Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

  “If this is the speech Bunny made at the convention, I've heard it once, and that was once too often.”

  “I know,” said Luc, “but I'm looking for clues. I suspect that it was this fool speech that got Marcel invited to the Last Laugh Foundation. I'm trying to determine what it might have been they heard in it.” He pushed Rewind.

  Claude didn't give a big quiche about the Last Laugh Foundation, about Bunny's visit to it, or Luc's morbid interest in it. Claude had come to his father's office to discuss the so-called agent file. He was disturbed that one V'lu Jackson was listed as a spy for their company. He wondered if Luc was aware that Bunny was mad about V'lu. Had the old man instigated their affair? Had Bunny played a role in recruiting V'lu? That seemed unlikely, yet Claude had an annoying feeling that business had been conducted behind his back. He was intent upon answers, but it appeared that he would have to wait until they'd listened, once again, to the address that had so embarrassed them when Bunny had delivered it to the Eighth International Congress of Aromatics (the biannual perfumers' convention) in New Orleans during early June.

  “Do I have to sit through this? I need to talk to you about—”

  “Shush.” Luc aimed his cigar as if it were a laser. Having zapped Claude's vocal cords, he pushed Pause, then Play.

  The tape had rewound farther than necessary, and the first sounds to escape the transmitter were those of the chief executive of a large New York fragrance corporation concluding a talk on the future of the industry. “In selecting fine fragrances, the perfumer has the most knowledge as to what new compounds and materials are available, but I don't believe he is close enough to the marketplace or the consumer to apply this knowledge correctly. Finished goods manufacturers have begun almost exclusively to put full responsibility for fragrance selection for their products in the hands of marketing people rather than technical people or fragrance compounders. This trend has made for more commercial, and somehow more successful, fragranced products having been launched in recent years.”

  Claude smiled to imagine how Bunny must have been fuming over those assertions.

  “. . . fragrance must be styled just as fashions are, or automobiles, or table settings, or anything else. Fragrance styles, like fashion styles, are cyclical, but new developments in chemicals, like new developments in fabrics, mean a return-with-a-difference. Thank you.”

  During the applause that followed, Claude pictured Bunny clinching pale, manicured fists. In Claude's picture, his cousin was the only member of the audience not clapping. In real life, however, that was not the case. Wiggs Dannyboy had not applauded because he had heard nothing that astonished him (he had, in fact, been bored and disappointed with his introduction to perfuming). V'lu Jackson and Priscilla Partido had not applauded because they, in separate parts of the auditorium, were so close to sleep that their breathing was locked into snore-launch modes. They nodded through the introduction of “master perfumer Marcel LeFever,” twitching into wakefulness only when their respective subconscious minds were pricked, for some odd reason, by the words, “It was then, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, that the flowers wiped out the dinosaurs.”

  Oblivious to the fact that he'd shaken two attractive amateurs from the mosquito nets of drowsiness and reversed an outside observer's decision to go to the men's room for a toke of marijuana, Bunny continued: “Science knows that the disappearance of dinosaurs and the appearance of flowers occurred simultaneously, yet, strangely, it has never drawn much of a connection between the two events. It is up to perfumers to correct the oversight.

  “Vegetarian dinosaurs dined on ferns, floating water plants, and the palmlike cycad. They were not very intelligent, and certainly not very French, having developed a limited, strictly specialized diet. When the great mountain building took place during the Cretaceous Period, seaways drained and swamps dried up. First the aquatic plants, then the ferns and cycads succumbed. Insufficient surface water. Some new plants had been gradually moving in, however. These plants were inconspicuous at first, and neither the dinosaurs nor the swamp plants paid them much attention. Ah, but they had plans for the future. They began to grow their roots longer and longer, sink them deeper and deeper, until they could reach the moisture trapped beneath the surface, and when their stringy little exploratory organs hit the water table—POW!” (Bunny smacked the podium; if V'lu and Priscilla hadn't been awake before, they were now.)

  “POW! They exploded in a scandalous display of sexual invitation.

  “The old claw-and-fang world of drab, predatory, reptilian repression had never seen anything like this. Lasciviously colored, scandalously scented blossom after blossom flaunted its genitalia openly, enticing with visual and heretofore unknown olfactory charms any who might be inclined to sample its pleasures.

  “With their appalling genius for adaptability, insects responded enthusiastically to the outbreak of sensuality. So did the smaller birds. Dinosaurs, however, were repulsed. Although their reproductive equipment must have been monumental—the penis of a Brontosaurus would have been only a couple of yards shorter than the thirty-foot organ of the great blue whale—it was kept out of sight and infrequently used. The dim-witted, thin-blooded dinosaur was not a hot lover, another way in which it differed from the French.” There was a soft ripple of laughter. Very soft. “It mated once a year, barring headaches. So put off was the prudish dinosaur by the sexy smell of flowering plants that it starved to death and went extinct rather than eat them.”

  Claude was particularly bothered by this part of the speech. Claude did not enjoy being reminded of whale penises and dinosaur peepees. The very thought of big dumb clumsy dinosaurs engaged in sexual intercourse was enough to flash-freeze his gonads, making him temporarily unreceptive to his wife. For that matter, Claude resented the fact that dogs and cats and chickens were allowed by nature to indulge in sexual practices not so terribly different from his own. In a perfect world, according to Claude, coitus would be the exclusive prerogative of humans. Even most humans weren't fit to participate in an activity so sacred, so personal, so sublime. Often, Claude simply could not imagine the couples he met at parties or passed on the street ever being locked in carnal embrace. It was not merely disgusting, it seemed impossible. Had they not had children, he would have been convinced that they cohabited platonically. This was especially true if the people were fat or stupid. Claude believed that only smart, attractive people had the right to fuck, and it sincerely hurt him when he discovered evidence to the contrary.

  Claude was shaded by a revulsion as dark as his socks, but the tape rolled merrily along.

  “I shall not ask you to believe that an evolutionary intelligence developed flowers for the specific purpose of ridding the world of dinosaurs (and incidentally, the carnivorous dinosaurs quickly joined their vegetarian relatives in oblivion, since, with the plant-eaters gone, they had nothing to dine upon), or that that intelligence was trying to teach our planet a lesson, to wit: it is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn. That is not really my point. Nor is it the point that the largest, most terrifying animals that ever lived were eradicated by fragrance.

  “No, the point is that the aroma of flowers, from which we have borrowed our perfumes, while extremely powerful, has been from the beginning entirely seductive in its intentions. A rose is a rose is a rogue.

  “Perfume, fundamentally, is the sexual attractant of flowers, or, in the case of civet and musk, of animals. Squeezed from the reproductive glands of plants and creatures, perfume is the smell of creation, a sign dramatically delivered to our senses of the Earth's regenerative powers—a message of hope and a message of pleasure.

  “Small wonder that the Church came to equate perfume with sin, stench with holiness. It is said that certain saints so completely neglected the normal requirements of personal hygiene that Satan h
imself fled in terror when approaching them from downwind—thus, their reputation for sanctity. The Church periodically favored incense and oils. LeFever purchased its original perfumery from an order of Catholic monks in 1666. Fragrance has long been an important element in ceremony and ritual. Overall, however, the Church has had to oppose perfume because it could not escape the conclusion that perfume is an implicit invitation to forbidden sexual license. As perfumers, we must face up to that reality, as well.

  “There is little difference between the Zulu warrior who smeared his body with lion's fat and the modern woman who dabs hers with expensive perfume. The one was trying to acquire the courage of the king of beasts, the other is attempting to acquire the irresistible sexuality of flowers. The underlying principle is the same.”

  Claude shuddered. Lion's fat. Ugh. Where did Bunny come up with these things?

  “What we are really talking about, then, is magic, is it not so? In the anthropological understanding of homeopathic magic, perfume is the medium by which the lady magically usurps the sexual powers of the blossom. As with the warrior's lion fat, there is also more than a little fantasizing going on, for however undetailed, a potential result of the use of the magical medium is being projected onto the wearer's screen of consciousness.

  “Since the perfumer is dealing in sexual magic and romantic fantasy, he or she is operating in a realm that is both deeply primitive and highly exalted. This realm has its rhymes and reasons, and they are not quite the same, I regret to inform you, as the rhymes and reasons of the marketplace.”

  The last remark was ad libbed, apparently. In spite of himself, Claude felt a tingle of pride in his cousin. He turned to Luc, shaking his head and chuckling. “That Bunny is a quick one,” he said. “And afraid of nothing.” Luc did not reply. Luc had other things on his mind. Luc had been awake most of the night. Luc had money to invest, and now that Morgenstern had hooked up with the Last Laugh Foundation . . . well, it was worth investigating. Surely, the foundation needed funds. Who knew, maybe it could do something for him. Luc chewed his cigar and listened intently. Luc felt rotten. The circles under his eyes were the purple of bad meat.

  “Now,” Marcel the Bunny was saying, “I wish to call your attention to yet another prehistorical event. About two hundred thousand years ago, the human brain tripled in size. Science has been unable to explain this relatively sudden enlargement, since beyond a certain size, a size that the brains of our ancestors had already reached two hundred thousand years ago, intelligence does not increase with brain volume. What evolutionary purpose was served, then, by tripling our cerebral real estate?”

  Bunny paused for effect, then went on. “I submit that the brain was enlarged in order to store more memories. We have learned in recent experiments that memory is stored not in specific neural centers but, holographically, throughout the brain. As the human mammal came to live longer, and to widen the scope of its intellectual activities, it had more to remember. It needed more closet space, so to speak. But the interesting thing is, the increase in memory capacity was far beyond what was needed at the time. It was, in fact, far beyond what is needed today, although we now live on the average more than three times as long as our prehistoric ancestors, and the range of our activities has increased geometrically. Could it be that evolution was preparing us for a time in the future when we will live considerably longer than we do at present? Could the mushrooming of memory space have been long-range longevity planning? An immoralist ploy?”

  Luc grunted. “This must be the part,” he said. “I passed over it the first time.” He sat up in his chair. The movement made him dizzy. (Five months earlier, Wiggs Dannyboy had been pulled forward in his seat by the same remark. Wiggs had crashed the convention on a hunch, and it looked as if the hunch was paying off.)

  Bunny: “We may only speculate about such matters. We do know, however, that of our five senses, the one most directly connected to memory is the sense of smell. Although man has become increasingly visual in his orientations, although his olfactory receptor has shrunk until it is no larger than an American dime, sight simply cannot compete with smell when it comes to the ability to awaken memory. Memories associated with scent are invariably more immediate and more vivid than those associated solely with visual imagery or sound. Psychiatrists have begun, in fact, to use perfume to aid the patient in recreating the suppressed memories of early childhood.”

  The old man cocked his head. Bunny was speaking in English, and what with the Blood Pressure Chorale caroling in Luc's temples, he had difficulty comprehending every word. English was a language fit only for narrating animated cartoons and inciting crowds at sporting events, according to Luc.

  Bunny: “Scent is the last sense to leave a dying person. After sight, hearing, and even touch are gone, the dying hold on to their sense of smell. Does that sharpen your appreciation of the arena in which we perfumers perform?

  “Fragrance is a conduit for our earliest memories, on the one hand; on the other, it may accompany us as we enter the next life. In between, it creates mood, stimulates fantasy, shapes thought, and modifies behavior. It is our strongest link to the past, our closest fellow traveler to the future. Prehistory, history, and the afterworld, all are its domain. Fragrance may well be the signature of eternity.”

  “That's laying it on a bit thick,” commented Claude. Luc made an effort to nod in agreement, but his head was so full of hot, noisy, polluted blood that it felt like a bistro on a weekend midnight, and he could not move it.

  The tape was enjoying perfect health, however. It stuck steadfastly to its pace. “There is a long-standing argument about whether perfuming is a science or an art. The argument is irrelevant, for at the higher levels, science and art are the same. There is a point where high science transcends the technologic and enters the poetic, there is a point where high art transcends technique and enters the poetic.

  “A perfumer, of course, is neither a quantum physicist nor a painter, but at his best, when his purposes are high purposes, when his imagination is liberated, his choices inspired, he, too, enters the poetic. And it is revealed to him, then, what the ancients meant when they said with conviction that the soul receives its sustenance via the sense of smell.

  “I have spoken to you this afternoon of poetry and of sexual magic. Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and L'Heure Bleue—The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors"—there were murmurs and gasps in the audience—"names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass?

  “Vanderbilt and Bill Blass are what the 'marketing people' have given us.”

  Marcel paused, as if trying to contain a coiling rage. Claude slapped the creased thigh of his expensive gray trousers. “Give them hell, Bunny,” he said, with a mixture of affection and mockery. Luc, meanwhile, had laid down his cigar so that he might employ both his hands to massage his exploding temples.

  “Vanderbilt and Bill Blass, alas. But you know, you perfumers, in the deep unfolding rose of your hearts, you know that fragrance is no automobile or table setting, no insurance policy, no Preparation H. Attempts to reduce perfume to a predictable product with which cost accountants can safely deal; attempts to own it, control it, and make it happen when the mysterious spirit is not there are fated to end in crude failure and coarse farce.

  “Perfuming is most unlike manufacture. And perfumers should be proud to assume our historic roles as enchanters, soul feeders, sacred pimps, and alchemists. 'Marketing people' are fine enough when it comes to peddling wares, but let us remember always that it is the perfumer, the f
lowermaster, the guardian of the Blue Hour, who can charm the birds and bees in the human spirit—and destroy its dinosaurs.”

  Scattered applause. Shocked murmurs. Nervous laughter. Then, the white-on-white whirr of blank tape.

  “That's that,” said Claude, relieved that it hadn't been worse than the first time that he heard it. “The wonderful Wizard of Oz. My guess is that Wiggs Dannyboy identified with Bunny. Someone told him about the speech, and he thought, 'Here's a man who's as big a bedbug as I am.' That must have been why Bunny was invited to that clinic.”

  Luc said nothing. Like a paper snake with a white spark on its tongue, the tape hissed on.

  Claude stretched and turned to look at his father. “Oh, no!” The executive was slumped over his desk, his face in the alabaster ashtray. The cigar was smoldering against Luc's cheek, burrowing like a red-hot worm into the head that was now the color and texture of one of Bunny's beets.

  If Claude was slow to react, it was because the smell transported him, helplessly, to a distant summer evening when he and his young bride were strolling between the braziers of kabob hawkers grilling mutton on an Algerian beach, consumed by romance but unable to see either stars or sea because of the fatty smoke.

  Part

  IV

  DOWNWIND

  FROM

  THE

  PERFECT

  TACO

  THE CITADEL WAS DARK and the heroes were sleeping. When sleeping. When they breathed, it sounded as if they were testing the air for dragon smoke.

  Except that the “citadel” was Concord State Prison and the sleeping “heroes,” who had been damaged by sorry environments and shoddy genes long before they had had a chance to wax heroic, were testing the air for tear gas. These were men who didn't care if the world was round or flat. Their dreams were haunted by jack handles and cash registers, and those who had been incarcerated for five years or more dreamed only in black and white.