Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

  Now Alobar had grown up in a more intimate relationship with his gods. His snored in magic tree trunks and twinkled in the constellations, frequently emerging, mossy-haired or moon-burned, to fraternize with humanity, sharing human foibles and appetites. As a king in the forests of what would one day be called Bohemia, Alobar, himself, had been deemed half divine. Still, he, too, felt odd and uncomfortable at times, felt a gulf widening between himself and his fellows who went uncomplaining to the grave. “Am I clinging to my individual being only to have it grow inhuman and strange?” he would agonize. “Am I inviting a revenge worse than simple annihilation?”

  On a day such as that one, however, a day popping its seams with sunshine, lust, and adventure, it was difficult for him—or Kudra—to conceive of anything worse than annihilation. So, they advanced in the lavender mountain haze like chatty autograph-seekers closing in on a celebrity's hideaway, but in their secret hearts they wanted something other than your scrawl, Mr. Shaggy; they wanted you to reach into their secret hearts and remove the hard, knobby doggy bone of doubt that their apparent victory over time had buried there.

  “We have been living in Constantinople among the Christians,” explained Alobar.

  “The Christians doth be everywhere,” said Pan.

  “Not in my homeland,” said Kudra.

  “They will be,” said Pan. A wave of faintness and nausea broke over him. He ignored it to concentrate on Kudra's mounds.

  “Prior to that,” said Alobar, “we lived in a cave far away in the East. Have you ever heard of the Bandaloop doctors?”

  “No,” said Pan. “Don't be stupid.”

  Alobar reddened. “You've been around a while. I thought someone might have mentioned Bandaloop to you.”

  “I am Pan,” said Pan. “People do not mention things to me.”

  “Your point is well taken,” said Kudra. Pan grinned at her lasciviously. Alobar glowered.

  “I will play for thee,” said Pan, producing his reeds.

  “We wished to talk to you about immortality,” protested Alobar.

  “Thou art too late,” said Pan. He blew a few weak notes on his pipes.

  “Too late for talk or too late for immortality?” asked Kudra.

  Pan's instrument made a sound, high and thin.

  “Too late for us or too late for you?” asked Alobar. He had noted the god's physical decline.

  “Thou art interested in the immortal, this be immortal,” said Pan, and he commenced to pipe in earnest.

  “But—” objected Alobar.

  “Your point is well taken,” said Kudra.

  Alobar glowered.

  Before she met him, before they flushed him from his thickets, Kudra had imagined Pan to be a giant, a winged monster with fire-blackened hooves and more arms than necessary for the discharge of polite duties; imagined him smoldering, hissing, uprooting trees and spitting hailstones, instructing humanity in a thunderous tone. She was frankly disappointed when he proved to be slighter in stature than her Alobar, and she could barely keep from sniggering at his foul tangles of wool and his silly tail. Even his stench failed to measure up to Alobar's description of it, striking her as more locally naughty than universally nasty. It wasn't until he began to pipe that Kudra got some sense of Who (or What) He Really Was.

  At first, his playing, too, seemed slight; it was so simple, careless, and primitive that one had to sympathize with Timolus, who, judging the music contest between Pan and Apollo, had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the Apollonian lyre, thereby establishing the tradition that critics must laud polish and restraint, attack what is quirky and disobedient, a tradition that endures to this day. Had Timolus not hooked Pan off the stage so quickly, had he possessed the—the what? the honesty? the humility? (Timolus, after all, couldn't play shit) the nerve? to actually listen to Pan, to respond with something more genuine than his preconceptions, he might have been affected, as Kudra began to be affected, once she stopped smirking at his obvious lack of formal training and quit comparing him unfavorably with the flutist, Lord Krishna. Pan's song, because it served no purpose, because, indeed, it transcended the human yoke of purposes, was, above all, liberating. It was music beyond the control of the player's will or the listener's will; the will, in fact, dissolved in it (which may explain why it was politically necessary for Apollo, with the compliance of Timolus, to drown it out). To Kudra it was the aural equivalent of the rope trick: a giddy ascent up a shaky coil, to arrive in a place of mystery, where the sense of all-encompassing oneness with the natural world and the sense of the absolute aloneness of the individual coexist and commingle. There was a sort of hippity-hoppity bunny rabbit quality to Pan's erratic melody, but also a roaming goatish quality, stubborn, rough, and lean. If at one instance it sounded tender and idyllic, at another, threatening and brutal, perhaps that was because Pan's song was the inner animal's songs, all of them, summed into one seemingly random epiphany. Kudra felt that at Pan's concert she was on less than solid ground, yet, as unsteady as that ground might be, she was driven to dance upon it. (Maybe there is no proper way to react to the inner animal's tunes but dance to them.)

  Kudra found herself swaying rhythmically and wiggling her grass-stained toes. She turned to Alobar to find him executing a little shuffle, snapping the fingers of his left hand while with the right he defined a tempo by shaking the charred remains of her half-smoked shoe. Kudra was amused by Alobar's tentative polka until her eyes fell upon the tumescent protrusion dancing with him. Disgusting, she thought. An erection is just inappropriate. Then she realized with a shock that she was so wet that children could have sailed toy boats in her underpants.

  The next thing she knew, she and Alobar were dancing up the hillside, following the Charmer's pipes through thistle bushes and over jagged rocks; and while panic fear erupted with a roar from her deepest places and while she overheard Alobar plaintively asking, “Doesn't it matter to you that she is my wife?” she was incapable of turning back.

  The refined erotic engineering taught by the Kama Sutra had not prepared Kudra for that night of priapism, but the following morning, after she had sponged her chafed parts in the grotto pool and smeared them repeatedly with the aromatics that she lugged about in the teapot (even so, the goat smell was to cling to her for weeks), she found that she and Alobar could face one another without shame, and she nodded in total agreement when Alobar ventured, “I feel somehow that his lechery was secondary, although to what I cannot say.”

  For breakfast, Pan served them olives, tomatoes, and cheese, which they ate in the nude without a trace of self-consciousness. Throughout the meal, the sleepy-eyed god kept testing the air, more like a hare than a goat, until at last Alobar inquired what he might be sniffing.

  “Flowers, methinks, but unlike any flowers that bloom in these parts. Most strange. Dost thou smell them, too?”

  “You are smelling my perfumes,” said Kudra, and when Pan looked puzzled, she thrust her shoulder under his nose. His bewilderment increased. “Thou didst not smell like that last night,” he said.

  Alobar made a move to produce the perfume jars, but Kudra caught his wrist and bade him wait. “We puny homers, as you call us, have some magic of our own,” she said. “Tell me, do you find the aroma unpleasant?”

  “It be quite pleasing—from a blossom. A woman shouldst smell as thou didst last night.”

  “Bah! You Western males are all alike, whether you call yourselves gods or men. You've had your noses in too many battles and too many hunts. Alobar used to hate perfumes, but when he came home from the warehouse every evening accidentally smelling of nutmeg and cinnamon and tumeric, he grew accustomed to the idea that flesh is more appealing when not left to marinate in its own rank juices. Here. Close your eyes for a minute. Just for a minute. Go ahead. Trust me.”

  Reluctantly, Pan lowered his big monkey lids, whereupon Kudra doused him with enough patchouli to stampede a herd of elephants. His eyes flew open like the hatch covers on an exploding ship, and he co
mmenced to sniff at his extremities, as if he were wildly in love with himself. A kind of disorientation seemed to seize him, causing him to walk in circles, repeatedly crossing his own path. The nymphs, who had entertained Alobar during the night while Kudra was being entertained by Pan, laughed nervously from their mossy lounge across the pool. One of the nymphs sidled up to the god and pulled his tail with a petal-picking gesture, only to be flung violently to the ground. At last, Pan sat down between Kudra and Alobar, still inhaling drafts of himself with expressions of disbelief, and began to speak in the most subdued tones Alobar had yet heard him employ.

  “'Tis true, thou homers do have magic of thine own, the gods have always known that, known it even better than thee. We gods know how to use our powers, but most men and women do not know how, that be the difference between us and thee. Sniff sniff.”

  “Forgive me,” said Alobar, “but the important difference between men and gods is that gods are immortal and men are not. Is this a result of we men not knowing how to correctly use our powers?”

  Pan ran his rather squashed nose along his patchouli-contaminated arm. “Once, a long time ago, when the earth had a flat dark face and a belly of fire, back before the hills had grown so tall that they pushed the moon away, mankind was given a choice between life and death and through trickery or misinformation or something else, made the wrong choice. That is all there is to it.”

  “But what if,” asked Kudra, shooting Alobar a meaningful glance, “but what if we decided now to choose life?”

  “Then choose it,” said Pan.

  Again, Kudra and Alobar exchanged glances. “But would not that anger the gods?” Kudra asked.

  “Ha ha ha!” The laughter burst out of Pan like the barking of some obscene dog. “Anger the gods? The gods, those that art still around, wouldst congratulate thee for finally catching on.”

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “I mean that the gods do not limit men. Men limit men.”

  “We are,” asked Kudra, “as deserving of immortality as the gods?”

  “Thou hast not deserved immortality because thou hast been too puny in thy mind and heart and soul. Sniff.”

  “But we can change that?” Kudra's voice was hopeful. “We can expand our minds, and enlarge our souls, and choose life over death?”

  “Sniff sniff. Thou hast that potential.”

  Alobar was nodding his head excitedly, and Kudra wore a smile that you could mail a letter in. An eleventh-century letter, written on parchment, rolled into a cylinder and tied with thongs. The Charmer was still cruising the patchouli patches.

  “Great Pan,” said Alobar, with a degree of reverence, “I used to be king over a state, but now I am king over myself.”

  “Dearest Pan,” said Kudra, with more than a degree of intimacy (in the preceding night, after all, she and the god had left no sexual stone unturned), “I used to weave rope, but now I weave my world.”

  “Methinks thou doth speak from freedom not from vanity,” said Pan, “and I lift my wineskin to thee, for thou art rare among humans. Sniff.” He squirted a stream of wine into his ugly, yet sensual, mouth. Red rivulets ran into his beard to disappear there, sopped up, perhaps, by whorls of thirsty wool. “Ah, but Alobar, doth thou not recall my telling thee that gods art immortal for only so long as the world believes in them? Thou hast only to look at me to see how a god dwindles when belief in him dwindles. Immortality has its conditions. Immortality has its limits. And immortality has its dangers. Whatever thou hast learned about death from thy wise men in the East, thou wouldst do well to remember . . .”

  “Yes? Go on,” urged Alobar.

  “What, Pan? Remember what?” asked Kudra.

  It was no use. Pan had finished speaking and would say no more. Nor would he sniff at himself again, for, incredibly, his native odor had peeled away the perfume that masked it; had slowly burned through the potent excess of patchouli like a sun-ray blazing its way through a purple fog, and now, after less than an hour of suppression, the goat gas—that chloride compound of barnyard and bedroom—was boiling again, filling the grotto with a sleazy vapor, a steam to press a rooster's pants.

  With the return of Pan's stink, there came renewed mischief in his eyes. When he scampered to the cave to fetch his pipes, Kudra and Alobar began hastily to dress. “We have a long journey ahead of us,” they explained, and with a curious mixture of relief and regret, they bade their divine host a fast farewell.

  Neither of them spoke until they reached the pasture, where they stopped to catch their breath after the rigorous descent. There, sitting against the base of the cliff, sequins of sweat sewn to their brows, they regarded one another as pilgrims—or survivors—do. Kudra folded her hands over her uterus, where some very strange little swimmers had recently drowned. Alobar issued a sigh that was shaped like a funnel: a full quart of beet juice could have been poured through it.

  “We shan't forget him for a time,” said Alobar.

  “We shan't forget him, ever.”

  “Then you weren't disappointed?”

  “You mean disappointed that he wasn't more like Krishna? Not in the end, I wasn't.” If Kudra was aware of her pun, she failed to betray it. “The only disappointment I feel is in his reticence to advise us.”

  “He is Pan. He doth not give advice.” At that, Kudra jumped, and so did Alobar, for it was a third party that had said it. The voice, which came from the bushes just above them, was soft and nonthreatening, and in a moment the branches parted, revealing a woman, as bare-assed as butter. Alobar recognized her as the elder—perhaps the leader—of the nymphs; the one who had addressed him on serious matters the last time he was in that neck of the woods.

  “Pardon me, my lady, my gentleman, for following thee.”

  “Pardon granted,” said Alobar, “although you did give us a start. Kudra, may I present . . .”

  “Lalo,” she said, “sister of Echo whose voice, alas, thou hearest repeating thee in all hollow places. Lalo. I only wanted to thank thee for thy visit to Pan. It brought him cheer at a time when his cheer is in short supply.”

  “Really?” asked Kudra. “From the way he greeted us at the beginning and dismissed us at parting, he did not strike me as overjoyed by our presence.”

  “He is Pan,” said Lalo rather sharply. “Didst thou expect him to bow and kiss thy hand?”

  Kudra blushed. Alobar extended his arm to assist Lalo down onto flat ground. The nymph was not quite as nimble as she once had been. “How grave is Pan's condition?” asked Alobar. “Surely he shan't succumb. Pan is in this land, in its crags, in its cataracts, its winds, its meadows, its hidden places, he can never go from the land, he will be here always, as long as the land is.”

  “Two things I wouldst say to thee on that account,” responded Lalo. “First, the conclusion that a wise homer—forgive the expression, sir—wouldst draw from Pan's admission that he lives only so long as men believe in him, is that men control the destiny of their gods. Thou mightst even say that men create their gods, as much as gods create men, for as I, untutored or read that I be, understand it, it is a mutual thing. Gods and men create one another, destroy one another, though by different means.”

  A whistle escaped Kudra's lips. “Could such a thing be? Yes, if lack of man's belief is what is ailing Pan, it must be true.”

  “A warning!” snapped Lalo, who at that moment sounded more like a Fury than a nymph. “Thou must never wax smug or arrogant about they influence upon the divine. If thou didst create gods, it was because thou needest them. The need must have been very great indeed, to inspire such a complex, difficult, and magnificent undertaking. Now, many art the men who think they no longer needeth Pan. They have created new gods, this Jesus Christ and his alleged papa, and they think that their new creations will suffice, but let me assurest thee that Christ and his father, as important as they may be, are no substitutes for Pan. The need for Pan is still great in humanity, and thou ignoreth it at thy peril.

  “That brin
geth me to the second thing,” Lalo continued. Her deep-set eyes were burning, her wine-red nipples were as erect as toy soldiers. “Thou art correct, Pan doth be in the land, he and the wildwoods art a part of one another, but thou art mistaken when thou implieth that the land doth last eternal. There be a time coming when the land itself be threatened with destruction; the groves, the streams, the very sky, not merely here in Arkadia but wildwoods the world over . . .”

  “Inconceivable,” muttered Alobar.

  “If Pan be alloweth to die, if belief in him totally decomposes, then the land, too, wilt die. It wilt be murdered by disrespect, just as Pan is murdered.”

  Alobar looked around him. In every direction as far as he could see, fierce outcroppings of gray stone, green curves of pasture, uncompromising slopes, spiny shrubs and delicate poppies (unlikely partners in a fling ordered by a reckless breeze), mountains teeming with invisible springs, clouds lying like oatcakes upon the blue tablecloth of sky, all of this seemed so inviolable that he could not entertain the notion of its vulnerability, and he said as much to Lalo.

  “Just the same,” the nymph answered, “shouldst thee continue to be successful in thy pursuit of long life, thou wilt see it transpire before thine eyes. Thus, I urge thee to protect Pan's dominions and reputations wherever thou mightst go. It be especially thy duty, not merely as a subject of Pan, but because thou, Alobar, art a prime practitioner of individualism, and it wilt be this new idea of individuality that leadeth many future men astray, causing them to feel superior to Pan, and thus to the land, which they wilt set upon to rape and spoil.”

  A ripple of annoyance like the shock wave from a splat of buzzard guano, zigzagged along Alobar's forehead. “Nymph,” he said, puffing himself up like a pigeon, “I do not know if I enjoy you telling me what my duty is.”

  “Alobar . . .” Kudra's tone was meant to be conciliatory.

  “Nor would I describe myself as a subject of Pan's. As for your attack on individualism . . .”