John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

At mention of his sister's name all thoughts of Maryland politics vanished from the poet's mind, and he demanded once again to know why she and Andrew had come to the province so long before their scheduled visit.

"Your father's cause will be clear," Burlingame said, "once I've told you that they did not make the voyage together. 'Tis to seek her out he's come, and haply to negotiate with Mitchell. He little dreamt, when last I saw him, that he had no more estate in Maryland — but haply he hath heard the news by now. ."

"Then Spurdance's charge is true, that my father is in league with Mitchell!"

"Not yet, to the best of my knowledge, but 'twill be true enough anon. What with the war, the want of foreign markets, the unseasonable weather, the scarcity of ships and hardy plants, the fly, the ground worm, the horn-worm, the house-burn, the frostbite, and the perils of sea and enemies, your sot-weed planter nowadays is in sore straits. Some have sold half their landholdings to clear the rest; some have turned to other crops, scarce worth the work of growing; some have moved to Pennsylvania, where the soil hath not as yet been leached and drained of spirit; and some, that have no love for these alternatives, have turned from planting to more lucrative fields. I have cause to think old Andrew had an audience on this topic with Lord Baltimore ere he sailed, else he'd no reason to come straight from Piscataway to Captain Mitchell's, where Joan and I caught sight of him two days past. 'Twas then we fled together — she to warn you of his presence, I to make my bargain with Colonel Henry Lowe and meet the twain of you here. I could stay no more with Mitchell, not alone because I'd learned my search was hopeless, but also because the real Tim Mitchell, so I have heard, is en route to the Province. What's more, the Jesuit priest Thomas Smith, that we called upon near Oxford, hath complained to Lord Baltimore of my abusing him, and on all sides I was looked at with suspicion."

"But damn it!" Ebenezer cried. "What of my sister? Where is she now, and why hath she come to Maryland?"

"You know the cause as well as I," said Burlingame.

"That she loves you!" Ebenezer groaned. "Ah God, how pleased that news would once have made me! But now I know you for the very essence of carnality, I feel as Mother Ceres must have felt, when Pluto took Proserpine for his bride. And galled — i'faith, it galls me sore to think how she praised my innocence, joined hers to mine there in the London posthouse, and sealed our virgin vows with her silver ring! And all was guile and cruel deceit: you'd long since had her maidenhead in the summer-house, and swived her behind my back in London, and e'en that very day of my departure, ere my business with Ben Bragg was done, the twain of you had billed and cooed all shameless in the public view. Hypocrisy! What lewd delight she must have taken in swearing to me she would be chaste, when even as she swore she still felt your hands upon her, and yearned for one last tumble on your bed! 'Tis clear now why that last farewell discomfited me, and the matter of the rings: she was so taken with rut for you, that stood disguised not ten yards distant, she fancied 'twas you whose hand she toyed with, and the fancy near made her swoon!"

"Enough!" Burlingame ordered. "If you believe this rot in sooth, thou'rt not so much innocent as stupid!"

"You deny it?" the poet cried. "You deny 'twas your lewd connection my father learned of in St. Giles and sacked you for?"

"Nay, not entirely."

"And those foul boasts in the Cambridge tavern!" Ebenezer pressed angrily. "That she hath begged you to have at her, and discovered her secrets to your eyes, and gone mad with joy in your lubricious games — do you deny these now?"

"They are true enough in substance," Burlingame sighed, "but what you fail to see — "

"Then where lies my stupidity, save in esteeming her too much to see 'twas common lust for you that fetched her to our rooms in Thames Street, and that this same monstrous lust hath brought her half round the world to warm your bed?"

"No more, you fool!" exclaimed Burlingame. " 'Tis love in sooth hath driven her hither, or lust, if you prefer; but love or lust — i'Christ, Eben! — have you not remarked these many years 'tis you that are its object?"

Ebenezer's features contorted wondrously. "Dear Heav'nly Father, Henry! What have you said?"

Burlingame turned his fist in his palm and frowned at the deck as he spoke. "Your sister is a driven and fragmented spirit, friend; the one half of her soul yearns but to fuse itself with yours, whilst the other half recoils at the thought. 'Tis neither love nor lust she feels for you, but a prime and massy urge to coalescence, which is deserving less of censure than of awe. As Aristophanes maintained that male and female are displaced moieties of an ancient whole, and wooing but their vain attempt at union, so Anna, I long since concluded, repines willy-nilly for the dark identity that twins share in the womb, and for the well-nigh fetal closeness of their childhood."

"I shudder at the thought!" Ebenezer whispered.

"As well doth Anna — so much so, that her fancy entertains it only in disguise — yet no other thought than this impelled her to me in the summer-house! 'Twas quite in the middle of a fine May night, the night of your sixteenth birthday, and though the time for't was some days past, a shower of meteors was flashing from Aquarius. I had lingered late outside to watch these falling stars and plot their courses on a map of my own devising; so engrossed was I in the work that when Anna came up behind — "

"No more!" cried Ebenezer. "You took her maidenhead, God curse you, and there's an end on't!"

"Quite otherwise," Burlingame replied. "We spent some hours discussing you, that were asleep in your chamber. Anna likened you to Phosphor, the morning star, and herself to Hesper, the mortal star of evening, and when I told her those twin stars were one and the same, and not a star at all but the planet Venus, the several portents of this fact near made her swoon! We tarried long in the summer-house that night, and long on many a balmy night thereafter; yet always, I will swear't, I pleased her in no wise save as your proxy."

"I'God, and you think this argues to your credit?"

Burlingame smiled. "There are two facts you've got to swallow, Eben. The first is that I love no part of the world, as you might have guessed, but the entire parti-colored whole, with all her poles and contradictories. Coode and Baltimore alike I am enamored of, whate'er the twain might stand for; and you know what various ground hath held my seed. For this same reason 'twas never you I loved, nor yet your sister Anna, but the twain inseparably, and could lust for neither alone. Whence issues the second fact, which is, that de'il the times her blood waxed warm the while she spoke of you, and de'il the times I kissed her as the symbol for you both, and played the sad games of her invention, yet your sister is a virgin still for aught of me!"

He laughed at Ebenezer's shock and disbelief. "Aye, now, that wants some chewing, doth is not? Think with what relish, as a child, she would play Helen to your Paris, but ever call you Pollux by mistake! Recall that day in Thames Street when you chided her for lack of suitors and as a tease proposed me for the post — "

Ebenezer clutched his throat. "Marry!"

"Her reply," Burlingame went on, "was that the search for beaux was fruitless, inasmuch as the man she loved most had the bad judgment to be her twin! And reflect, in the light of what I've told you, on this matter of your mother's silver ring, that Anna gave you in the posthouse: did you know she was wont to read the letters ANNE B as ANN and EB conjoined? Can a poet be blind to the meaning of that gift and of the manner of its giving?"