Mason & Dixon (74 page)

"And if only one of you shows up...?"

"How could you ever be sure which one it was?— Oh, and meaning no offense,— for an Insolent Question like that, the 'real' Zarpazo would have you publickly aflame in the nearest Glade, before you even under-

 
stood what you'd done. His Chinese impersonator might wait but a few minutes more."

"Mighty harsh talk, Captain," says Shelby. "But you know, I'm a Captain too, and now I wonder'd if I might just have a chat with you, Captain to Captain, as you'd say."

"You do me honor, Captain."

"What troubles us, Captain, about your Spanish friend, is his way of wanting to kill anyone who doesn't agree with him. Hardly do around here, you see. Likely, after a short while, to be no one left. Withal, if one of us gets lucky and prevails, then we have the problem of a dead Jesuit, thousands of miles from home, inside a Territory where he ought not to be. Others, some sooner or later with real power, will be making inquiries. In either case, you would have to flee."

"You are all safe, so long as I have,"— thumb and Index together, he twirls his wrist and is immediately holding up a dark Red sphere about the size of a Cherry,— "this. 'Tis a Pearl, yet not from beneath the Sea. Once it was a Cyst, growing within the Brain of a Cobra. None but expe-rienc'd Harvesters are able to tell which Cobras bear them and which are not worth killing. The pearls are taken north into the Himalayan Mountains, where they find use in the Tibetan Medicine— Therefore fear not the Advent of the Wolf, for here is the soul of the Cobra, yet living, yet potent."

"I'll buy one!" Dixon cries. Mason looks upward, patiently.

That night, at Zsuzsa's Exhibition, in Torchlight, before the gleaming eyes of lovesick Axmen, "Great Frederick has chang'd the face of War, created a new Power upon the Continent,...lo, the Prussian columns,— keeping ever their Intervals, and each precisely upon his mark, wheeling,... the Angles of the Hats, as of the Wigs, calculated as to the Field of Vision, for most efficient Fire."

When it is time for questions from the audience,— "Began at Ramil-lies, in fact," notes Professor Voam, to all nearby, "— 'twas well before the first Charles, that men envied and sought to copy, nay, outdo, the loos'd Locks of the other half of humanity. All the history of England since that discredited Dynasty has been about Hair,— and nothing else,

the tied-back wigs of Marlborough's riflemen at Ramillies being so ideally Hanoverian, so perfected a compromise between the Stuart wantonness and the shorn Republican Pate, that today any hair worn forward of the shoulders, is but Jacobitism by means of Coiffure,— a wordless sedition, that places in question all our hard-won Arrangements."

"Do you mean," Zsuzsa cries, "a perfect balance between the Feminine and the Masculine? English Soldiers? My Brain,— ah, I must think...."

"My good young Woman." Captain Shelby flourishing his Brows. "Whilst Europe was enjoying such tidy doings as yours,— over here, in our own collateral wars, we rather suffer'd one by one, in terror, alone among the Leagues of Trees unending. The only German precision we know of's right here," patting the octagonal Barrel of his Lancaster Rifle, as if 'twere the Flank of a faithful Dog.

"Geometry and slaughter!" ejaculates Squire Haligast, "— The future of war, yet ancient as the mindless Exactitudes of Alexander's Phalanx."

"Perhaps," the Revd suggests, "we attribute to the Armies of old, a level of common Belief long inaccessible to our own skeptical Souls. Making the Prussian example all the more mystical,— whom or what can any modern army believe in enough to obey? If not God, nor one's King... ?"

"They submit," Zsuzsa replies, "to the preemptive needs of the Manoeuvre,— a Soldier's Faith at last must rest in the Impurity of his own desires. What can Hansel possibly wish for, that Heinz in front of him, and Dieter behind, and a couple of Fritzes on either side, have not already desir'd,— multiplied by all the ranks and files, stretching away across the Plain? The same blonde from down the Street, the same Pot of beer, the same sack of Gold deliver'd by some Elf, for doing nothing. Who is unique? Who is not own'd by someone? What do any of their desires matter, if they can be of no use to the Manoeuvre, where all is timed from a single Pulse, each understanding no more than he must,—

" 'Tis he!" screams Capt. Zhang, leaping to the Platform and taking a position as if astride a Horse, extending his hands precisely before him. Zsuzsa, her eyes very wide, swiftly undoes some buttons of her Tunic, to reach for a Pistol of British make, and a Lady's Powder-Flask with a Stopper of strip'd blue Venetian Glass, purring, "Captain, Captain, not in here. Run along now, take it outside, you have all the Forest to play in.”

"Reveal yourself, Wolf of Jesus. Zhang does not kill Fools, nor may he in honor kill you, whilst you linger within that contemptible disguise."

"What, this old Rongy?— Will someone explain this to me? Don Foppo de Pin-Heado, here, seems upset."

"Perhaps if Mademoiselle, as a gesture of good intent, would put aside her,— ehm,— " cajoles Mr. Barnes.

"We call it a Pistol, the same as men do," twirling the Weapon by its trigger-guard. "Now that you have spoken to the Lady in Breeches, perhaps you could have a word with the man in skirts."

"He's not a real Jesuit," Mason assures her.

"Or, perhaps all too real!" the Captain with a look of evil glee,— "for suppose I was never Zhang, but rather Zarpazo, all the Time! HA,— ha-ha!" His Laugh, tho' hideously fiendish enough, seems practis'd.

"Or," replies Mr. Barnes, "that you are neither, but yet another damn'd Fabulator, such as ever haunt encampments, white or Indian, ev'ry night, somewhere in this Continent."

"Too many possible Stories. You may not have time enough to find out which is the right one."

"Best thing's draw up a Book, for there's certain to be wagering upon the Question?" offers Guy Spit.

Ethelmer, downstairs, alone, at the Clavier, hair loos'd, apostrophizes a Thermometer,— throughout which the Listener may imagine a series of idiotic still-life Views, first of the Thermometer, registering some low temperature,— then of Ethelmer, singing to it, then back to the Thermometer again, and so forth.

Say, Mister Fahrenheit,

She doesn't treat me right, [advert to Thermometer]

Wish you could warm up that Lady of mine,— [then back to

'Thelmer, &c.]

Look at you, on the wall,

Don't have a, care at all,—

Even tho' our love has plung'd,

To minus ninety-nine,— now, Doctor

Celsius, and ev'ryone else, yes,

 
Say, you've plenty to spare,—

Don't let us freeze, can't you

Send some Degrees, from where-

-Ever you are, out there,—

Damme,

Mister Fahrenheit,—

Here comes another night,

I shall once again be shiv'ring through,

With no help from your Scale,

Tie all Ice and Hail, and

I'll turn-into a Snow-man, too.

"Where's Brae, Thelmer?" DePugh, self-Mesmeriz'd, having lost his way to the Larder.

"Dreaming. As to what, I can only say with certainty, that 'tis not of me." "Romance, you did your best." "Ah. But not my worst.”

56

"Now here is something curious." The Revd produces and makes available to the Company his Facsimile of Pennsylvania's Fair Copy of the Field-Journals of Mason and Dixon, "copied without the touch of human hands, by an ingenious Jesuit device, and printed by Mr. Whimbrel, next to The Seneca Maiden, Philadelphia, 1776."

"Cycles, or if you like, Segments of eleven Days recur again and again. Here, in 1766, eleven days after setting out southward from Brandywine, is Mason paus'd at Williamsburg, the southernmost point of his journey,— next day he leaves for Annapolis, and eleven days later departs that City, to return to work upon the Line,— a very Pendulum. In April, just after crossing the North Mountain, they must wait in the Snow and Rain, from the sixth thro' the sixteenth before resuming. The culminating Pause, of course, is at the Line's End, between 9 October of '67, when the Chief of the Indians that were with them said he would proceed no farther west than the Warrior Path, and the 20th, when the Party, turning their backs for the last time upon the West, began to open the Visto eastward— unto their last Days in America,— " turning the Pages, - from 27 August of '68, when accounts were settl'd and the work was officially over and done with, till 7 September, their last night in Philadelphia before leaving to catch the Halifax Packet at New-York. Again and again, this same rough interval continues to appear,— suggesting a hidden Root common to all. And Friends, I believe 'tis none but the famous Eleven Missing Days of the Calendar Reform of '52.”

Cries of "Cousin? we beseech thee!" and "Poh, Sir!" "Those of us born before that fateful September," observes the Revd, "comprise a generation in all British History uniquely insulted, each Life carrying a chronologick Wound, from the same Parliamentary Stroke. Perhaps we are compell'd, even unknowingly, to seek these Undecamerous Sequences, as areas of refuge that may allow us, if only for a moment, to pretend Life undamaged again. We think of 'our' Time, being held, in whatever Time's equivalent to 'a Place' is, like Eurydice, somehow to be redeem'd.—
 
Perhaps, as our Indian brothers might re-enact some ancient Adventure, correct in all details, so British of a certain Age seek but to redeem Eleven Days of pure blank Duration, as unalienably their own—

"Pull not such faces, young Ethelmer,— one day, should you keep clear of Fate for that long, you may find yourself recalling some Injustice, shared with lads and lasses of your own Day, just as uncalmable, and even yet, unredeem'd."

Mason for a while had presum'd it but a matter of confusing dates, which are Names, with Days, which are real Things. Yet for anyone he met born before '52 and alive after it, the missing Eleven Days arose again and again in Conversation, sooner or later characteriz'd as "brute Absence," or "a Tear thro' the fabric of Life,"— and the more he wrestl'd with the Question, the more the advantage shifted toward a Belief, as he would tell Dixon one day, "In a slowly rotating Loop, or if you like, Vortex, of eleven days, tangent to the Linear Path of what we imagine as Ordinary Time, but excluded from it, and repeating itself,— without end."

"Hmm. The same eleven days, over and over, 's what tha're saying... ?" "You show, may I add, an unusual Grasp of the matter." "Why then, as it is a periodick Ro-tation, so must it carry, mustn't it, a Vis centrifuga, that might, with some ingenuity, be detected...? Perhaps by finding, in the Realm of Time, where the Loop tries either to increase or decrease its Circumference, and hence the apparent length of each day in it. Or yet again not rotate at all, the length of the Day then continuing the same,—

"Dixon. Everything rotates.”

"A Vorticist! Lord help us, his Mercy how infrequent!" Emerson, believing Vorticists to be the very Legion of Mischief, had so instructed ev'ry defenseless young Mind he might reach.

"Very well,— if you must know,— lean closer and mark me,— I have been there, Sir."

"'There,'Sir...?"

Mason is gesturing vigorously with his Thumb, at the Eye, much wider than its partner, that he uses for Observation.—
 
"Tho' I've ever tried not to recollect any more than I must,— at least not till a zealously inquisitive Partner insists upon knowing,— yet the fact is that at Midnight of September second, in the unforgiven Year of 'Fifty-two, I myself did stumble, daz'd and unprepared, into that very Whirlpool in Time,— finding myself in September third, 1752, a date that for all the rest of England, did not exist,— Tempus Incognitum."

"Eeh..."

"Don't say it,— I didn't believe it myself. Not until it happen'd, that is,— no Discomfort to it, only a little light-headedness. At the Stroke of the Hour, whilst I continued into the Third, there came an instant Trans-halation of Souls, leaving a great human Vacuum, as ev'ryone else mov'd on to the Fourteenth of September."

"Not sure what that means, of course
             
"

"You'd have felt it as a lapse of consciousness, perhaps. Yet soon
enough I discover'd how alone 'twas possible to be, in the silence that
flow'd, no louder than Wind, from the Valleys and across those Hill-
villages, where, instead of Populations, there now lay but the mute
Effects of their Lives,— Ash-whiten'd Embers that yet gave heat, food
left over from the last Meals of September Second, publick Clocks frozen
for good at midnight between the Second and the day after,— tho' some
where else, in the World which had jump'd ahead to the Fourteenth, they
continued to tick onward, to be re-wound, to run fast or slow, carrying on
with the ever-Problematick Lives of the Clocks
             

"Alone in the material World, Dixon, with eleven days to myself. What would you have done?"

"Had a Look in The Jolly Pitman, perhaps...?"

A look of forbearance. "Aye, as my first thoughts were of The George in Stroud,...yet 'twas the absence of Company, that most preoccupied

 
me,— seeking which, in some Desperation, before the Sun rose, I set out. Reasoning that if I had been so envortic'd, why so might others— breaking off abruptly, a word or two shy (Dixon by now feels certain) of some fatal confidence, that Rebekah would have stood at the heart of.

Young Charles was to reason eventually, that the pain of separation had lain all upon his side, for she was to bid him good morrow upon the fourteenth, as she had good night upon the second, without a seam or a lurch, appearing to have no idea he'd been away cycling through eleven days without her. Nor had whatever he liv'd through in that Loop, caus'd any perceptible change in the Youth she kiss'd hello "the very next day" in the High Street in Stroud, brazen as a Bell.

Meanwhile there he was, alone, with the better part of a Fortnight before he'd be hooking up again with his Betroth'd, as smoothly as if he'd never been gone,— and, Damme, he would be off. "Were there yet Horses about?" Dixon wishes to know.