Free Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon Page A

among the more amiable Items upon the Schedule of Humiliation.
    "Why?" the Twins wish to know. "It sounds more like Punishment. Did somebody make it a crime to cross the Equator?"
    "Sailors' Pranks, Lads,— ignoring 'em's best," huffs Uncle Ives. "And a foolish rowdy-dow over some Geometers' Abstraction that cannot even be seen."
    "But that for one Instant," the Revd points out, "our Shadows lay perfectly beneath us. To change Hemispheres is no abstract turn,— our Attentions to the Royal Baby, and the rest of it, were Tolls exacted for passage thro' the Gate of the single shadowless Moment, and into the South, with a newly constellated Sky, and all-unforeseen ways of living and dying. So must there be a Ritual of Crossing Over, serving to focus each Pollywog's Mind upon the Step he was taking."
    "We'd suppos'd it fun," frowns Pliny.
    "Your getting thump'd about and all, Uncle," explains Pitt.
    "Has either of you," inquires the Revd, "ever had a Basin-ful of Spotted Dick slung into your Face?" The Twins, deciding that this is not an actual Threat, voice approval of the Practice. "Yes, boys, it does sound sportive enough,— except for the part that no one ever tells you about,— "
    "Tell us!" cries Pitt.
    "Not sure I ought...the same indeed being true of Puddings and the more Cream-like Pies,— '
    "Tell us, or you're Salt Pork," stipulates Pliny.
    "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,—
    "And if it goes far enough up your Nose," adds Uncle Lomax with a monitory tremolo, "Well. Then it's in your Brain, isn't it?"
    In the Lull whilst the Boys consider this, the Revd slips back into his tale.
    On southward the Seahorse gallops, as if secure forever in a warm'd, melodious Barcarole of indolent days, when in fact 'twill be only a few degrees of Latitude more till we pick up the Trade Wind, and hear in its Desert Whistle the message Ghosts often bring,— that 'tis time, once again, to turn to. And, in denial of all we thought we knew, to smell the Land we are making for, the green fecund Continent, upon the Wind that comes from behind us.
    The Astronomers have a game call'd "Sumatra" that the Revd often sees them at together,— as children, sometimes, are seen to console themselves when something is denied them,— their Board a sort of spoken Map of the Island they have been kept from and will never see. "Taking a run in to Bencoolen, anything we need?" "Thought I'd nip up the coast to Mokko-Mokko or Padang, see what's a-stir." "Nutmeg Harvest is upon us, I can smell it!" Ev'ry woman in "Sumatra" is comely and willing, though not without attendant Inconvenience, Dixon's almost instantly developing Wills and Preferences of their own despite his best efforts to keep them uncomplicated,— whereas the only women Mason can imagine at all are but different fair copies of the same serene Beauty,— Rebekah, forbidden as Sumatra to him, held in Detention, as is he upon Earth, until his Release, and their Reunion. So they pass, Mason's women and Dixon's, with more in common than either Surveyor will ever find out about, for even phantasms may enjoy private lives,— shadowy, whispering, veil'd to be unveil'd, ever safe from the Insults of Time.
     
     
    7
    Trying to remember how they ever came to this place, both speak of Passage as by a kind of flight, all since Tenerife, and the Mountain slowly recessional, having pass'd like a sailor's hasty dream between Watches, as if, out of a sea holding scant color, blue more in name than in fact, the unreadable Map-scape of Africa had unaccountably emerg'd, as viewed from a certain height above the pale Waves,— tilted into the Light, as a geometer's Globe might be pick'd up and tilted for a look at this new Hemisphere, this haunted and other half of ev'rything known, where