Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

“I know all that, Marcel.”

“Yes, but what you don't know is how boring and, ultimately, frightening I am finding this scent. I slept last night with New Wave on my pillowcase, and my dreams were totalitarian nightmares. The boof is not unattractive, yet when I test it, I have somehow the feeling that I am smelling the sinister vapors of fascism.”

“Really, Bunny. Ha ha.”

“I am not joking.” Marcel removed the whale mask. His demeanor was serious, indeed. “I am not joking.”

“But, surely—”

“When I smell New Wave , I have the sensation that I am smelling control, conformity, domination. As I have said, it has a definite appeal. . ”

“Well, then—”

“There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all of us secretly attracted to violence.”

“A violent perfume? Ha ha. Remember that U.S. after-shave, Hai Karate ?”

“Were I to add but a trace note of leather to New Wave , Claude, I would say that I had drawn on my canvas the olfactory silhouette of the Nazi.”

The word jolted Claude. He shuddered. The LeFever twins had been small boys during the Nazi occupation of Paris, but they recalled it as an adult recalls the breaking of a bone in childhood: the sickening crack, the fear, the pain, the sadness, the sudden ooze of blood that shows itself like the black blush of fairy-tale witches. It was a wound upon their memory, a thud of monster boots in a distant sandbox.

“ New Wave is an intriguing perfume,” Marcel went on, “but I am growing to loathe it, and actually to fear its implications. Therefore, I have been thinking today about raw materials. The eclipse set me to wondering about those powerful and mysterious aspects of the natural world that the perfumer has not tapped yet. We moved into synthetics as natural raw materials became less available, more expensive. But there are scores, perhaps hundreds, of raw materials in different parts of the world that we haven't examined — consider the valley of the Amazon, consider the ocean , for God's sake — and there is history. . The recent love affair with the past was with a relatively recent past. Fifty years ago, a century at the most. But what of the fragrances of five thousand years ago, were they as primitive and unrefined and fundamental as we believe? History? What about the fragrances of prehistory?”

Marcel took a seat. He sighed. He was not an athletic man, and he'd been on his feet the whole strange day. “The eclipse also caused me to think of V'lu.”

“Yes, back to V'lu.” Claude grinned a sloppy Pernod grin. “Let me guess. This black face of the sun reminded you of her. Reminded you that her ancestors in the jungle used fragrances of which we know little—”

“Idiot. What I was reminded of, aside from things that are none of your business, was a remark she made. V'lu pointed out to me that the synthetics that predominate in perfumery today are practically all petroleum products. The price of crude oil is now subject to arbitrary decisions by the OPEC nations. V'lu suggested that since the Arabs are untrustworthy and since the future of the Mideast is uncertain, there is a strong possibility that petrochemicals will become even more scarce and expensive than natural materials. She suggested that we ought to be looking anew at the flowers.”

“That is elementary and quite sound,” agreed Claude. “It is an idea with some merit, I don't have to be sober to recognize that. Fuck the Arabs, anyhow. Hang them from the drapes! And the draperies , too; yes, Bunny? But what I can't imagine is how this shopgirl — out of the mouths of babes, uh? — communicated this to you; I mean how could you even understand her, speaking in southern Negro dialect and all?”

Marcel looked first at his cousin, then out the window again, focusing perhaps on that same invisible celestial footprint that had held his gaze all day. “I had no problem,” he said. “V'lu did not express this to me in English, you see. She spoke flawless French.”

Mangel-Wurzel, Mon Amour.

AS THE AFTERNOON PROGRESSES, our shadows grow longer. At night, in the dark, we become our shadows. That is as true today as then. In the old days, people were aware of it, that's all. In the old days, the whole world was religious and full of interest.

Alobar had been at the lamasery twenty years when Kudra arrived, dressed as a boy. The lamas saw through her disguise immediately but put her to work moving stones. She had worked on the wall less than an hour before Alobar, too, realized she was a woman. Her shadow fell off of her with perfect discretion. Shadows do. It was her aroma that gave her away.

They took their afternoon tea by the cold river. The lama who was overseeing the construction of the wall suggested that the workers disrobe and enjoy a dip. Alobar encouraged this idea, for it had been a long time since he had seen a naked woman. He found himself trembling.

Kudra declined to swim. The lama persisted. “Come on, boy,” he said. “Everybody must bathe or else the wall will fall down.” In the high mountain air, there was mischief afoot.

Finally, the “boy” dashed up to Alobar, who was just wading into the water, and whispered, “Help me, please. Don't you recognize me?”

Of course, he didn't recognize her. Naked, he would not have recognized her. She had been eight years old when he had seen her last.

“You called me by a foreign name. Wren, little Wrenna, I believe it was.” Kudra smiled. “You haven't aged at all, you know.”

The icy water swirling around Alobar's ankles was causing his genitals to retract. He felt ashamed and wanted to turn his back. This mischief was a mistake.

Kudra grasped his arm. “Remember? You tried to persuade me to eat a beet.”

Of our nine planets, Saturn is the one that looks like fun. Of our trees, the palm is obviously the stand-up comedian. Among fowl, the jester's cap is worn by the duck. Of our fruits and vegetables, the tomato could play Falstaff, the banana a more slapstick role. As Hamlet — or Macbeth — the beet is cast. In largely vegetarian India, the beet is rarely eaten because its color is suggestive of blood. Out, damned mangel-wurzel .

Alobar was remembering. .

He had been put off from the moment he sighted smoke. On a day so sultry that he moved through it the way an inchworm might move through a mound of lye, a day so bright that it sent his eyeballs retreating into the shade of their own sockets, he simply could not conceive of any advantage in torches. Surely torches could have waited until after sunset, although upon the sweltering Ganges plain it seemed to Alobar that one's sweat poured as profusely by night as by day. As he drew nearer to the flames, he realized that they were borne by mourners gathering for a funeral — all the more reason to detour to the cheerful cool of a grove. It should come as no surprise that the traveler from the west was, in funeral matters, slightly shy.

The road, which had seen too many monsoons and forgotten too few, passed within yards of the funeral site, alas, and in the grassy savannas to the side of the road, Alobar had detected the odd hiss and slither, a persuasive inducement to stick to the well-worn path. Thus, he soon found himself in the midst of the white-clad mourners, an unwilling witness to unappetizing customs.

Not far from the river, four tall beams had been planted in the ground to form the corners of a square. They supported four thick planks firmly held by mortises. Between the beams there lay a plexus of logs, arranged in such a manner as to leave a space in the center, into which wood chips and resin had been scattered. Around and upon the log pile, dry branches of the sort that might burn quickly and brightly lay in wait. The roof of the pyre was made of planks covered with turf. The end result was a kind of tinder shack, a cottage at which no insurance agent would ever call, a studio apartment of death.