John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Ebenezer sighed. "Yet I fail to see the relevance of this; 'tis not germane at all to what I had — "

"Not germane?" Burlingame exclaimed. " 'Tis the very root and stem of't! Two things alone can save a man from madness." He indicated the other patrons of the inn. "Dull-headedness is one, and far the commoner: the truth that drives men mad must be sought for ere it's found, and it eludes the doltish or myopic hunter. But once 'tis caught and looked on, whether by insight or instruction, the captor's sole expedient is to force his will upon't ere it work his ruin! Why is't you set such store by innocence and rhyming, and I by searching out my father and battling Coode? One must needs make and seize his soul, and then cleave fast to't, or go babbling in the corner; one must choose his gods and devils on the run, quill his own name upon the universe, and declare, ' 'Tis I, and the world stands such-a-way!' One must assert, assert, assert, or go screaming mad. What other course remains?"

"One other," Ebenezer said with a blush. " 'Tis the one I flee. ."

"What? Ah, 'sheart, indeed! The state I found you in at college! How many have I seen like that in Bedlam — wide-eyed, feculent, and blind to the world! Some boil their life into a single gesture and repeat it o'er and o'er; others are so far transfixed, their limbs remain where'er you place 'em; still others take on false identities: Alexander, or the Pope in Rome, or e'en the Poet Laureate of Maryland — "

Ebenezer looked up, uncertain whether it was he or the impostors whom Burlingame referred to.

"The upshot of't is," his friend concluded, "if you'd escape that fate you must embrace me or reject me, and the course we are committed to, despite the shifting lights that we appear in, just as you must embrace your Self as Poet and Virgin, regardless, or discard it for something better." He stood up. "In either case don't seek whole understanding — the search were fruitless, and there is no time for't. Will you come with me now, or stay?"

Ebenezer frowned and squinted. "I'll come," he said finally, and went out with Burlingame to the horses. The night was wild, but not unpleasant: a warm, damp wind roared out of the southwest, churned the river to a froth, bent the pines like whips, and drove a scud across the stars. Both men looked up at the splendid night.

"Forget the word sky," Burlingame said off-handedly, swinging up on his gelding, " 'tis a blinder to your eyes. There is no dome of heaven yonder."

Ebenezer blinked twice or thrice; with the aid of these instructions, for the first time in his life he saw the night sky. The stars were no longer points on a black hemisphere that hung like a sheltering roof above his head; the relationship between them he saw now in three dimensions, of which the one most deeply felt was depth. The length and breadth of space between the stars seemed trifling by comparison: what struck him now was that some were nearer, others farther out, and others unimaginably remote. Viewed in this manner, the constellations lost their sense entirely; their spurious character revealed itself, as did the false presupposition of the celestial navigator, and Ebenezer felt bereft of orientation. He could no longer think of up and down: the stars were simply out there, as well below him as above, and the wind appeared to howl not from the Bay but from the firmament itself, the endless corridors of space.

"Madness!" Henry whispered.

Ebenezer's stomach churned; he swayed in the saddle and covered his eyes. For a swooning moment before he turned away it seemed that he was heels over head on the bottom of the planet, looking down on the stars instead of up, and that only by dint of clutching his legs about the roan mare's girth and holding fast to the saddlebow with both his hands did he keep from dropping headlong into those vasty reaches!

It required less than an hour's windy ride for Ebenezer and Henry Burlingame to reach their destination; they traveled four miles eastward from the village of Oxford and then turned south for a mile or so along a path leading through woods and tobacco-fields to a small log dwelling on Island Creek, which, like the larger Tred Avon River, debouched into the Great Choptank.

" 'Tis an uncommon fellow you'll meet here," Burlingame said as they approached. "He is a kind of Coode himself, but on the side of the angels. A valuable man."

"Thomas Smith?" asked Ebenezer. "I don't believe Charles Calvert told me aught — " He stopped and grimaced. "That is to say, I have ne'er heard tell of him."

"Nay," laughed Henry, "I haply made no mention of him. He is a Jesuit to the marrow, and so 'tis certain Thomas Smith is not his real name. But for all that, he's a great good fellow that loves his beer and horses. Each Friday night he hath a drinking bout with Lillingstone the minister (the same that helped me steal Coode's letters two years past, in Plymouth harbor); 'twas after one such bout they rode a horse into Talbot courthouse and called it Lambeth Palace! Some say this Smith came down from Canada to spy for the French — "

"I'faith, and Baltimore trusts him with the Journal?"

Burlingame shrugged. "They have loyalties larger than France and England, I daresay. At any rate 'tis precious little spying Smith can do hereabouts, and we've ample demonstrations of his spirit: last year he was charged by Governor Copley with seditious speech, along with Colonel Sayer, and barely missed arrest."

The term larger loyalties Ebenezer found disquieting, but he was still too much preoccupied with his own problems to ask Burlingame whether it was the cause of Justice or, say, international Roman Catholicism that he referred to. They tethered their horses, and Burlingame rapped three times, slowly and sharply, on the cabin door.

"Yes? Who is't there?"

"Tim Mitchell, friend," said Burlingame.

"Tim Mitchell, is't? I've heard that name." The door opened enough to permit the man inside to raise a lantern, but was still chained fast to the jamb. "What might you want o' me this time of night?"

"I'm fetching a stray horse to her master," Burlingame replied, winking at Ebenezer.

"Is that so, now? 'Tis a deal o' trouble for a small reward, is't not?"

"I'll have my reckoning in Heaven, Father; for the nonce 'twill suffice me that the man shall have his mare again."

Ebenezer had supposed that Burlingame was, for reasons of delicacy, speaking allegorically of Susan Warren's escape, but at the end he recognized the pass phrase of the Jacobites.

"Ha!" cried the man inside, unlatching the door and swinging it wide. "He shall in sooth, if the Society of Jesus hath not wholly lost its skill! Come in, sir, pray come in! I'd not have been so chary if there were not two of you."

Their host, Ebenezer found upon entering the cabin, was by no means as fearsome as his deep-bass voice and the tale of his exploits suggested: he stood not much over five feet tall; his build was slight, and his ruddy face — more Teutonic than Gallic above his clerical collar — had, despite his nearly fifty years, the boyish look that often marks the celibate. The cabin itself was clean and, except for a wine bottle on the table and a row of little casks along the chimneypiece, as austerely furnished as a monk's cell. For all his carousing, the priest appeared to be something of a scholar: the walls were lined with more books than the Laureate had seen in one room since leaving Magdalene, and around the wine bottle were spread other books, copious papers, and writing equipment.

"This young man is Mr. Eben Cooke, from London," Burlingame said. "He is a poet and a friend of mine."