Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

Yet he continues here under Royal Society orders,— as now, apparently, do we.” “Tha talk like a sober man.” “Who can get drunk in this terrible place?”

The most metaphysickal thing Mason will ever remember Dixon saying is, “I owe my Existence to a pair of Shoes.”

“We are forbidden, good Woman, as a term of our Contract and Commission, to harm Gardens and Orchards. We’ll set up in a safe place,— pay ye fair rent, of course.”

“Mr. Tumbling fir’d his Rifle at us,” says Dixon. “And what made you think I wouldn’t?” “We gambl’d,” suppose Mason and Dixon. “I’ll just fetch down the Rifle,” offers Mrs. Harland.

“The Sky, turn’d upside down? Wondrous! You are allow’d to do this?” “We’re paid to do this,” declares Dixon. “Kings pay us to do this,” adds Mason.

’Tis determin’d afterward, that Mr. Dimdown, heretofore unacquainted with any confinement longer than hiding in the Root-Cellar till the Sheriff took his leave, had been drinking steadily whatever Spirits came to hand, for the three days previous, attempting, as he explains, “to get the Time to pass differently, that’s all.”

“They do need tender Handling, boys,” young Nathanael McClean tries sternly to advise the five-shilling Hands. “Like your Mother’s Pussy,” is the reply. “My Mother?” counters the young Swamper equably, “Say,— Just saw your Mother, going out, to shoot, Somebody stepp’d on her Infantry Boots,— ” “Aye? Well,— I saw your Mother, and I Quiz you not,— Drinking penny-Gin from a Chamber-Pot.” “Ladies, please, there are Gentlemen present,” announces Overseer of the Axmen Moses Barnes

“The penalty stipulated in the Contract, to remain in force for nine generations,— one for each pair of holes in the Creature,— was that no Lord of Lambton die in his bed. Under this Gypsy curse, one by one, they drown’d, they were kill’d in battle,— Wakefield, Marston Moor,— sure ’twas, none died in bed. The last, the ninth Lord, was Henry Lambton, and one of my letters from Durham, brought me, whilst at the Cape, news that he’d died, three weeks after the Transit of Venus, riding ’cross the new Lambton Bridge in his carriage.”

‘A “Force Intensifier,” as ’tis styl’d, A geomantic Engine in the Wild, Whose Task is sending on what comes along, As brisk as e’er, and sev’ral Times as strong.’

The Graves of my Family are in back of the Cabin, up that Meadow, near the line of Cedars . . . I visit ev’ry Day,— yet, Grief too Solitary breeds madness. At my Work I meet a good many of the Publick, who travel in these parts, who will sometimes, like you, let me bend their Ears with my particular Woes. It keeps away the Madness.

Hey? You think it’s over out here, Redcoat? It’s not over. The Fall of Quebec was not the end, nor Bouquet’s Success at Bushy Run, nor the relief of Fort Pitt,— for there is ever a drop in the cup left, another Shot to be fir’d, another life to be taken off cruelly, in unmediated Hate, ev’ry day in this Forest Life, somewhere. The last Dead in this have not yet been born.

“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.”

“Ev’rywhere they’ve sent us,— the Cape, St. Helena, America,— what’s the Element common to all?” “Long Voyages by Sea,” replies Mason, blinking in Exhaustion by now chronick. “Was there anything else?” “Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,—

As all History must converge to Opera in the Italian Style,

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.

“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?”

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. . . .

“No need to slay a Man who isn’t There.”