Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

It is hardly surprising that the couple had four children in five years. They might have had still more had not the mother-in-law decided that the house was becoming too crowded and introduced Kudra to pennyroyal's application as an oral contraceptive.

Kudra loved her babies. One day, a dozen years into the marriage, she came to love her husband, as well. It happened on the morning after the festival of Mahashivaratri — the Great Night of Shiva — when, weakened by fasting and loosened by a kind of spiritual hangover, Navin revealed to Kudra that he adored horses and that during his youth had entertained the impossible dream of miraculously transcending Vaisya, the merchant caste, and ascending to Kshatriya, the warrior caste, so that he might ride. The admission of his ridiculous longing shamed him, but Kudra was touched to learn that, like her, Navin had a blasphemous desire locked away in his breast. It made them partners in a new, more intimate sense, and whenever she thought about his secret, she would reach across the rope bin to pat him tenderly. She did not share her own hidden dream because she didn't know how to articulate it. She only knew that it made her restless, that it smelled good, and that it was always there.

About a month after Navin's disclosure, a column of warriors paid a call at the rope shop to order some fancy, customized bridles, braided with bells and tassels, for their steeds. Kudra drew the leader aside and charmed him into offering Navin a ride.

“Oh, no, no, I could never,” protested Navin.

“Go ahead,” Kudra urged. “This is your chance. Just as far as the temple and back.”

The army officer, who had his eye on Kudra's ripe hips, helped Navin aboard and gave the big horse a whack that sent it off at a gallop. Navin, terrified, leaned too far forward and sailed off into a rock pile. His head split like a milk bowl, sending forbidden ambition, mixed with blood and brain, trickling into the public light.

During the next few days, Kudra seriously considered joining Navin's corpse on the pyre. It was not because she blamed herself for his demise — guilt is a neurotic emotion that Christianity was to exploit to fullest economic and political advantage; Hinduism was healthier in that regard — but because face to face with widowhood, she learned that her mother's dire description of it was, if anything, understated.

From the moment of her mate's death, a widow was under the tutelage of her sons, even if, as in Kudra's case, the sons were mere boys. She could never remarry, and were she to engage in illicit sexual activities, the Brahmans would administer to her a whipping that would expose the white of her bones. Prohibited from returning to her parents, she must remain with her husband's family, and while she would be expected to perform household chores from dawn to dusk, she could never attend the family festivals that played so big a part in Hindu life, for a widow's gloom would bring bad luck to everyone present. For all intents and purposes, a widow was an ascetic, shaving her head, sleeping on the ground, eating only one meal a day and that without honey, wine, or salt. She could wear neither colored garments nor ornaments, she could not use perfumes.

The ban on perfumes was, for Kudra, the final straw. She found herself nodding in agreement when a delegation of village Brahmans enumerated for her the spiritual advantages of suttee. When the priests left, she ran after them to inquire how long they thought it might take for her to be reincarnated. Not wishing to interrupt their conversation, she followed them silently down the dusty road and overheard them speculating about the worth of her jewelry. Upon suttee, her personal belongings would, by law, go to the Brahmans. One priest was of the opinion that Navin, like any good merchant-class husband, had lavished gold and silver ornaments upon his wife, and that they could scarcely afford to let Kudra forgo the funeral fire.

Kudra felt her entrails turn on an axle of lead. The Sanskrit alphabet, heavy-footed and squirmy, snag itself out in her belly; a cobra's tongue swam across the waters of her eyes. As the landscape blurred before her, she could see with pristine clarity the widow in smoking sari being pulled from the riverbank and dragged, screaming, back to the pyre. And she remembered then her promise to the pale-skinned stranger that such a fate would never be hers.

That night, the eve of cremation, after the household was fast asleep, she dressed herself in her nephew's clothing. She laid out her jewelry for the Brahmans, so that they might be less inclined to pursue her. She wrapped some flat cakes, rice balls, and coins in a silk scarf. Then she undid the package and added a hairbrush and several ivory vials of perfume. Then she unknotted the scarf a second time and, without consciously thinking why, put in a small pouch of pennyroyal. As warm vanilla moonlight creamed through the windows, she knelt before her crude little personal shrine, offered a bowl of ghee to the goddess Kali and begged for forgiveness. She knelt before Navin's casket and begged the same. She kissed each of her children in his sleep. Keeping to the shadows, she slipped from the house, stopping in the yard only long enough to kick with all of her might a flabbergasted basket of rope.

“So you ran away from death,” said Alobar. He was obviously pleased. Kudra's flight brought back memories of the two times he had ducked the swipe of the Reaper's sickle. It meant that he and this woman had something in common, something revolutionary and scandalous that bound them together out on the edge of behavior where the bond is tightest and sweetest.

“No,” said Kudra. “I did not run away from death. How can a person run away from death? And why would a person want to? Death is release. I did not flee death but the corruption of the Brahmans.”

“Nonsense! Do you mean to tell me that had the Brahmans been interested in your eternal soul instead of your bangles, you would have dived into the flames?”

“Well. . I have much fear of flames.”

“Suppose they had wanted you to drown yourself, then. Would you have gone to water more gladly than to fire?”

“Yes. No. Oh, I do not know! Drowning is not such a good way to die.”

“What is a good way to die?”

“In your sleep, I suppose. When you are old and your children are grown.”

“Oh? Old and in your sleep? After a lifetime of hard work and ill treatment? And how old is old? Is it ever old enough? You could have accepted the painful life of the widow and died unappreciated in your sleep at the age of forty, you could have chosen that instead of the fire, that option was open to you, but you ran away from that, as well.”

“You are shaming me. Do you bid me return?”

Alobar put his hand on her shoulder. It was the softest thing he had touched in years. The heat of her flesh, wafting through her boy's jacket, caused fish eggs of perspiration to pop out on his palm. “Not in the least,” he said. “I merely want you to admit that you do not wish to die. You want to live and, what is more, you want to live decently and happily, you want to live a life that you yourself have chosen. Admit that, now, and you shall be rewarded.”

Kudra eyed his fingers suspiciously. They were kneading her shoulder and seemed to be of a mind to migrate south. “And what is to be my reward?”

Sensing her mistrust, he removed his hand. “The comfort and protection of a kindred spirit.”

“How can you protect me? Can you not see, I am certain to be reincarnated as a spider for what I have done. A spider or a flea or a worm .” She shuddered.

“All the more reason to live a long, enjoyable life while you are still human.”

“NowI shall probably have to endure a hundred more lifetimes before I reach nirvana and gain my final release.”