Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume

“'Tis not the whole of it, though. Our bodies, splendid though they be, are as gullible as your widow in love or your farm boy on Broadway. The body will fall for the same line from the same slick-talking placebo over and over again. Fortunately, it is usually as much to our advantage to be conned by a placebo as to be blarnied by an Irishman, and that was the case when the hot tub fooled the DNA of Alobar and Kudra into reactin' as if its hosts were back in the womb again. The temperature o' womb fluid is a fairly constant one hundred degrees. That happened to be the temperature o' the cavern spring where your couple bathed in India, and they duplicated it as precisely as possible whenever they heated baths in Constantinople or Europe. Floatin' suspended in one-hundred-degree water as often as they did may have conned their DNA into believin' they were neoembyronic, thus supplyin' them with the strongest and freshest hormones and enzymes, because 'tis the nature of DNA to lavish life-enhancin' goodies upon the fetal and the young, while deprivin' us that is over twenty.

“In the centuries when they traveled the fair circuit, they carted a barrel about with 'em, going to the trouble to fill it nightly with bathwater heated in Kudra's silver teapot. Their patience and persistence paid off. Every time the teapot whistled, your Pale Figure would lay down his scythe and mop his bony brow with a black bandanna: quittin' time on the corpse plantation, the most productive farm on Earth. Sure and Alobar stuck to his bathin' throughout his years in America.”

EARTH

“Trees and houses and diamond mines may attach themselves like lice to this element, but ye know that soil itself is fastened to the belly. Dirt is the mother o' lunch.

“There's probably no subject with quite so many conflictin' opinions about it as there are about food, and 'tis better to swap bubble gum with a rabid bulldog than challenge a single one o' the varyin' beliefs your average human holds about nutrition, but 'tis obvious that diet must've played an important role in Alobar and Kudra's long-run performance.

“By now, even congenital idiots shut up in cellars in Saskatchewan grain towns are aware that excess body fat promotes infirmity and shortens life expectancy, but are ye familiar with the experiments at Cornell, Montesano Laboratories, the University of California, and the Nebraska Medical School? Severely reduced calorie intake and restricted ingestion o' certain amino acids by laboratory animals drastically altered the process of agin'. There was an unfortunate side effect: your animals who were deprived of amino acids suffered from weakened immune systems. However, ye might recall that Alobar and his woman were, in perfect bloomin' counterbalance, strengthenin' their immunological effectiveness by coolin' their blood.

“Your man and his wife ate simply, but apparently they ate with gusto. They consumed small amounts o' food at a time, and let me impress somethin' upon ye, darlin', 'tis the best kept secret o' nutrition that 'tis healthier to eat small amounts o' 'bad' food than large amounts o' 'good.'

“Alobar told me that they fasted for five days each month. Now there's nothin' like periodic fastin' for cleanin' out your pipes, and remember 'tis the accumulated death o' cells — their failure to reproduce — that ages and kills a body, and 'tis the accumulation o' toxins that kills a cell. How does your sweet little cell get polluted with toxins? From improper breathin' and improper diet.

“One other thing about your couple's menu. Ye'll be rememberin', o' course, that they were eaters o' beets. They were your original beetniks, ha ha. Well, 'twas only a few years past that Dr. Benjamin S. Frank discovered that beets build up the blood, stimulate the liver (which is our main organ o' purification), and supply a body with nucleic acid, nucleic acid being absolutely essential to the efficient reproduction o' youthful cell structure. Ta- da !”

(Dr. Dannyboy felt a wee bit guilty about bringing up beets in the context of nutrition while saying nothing about their application in perfumery, a subject that, for the present, at least, was a hell of a lot more interesting to Priscilla. In the near darkness, he watched something flicker in her tired violet eyes at his mention of beets. Surely the poor girl didn't think that a good samaritan was sending her beets in order to improve her diet?)

FIRE

“With the element o' fire, sex enters the picture.”

A little too obviously, he squeezed the cheeks of her ass. Not to be outdone, she squeezed the cheeks of his ass. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine sex entering the picture. Would sex enter the picture in a silk robe, or would it be as nude as a platter of cold cuts? Would sex enter the picture from the left or the right? Would it ring first, or would it just slide in slyly, too quick and slippery to be denied; or, would sex barge in forcibly, red-faced and green-bereted, pushing all other things aside? She was very tired. .

“Now we know that sex can ease stress, and we know that stress wears out the rubber on the wheel o' life. But sexual fire, like the breath of air and the bath o' water, makes other contributions to the immortalist program.

“The human organism is designed by DNA to maintain an optimum of strength and health to sexual maturity — and just a few years beyond. Once it has presumedly done its procreative duty, (and the perpetuation o' the species may be the only thing DNA really cares about) 'tis kissed off, abandoned to steadily deteriorate. What Alobar and Kudra did was to keep their sexual fires so hotly stoked that DNA was fooled into believin' that they were just entering into sexual maturity. The fact that, despite their adolescently high hormone levels, they never actually produced a pregnancy, only contributed to the ruse. What with their womb soaks and sex spurts, their DNA couldn't get a clear fix on their age. 'Twas only aware that they had somethin' going, and to be safe, it had better support them.

“You're yawnin'.”

Priscilla stretched. “You know what time it is?”

“I hope I've not been borin' ye—”

“Oh, no. .”

“—with me gab. But ye wanted to know if 'twas medically possible for your man to live a thousand years, and I had to make me case. Next you'll be wantin' to know how 'tis medically possible for a tongue to wag incessantly without comin' unhinged. Me ex-wife said, 'Wiggs, you talk so much that when you die they'll have to beat your tongue to death with a stick.' I resent that remark. She should've said, ' if ' you die.”

Pris made two small fists and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, Wiggs,” she said.

“Hey, 'tis true! Your man programs himself to die. Almost with our first breath, we're taught to expect our last. The power o' suggestion will pack you up if nothin' else does. Check the statistics sometime on how many people die at the same age that their parents died, the parent whom they most identified with. Your man Elvis Presley not only packed it up at the same age as his mum, but the very same day o' the year. The body is the servant o' the mind, and if we keep tellin' our bodies that they're probably goin' to croak, age seventy-two, then come seventy-two, croak they will. Maybe the main reason your Alobar lived on was because he believed he could. It doesn't matter how ye take care o' yourself, beets and baths and breaths and whatever, if ye think that your death is inevitable, it will be. Attitude, attitude. 'Tis the death wish that nails 'em, every bleedin' time.”

Wiggs actually paused for a moment, but before Pris could take advantage of the situation, he coughed up a couple of chuckles. “Funny thing,” he said, “but that's where Alobar went wrong.”