Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

  While she waited for the camera-laden tourist to complete his call, she focused on the sunset and calculated what the time of day must be in Paris, where it was already Fat Tuesday. She knew that Luc LeFever wouldn't have minded a call at an inopportune hour, but she wasn't sure about his successor, Claude. Still, how could Claude complain, once he'd heard the news? This perfume, this K23, could justify, a million times over, every cent they'd ever paid her.

  Born at Belle Bayou into a family of ex-slaves who'd elected to remain on the plantation as paid servants, generation after generation, V'lu grew up with the plantation owner's daughters. They were an old Creole clan who refused to speak English. The servants spoke mostly French, as well. When the owner sent his daughters to school in Switzerland, V'lu, age eleven, was sent with them—as companion, schoolmate, and unofficial maid.

  Upon graduation, the white girls went on to the Sorbonne, but V'lu, who'd piqued the girls by earning higher academic honors, was returned to Belle Bayou. The owner didn't know quite what to do with her. She was pretty, mannered, had an aptitude for chemistry and French literature, and could speak no English beyond the dialect she'd picked up in the rural ghetto. “Niggertown” English. He and his wife were trying to decide what might be best for her when his second cousin, Lily Devalier, arrived for a weekend visit and confessed she needed an assistant—and heir—in her perfume business. Voilà!

  For fear she'd appear overqualified, the Belle Bayou owner hid her accomplishments from Lily, palming her off as a simple plantation girl. Moreover, he advised V'lu to speak only English in New Orleans, so that she'd fit in. V'lu followed that advice (she even changed her name to Jackson from Saint-Jacques), except when she might encounter some interesting visitor from France.

  Such a visitor was Luc LeFever, who'd come to Parfumerie Devalier one afternoon while Madame was napping, met V'lu, and swiftly recognized her worth. He took her to dinner that evening, seduced her (she'd had a few sexual encounters in Switzerland and found them to her liking), and put her on the payroll. Luc, after all, had had dealings with Lily Devalier and her fragrances and recognized that she had the potential, at least, to produce something of commercial interest.

  As an industrial spy, V'lu earned one hundred dollars a month, with the promise of a fat bonus should she deliver a formula LeFever might profitably market. With some misgiving, Claude saw to it that the arrangement continued after his father's death, and it was to fulfill her obligation and collect her bonus that V'lu now stepped toward the public telephone to dial Paris, collect.

  As V'lu reached for the door of the booth, a small yellow cloud materialized between her hand and the door. She drew back her arm. The cloud fragmented into forty or fifty “drops,” spread like oversize dew upon the glass door. For a second, V'lu thought she might be experiencing a flashback hallucination, because the hurricane drops had worn off only an hour before, but just then someone in the street yelled, “The bees! It's the bees!”

  A crowd began instantly to form. “The bees!” “Where?” “There!” “Look, it's the bees!” The way the pedestrians were acting, the bees might have been Michael Jackson and Katharine Hepburn. Any minute, someone in the crowd would ask the bees for their autograph.

  V'lu swung her pink plastic handbag in the swarm's direction. “Shoo!” she said. “Shoo, bees! Go on now!”

  As one, the swarm lifted off the glass and with wings vibrating furiously, fell into their infamous saber saw formation. The flying blade splintered the air around V'lu's head. She yelped and ran for cover.

  Through the plate-glass window of a boutique across the street, she waited and watched. For nearly five minutes, the swarm patroled the space between the telephone booth and the boutique, then it flew off into the spreading bruise of dusk.

  V'lu was patient. She waited until it was completely dark. She waited a little longer. It was common knowledge that bees ceased to function at sunset. At last, when night lay on the Quarter like a fallen horse, V'lu cautiously opened the boutique door and slowly crossed the street. The coast was clear.

  Safely in the booth with the door shut, she reached out with a slender, magenta-nailed finger to dial the overseas operator. A bee lit on her finger.

  It appeared to be alone, a sleepy straggler left behind by the swarm. She snapped her wrist and flicked it off. She went to dial again, but there was a bee in the “O” hole. Uh-oh!

  Single file, they were invading the booth through the crack between the door and the pavement. Quickly, the booth was full of them. They swarmed over V'lu, squirmed up her nose, into her ears, down her cleavage, and under her armpits. A solitary bee, kamikaze all the way, buzzed up her dress and drilled its toxic stinger through her cotton underpants and into her perineum, that exquisite corridor separating a woman's back door from her front door, that smooth, hidden cusp that may be the most holy spot on the human body.

  V'lu screamed, dropped both the receiver and the card with Claude's number on it, and bolted from the booth. Swaying dangerously upon her pink, spiked shoes, she ran all the way back to Parfumerie Devalier, where she found the others in such a state of happy excitement that they neglected to notice that she was out of breath and sobbing.

  In V'lu's absence, important decisions had been made.

  Alobar had decided to dematerialize. Should he fail, then he would simply permit himself to die. “I have nothing else to prove by remaining alive,” he said, “but a great deal to prove—and gain—by pursuing Kudra. Finally, I'm ready for that adventure. I've seen the bottle again, and I'm ready. I feel that Pan has, for better or for worse, made his parting gesture, and it would be-hoove me to do the same.”

  It was his plan to attempt his dematerialization in Paris, on the rue Quelle Blague. He suspected it might be advantageous to leave this plane near where Kudra had left it.

  Meanwhile, he was turning over the K23 formula to Marcel.

  “That's overwhelmingly generous of you,” said Marcel. “But what if you change your mind about this dematerialization?”

  “I won't. Nothing short of Kudra's return could change my mind.”

  For his part, Marcel decided that LeFever would distribute the perfume internationally, it was ideally suited for that, but he insisted that Parfumerie Devalier actually produce the fragrance. It would be marketed under the Devalier label. At that, Madame Devalier began to blubber.

  Under Marcel's plan, LeFever would claim thirty percent of profits. Lily Devalier would be awarded fifty percent, with Priscilla and V'lu each receiving ten percent, until Madame's death, at which time they'd split her share.

  My, did V'lu feel bad. And it wasn't just the throbbing in her perineum.

  “How about Wiggs Dannyboy?” asked Priscilla.

  “Eh?”

  “He's done as much as anybody to get this perfume made—and he's never even smelled it.” Pris described the trouble and expense to which Dr. Dannyboy had gone in delivering his clues—his beets—to those in the best position to duplicate K23.

  “Quite right,” said Alobar.

  It was agreed that LeFever and Madame would each award Dr. Dannyboy four percent of their share, while Priscilla and V'lu would give him one percent apiece.

  “Live by the heart if you would live forever,” said Alobar.

  They toasted to that with champagne, after which Madame and Priscilla went into a corner to hug and cry and reconcile; Alobar fell asleep on the love seat, dreaming of his lady; and V'lu took Marcel up to her room, where, in the best French tradition, he sucked the venom from her bee sting.

  The next day was Mardi Gras, but in the shop nobody really noticed. They held their private celebration, a celebration of the heart and the nose, which honored neither mindless excess nor neurotic asceticism, and from which neither church nor state would benefit—at least, not in any way that their leaders might have imagined.

  Madame introduced Marcel to the Bingo Pajama jasmine. His nostrils opening and closing like the flaps of an airplane in distress, he pronounced it mo
re precious than any in the South of France and swore that he would send a team of botanists to Jamaica to track it down. “So this is what Wiggs and his little girl were wishing to grow in their greenhouse. Ooh-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

  At noon they uncorked more champagne. They toasted Bingo Pajama. “And to mangel-wurzel,” added Alobar. “Long may it wave,” said Pris. Regarding Alobar in his beet suit, now crumpled (and flat in places) from having been slept in, Marcel said, “I wish I had my whale mask.” Everyone was too polite to ask what he meant. In truth, Marcel no longer owned a whale mask. He had stuffed it into Uncle Luc's coffin just before it was sealed.

  The party agreed that it would call the perfume Kudra, a more romantic name than K23. Alobar was touched and pleased, although at one point Priscilla, only half facetiously, suggested christening it The Perfect Taco.

  Madame looked at her long and hard.

  They drank more champagne and sang breezy songs, mostly in French, for they spoke the language fluently except for Priscilla, who knew only six words in French, and that was counting ménage à trois as three.

  They ate jambalaya (protection against the Humping Beast), drank yet more champagne, and waxed sentimental over Alobar, lamenting his proposed departure.

  “It's been a huge adventure, an exploration of possibility, the invention of a game and the play of the game—and not merely survival. But I don't mind going now. This is not the best of times, you know.”

  “You're referring to the political situation?”

  “Oh, no, not that. Our political leaders are unenlightened and corrupt, but with rare exception, political leaders have always been unenlightened and corrupt. I stopped taking politics seriously a long, long time ago, therefore it's had practically no effect on the way I've lived my life. In the end, politics is always a depressant, and I've preferred to be stimulated.

  “No, my friends, what bothers me today is the lack of, well, I guess you'd call it authentic experience. So much is a sham. So much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized. You know, less than half a century ago there were sixty-three varieties of lettuce in California alone. Today, there are four. And they are not the four best lettuces, either; not the most tasty or nutritious. They are the hybrid lettuces with built-in shelf life, the ones that have a safe, clean, consistent look in the supermarket. It's that way with so many things. We're even standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. The sham is everywhere.

  “But wait, now. Don't let me spoil the party. Things will change, eventually, believe me. You can count on change. Even now, I'm curious about what's going to happen next. And I'll be back, if I can get back. The perfume will guide me back, I feel that it will.

  “So make our perfume, my friends. Make it well. Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.”

  “Right,” said Pris, under her breath. “And don't smoke in bed.”

  Thus, their Fat Tuesday passed with some sadness, some gaiety, and much optimism. In the garbage-strewn, hungover hush of Ash Wednesday, a letter arrived from Wiggs Dannyboy. It slid through the slot with an appropriately soft sound, like a headachey matron folding her Mardi Gras fan.

  Wiggs and Huxley Anne would fly in on Friday, the letter said. It said that it was raining in Seattle and that the greenhouse had been completely repaired. It concluded with a joke, an obscene suggestion, and a pronouncement or two. The pronouncements concerned Dr. Dannyboy's new theory of the evolution of consciousness. Perhaps because she had received the theory in bits and pieces, Priscilla hadn't paid much attention to it. Now, however, she sensed that Wiggs was attempting to make a major, radical statement, and she wondered if she shouldn't put it into focus.

  Gathering all the letters that he'd written to her since she came to New Orleans, she snipped out the relevant sections, placed them in her handbag, and left the sublet flat. She walked through the Garden District, stopping finally at a park bench in front of Charity Hospital. There, almost directly beneath the window of the ward where her daddy died, she pieced together the fragments of Wiggs's hypothesis.

  She wasn't positive that she accepted it or understood it. She wasn't positive that anyone else would accept it or understand it, or that anyone would care. She only knew that despite the numb torture of a champagne hangover, it made her want to go on living, a feeling she never quite got from the theories of Thomas Aquinas, Freud, and Marx.

  DANNYBOY'S THEORY

  (Where We Are Going and Why It Smells the Way It Does)

  To put it simply, humankind is about to enter the floral stage of its evolutionary development. On the mythological level, which is to say, on the psychic/symbolic level (no less real than the physical level), this event is signaled by the death of Pan.

  Pan, of course, represents animal consciousness. Pan embodies mammalian consciousness, although there are aspects of reptilian consciousness in his personality, as well. Reptilian consciousness did not disappear when our brains entered their mammalian stage. Mammalian consciousness was simply laid over the top of reptilian consciousness, and in many unenlightened—underevolved, underdeveloped—individuals, the mammalian layer was thin and porous, and much reptile energy has continued to seep through.

  When our remote ancestors crawled out of the sea, they no doubt had the minds of fish. Smarter, more adventurous and curious than their fellows who remained underwater, but fish-minded, nonetheless. On the long swampy road to a primate configuration, however, we developed a reptile mind. After all, in those tens of millions of years, reptile energy dominated the planet. It culminated in the dinosaurs.

  As Marcel LeFever suggested in his address to the perfumers' convention, reptile consciousness is cold, aggressive, self-preserving, angry, greedy, and paranoid.

  Paul McLean was the first neurophysicist to point out that we still carry a reptilian brain—functional and intact—around in our skulls today. The reptile brain is not an abstract concept, it is anatomically real. It has been carpeted over by the cerebrum, but it is there, deep within the forebrain, and consists of the limbic lobe, the hypothalamus, and, perhaps, other organs of the diencephalon. When we are in a cold sweat, a blind rage, or simply feeling smugly dispassionate, we may be sure that, for the moment, our reptile brain is in control of our consciousness.

  As the Age of Reptiles was drawing to a close, the first flowers and mammals appeared. Marcel LeFever believes that the flowers actually eliminated the great reptiles. Mammals also may have contributed to their egress (not “exit"), because for many early mammals there was nothing quite like a couple of dinosaur eggs for breakfast.

  At any rate, our ancestors had by then evolved brains that were both mammalian and floral in their formation. For reasons of its own, evolution allowed mammalian energy to hold sway, and the recently developed human midbrain or mesencephalon, which had folded over the old diencephalon, could be accurately labeled a mammal brain.

  Characteristics of mammal consciousness are warmth, generosity, loyalty, love (romantic, platonic, and familial), joy, grief, humor, pride, competition, intellectual curiosity, and appreciation of art and music.

  In late mammalian times, we evolved a third brain. This was the telencephalon, whose principal part was the neocortex, a dense rind of nerve fibers about an eighth of an inch thick that was simply molded over top of the existing mammal brain. Brain researchers are puzzled by the neocortex. What is its function? Why did it develop in the first place?

  LeFever has postulated that the neocortex is an expanded memory bank, and it certainly possesses that capability. Robert Bly thinks that it is connected somehow to light. If the reptile brain equates with cold and the mammal brain with warmth, then the neocortex equates with light. Bly's hunch makes a lot of sense because the third brain is a floral brain and flowers extract energy from light.

  Even prior to the mysterious appearance of the neocortex, our brains had strong floral characteristics. The whole brain is described in science as a bulb. The neurons of which it is composed have dendrites: r
oots and branches. The cerebellum consists of a large mass of closely packed folia, which are bundles of nerve cells described in the literature as leaflike. Not only do the individual neurons closely resemble plants or flowers, the brain itself looks like a botanical specimen. It has a stem, and a crown that unfolds, in embryonic growth, much in the manner of a petaled rose.

  In the telencephalon—the new brain—the floral similarity increases. Its nerve fibers divide indefinitely, like the branches of a tree. This process is called, appropriately, arborization. In the proliferation of those twiggy fibers, tiny deposits of neuromelanin are cast off like seeds. The neuromelanin seeds apparently are the major organizing molecules in the brain. They link up with glial cells to regulate the firing of nerve cells. When we think, when we originate creative ideas, a literal blossoming is taking place. A brain entertaining insights is physically similar, say, to a jasmine bush blooming. It's smaller, and faster, that's all.

  Moreover, neuromelanin absorbs light and has the capacity to convert light into other forms of energy. So Bly was correct. The neocortex is light-sensitive and can, itself, be lit up by higher forms of mental activity, such as meditation or chanting. The ancients were not being metaphoric when they referred to “illumination.”

  With the emergence of the neocortex, the floral properties of the brain, which had, for millions of years, been biding their time, waiting their turn, began to make their move—the gradual move toward a dominant floral consciousness.

  When life was a constant struggle between predators, a minute-by-minute battle for survival, reptile consciousness was necessary. When there were seas to be sailed, wild continents to be explored, harsh territory to be settled, agriculture to be mastered, mine shafts to be sunk, civilization to be founded, mammal consciousness was necessary. In its social and familial aspects, it is still necessary, but no longer must it dominate.