He sees blood in Corners never cleans’d. Thankful he is no longer a Child, else might he curse and weep, scattering his Anger to no Effect, Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himelf upon the Pate at any sign of unfocusing. What in the Holy Names are these people about? Not even the Dutchmen at the Cape behav’d this way. Is it something in this Wilderness, something ancient, that waited for them, and infected their Souls when they came? Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch’d and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar’d him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,— the publick Executions and Whippings, the open’d flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites. . . . Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen’d here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,— that at the end no one understood what they said as they died. “I don’t pray enough,” Dixon subvocalizes, “and I can’t get upon my Knees just now because too many are watching,— yet could I kneel, and would I pray, ’twould be to ask, respectfully, that this be made right, that the Murderers meet appropriate Fates, that I be spar’d the awkwardness of seeking them out myself and slaying as many as I may, before they overwhelm me. Much better if that be handl’d some ot...

“Recollect, cher Maître, as I do with senses even today a-tremble, your Canard au Pamplemousse Flambé. It is unique in Civilization. Not to mention the sublime Canard avec Aubergines en Casserole . . . mmhhnnhh! I embrace them! The immortal Fantaisie des Canettes . . . ,”— and much more, including Dishes I’d all but forgotten. I should have stood unmov’d, but I’d gone a-blush. “Oh, those old Canards,” I murmur’d.

Agreed, you must consider how best to defend yourself,— wear clothing it cannot bite through, leather, or what’s even more secure, chain-mail,— its Beak being of the finest Swedish Steel, did I mention that, yes quite able, when the Duck, in its homicidal Frenzy, is flying at high speed, to penetrate all known Fortification, solid walls being as paper to this Juggernaut. . . . One may cower within, but one cannot avoid,— le Bec de la Mort, the . . . ‘Beak of Death.’ ”

“Duress? Duress is not an Issue,— for Life is Duress.”

True story.

“No taxation— ” “— without it, yesyes but Drogo, lad, can you not see, even thro’ the Republican fogs which ever hang about these parts, that ’tis all a moot issue, as America has long been perfectly and entirely represented in the House of Commons, thro’ the principle of Virtual Representation?” Cries of, “Aagghh!” and, “That again?” “If this be part of Britain here, then so must be Bengal! For we have ta’en both from the French. We purchas’d India many times over with the Night of the Black Hole alone,— as we have purchas’d North America with the lives of our own.” “Are even village Idiots taken in any more by that empty cant?” mutters the tiny Topman McNoise, “no more virtual than virtuous, and no more virtuous than the vilest of that narrow room-ful of shoving, beef-faced Louts, to which you refer,— their honor bought and sold so many times o’er that no one bothers more to keep count.— Suggest you, Sir, even in Play, that this giggling Rout of poxy half-wits, embody us? Embody us? America but some fairy Emanation, without substance, that hath pass’d, by Miracle, into them?— Damme, I think not,— Hell were a better Destiny.”

Stamp Tax now,— and till we have someone, that can prevent the next such, why, the Stamp Act is simple Tyranny, and our duty’s to resist it.” Mason expects shock’d murmurs at this,— that there are none shocks him even more gravely, allowing him a brief, careening glimpse at how far and fast all this may be moving,— something styling itself “America,” coming into being, ripening, like a Tree-ful of Cherries in a good summer, almost as one stands and watches,— something no one in London, however plac’d in the Web of Privilege, however up-to-the-minute, seems to know much about. What is happening?

there remains a standing Quarrel, as to what Rifle may have serv’d as the Model,— that is, if any at all did,— too much, out here, failing to mark the Boundaries between Reality and Representation.

“The Spark was too bright, Mason. All look’d away, but you.” In the hidden Journal that he gets to so seldom it should be styl’d a “Monthly,” Mason writes, “I saw at the heart of the Electrick Fire, beyond color, beyond even Shape, an Aperture into another Dispensation of Space, yea and Time, than what Astronomers and Surveyors are us’d to working with. It bade me enter, or rather it welcom’d my Spirit,— yet my Body was very shy of coming any nearer,— indeed wish’d the Vision gone. Throughout, the Creature in the Tank regarded me with a personal stare, as of a Stranger claiming to know me from some distant, no longer accessible Shore,— a mild and nostalgic look, masking, as I fear’d, Blood or Jungle, with the luminous Deep of his great Spark all the while beckoning. . . . “I can no more account for it than for the other Episodes. I do not choose these moments, nor would I know how. They come upon me with no premonition. Shall I speak with Dixon? Is it an hallucinatory symptom of a Melancholia further advanced than I knew?

Ev’ryone has a Point of View they wish to persuade the Surveyors to. “Sometimes you’re the Slate,” Mason observes, “sometimes you’re the Chalk.”

Sounds like design. Some days design is the rope in the tug-of-war between product, development, manufacturing, and all the other stakeholders caught up in the process.

“Sin as practis’d is not deep enough for you, Sir?” inquires Dixon. “Why is it that we honor the Great Thieves of Whitehall, for Acts that in Whitechapel would merit hanging? Why admire the one sort of Thief, and despise the other? I suggest, ’tis because of the Scale of the Crime.— What we of the Mobility love to watch, is any of the Great Motrices, Greed, Lust, Revenge, taken out of all measure, brought quite past the scale of the ev’ryday world, approaching what we always knew were the true Dimensions of Desire. Let Antony lose the world for Cleopatra, to be sure,— not Dick his Day’s Wages, at the Tavern.”

“Come, Sir, can you not sense here, there, just ’round the corner, the pattering feet and swift Hands of John Company, the Lanthorns of the East . . . ? the scent of fresh Coriander, the whisper of a Sarong . . . ?” “Sari,” corrects Mason. “Not at all Sir,— ’twas I who was sarong.”

“Tho’ for symmetry’s sake,” interposes DePugh, “we ought to say, ‘almost endless.’ ” “Why,” whispers Brae, “whoever said anything had to be symmetrickal?”

One day, the Meridian having been closely enough establish’d, and with an hour or two of free time available to them, one heads north, one south, and ’tis Dixon’s luck to discover The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, “Live long and prosper.”

‘Eyeh asher Eyeh,’ “—in on which, in Tones hush’d, though ominous, the others now join. “That is, ‘I am that which I am,’” helpfully translates a somehow nautical-looking Indiv. with gigantick Fore-Arms, and one Eye ever a-Squint from the Smoke of his Pipe. “Tho’ Rashi in his Commentary has, ‘I will be what I will be,’ as the Tense is ambiguous between present and future.”

South Mountain is the last concentration of Apparitions,— as you might say, Shape-’Morphers, and Soul-Snatchers, besides plain “Ghosts.” Beyond lies Wilderness, where quite another Presence reigns, undifferentiate,— Thatwhichever precedeth Ghostliness. . . .

Ghosts.

“Earthbound,” Emerson continued, “we are limited to our Horizon, which sometimes is to be measur’d but in inches.— We are bound withal to Time, and the amounts of it spent getting from one end of a journey to another. Yet aloft, in Map-space, origins, destinations, any Termini, hardly seem to matter,— one can apprehend all at once the entire plexity of possible journeys, set as one is above Distance, above Time itself.”

Adults hold Babies aloft, exclaiming, “The little Sausage!” and pretending to eat them.

Maybe jokes originated as an adaptive way of showing no harm?

Mason speaking as to a Child. “The object being, that the people shall set their homes to one side or another. That it be a Boundary, nothing more.” “Boundary!” The Chinaman begins to pull upon his hair and paw the earth with brocade-slipper’d feet. “Ev’rywhere else on earth, Boundaries follow Nature,— coast-lines, ridge-tops, river-banks,— so honoring the Dragon or Shan within, from which Land-Scape ever takes its form. To mark a right Line upon the Earth is to inflict upon the Dragon’s very Flesh, a sword-slash, a long, perfect scar, impossible for any who live out here the year ’round to see as other than hateful Assault. How can it pass unanswer’d?”

“European docility,— no one with Power has ever under-appreciated its comforts.

’tis his Destiny to inflict these Tellurick Injuries, as ’tis mine to resist them.”

Tho’ Degrees of Longitude and Latitude in Name, yet in Earthly reality are they Channels mark’d for the transport of some unseen Influence, one carefully assembl’d cairn,

They know by now where they are, not only in Miles, Chains, and Feet, but respecting as well the Dragon of the Land, according to which anyplace beyond the Summit of the Alleghenies, wherever the water flows West, into the Continental Unknown, lies too far from the Countryside where, quietly, unthreaten’d, among the tall gray stalks of the girdl’d trees, beneath Roofs tarr’d against the Rain, the Wives knead and flour, and the Dough’s Rising is a Miniature of the great taken Breath of the Day, . . . and where voices in the Wind are assum’d into the singing of the Congregations, the Waggon’s rumbling upon the roads of pack’d and beaten earth, the lowing, the barking, the solitary rifle-shot, close to supper-time, from over in the next Valley.

“Small Differences mean much to you. There is Power in these?” “The finer the Scale we work at, the more Power may we dispose. The Lancaster County Rifle is precise at long range, because of microscopick refinements in the Finish, the Rifling, the ease with which it may be held and aim’d. They who control the Microscopick, control the World.”

“Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream’d of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you,— we believ’d that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream’d of us, and when at last you saw us, wish’d only to destroy us. Then the killing started,— some of you, some of us,— but not nearly as many as we’d been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip’d us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers,— your Rifles,— as if encouraging us to shoot at you,— and so we did, tho’ not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not. . . . Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho’ we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams.”

“By the time we get anywhere to tell anyone, they’ll be someplace else. We’d better go back. For now, say nothing more, and try to move quietly.” Mr. Barnes is troubl’d at the Depth of the Silence that reigns. “No longer frets th’ intemperate Jay,” he mutters, “— withal, the Siskin chirpeth not.” “Cap’n, what the fuck is going on?”

Mason is able to inspect the long Map, fragrant, elegantly cartouch’d with Indians and Instruments, at last. Ev’ry place they ran it, ev’ry House pass’d by, Road cross’d, the Ridge-lines and Creeks, Forests and Glades, Water ev’ry-where, and the Dragon nearly visible. “So,— so. This is the Line as all shall see it after its Copper-Plate ’Morphosis,— and all History remember? This is what ye expect me to sign off on?” “Not the worst I’ve handed in. And had they wish’d to pay for Coloring? Why, tha’d scarcely knaah the Place . . . ?” “This is beauteous Work. Emerson was right, Jeremiah. You were flying, all the time.”

There may be found, within the malodorous Grotto of the Selves, a conscious Denial of all that Reason holds true. Something that knows, unarguably as it knows Flesh is sooner or later Meat, that there are Beings who are not wise, or spiritually advanced, or indeed capable of Human kindness, but ever and implacably cruel, hiding, haunting, waiting,— known only to the blood-scented deserts of the Night,— and any who see them out of Disguise are instantly pursued,— and none escape, however long and fruitful be the years till the Shadow creeps ’cross the Sill-plate, its Advent how mute. Spheres of Darkness, Darkness impure,— Plexities of Honor and Sin we may never clearly sight, for when we venture near they fall silent, Murdering must be silent, by Potions and Spells, by summonings from beyond the Horizons, of Spirits who dwell a little over the Line between the Day and its annihilation, between the number’d and the unimagin’d,— between common safety and Ruin ever solitary.