Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

Kepler said that Astrology is Astronomy’s wanton little sister, who goes out and sells herself that Astronomy may keep her Virtue,— surely we have all done the Covent Garden turn. As to the older Sister, how many Steps may she herself indeed already have taken into Compromise?

He tries to joke with himself. Isn’t this suppos’d to be the Age of Reason? To believe in the cold light of this all-business world that Rebekah haunts him is to slip, to stagger in a crowd, into the embrace of the Painted Italian Whore herself, and the Air to fill with suffocating incense, and the radiant Deity to go dim forever. But if Reason be also Permission at last to believe in the evidence of our Earthly Senses, then how can he not concede to her some Resurrection?— to deny her, how cruel!

We who rule must tell great Lies, whilst ye lower down need only lie a little bit. This is yet another thankless sacrifice we make for you, so that you may not have to feel as much Remorse as we do,— as we must.

That’s part of the Price,— to drink from Lethe, and lose all thy Memories. Tha’ll be considering the next World brand new,— nawh . . . ? never seen thah’ before!— and tha’ll go ahead and make the same mistakes, unless tha’ve brought along a Remembrancer, as some would say a Conscience . . . ? something stash’d in thy Boot-Strap to get thee going upon a cold Day,— and cold shall it be,— a part of thy Soul that doesn’t depend on Memories, that lies further than Memories . . . ?”

As torch- or taper-light takes over from the light of the sunset, what are those Faces, gather’d before some Window, raising Toasts, preparing for the Evening ahead, if not assur’d of life forever? as travelers come in by ones and twos, to smells of Tobacco and Chops, as Fiddle Players tune their strings and starv’d horses eat from the trough in the Courtyard, as young women flee to and fro dumb with fatigue, and small boys down in strata of their own go swarming upon ceaseless errands, skidding upon the Straw, as smoke begins to fill the smoking-room . . . how may Death come here?

The question I cannot resolve is whether real Flesh and real Blood are themselves, in turn, further symbolick,— either of some mystickal Body of Christ, in which participants in the Lord’s Supper all somehow,— mystickally, to be sure,— become One,— or of a terrible Opposite . . . some ultimate Carnality, some way of finally belonging to the doom’d World that cannot be undone,— a condition, I now confess, I once roam’d the Earth believing myself to be seeking, all but asphyxiated in a darkling innocence which later Generations may no longer fully imagine.

In the shadows where the Forge’s glow does not reach, or out uncomforted beneath the vaporous daylight of Chesapeake, bent to the day’s loads of Fuel from the vanishing Hard-wood Groves nearby, or breathing in the mephitic Vapors of the bloomeries,— wordlessly and, as some may believe, patiently, they bide everywhere, these undeclared secular terms in the Equations of Proprietary Happiness.”

“Aye, they do that, Lad, and they drink and smoke, and dance and gamble withal. Thought ev’ryone knew that. Some might even define an Angel as a Being who’s powerful enough not to be destroy’d by Desire in all its true and terrible Dimensions. Why,— a drop of their Porter? ’twould kill the hardiest drinker among ye,— they smoke Substances whose most distant Scent would asphyxiate us,— their Dancing-floors extend for Leagues, their Wagering, upon even a single trivial matter, would beggar Clive of India. And who’s to say that Human sin, down here, may not arise from this very inadequacy of ours, this failure of Scale, before the sovereign commands of Desire,—

“Never Reporters that anyone else was likely to believe,— men who ate the Flesh and fornicated with the Ghosts of their Dead, murderers and Pirates on the run, monks in parchment Coracles stitched together from copied Pages of the Book of Jonah, fishermen too many Nights out of Port, any Runagate craz’d enough to sail West.” “All matters of what becomes Visible, and when. Revelation exists as a Fact,— and continues, as Time proceeds. If new Continents may become visible, why not Planets, sir, as Planets are in your Line?”

“No longer, Alas, a phrase of Power,— this Age sees a corruption and disabling of the ancient Magick. Projectors, Brokers of Capital, Insurances, Peddlers upon the global Scale, Enterprisers and Quacks,— these are the last poor fallen and feckless inheritors of a Knowledge they can never use, but in the service of Greed. The coming Rebellion is theirs,— Franklin, and that Lot,— and Heaven help the rest of us, if they prevail.”

There are some catchy Tunes, and an Elephant, promis’d in the first Act, which incredibly, at the very end of the Show, is deliver’d. The audience sit stunn’d in the vacuous Purity of not having been cheated.

“All respect, Sir, the Captain wasn’t just Pipe-Smoaking in the Article of that Sha. We all felt it, as, to Appearance, did you and Mr. Dixon. Surveying a Property Line, that may be one thing,— clearing and marking a Right Line of an Hundred Leagues, into the Lands of Others, cannot be a kindly Act.” “Should we have refus’d the Commission, then?” Mason in ever-sharpening Nasality, “— We didn’t invent Parallels of Latitude. Your Dispute is with Hipparchus, and Eratosthenes before him,— both, I believe, dead?”

“Consider,” replies the Geomancer, “— Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten’d. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten’d. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling Apple,— and he was enlighten’d. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness. But it may be your Visto is.”

“To rule forever,” continues the Chinaman, later, “it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call . . . Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,— to create thus a Distinction betwixt ’em,— ’tis the first stroke.— All else will follow as if predestin’d, unto War and Devastation.”

“A Prison,” suggests Capt. Zhang. “Settlers moving West into instant Control.” “Dozens of such Schemes each year,” shrugs Capt. Shelby, “and they all fail.” “Bringing closer the day,” replies the Chinaman, as if receiving Instruction from Elsewhere, “when one of them succeeds.”

“They’ll be curious. Good idea to satisfy them on all questions. Wagering that they may not ask the fatal one,— ‘Why are you doing this?’ If that happens, your only hope is not to react. ’Tis the first step into the Quagmire. If you be fortunate enough to emerge, ’twill not be with your previous Optimism intact.” “Why am I doing this?” Mason inquires aloud of no one in particular, “— Damme, that is an intriguing Question. I mean, I suppose I could say it’s for the Money, or to Advance our Knowledge of,— ” “Eeh,— regard thaself, thou’re reacting,” says Dixon. “Just what Friend Cresap here said not to do,— thou’re doing it . . . ?” “Whine not, as the Stoick ever says? You might yourself advert to it profitably,— ” “What Crime am I charg’d with now, ever for Thoo, how convenient?”

“Wait, wait, you’re saying I don’t take blame when I should, that I’m ever pushing it off onto you?” “Wasn’t I that said it,” Dixon’s Eyebrows headed skyward, nostrils aflare with some last twinkling of Geniality. “I take the blame when it’s my fault,” cries Mason, “but it’s never my Fault,— and that’s not my Fault, either! Or to put it another way,— ” “Aye, tell the Pit-Pony too, why don’t tha?”

Measuring the Degree, they may have intended to hide somehow, inside the Work-day,— surrendering, as openly as they ever could, into a desire to transcend their differently discomforted lives, through what, at the end of the Day, would be but Ranks and Files of Numerals, ever in the Darkness of Pages unopen’d and unturn’d, Ink already begun to fade, from Type since melted and re-cast numberless times,— all but Oblivion,—

Yet at the same time, silently parallel to the Pleasantries of teamwork, runs their effort to convince themselves that whatever they have left upon the last ridge-top, just above the last stone cairn, as if left burning, as if left exhibited in chains before the contempt of all who pass, will find an end to its torment, and fragment by fragment across the seasons be taken back into the Tales preserv’d in Memory, among Wind-gusts, subterranean Fires, Over-Creatures of the Wild, Floods and Freezes . . . until one day ’twill all be gone, re-assum’d, only its silence left there to be clamor’d into by something else, something younger, without memory of, or respect for, what was once, across the third Turning of Dunkard Creek, brought to a halt. .

“Slaves. Ev’ry day at the Cape, we lived with Slavery in our faces,— more of it at St. Helena,— and now here we are again, in another Colony, this time having drawn them a Line between their Slave-Keepers, and their Wage-Payers, as if doom’d to re-encounter thro’ the World this public Secret, this shameful Core. . . . Pretending it to be ever somewhere else, with the Turks, the Russians, the Companies, down there, down where it smells like warm Brine and Gunpowder fumes, they’re murdering and dispossessing thousands untallied, the innocent of the World, passing daily into the Hands of Slave-owners and Torturers, but oh, never in Holland, nor in England, that Garden of Fools . . . ? Christ, Mason.”