John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

" 'Tis your scheme to drive me mad!"

"That is their name, I swear't."

"No matter! No matter!" Ebenezer shook his head as though to jar his senses into order. "You have proved to the very rocks and clouds that twin-worship is no great rarity in this earth!"

Burlingame nodded. "Sundry pairs of these twins are opposites and sworn enemies — such as Satan and God, Ahriman and Ormuz, or Baldur and Loki — and their fight portrays the struggle of Light with Darkness, the murther of Love by Knowledge, or what have you. Sundry others represent the equivocal state of man, that is half angel and half beast: the first of such pairs is mortal and the second divine. Still others are the gods of fornication, like Mutumnus and Tutumnus, or Picumnus and Pilumnus; if less than gods, they yet may be remembered for incestous lust, like Cain and his Alcima, and even be honored for swiving up a hero, as were Sieglinde and Siegmunde. How Anna loved the Siegfried tales!"

So heavy with revelations was the poet, he could only wave his hand against this remark.

"Yet whether their bond be love or hate or death," Burlingame concluded, "almost always their union is brilliance, totality, apocalypse — a thing to yearn and tremble for! 'Tis this union Anna desires with all her heart, howe'er her mind disguise it; 'tis this hath brought her halfway round the globe to seek you out, and your father to fetch her home if he can find her. 'Tis this your own heart bends to, will-ye, nill-ye, as a flower to the light, to make you one and whole and nourished as ne'er since birth; or as a needle to the lode, to direct you to the harbor of your destiny! And 'tis this I yearn for too, and naught besides: I am Suitor of Totality, Embracer of Contradictories, Husband to all Creation, the Cosmic Lover! Henry More and Isaac Newton are my pimps and aides-de-chambre; I have known my great Bride part by splendrous part, and have made love to her disjecta membra, her sundry brilliant pieces; but I crave the Whole — the tenon in the mortise, the jointure of polarities, the seamless universe — whereof you twain are token, in coito! I have no parentage to give me place and aim in Nature's order: very well — I am outside Her, and shall be Her lord and spouse!"

Burlingame was so aroused by his own rhetoric that at the end of his speech he was pacing and gesturing about the cabin, his voice raised to the pitch and volume of an Enthusiast's; even had Ebenezer not been too dismayed for skepticism, he could scarcely have questioned his former tutor's sincerity. But he was stunned, as well with recognition as with appall: he clutched his head and moaned.

Burlingame stopped before him. "Surely you'll not deny your share of guilt?"

The poet shook his head. "I'll not deny that the soul of man is deep and various as the reach of Heav'n," he replied, "or that he hath in germ the sum of poles and possibilities. But I am stricken by what you say of me and Anna!"

"What have I said, but that thou'rt human?"

Ebenezer sighed. " 'Tis quite enough."

By this time the sun was bright in the eastern sky, and the Pilgrim stood well down the Bay for Point Lookout and St. Mary's City. The other passengers were awake and stirring about their quarters. At Burlingame's suggestion they fastened their scarves and coats and went on deck, the better to speak in private.

"How is't you know Anna to be in St. Mary's? Why did she not come straight to Malden?"

" 'Tis your man Bertrand's fault," Burlingame answered and, laughing at Ebenezer's bewilderment and surprise, confessed that when he had dispatched Bertrand from Captain Mitchell's to St. Mary's City back in September, he had charged the valet not only to retrieve the Laureate's trunk but if possible to claim it in the guise of the Laureate himself, the better to throw John Coode off the scent while they made their way to Malden. "To this end I rashly loaned him your commission — "

"My commission! Then 'tis true you stole it from me back in England!"

Burlingame shrugged. " 'Twas I authored it, was't not? Besides, would it not have gone worse with you had Pound been certain of your identity? In any case, there was some peril in your man's assignment, and 'twas my thought, if Coode should kill or kidnap him with the paper on his person, he might think you yourself were an impostor — 'twould have spun his compass for fair! Howbeit, Bertrand could not rest at fetching your trunk, it seems, but must parade St. Mary's City as the Laureate and declare his post in every inn and tavern."

Thus it was, Burlingame declared, that on reaching the port of St. Mary's some time ago, Anna had been given to think her brother was in the town and had disembarked in quest of him. "I myself heard naught of this until old Andrew came to Captain Mitchell's; he had learnt in London of my whereabouts, and, like you, thinks Anna hath come to be my wife. But he believes thou'rt party to the scheme as well and are pimping us in some wise: when he learns the state of things at Malden, today or tomorrow, he'll assume you've fled with the twain of us to Pennsylvania, where fly all fugitives from responsibility — the more readily, inasmuch as neither Anna nor the false Laureate hath been seen or heard of since she landed." He sucked in the corner of his mouth. " 'Twas my intent to stay with Andrew, disguised as Timothy Mitchell, the better to temper his wrath and learn his connection with Lord Baltimore; but so vain hath been my search for parentage in the world, and so much rancor hath that search engendered, 'twas no longer safe to play that role."

Ebenezer asked what were his tutor's present plans.

"We'll put ashore together at St. Mary's," Burlingame said. "You then enquire in public places for news of Anna or Eben Cooke, and I shall search alone for Coode."

"At once? Is't not more urgent to find my sister ere some harm befall her?"

" 'Tis but two paths to a single end," replied Burlingame. "No man knows more than Coode of what transpires in Maryland, and for aught we know he may have made prisoners of them both. Besides which, if I can win his confidence, he may abet us in regaining your estate. 'Twill be a joy to him, after all, to hear the Laureate of Maryland is his ally!"

"Not so swiftly," Ebenezer protested. "I may be disabused of my faith in Baltimore, but I've sworn no oaths of loyalty to John Coode. In any case, as you well know, I ne'er was Laureate — and even had I been, I'd be no longer. Look at this." He drew the ledger from his coat and showed Burlingame the finished Marylandiad, which in view of its antipanegyric tone he had retitled The Sot-Weed Factor. "Call't a clumsy piece if you will," he challenged. " 'Tis honest nonetheless, and may spare others my misfortunes."

"What's full of heart may be bare of art," Burlingame asserted with interest, "- and vice-versa." He held the ledger open against the rail and read the work closely several times while the Pilgrim ran down the Bay to Point Lookout, where the Potomac River meets Chesapeake Bay. Although he made no comments either favorable or unfavorable, when the time came for them to transfer to the lighter for St. Mary's City he insisted that the poem be forwarded aboard the Pilgrim to Ben Bragg, at the Sign of the Raven in Paternoster Row.

"But he'll destroy it!" exclaimed the poet. "D'you recall how I came by this ledger back in March?"

"He'll not destroy it," Burlingame assured him. "Bragg is obliged to me in ways I shan't describe."

There was no time to ponder the proposal; with some misgivings Ebenezer allowed his former tutor to entrust The Sot-Weed Factor to the bark's captain, who also refunded the balance of his fare to England, and the two men ferried upriver to St. Mary's City.