Mason & Dixon

by Thomas Pynchon

“They pay you money to keep away,” says Pliny. “Your Grandsire Cherrycoke, Lads, has ever kept his promise to remit to me, by way of certain Charter’d Companies, a sum precise to the farthing and punctual as the Moon,— to any address in the World, save one in Britain. Britain is his World, and he will persist, even now, in standing sham’d before it for certain Crimes of my distant Youth.” “Crimes!” exclaim the Boys together. “Why, so did wicked men declare ’em . . . before God, another Tale. . . .” “What’d they nail you on?” Uncle Ives wishes to know, “strictly professional interest, of course.”

“Madness has not impair’d your memory. Good. Keep away from harmful Substances, in particular Coffee, Tobacco and Indian Hemp. If you must use the latter, do not inhale. Keep your memory working, young man! Have a safe Voyage.”

Taking it for the joke it must surely be, Dixon laughs, “Ha, ha, ha! Oh, thah’s a bonny one, all right.” Mason shrugging, palms up, “I’m serious. Worse than that, I’m sober. A man’s first time in town, he simply can’t miss a hanging.

lolllllllllll

“His Thought being,” endeavored Mr. White, “that all this time, we’d rather imagin’d that the Navy— ” “Alas, Gentlemen, one of many Sacrifices necessary to that strange Servitude we style ‘Command,’” replied the First Lord. “Howbeit, ’twill depend largely on how much your Captain plans to drink, and how many livestock he may feel comfortable living among,— hardly do to be slipping in Goat Shit whilst trying to get ten or twelve Guns off in proper Sequence, sort of thing.

“Dixon, think,— what if they should say yes? Do you want to command a Regiment?” “Why, . . . say, ’tis nothing I’d rule out, at this stage of my life,— ” “You’re a Quaker, you’re not suppos’d to believe in War.” “Technically no longer a Quaker, as they expell’d me back at the end of October from Raby Meeting, just before I came to London,— so I guess now I may kill anyone I like . . . ?” Mason pretends interest, having already heard about it in his briefing by the R.S. “And will any personal difficulties attend that, do you think?”

I feel a certain Gastrick Desolation. What will be his idea of Diversion ashore? Nothing to do with Coffee, I suppose,— tho’ this Route to India is known as a Caffeinist’s Dream. What else may he not abide? My Berth a Prison, unseamanlike Behavior abounding, the very Ship a Ship of Death.

For we’re off to the Indies, off to the East, Ho for the Fables and Ho for the Feast,— Grov’ling like Slaves in the Land of the Turk, There’s nought an Astronomer won’t do for Work.

I cant help but imagine all pynchon songs as showtunes, idk why

The Sailors, having mark’d in both Men these rapid changes of Aspect, are determin’d to keep a wary eye,— tho’ Madness at Sea is not quite as worrying as fire or theft, being indeed so of the essence of a Frigate’s crew that one might as well speak of “Hemp at Sea” or “Wood at Sea.” It’s a Village, after all, ’s a Frigate,— and what is a Village, without Village Idiots? Ev’ryone on board knows who the Madmen are, and that they are here as security against the Forces of Night,—

In Johanna’s intrigue to bring together Mason and her senior slave, however, ’tis the Slavery, not any form of Desire, that is of the essence. Dixon, out of these particular meshes, can see it,— Mason cannot. 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, as he comes to recognize the sorrowful Nakedness of the Arrangements here, grows morose, whilst Dixon makes a point of...

One of Pynchon's best prose passages.

“Oh. Oh, of course, I hadn’t realiz’d. ’Tis but our uninhibited Earthiness, we of lower degree, we’re forever speaking of shit, you see, without much— Damme, I say, I said ‘shit,’ didn’t I?— Oh, shit, I’ve said it again,— No! Twice!” Smacking himself repeatedly upon the Dome.

we of lower degree, we’re forever speaking of shit, you see, without much— Damme, I say, I said ‘shit,’ didn’t I?— Oh, shit, I’ve said it again,— No! Twice!” Smacking himself repeatedly upon the Dome.

“Wouldn’t want you getting into any trouble,” Mason unable to refrain from adding, “— Spanish Inquisitors or whatever. . . .” “Indulge me, Sir, that word again was . . . ?” “Oh, for Heav’n’s sake, ‘Authorities,’ if you like, if that’s not too sectarian for you.” “I am not a fucking Jesuit, Mason. If Jesuits are manipulating me, then are we two Punches in a Droll-booth, Friend,— for as certainly would it be the East India Company who keep thee ever in Motion.”

“Where’s the Local ’round these parts, then?” “A moment’s Walk, tho’ not as easy to get back from.” “Hum. Bit like Life, isn’t it?”

“These frightful Machines!” she pretends to lament, “— shall our Deaths now, as well as our Lives, be rul’d by the Philosophers, and their Army of Mechanicks?”

Mason, Dixon, and Maskelyne are in a punch house on Cock Hill called “The Moon,” sitting like an allegorickal Sculpture titl’d, Awkwardness. It is not easy to say which of them is contributing more to sustaining the Tableau. Mason is suspicious of Maskelyne, Maskelyne struggles not to offend Mason, and Dixon and Maskelyne have been estrang’d from the instant Dixon, learning of Maskelyne’s Residence at Pembroke College, Cambridge, brought up the name of Christopher Smart.

They styl’d it ‘Trekking,’ and themselves ‘Trekkers.’

lmao

Every young woman for miles around would be there, although Mason adopted a more Scientifick motive, that of wishing to see at first hand, a much-rumored Prodigy, styled “The Octuple Gloucester,”— a giant Cheese, the largest known in the Region, perhaps in the Kingdom. Some considered it an example of Reason run amok,— an unreflective Vicar, worshiping at the wrong Altar, having convinced local Cheesemen to pool their efforts in accomplishing the feat. Scaled up from the dimensions of the classic Single Gloucester, not only in Thickness, but actually octupled in all dimensions, making it more like a 512-fold or Quincentenariduodecuple Gloucester,— running to nearly four tons in weight when green, and even after shrinkage towering ten feet high by the time it emerged from the giant Shed built at the outskirts of town especially for this unprecedented Caseifaction,— the extraordinary Cheese, as it slowly aged, had already provided material for months of public Rumor.

All this while, the Ear reposes in its Pickling-Jar of Swedish lead Crystal, as if being withheld from Time’s Appetite for some Destiny obscure to all.

“Well look at it? It’s peculiar isn’t it? Are ye taking me to one of these sinister Castles, oh I’ve read about them,— secret Rituals, Folk in Capes and Hoods? Sex? Torture? Nuns and Monks? Why Charlie, the Idea.”

“may be that none of you people has ever known a moment of Transcendence in his life, nor would re-cognize one did it walk up and bite yese in the Arse,—

By the Time what is arguably the first British Pizza is ready to come out of the Baking-Oven beside the Hearth, the Road outside has gone quiet and the Moorland dark, several Rounds have come and pass’d, and Lud is beginning to show signs of Apprehension.

god this book is incredible

“Mason,— shall we argue Religious Matters?” “Good Christ. Dixon. What are we about?”

The Better-Off live far as they may, from the concentration of Slaughter.

shit ain't changed

“Unfortunately, young people,” recalls the Revd, “the word Liberty, so unreflectively sacred to us today, was taken in those Times to encompass even the darkest of Men’s rights,— to injure whomever we might wish,— unto extermination, were it possible,— Free of Royal advice or Proclamation Lines and such. This being, indeed and alas, one of the Liberties our late War was fought to secure.”

trenchant

“At the Time of Bushy Run,” confides Ives LeSpark, “— and I have seen the very Document,— General Bouquet and General Gage both sign’d off on expenditures to replace Hospital Blankets us’d ’to convey the Small-pox to the Indians,’ as they perhaps too clearly stipulated. To my knowledge,” marvels Ives, “this had never been attempted, on the part of any modern Army, till then.” “Yes, Wicks?” Mr. LeSpark beaming at the Revd, “You wish’d to add something? You may ever speak freely here,— killing Indians having long ago ceas’d to figure as a sensitive Topick in this House.” “Since you put it that way,” the Revd, in will’d Cheeriness, “firstly,— ev’ryone knew about the British infection of the Indians, and no one spoke out. The Paxton Boys were but implementing this same Wicked Policy of extermination, using Rifles instead,— altho’,— Secondly, unlike our own more virtuous Day, no one back then, was free from Sin. Quakers, as handsomely as Traders of less pacific Faiths, profited from the sale of Weapons to the Indians, including counterfeit Brown Besses that blew up in the faces of their Purchasers, as often as fell’d any White Settlers.

“Why? The worst sort of Celtick Degenerates? Their Ancestors ate human flesh,— as their Relatives continue to, no doubt.

RUDE

The next Day, he creeps out before Dixon is awake, and goes to the Site of last Year’s Massacre by himself. He is not as a rule sensitive to the metaphysickal Remnants of Evil,— none but the grosser, that is, the Gothickal, are apt to claim his Attention,— yet here in the soil’d and strewn Courtyard where it happen’d, roofless to His Surveillance,— and to His Judgment, prays Mason,— he feels “like a Nun before a Shrine,” as he later relates it to Dixon, who has in fact slept till well past noon, as Shifts and Back-shifts of Bugs pass to and fro, inspecting his Mortal Envelope. “Almost a smell,” Mason quizzickally, his face, it seems to Dixon, unusually white, “— not the Drains, nor the Night’s Residency,— I cannot explain,— it quite Torpedo’d me.”

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 other way, by someone a bit more credible. . . .” He feels no better for this Out-pouring.

Mr. Edgewise is traveling with his Wife, who, when she must, regards him with a Phiz that speaks of the great amounts of her time given over, in a philosophickal way, to classifying the numerous forms of human idiot, beyond the common or Blithering sort, with which all are familiar,— the Bloody-Minded I., for example, recognized by the dangerous sea of white all around the irises of the eye-balls, or the twittering Variety, by the infallible utterance “Frightfully.” Then one has Mr. Edgewise. . . .

this book gets better and better i swear

How might I speak of my true “Church,” of the planet-wide Syncretism, among the Deistick, the Oriental, Kabbalist, and the Savage, that is to be,— the Promise of Man, the redemptive Point, ever at our God-horizon, toward which all Faiths, true and delusional, must alike converge!

u wot m8

“A mechanickal Duck that shits? To whom can it matter,” Mr. Whitpot, having remov’d his Wig, is irritably kneading it like a small Loaf, “— who besides a fanner would even recognize Duck Waste, however compulsively accurate? And when might any country person get to see this Marvel to begin with, if its only engagements were in Parisian Hôtels?”

Vaucanson’s vainglorious Intent had been to repeat for Sex and Reproduction, the Miracles he’d already achiev’d for Digestion and Excretion. “Who knows? that final superaddition of erotick Machinery may have somehow nudg’d the Duck across some Threshold of self-Intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change, from Inertia toward Independence, and Power. Isn’t it like an old Tale? Has an Automatick Duck, like the Sleeping Beauty, been brought to life by the kiss of . . . l’Amour?” “Oo-la-la,” comes a voice from the corner, “and toot ma flute.” “Frenchies,— marvelous i’n’t it,” comments another, “ever at it, night and day.” “Savages,” hisses the Gallic miniature.

“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. “You see, when one looks in the files of the Ministries, and of other Detectives, for that matter, invariably, under the Heading, ‘Duck,’ the two Humans whose Names most often appear, are Vaucanson, and yourself. Again and again. Can there be a Connection?— the Automaton apparently believes so, having somehow, quite recently, become aware of you. Since then, its Resentment on behalf of all Ducks,— and not only those you personally may have cook’d,— has grown alarmingly. Without doubt, it is forming a Plan, whose details you may not wish to know.” “But this is dangerous! What if its Brain be affected by now? And if it be blaming me for Wrongs I never knew I was committing?”

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.’ ”

Dixon beams and waves at them. “Are all Virginian Ladies as merrily dispos’d?” “Ev’rywhere but at Norfolk, where talk of Passion far outweighs its Enactment,— indeed, the Sailors’ Paronomasia for that wretched Place, is ‘No-Fuck.’ ”

“I have encounter’d Slavery both at the Cape of Good Hope, and in America, and ’tis shallow Sophistry, to compare it with the condition of a British Weaver.”

“Your French has improv’d,” whispers Mason. “I know who you are, and well before next Midnight, too. Ah, and as for ‘kind,’ why the man is at least a Flagellant, you Wanton.” She smiles not at all enigmatickally, turns and steps away, shaking those Globes,— too bad, Flagellants in the Region, she’s here only on short-term Lease, in a Fortnight she’ll be shaking them someplace else, and a glamorous International Life it’s proving to be for her too, so far at least. Who says Slavery’s so terrible, hey?

“Surrounded upon all sides, Night and Day, by the American Mob, ev’ry blessed one of them packing Firrearrms,— why, why yes, I may’ve made some note of that,—

HA.

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? Should I seek the counsel, God help me, of the cherubick Pest, Cherrycoke? He will take down ev’ry Word he can remember. (Might it prove of use, in any future Claims for Compensation, to be recorded, at what’s sure to be impressive Length, as having sought Spiritual Assistance?)

Back Inhabitants all up and down the Line soon begin taking the Frenchman’s Duck to their Bosoms, for being exactly what they wish to visit their lives at this Moment,— something possess’d of extra-natural Powers,— Invisibility, inexhaustible Strength, an upper Velocity Range that makes her the match, in Momentum, of much larger opponents,— Americans desiring generally, that ev’ry fight be fair. Soon Tales of Duck Exploits are ev’rywhere the Line may pass. The Duck routs a great army of Indians. The Duck levels a Mountain west of here. In a single afternoon the Duck, with her Beak, has plow’d ev’ry Field in the County, at the same time harrowing with her Tail. That Duck! As to the Duck’s actual Presence, Opinions among the Party continue to vary. Axmen, for whom tales of disaster, stupidity, and blind luck figure repeatably as occasions for merriment, take to shouting at their Companions, “There she goes!” or, “Nearly fetch’d ye one!” whilst those more susceptible to the shifts of Breeze between the Worlds, notably at Twilight, claim to’ve seen the actual Duck, shimmering into Visibility, for a few moments, then out again.

Less formally, he comes running screaming into Dixon’s Tent, just as Dixon is lighting his Evening Pipe. “Did you see that?” “Bright as Day . . . ?” Dixon nods. “Lord, into what Sub-urbs Satanick hast Thou introduc’d me this time?— Thy Procedures not to be question’d, of course.”

“Can’t understand how anyone abides that stuff.” “How so?” Mason unable not to react. “Well, it’s disgusting, isn’t it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?” “Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,— what all tasteful London drinks,— that,” pollicating the Coffee-Pot, “is what’s disgusting.” “Au contraire,” Dixon replies, “Coffee is an art, where precision is all,— Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I’d mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,— ” “How is it,” Mason pretending amiable curiosity, “that of each Pot of Coffee, only the first Cup is ever worth drinking,— and that, by the time I get to it, someone else has already drunk it?” Dixon shrugs. “You must improve your Speed . . . ?

“Folly,” gapes Mason. “Why, ev’ry cup of Tea is perfect . . . ?” “For what? curing hides?”

All the way back to the Visto, Mason is seiz’d by Monology. “Text,— he cries, and more than once, “it is Text,— and we are its readers, and its Pages are the Days turning. Unscrolling, as a Pilgrim’s Itinerary map in ancient Days. And this is the Chapter call’d ‘The Subterranean Cathedral, or, The Lesson Grasp’d.’ You must make sure I do not attempt to return. Didn’t you feel anything? You people, with your second sight and Eldritch Powers,— why I’ve seen betterr at Painswick Fairr.”

We trespass, each day ever more deeply, into a world of less restraint in ev’rything,— no law, no convergence upon any idea of how life is to be,— an Interior that grows meanwhile ever more forested, more savage and perilous, until,— perhaps at the very Longitude of your ‘City,’— we must reach at last an Anti-City,— some concentration of Fate,— some final condition of Abandonment,— wherein all are unredeemably alone and at Hazard as deep as their souls may bear,— lost Creatures that make the very Seneca seem Christian and merciful.”

trenchant!

“This day from the Summit of Sidelong Hill I saw the Line still formed the arch of a lesser circle very beautiful, and agreeable to the Laws of a Sphere,” as Mason records. “Yet,” he confides to Capt. Zhang, “this unremitting Forest,— it disturbs me. Far, far too many trees.” “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.”

“Poh, Sir,” goads Mason, “the Provinces are alike as Stacy and Tracy.” “Except for the Negro Slavery upon one side,” Dixon points out, less mildly than he might, “and not the other.” “If you think you see no Slaves in Pennsylvania,” replies Capt. Zhang, his face as smooth as Suet, “why, look again. They are not all African, nor do some of them even yet know,— may never know,— that they are Slaves. Slavery is very old upon these shores,— there is no Innocence upon the Practice anywhere, neither among the Indians nor the Spanish nor in the behavior of the rest of Christendom, if it come to that.”

Once, so long ago that no one is sure of Dates anymore,— tho’ some say it was during the reign of one of the Hia Emperors,— upon the first day of Autumn in the Hsiu or Moon-station of Fang, an eclipse of the Sun occurr’d, which the Court Astronomers, Hsi and Ho, fail’d to predict,— not just predict accurately, but predict at all. Instead of diligently observing the Heavens, and doing the calculations, they had been spending most of their time roistering into town at late hours, abusing wine, drunkenly pursuing notorious Courtesans, not all of whom were Women, falling into public Latrines, and losing great portions of their Royal Stipends to all sorts of thieves, from Adventuresses to Gamingtable Bullies,— until, one strangely-lit Noontide, clogg’d and neuralgick, weaving their way back to their quarters in the Palace, they notice something about the shadows of the trees.—

This entire chapter is gold

“We may be in trouble,” says Ho. “Thanks for doing the brain-work on that.” They hurry on in the livid, decadent Noon, stepping among the slow-stirring bright lacework, their faces averted from the Event above. Dogs howl all over the City. Chickens stop what they are doing and fall asleep. Babies cry, Pigs briefly acquire the power of speech, saying, “Hush, hush.” The Light continues to seep away, until all individual Shadows are dissolv’d in a general Gloom, tense and baleful.