Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

“Mason, pray You,— ’tis the Age of Reason,” Dixon reminds him, “we’re Men of Science. To huz must all days run alike, the same number of identical Seconds, each proceeding in but one Direction, irreclaimable

Passing the Start-Point at last, the cock’s-comb of hilltops to starboard, the Ship leaning in the up-Channel wind, the late sun upon the heights,— more brilliant gold and blue than either Landsman has ever seen,— the Cold of approaching Night carrying an edge, the possibility that by Morning the Weather will be quite brisk indeed . . . “Su-ma-tra,” sing the sailors of the Seahorse,

“As if . . . there were no single Destiny,” puzzles Mason, “but rather a choice among a great many possible ones, their number steadily diminishing each time a Choice be made, till at last ‘reduc’d,’ to the events that do happen to us, as we pass among ’em, thro’ Time unredeemable,— much as a Lens, indeed, may receive all the Light from some vast celestial Field of View, and reduce it to a single Point. Suggests an optical person,—

putting upon View, for a fee, fictitious Sea-Creatures that others must bend down to see, becoming thereupon subject to Posterior Assault.

“ever had a Basin-ful of Spotted Dick slung into your Face?”

“Well, then, Lads,— it goes up your Nose. Yes. You know what Pond-water feels like up there, I’m sure, but imagine . . . thick, cold, day-before-yesterday’s Spotted Dick, . . . curdling, spots of Mold, with all those horrible Raisin-bits, hard as Gravel,— ”

“Heaven help me,” Mason muttering sourly, “my Dreams reveal this Town to be one of the colonies of Hell, with the Dutch Company acting as but a sort of Caretaker for another . . . Embodying of Power, ’s ye’d say, altogether,—

Maskelyne! what is it, a Cannibal Sacrifice?— ” “No!” Maskelyne screams, “Worse!” “Worse?” Dixon murmurs, by which time all can see the Candles upon the great iced Cake, being borne out to them as its Escort burst into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

“If one did not wish to suffer Horror directly,” comments the Revd in his Day-Book, “one might either transcend it spiritually, or eroticize it carnally,— the sex Entrepreneurs reasoning that the combination of Equatorial heat, sweat, and the flesh of strangers in enforc’d intimacy might be Pleasurable,— that therefore might some dramatiz’d approach to death under such circumstances be pleasurable as well, with all squirming together in a serpent’s Nest of Limbs and Apertures and penises, immobiliz’d in a bondage of similarly bound bodies, lubricated with a gleaming mixture of their own shar’d sweat, piss, and feces, nothing to breathe but one another’s exhausted breaths, moving toward some single slow warm Explosion. . . .”

He continues, tho’ not aloud,— There is a Countryside in my Thoughts, populated with agreeable Company, mapped with Romantick scenery, Standing-Stones and broken Archways, cedar and Yew, shaded Streams, and meadows a-riot with wild-flowers,— holding therein assemblies and frolicks . . . and each time, somewhere by surprize goes Rebekah, ever at a distance, but damme ’tis she, and a moment passes in which we have each recognized the other,— my breath goes away, I turn to Marble,—

“What happens to men sometimes,” his Father wants to tell Charlie, “is that one day all at once they’ll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,— and it proves too much to bear, and they’ll not want it, any of it, and back away in fear. And that’s how these miserable situations arise,— in particular between fathers and sons. The Father too afraid, the Child too innocent. Yet if he could but survive the first onrush of fear, and be bless’d with enough Time to think, he might find a way through. . . .” Hoping Charlie might have look’d at him and ask’d, “Are you and I finding a way through?”

Someday, Mason almost replies. “Don’t know.” He picks the boy up, turns him upside down, and holds him by his feet. “Now then, what’s this?” “Me too!” cries Will. One in each Arm, “I’ll need to be at least this strong, in America.” Each time he bids them farewell and rides away, he pretends there’ll be at least one more Visit. They watch him depart, smaller in the Doorway than in his embrace, and at the Turn of the Road, hand in hand, go dashing off.

The next thing Mason knows, Night has fallen and he is in a Quarter of the City previously unknown to him. Fans of violet light, from Lanthorns of tinted glass, reveal silent Crowds of hastening men and women. Odd Screams now and then break the determin’d Rush of Footfalls. Mun seems unconcern’d at the firmness of the Mobility’s Grip upon them, once they have enter’d the Current. Soon he has vanish’d, leaving Mason to find his way back, tho’ by now ’tis unclear if, thro’ an Agency yet to be discover’d, he has not already, Wig and Waistcoat, been not so much transported as translated, to a congruent Street somewhere in America.

The Telescope, the Fluxions, the invention of Logarithms and the frenzy of multiplication, often for its own sake, that follow’d have for Emerson all been steps of an unarguable approach to God, a growing clarity,— Gravity, the Pulse of Time, the finite speed of Light present themselves to him as aspects of God’s character. It’s like becoming friendly with an erratic, powerful, potentially dangerous member of the Aristocracy. He holds no quarrel with the Creator’s sovereignty, but is repeatedly appall’d at the lapses in Attention, the flaws in Design, the squand’rings of life and energy, the failures to be reasonable, or to exercise common sense,— first appall’d, then angry. We are taught,— we believe,— that it is love of the Creation which drives the Philosopher in his Studies. Emerson is driven, rather, by a passionate Resentment.

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.

“Ah! it might seek you out, mightn’t it,— and, in the Monomania of its Assault, grow careless enough to allow my Agents at last to apprehend it. That would be the Plan, anyhow. 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.’ ”

I am besieged, as she continues upon her strange Orbit of Escape from the known World, whilst growing more powerful within it.”

“I think he’s waking.” She is up and a-bustle, the children secreting themselves in corners, older ones shepherding younger ones to nearby rooms. Mary beckons Franklin in. Mason is gone gray, metallic whiskers sprout from his Face, even his eyelashes are grizzl’d. Franklin is surpriz’d to find that Mason has lost his Squint, that as the years have pass’d, his Face has been able somehow to enter the Ease of a Symmetry it must ever have sought, once he abandon’d the Night Sky, and took refuge indoors from the Day.