Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

Paying him little heed when he entered, Kudra remained bent over a large candle, heating some newly purchased storax resin in a metal cup. “It's cold in here,” Alobar said. “Umm,” she answered, without looking up. As it relaxed its grip on itself, the wad of storax caused the room to smell like the center of a chocolate cream. Sometimes when a stressful person relaxes, he or she will, in a similar fashion, perfume the air 'round about them. Alobar sat down and tried it.

The candle glow that held Kudra's head like an object in a showcase allowed Alobar to count five silver hairs in her mane. He hadn't noticed them until then. It was all he could do to keep from crying out. He wondered if she knew.

His thoughts flashed back to the afternoon that he met her, eight years old and sobbing, fleeing the funeral pyre. He thought of her in the Himalayas, dressed as a boy; the glossy black explosion her tresses had made when they tumbled from the turban. Then he thought of that fateful day when the concubines' mirror had shown him his own pale intruder. Such a chain of events that little fellow had set off!

So still for so long was Alobar that when he finally spoke, Kudra flinched. She must have forgotten he was there. The corona of candlelight and the vanilla halo of storax ringed her concentrically, as if she were twice blessed, a double madonna.

“Kudra,” he said, “I have a splendid idea.”

“And what splendid idea is that?” she asked, her head still bowed to the task.

“Let's sail to the New World.”

“The New World?”

“Yes, the New World, the land they stumbled upon when they finally caught on that the Earth is round, as I, ahem, was saying all along.”

“Only fortune hunters and Christian fanatics go to the New World. We are neither of those.”

“Fortune hunters, Christian fanatics, and misfits. That last category describes us rather accurately.”

“You may be a misfit, Alobar. I am not. Not any longer, at any rate.”

He leaped to his feet and with two swift yanks reduced her silver quintet to a trio. Dropping the strands into the resin cup in front of her, he said, “In the New World, you wouldn't have to sacrifice your beautiful black hair.”

Kudra stared at the hairs in the cup. She may have denied that there were tears in her eyes, but the reflection of candlelight upon tearwater proved otherwise.

“See those,” said Alobar. “Those are worms from the rot of the grave.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. A single teardrop broke through the barricades and made a run for it, only to lose its footing and topple into the cup with the resin and the hairs. Was that a finer place than it had been?

Alobar lay his hands on her shoulders and massaged them gently. “You don't have to go through this,” he said softly. “We can sail to the New World.”

Kudra shook her head. “We made our own new world,” she said, “but something has gone wrong with it. I guess new worlds grow old. Pan was right. Immortality has its limitations.”

“If only we had learned more in the caves!”

“Oh, shit,” said Kudra. “Not that again.”

“But, darling—”

“Alobar, I'd like to be alone for a while.”

“But—”

“Please, Alobar!” She picked the hairs from the storax and flicked them to the floor. The teardrop had vanished, whether absorbed by resin, evaporated by candle heat, or welcomed into some mystery dimension, we cannot determine. No reward was ever offered for its return. “Please. Let me be.”

So Alobar exchanged his slippers for boots that reached all the way to the hems of his knee breeches, pulled a woolen knee-length coat over his brocade waistcoat, tightened his lace collar until it pinched his Adam's apple, and went out into the night, where, by lamplight, the frosted cobblestone streets resembled marshmallow plantations at harvest time. Although he hadn't a destination in mind, he walked rapidly, soon finding himself in an obscene quarter of Paris, a squalid area without cobblestone or torch, an unpaved district whose frozen mud puddles reflected the shine of red lanterns. From every doorway, the lewd breath of prostitutes rose like hooks of smoke. Huddled against the cold, groups of them called to him as he passed, and he began to get ideas. A misunderstood husband usually is armed with a blunt instrument, its knob painted red like the face of a judge.

The prostitute he eventually approached was tall and blonde. As they discussed rates, her companion, a dumpy, aged woman whom Alobar had not even considered, moved ever closer until she had wormed her way between him and the blonde. She had a rude, animal odor and so many wrinkles she could screw her hat on. Alobar was about to nudge her aside when the blond slapped her with her muff, saying, “Get along, Lalo. This one's not desperate enough to want you.”

“Lalo?”

“Alobar! I thought that it be thee!”

They shared a tearful embrace, then and there, while the blonde jeered and the first flakes of snow began to sift through the scarlet lanternshine. Then, he escorted her to the incense shop, walking slowly now for Lalo was a nymph no longer, but an old tart who had quit the brothels of Athens when the demand for her services waned. It was said that in Paris no whore was too old or too ugly to survive.

Kudra was both saddened and delighted by the sight of her. She brought out their best cheese and served tea from the battered but cherished silver pot. Once Lalo was fed and warmed, they questioned her about Pan. The news was enough to sour the cheese.

Pan was a ghost, now, Lalo said; you could look straight through him. His heartbeat was no stronger than a sparrow's. His pipes could still cause the flocks to shuffle their feet, could still raise the fuzz on a peasant's neck, but he lacked the vigor or the will to play them very often. Pan continued to visit men, according to Lalo, perhaps he always would, but in the modern world he came to them not in person, in sunlight, direct and immediate, but in dreams — erotic nightmares — or in flashes of terror, the kind that cause crowds to stampede for no reason, that they could neither explain nor understand. Lacking a direct relationship with Pan, modern Europeans were estranged from their flocks and their crops, from the natural world and, indeed, from their own natural impulses. “Grieve not just for Pan,” said Lalo, in a voice as scratched as the teapot, “but for thyselves, as well.”

“And what of the nymphs?” asked Kudra.

“It has been more than a century since Pan last chased a nymph. Without him in pursuit, the nymphs lost their identity, grew thin and mad. Many took their own lives. Others, like me, became whores to homers, seeking in each sexual coupling to re-create the old seduction, the old magic, the old feeling of unity.” She sighed forlornly. “I don't know why I hold on, but I do.”

They put Lalo to bed in their flat upstairs. Then they took to their own bed, where, as the snow did its sums on the windowsill, they snuggled and talked, eventually formulating a plan of action: they would get Pan out of Europe.

The New World was vast and virgin. They would make a place for him there, beneath smokeless skies where primitive equalities prevailed. Far from any city, they would establish a new Arkadia, complete with flocks of goats; and the pagan Indians, so hounded now by Christian missionaries, could join with them in a free landscape in which the old gods and goddesses would be given their due. Why, they would teach the Indians what they knew of Bandaloop immortality, and, moreover, Kudra would throw away her pennyroyal, and she and Alobar would at last have children of their own. They would found a race of immortals, with Pan as their principal deity. Yes! Wasn't this the grand destiny that had been eluding them all along?! They grew drunk with the vision of it while the sober snow looked on.