17. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 525-553

Two: America; 54-55

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The narrative abruptly shifts to first person, as our abductee tells us that one evening she was "taken to a Chamber, and there laced into an expensive Corset," her face was "painted ... into a wanton Sister of itself,"... and she was given "undergarments ... that might, Blondelle assur'd me, make a French whore think twice." She is to be taken to "the Chinaman."

If this sounds like porn, it is. Tenebrae "has discover'd the sinister Volume in 'Thelmer's Room, lying open to a Copper-plate Engraving of two pretty Nuns, sporting in ways she finds inexplicably intriguing." Ethelmer claims the book, which is "the next in the Ghastly Fop series," is "something of Cousin DePugh's." She wonders that "a young University Gentleman should find Affection between Women at all a topic of interest." He gives her a synopsis of the series featuring the Ghastly Fop, who to some "seems quite conventionally alive, whilst others swear he is a Ghost.... The Series runs to at least a Dozen Volumes by now, tho' no one is sure exactly how many, -- forgeries have also found their way into the Market." Ethelmer tells Tenebrae that he has read as far as "where she meets the Chinese Boy, and they plan their Escape." He says he will read the next chapter to her. "And so off they minuet, to become detour'd from the Revd's narrative Turnpike onto the pleasant Track of their own mutual Fascinations, by way of the Captive's Tale." 

The tale resumes with the captive's account of a dream, and then shifts to third person as the Wolf of Jesus realizes that the "Chinaman," Zhang, whom he has paired with the captive is fluent in Spanish. Moreover, Zhang is now preparing to escape from the Jesuits and the captive "understands when he will leave, and in the instant decides to go with him." She disguises herself as a boy, and they make their escape. He has with him a "miraculous Luo-Pan," a magnetic compass used in feng shui. They make their way to the home of Sir William Johnson, who recognizes Zhang after he "presents him a curious sort of Metallick Plate" and they "exchange a complicated Hand-shake." She reveals herself to be Eliza Fields of Conestoga.

Ethelmer proposes to skip a page of erotic stuff about Eliza and Zhang, but Tenebrae has already read ahead. Eliza and Zhang journey on, and at this point the fiction of the Ghastly Fop joins up with the narrative of the Mason-Dixon expedition: "they arrive at the West Line, and decide to follow the Visto [the line blazed by the axmen] east, and ere long they have come up with the Party." Zhang asks if she plans to return to her husband. "'Either to the Jesuits, or to him? -- That's my full list of Choices? ...' She twirls her Nose in the air, and departs."

Eliza bunks with one of the camp-followers, Zsuzsa Szabó, who does a show involving "Accordion musick, Dog tricks and Gypsy Dancing" with a machine that recreates the Battle of Leuthen. The surveyors meet Eliza in the tent, Dixon quite taken with the "Deerskin Costume" that she wears, and Mason stunned to discover in her a likeness, indeed a "Point-for-Point Representation," of his late wife. Both Mason and Eliza consult the chaplain of the party, which is Cherrycoke, who "speculates that the Resemblance so confounding Mason is less likely the Transmigration of a Soul, than the Resurrection of a Body, -- enough of its Particulars to convince him 'tis she." Mason is tormented by dreams of Rebekah, and one day concludes that since Eliza's hair has grown back in, she no longer looks like her that much.  Eliza tells him that she and Zsuzsa have decided "to go off and be Adventuresses," and if he passes near Conestoga to listen for the sounds of merriment that will reveal how much her husband, Seth, misses her.

Zhang, meanwhile, is criticizing the survey itself: "Terrible Feng-Shui here. Worst I ever saw. You two crazy?" He means that the straight line, the Visto, "acts as a Conduit for what we call Sha, or, as they say in Spanish California, Bad Energy. -- Imagine a Wind, a truly ill wind, bringing failure, poverty, disgrace, betrayal, -- every kind of bad luck there is, -- all blowing through, night and day, with many times the force of the worst storm you were ever in." Boundaries, he says, should "follow Nature, -- coast-lines, ridge-tops, river-banks, -- so honoring the Dragon or Shan within, from which Land-Scape ever takes its form." He is surprised that a people so given to religion as the settlers in America should allow it.

He tells them of his enemy, the Wolf of Jesus, Father Zarpazo, who is "sworn to destroy all who seek God without passing through the toll-gate of Jesus." Under his direction, they have particularly targeted practitioners of feng shui. Dixon is fascinated by Zhang's luopan, recognizing a fellow "Needle man." When he mentions that Mason is frustrated by the fact that the compass "never points to what he calls True North," Zhang says that Zarpazo is too. "The Impurity of this Earth keeps him driven in a holy Rage, -- Which is why he wants this Visto." He explains that the Visto will draw Zarpazo to it because "Purity of Azimuth is his Passion."

Dixon is puzzled that Zhang should be so opposed to their mission, but he reassures him that "my business is with the Jesuit. We happen to be the principal Personae here, not you two! Nor has your Line any Primacy in this, being rather a Stage-Setting, dark and fearful as the Battlements of Elsinore, for the struggle Zarpazo and I must enact upon the very mortal Edge of this great Torrent of Sha." But so obsessed is Zhang with the struggle against Zarpazo that he has become paranoid, convinced that Zarpazo, "a master of disguise, ... has actually penetrated the Camp, and only waits his moment to administer that poison'd Stiletto preferr'd by a Jesuit confronting Error." His suspicions also include Dixon because "'Tis widely assum'd that you are here on behalf of the Jesuit Le Maire." The Jesuits, he claims, want to "tap into the unremitting torrent of Sha roaring all night and all day, and convert it to their own uses."

Mr. Everybeet, the mineralogist, notes that "west of here, in the Hills 'round Cheat and Monongahela, are secret Lead Mines, which the Indians guard jealously." And that "who controls Lead controls the supply of Ammunition."

Mason and Dixon conclude that Zhang is "a few Links short of a Chain," especially when he begins transforming himself into the image of his adversary, Zarpazo. He wears black robes and begins to grow a small beard, and "Spanish phrases increasingly creep into his Conversation." Mason suggests that there might be trouble if Zhang's presence attracts Zarpazo and that Dixon is the only one who can get rid of him: "He already thinks you're a Jesuit Agent. All you have to do is advise him to stay, and he'll do the opposite." But Zhang claims to have an amulet against the Jesuit that will protect the expedition: "a dark Red sphere about the size of a Cherry" that he claims is a cyst that once grew in the brain of a cobra. "Therefore fear not the Advent of the Wolf, for here is the soul of the Cobra, yet living, yet potent." When Zhang displays it, "'I'll buy one!' Dixon cries. Mason looks upward, patiently."

10. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 289-326

Two: America; 29-32

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We meet the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who make beeswax effigies to be hanged and burned at political rallies -- sometimes, if the effigies are to be decapitated, using spare parts from the neighborhood abattoir. They're so lifelike, Damian says, that "you'd enter any darken'd Room our lads and lasses happen'd to be in, only upon ill advice indeed." Mason and Dixon have discovered that the back rooms of taverns in Philadelphia tend to be reserved for members of various secret societies, and in one of them he finds some of the Veery brothers' creations: heads of the commissioners for the boundary line. So he's creeped out when he attends a meeting of the commissioners. "Those waxen Faces that gaz'd at him with such a midnight Intent, -- here are their daytime counterparts to greet him, with the same, O God in thy Mercy, the same look ... as if deliberately to recall the other night."

Mason finds it hard to sleep in Philadelphia, what with the street noises and the bedbugs, though Dixon has no problem doing so. One insomniac night he goes to the Orchid Tavern, where he has the complexities of Pennsylvania politics -- the reason the Veery brothers can make a living off of effigies -- explained to him. "Religious bodies here cannot be distinguished from Political Factions. These are Quaker, Anglican, Presbyterian, German Pietist. Each prevails in its own area of the Province." The Penns, he is told "tho' Quaker by ancestry are Anglican in Praxis, -- some even say, Tools of Rome." But the political lesson is interrupted by the appearance of Franklin, who gives a demonstration of electricity with the help of volunteers from the audience.

Mason and Dixon's work on their eponymous line begins with the establishment of the southernmost boundary of Philadelphia. The boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland is to be drawn fifteen miles south of this. The commissioners have chosen the northern wall of a house to be the southernmost boundary, because the south wall is in private property. Nearby, "Mr. Benjamin Loxley and his Crew have been busily erecting an Observatory." Dixon, who is in charge of the compass, visits a coffee house, the Flower-de-Luce, which is "frequented by those with an interest in the Magnetick." There he meets "Dr. Franklin's friend Dolly," who turns out to be interested in compasses and maps. She tells him that the Calverts are interested in him and that Cecilius Calvert "believes you a Wizard, a Dowser of Iron.... They imagine, that you and your Instrument will make of them Nabobs, like Lord Lepton, to whose ill-reputed Plantation you must be drawn, upon your way West, resistlessly as the Needle. Then, Sailor among the Iron Isles, -- Circumferentor Swab, -- Beware."

Late in December they awaken to silence outside, which they find eerie, so they set out to find out what has happened to everyone. At the Restless Bee, a coffee house, they learn that the vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys have massacred a group of peaceful Indians and are now marching on Philadelphia. "Mason and Dixon look at each other bleakly. 'Well. If I'd known 'twould be like this in America....' Mason did note as peculiar, that the first mortal acts of savagery in America after their Arrival should have been committed by Whites against Indians." They also worry about the kind of people they will encounter as they move west. "What must we look like? A sizable Band of Arm'd Pioneers, working for the Proprietors? ... mystical Machinery they've never seen ...? Up far too late at night, gazin' at the Heavens...?"

They also recall the Second Jacobite Rising of 1745, although Mason, who was seventeen at the time, while Dixon was twelve, claims to recall it better. Which leads them into a quarrel about the difference of their backgrounds, with Mason asserting, "You, simple Geordie, inhabit a part of England where ancient creatures may yet move in the Dusk, and the animals fly, and the dead pop in now and then for coffee and a chat. Upon my home soil, the Ground for growing any such Wonders has been cruelly poison'd, with the coming of the hydraulick Looms.... My home's no more."

Pitt and Pliny are excited by the notion that Mason and Dixon might have come to blows over their differences, but Cherrycoke doesn't give them that satisfaction, assuring them that they remained friends "till something ... something occurr'd between them, in 'sixty-seven or 'sixty-eight, that divided their Destinies irremediably...." Tenebrae announces that it's bedtime for the boys, but Cherrycoke promises them "Indians tomorrow." After they depart, he tells the remaining audience about the watch that Emerson presented to Dixon before he sailed, telling him to "be vigilant, to the point of Folly, if Folly it takes, in your care of this Watch, for within it lies a secret mechanism, that will revolutionize the world of Horology." In short, it's a perpetual motion machine, which Emerson has always told Dixon is impossible. But when Dixon goes to wind it, he can't find a way of doing so.

Mason is skeptical about this impossible watch, even though Dixon assures him that he never has to wind it. "You might be winding it while I'm asleep, or when screen'd, as we so often are one from the other, by Trees." Then one night Dixon has a dream in which Emerson appears to him and charges him with breaking his contract and threatens terrible consequences. After he awakes, "Tho' sworn to guarantee the Watch's safety, he soon finds his only thoughts are of ways to rid himself of it." As it happens, a land-surveyor named R.C., who is working with them, has been shown the watch and wants it, thinking it might be worth something to the men who are trying to solve the problem of determining longitude. So one night R.C. swallows the watch.

In the months, and then the years, after he swallows the Watch, as the days of ceaseless pulsation pass one by one, R.C. learns that a small volume within him is, and shall be, immortal. His wife moves to another Bed, and soon into another room altogether, after persuading him first to build it onto the House. "Snoring's one thing, R.C., I can always do something about that," brandishing her Elbow, "-- but that Ticking..."

Dixon reluctantly reports the loss of the watch to Emerson, who is surprisingly jubilant at the news. He has to dictate his reply to Dixon's letter because he injures himself celebrating the news of the lost watch, but Mrs. Emerson writes that her husband "wishes me to say, 'Felicitations, Fool, for it hath work'd to Pefection.'" But the only explanation of that remark from Emerson comes in a postscript: "Time is the Space that may not be seen, --"

4. Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon, pp. 94-124

One: Latitudes and Departures; 10-12

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Pliny suggests that they set up the orrery so Cherrycoke can demonstrate the transit of Venus, and Pitt gets out the candle that represents the sun. Their sister Tenebrae, meanwhile, indulges in some mild flirtation with Cousin Ethelmer. The orrery includes the new "Georgian" planet, which would later be named Uranus, because its creator, "Dr. Nessel, the renown'd German Engineer," had traveled to Philadelphia to update, free of charge, the orreries he had built in America. He has even given some surface features to the new planet, which inspired the children to write "a Book, History of the New Planet, the Twins providing the Wars, and Brae the scientifick Inventions and Useful Crafts."

Cherrycoke explains why numerous observations of the transit are necessary to determine "the value of the Solar Parallax." That is, we want to determine the size of the Earth, and the observations of the transit allow us to calculate it as if one were standing on the surface of the sun. DePugh, "the son of Ives LeSpark, like Ethelmer home on a Visit from School, in this case from Cambridge," refers to the sought-after calculation as "A Vector of Desire," a Pynchonian joke on a Lacanian phrase. Cherrycoke calls this "the phrase exact."

We return to the scene in Cape Town where "odd behavior like it, is going on all over the World all day long that fifth and sixth of June, in Latin, in Chinese, in Polish, in Silence, -- upon Roof-Tops and Mountain Peaks, out of Bed-chamber windows, close together in the naked sunlight whilst the Wife minds the Beats of the Clock." They need to record "four instances of perfect Tangency":  the moments when the planet first touches the outer edge of the sun and when it is fully within the circumference, and the corresponding moments as it leaves the solar disk. But it is cloudy on the days leading up to the event. Mason and Dixon are nevertheless calm but they notice that "the Zeemans and the Vrooms speed about in unaccustom'd Bustle," which causes Mason to remark, "Dutch Ado about nothing." (Pynchon leaves no opportunity unpunned.)

The day comes, and the sky is clear enough for observation. They observe carefully, but "Whatever the cause, the times [Dixon] records are two to four seconds ahead of Mason's." And then comes anticlimax.

As before the Transit the month of May crept unnaturally, so, after it, will June, July, August, and September hasten by miraculously, -- till early in October, when Capt. Harrold, of the Mercury, finds a lapse in the Weather workable enough to embark the Astronomores, and take them to St. Helena in.... After the Transit, Astronomers and Hosts walk about for Days in deep Stupor, like Rakes and Doxies after some great Catastrophe of the Passions.

The pursuit of Mason by the Vroom women ends when some young men arrive at the Cape, "a Heaven-sent Source of White Blood.... Johanna can almost see those Babies now, up on the Block, adorable enough to sell themselves, kicking their feet in the air and squealing." Idled, Mason inquires of Dixon about the Quaker practice of sitting quietly until one feels the presence of the spirit, but Mason is too eager for the experience and "keeps jumping up, to run and interrupt Dixon, who is trying to do the same, with news of his Progress, '' 'Jere! I think it almost happen'd! D'ye get a kind of rum sensation here,' -- touching the center of his Forehead, -- 'is that it?'" But they finally give it up after "Mason, in his Chair, falling asleep, topples with a great Crash, or Dixon decides he'll step out after all, nip down to The World's End, and see what the Cape Outlawry may be up to." Finally, they sail away from the Cape, with "no one ... there at the Quay to say good-bye but Bonk, the police official who earlier greeted them."

Cherrycoke's audience is joined by Aunt Ephrenia, "careering into the room with her Oboe and an armload of sheet-music," and as she carves a reed from her oboe we learn that she was once abducted by Barbary pirates and kept in a sultan's harem. Cherrycoke continues with "a part of the Tale that I miss'd," which is the experiences of Mason and Dixon in St. Helena, where they met up with the astronomer royal, Nevil Maskelyne. Uncle Ives asks how they are to know what happened there, but Cherrycoke continues with the story nevertheless. St. Helena, he says, is "an infamous Port of Call, quite alone in the mid-Atlantic, a Town left to shift as it may, dedicated to nought but the pleasures of Sailors, -- which is to say, ev'ry species of Misbehavior, speakable or not."

Maskelyne is there to observe Sirius, "the Island's Zenith-Star." But it's hardly a pleasant place to be.

The Town has begun to climb into the Ravine behind it, and thus, averaged overall, to tilt toward the sea. After Rain-Storms, the water rushes downhill, in Eagres and Riffles and Cataracts, thro' the town, rooftop to rooftop, in and out of Windows, leaving behind a shiv'ring Dog from uphill, taking away the Coffee Pot, till leaving it in its turn somewhere else, for a Foot-Stool, thus bartering its way out to sea. 

The residents of the island "make up a mix'd flock":

Convicts being transported to the South Seas for unladylike crimes in England, with St. Helena one of the steps in their Purgatory, -- young Wives on their way out to India to join husbands in the Army and Navy, a-tremble with tales, haunting the Day like a shadow from just beneath the Horizon ahead, of the Black Hole of Calcutta, -- and Company Perpetuals, headed out, headed home, such shuttles on the loom of Trade as Mrs. Rollright, late of Portland, who keeps opium in her patch-box and commutes frequently enough upon the India run to've had four duels fought over her already, though she has yet to see her twenties out. 

And Mason encounters an old acquaintance, Florinda, whom he met after the death of his wife, when he followed "some of Lust's less-frequented footpaths." He had met her at the hangings at Tyburn, particularly at "the much-heralded Hanging of Lord Ferrers for the murder of Johnson, his Steward."

Mason and Dixon meet with Maskelyne at The Moon, "a punch house on Cock Hill," but Dixon and Maskelyne don't get along particularly well after Dixon, learning that Maskelyne was at Pembroke College, Cambridge, is indiscreet enough to ask him about Christopher Smart, notorious for his insanity. The proprietor of the punch house also can't resist a pun about how Maskelyne is there on "Sirius Business." And Maskelyne is further annoyed by having his birthday celebrated with a cake, reminding him that he has just turned twenty-nine.

Dixon is preparing to return to the Cape, and when Maskelyne steps out, Mason reveals that the instrument Maskelyne is using to measure the position of Sirius doesn't work. Dixon thinks he can fix it, but Mason warns him not to bring up the subject of the instrument with Maskelyne because he has so much invested in it. Dixon is returning to the Cape with the Shelton Clock, and there is a section of dialogue between it and the Ellicott Clock about Dutch clocks, whose mechanisms don't give a warning -- the sound of the mechanism preparing -- before they strike. Mason and Dixon were both annoyed by the surprise striking of the clocks.