Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

  “But the bandaloop is more than just another dance fad,” the announcer said. “It's a health fad, as well. Supposedly, it can add years, even decades, to your life.”

  A familiar face appeared on the screen.

  “The man who is singularly responsible for the bandaloop epidemic is a veteran Argentine accordion virtuoso named Effecto Partido.”

  Priscilla leaned forward.

  “A respected amateur ethnomusicologist, Señor Partido last year accompanied a small group of scientists, including the late Nobel prize-winning chemist, Wolfgang Morgenstern, into the most remote area of the Patagonian wilderness. Partido's interests were musical, but the scientists were there to investigate the habits of a little-known tribal people whose average life span was said to exceed one hundred and forty years. The scientists have yet to comment, but according to Partido, the secret of the tribe's longevity was the dance they performed several times each day: the bandaloop.”

  The camera panned to dancers in a Buenos Aires night spot, then back to a close-up of Effecto, who, Priscilla perceived, was looking youthful and fit, indeed.

  “Theese dance she make zee blood happy, zee bones happy. I don't know how explain eet, but theese dance she celebrate that we are not, you know, died already.”

  As the announcer chuckled, the camera panned to a warehouse, painted bright pink. “The bandaloop requires so much space that the traditional tango clubs of Argentina can only accommodate three or four dancers at a time. So Effecto Partido acquired an empty warehouse near the Buenos Aires waterfront and converted it into a bandaloop club. The place is jammed every night of the week—and Effecto Partido, who also leads the band and takes frequent accordion solos, is South America's newest millionaire. His nightclub, by the way, is called Priscilla.”

  “I call it for zee only woman I ever love,” said Effecto.

  Priscilla bandalooped out of bed.

  For fifteen minutes or so, the former genius waitress paced the floor. Then she got the idea to telephone Ricki.

  “Hello.”

  “Bartender, I'd like some Alpo on the rocks with a twist of railroad spike.”

  “I don't make house calls. Who is this?”

  “You don't recognize the one who did you wrong?”

  “Pris! Maybe I do make house calls. Where are you?”

  “Still in Louisiana. Ricki, it's so good to hear your voice.”

  “It's good to hear you. You asshole.”

  “I'm sorry, Ricki. I was positive you had my bottle. I'm prepared to eat a lot of crow.”

  “I'd rather you eat something else.”

  “You're a dirty-talking woman.”

  “It's not just talk.”

  “Can you forgive me, Ricki?”

  “Hey, I was a jerk myself. But, look, the Daughters got another grant coming up. This time—”

  “No, I don't need it anymore. How're things at El Papa Muerta, by the way? Customers still complaining that there're only nine hundred islands in their thousand-island dressing?”

  “Yeah, they don't realize the peso's been devalued.”

  “Ricki, you want to go to Argentina?”

  “Does the Pope want to play Las Vegas? What're you talking about?”

  “I'm not kidding. I'm going. You would not believe the past four months of my life. The people I've met, the stuff I've learned, the things that have been happening to me. . . .”

  “Try me.”

  “Okay, what would you say if I told you a dying god knocked me down and broke my perfume bottle?”

  “'Don't cry for me, Argentina.'”

  “You want to go to Argentina?”

  “What's happened to your junkie boyfriend?”

  “He's not a junkie, and he's not my boyfriend! I guess he never was my boyfriend. I don't know anymore. He's amazing. Incredibly amazing. But he's sure not in love with me. He came to New Orleans Friday and then turned right around and left, without seeing me. I think it has something to do with his daughter—”

  “The gift of the Magi.”

  “What?”

  “In the Bible. The Magi brought frank incest and mirth.”

  “Ha ha. I didn't know you read the Bible.”

  “Only the good parts. There's a lot about me you don't know.”

  “You want to go to Argentina tomorrow?”

  “I'm off tomorrow. Why not? Why're we going to Argentina?”

  “To join my ex-husband.”

  “Wait a minute. Are we talking ménage à trois?”

  Priscilla paused. “I'm not sure what we're talking. I only know that I seem to require a man of a certain age—and that you're the only real friend I have. I don't know what we're gonna do in Argentina, but one thing I can tell you . . .”

  “What's that, Pris?”

  “Whatever it is, it may be possible to do it for a long, long time.”

  The night sky over Paris was the color of beet juice, a result of red lights and blue lights reflecting upon the gun-metal gray of the clouds. The sky was sorrowful and disheveled, like the head of an old musician. Heavy with music, it nodded uncontrollably, strands waving, as if keeping time, against its will, to the cabaret piano that was the heartbeat of Paris. Through breaks in the overcast, a dandruff of pale stars could be seen.

  Emerging from the dim lobby of the LeFever Building into the dimmer street, Claude LeFever didn't notice the sky, but looked first left, then right, then left again. He knew that he was early, but he hoped that his car and driver might be early, as well. No such luck.

  Claude turned up the collar of his cashmere topcoat. It might have been spring in Nice, but winter winds had not moved completely off the rue Quelle Blague. Chilled and impatient, still Claude was fond enough of the street to stand in it, his back to the edifice that smell had built.

  Although the law prohibiting skyscrapers had been amended for thirty years, the LeFever Building remained the sole high-rise in that neighborhood. The rest of the block was oblivious to what, in the modern world, passed for progress. With a mixture of frustration and affection, Claude surveyed the cafés and bicycle shops, and the cathedral, of course, and wondered how a city whose name meant fashion to the world could, decade after decade, get away with conforming to archaic ideas. Paris was like his cousin Bunny, he thought: faithful to tradition, on the one hand, in a constant state of upheaval on the other.

  As his eyes swept the street, the door of the darkened bicycle shop next door creaked slowly open, and a somnambulistic figure, as evocative as a silhouette in a period cinema, joined him on the rue Quelle Blague. Claude thought the person might be a burglar, his outlines distorted by a sack of loot, but instead of hurrying away, the figure stood there, drinking in the neighborhood as Claude himself had done.

  Since the figure was not threatening, was, in fact, compelling, Claude approached it. He was instantly glad, for it proved to be a woman, a dark, Asian woman, quite beautiful, but dressed in a seventeenth-century costume and behaving as if drunk or drugged. When the woman saw Claude, she drew her hand to her mouth and gasped. Evidently, he appeared as odd to her as she to him, yet she did not seem overly afraid.

  “I thought I was back,” the woman said. Her French was formal, old-fashioned. “But now I am unsure.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Claude.

  “It is not the same as it was. My shop is full of silver wheels. There is a tower next door so tall I cannot find its top. And you, sir . . .”

  She seemed actually in shock. She must be on some drug, Claude thought. Got loaded at a costume party, no doubt, but what was she doing in a locked bicycle shop? “Uh, how long have you been gone?” he asked.

  “Only an hour or two.”

  He chuckled. “Well, my dear, nothing's changed in the past couple of hours, I assure you.” He told himself that he should walk away, but he stayed. She was so exotic, so lost and lovely. Despite an otherworldly aloofness, she radiated an erotic heat that melted his customary caution and reason. Even should she prove
to be an actress on heroin, and not the creature of marvel that she seemed, he nevertheless craved her company. His loins tingled, not merely with lust but with a kind of spiritual adventurism, almost Promethean in character, as if he might steal something from her (from her lips, her breasts, her breath) that would allow him to surpass himself. He hoped that his limo was stuck in traffic again.

  “Where have you been?”

  Kudra didn't hesitate. “I have been on the Other Side,” she said. For the first time, she looked into his eyes.

  Claude felt weak. It was a result of the eye contact, not her reply. He thought that she meant the other side of the Seine.

  “And how are things on the other side?” He hoped he didn't sound flip.

  “Oh, sir . . .” A tremor ran the length of her, causing her voluptuous flesh to quiver like the throat of a lovesick frog. Her bustle gown was lacy and had three-quarter-length sleeves, with which she wore neither muff nor gloves. Assuming that she was cold, Claude draped his topcoat about her shoulders.

  “Actually,” said Claude, “I much prefer the Right Bank. Did you really find it so unpleasant over there?”

  “Oh, I would not describe the Other Side as unpleasant, sir. It is quite beyond the scope of words such as pleasant or unpleasant.”

  Her seriousness made him smile. “Impressed you, hey? Well, how would you describe it?”

  Kudra neglected to answer right away. Instead, she searched the block, pivoting stiffly, like a figurine atop a music box, to stare back into the bicycle shop. She was looking for someone, although in her dazed state she may have been confused as to his precise identity.

  Gradually she turned to Claude again, fixed him with a hypnotic gaze, and began a monologue so lengthy and bewildering that had it come from any mouth but hers, he would have done something rude. As it was, there was no question of interruption. She spoke softly and slowly, as if in a trance, and Claude, himself, became entranced. Her manner, her voice, her heat, her scent combined to hypnotize him, binding him with spider wire, wrapping his mind in a web of vision so thick that he could actually see the scenes she described as vividly as if he were dreaming them.

  Released with a sudden puff from the electromagnetic convulsions of dematerialization, Kudra finds herself inside a covered wharf, an enormous building of damp granite and soiled marble, extending for two hundred yards or more beyond the shore of some dark sea.

  Obviously a terminal, the wharf is teeming with travelers of every race, nationality, and era of time, arriving, departing, waiting.

  The travelers murmur, occasionally they moan, but they do not converse among themselves. They hustle in. They bustle about. They stand in long lines. They go.

  Although Kudra's body feels normal and intact, there is something insubstantial, almost vaporous, about most of the others. She is soon to learn that that is because they are dead. They have left their bodies behind and are walking about in mental projections, in their ideas of their earthly bodies. They have fleshed themselves in their imaginations of themselves, which explains why the majority of them are rather handsome.

  Only the dematerialized are housed in actual bodies, and in all the throng, there are but two or three of these. The dematerialized, moreover, are exempt from the rules and regulations governing the dead. Conductors in white uniforms herd the dead arrivals into groups, from the groups into lines, single-file, but Kudra is allowed to roam at will.

  The conductors seldom speak, but they act with irresistible authority. Their faces are radiant, their movements fluid and fluttery. Kudra is reminded of snowflakes, of the fluttering pages of books upon which poems in white ink have been written.

  Acutely aware of her own smell, for there is no trace of odor among the dead masses, Kudra wanders throughout the great wharf, which, though miserably crowded, is steeped in a solitude more complete than any she has ever known.

  No newspapers are for sale in the station, no sweets or tobacco. Travelers arrive. They go. They arrive in streams, through wide marble portals, carrying neither luggage nor souvenirs. But where is it they go from here? To find out, Kudra pushes to the head of a line. All lines, it turns out, lead to the same place: the Weighing Room.

  Timidly, Kudra slips into the room, where she is surprised to find a tall, androgynous figure, half priest and half harlequin, wielding a gleaming knife.

  One by one, the dead approach the harlequin priest. With a swift, practiced stroke, he (or she) cuts out their hearts.

  Upon a stone altar, there is a set of scales. The scales are ordinary, made of brass, not gold. On the left balance, there is a single hawk-brown feather.

  The harlequin priest passes each freshly rooted heart to his/her assistant, a young woman in a white tunic. The assistant lays the heart upon the right balance. If the heart is heavier than the feather—and time after time it is—the person is motioned to the rear of the room, where he or she joins another line, this one filing down steps that lead to the docks.

  At regular intervals, ships moor at dockside. The ships are sleek and luminous. In fact, they seem fashioned entirely of light, a cold light, as staid and ordered as a Victorian drawing room. The heartless dead board the ships, which, once loaded, sail away at tremendous speeds. In a matter of seconds, they are no more than distant stars in the obsidian night of ocean.

  The woman in the snowy tunic notices Kudra. She smiles. “Do you understand what is happening here?” she inquires. “We weigh their hearts. Should a person possess a heart that is as light as a feather, then that person is granted immortality."

  "Indeed? Are there many?"

  "Few. Precious few, I am sorry to say. One would think that people would catch on. Those who pass the test are usually rather odd. The last was a tall black fellow with bee dung caked in his hair. The ordinary rarely beat the scales."

  "Where do they go, then, all those who fail?” Kudra pointed toward the water, where another ship of light was just whooshing away, leaving a milky wake.

  "To the energy realms."

  "Never to return?"

  The woman shrugs. “As energy, perhaps. As light."

  "But the ones who pass the test . . . ?"

  "The immortals? They are free to take any direction they like. Free to embark on a sea voyage, to return to your world, or to some different world.” She places yet another heart upon the balance, squealing with delight when it does not send the balance dish plummeting to the altar top. “Look,” she says to Kudra. “Look at this one. Now here is one that comes fairly close."

  This organ was ripped from the corpulent breast of a jolly-faced troubadour. He doesn't comprehend the commotion, but he is winking at Kudra, rubbing his belly, and looking as if he'd gladly trade his butchered heart for a pint of ale.

  "Had he combined his hedonism with a pinch more wisdom, had he poured slightly less into his gullet and slightly more into his soul, he might have made it,” says the weigher of hearts. “Still, he earns a pink ticket."

  She hands the troubadour something strongly resembling a carnation petal and motions him to a side door. Kudra follows him and learns that this door, too, leads down to the water, but to an empty dock. From above, the woman signals him to wait.

  For quite a long time, the troubadour stands there. To relieve his tedium, he whistles a tune, a medieval ballad of courtly love. Suddenly, he is silenced in mid-whistle, his lips periwinkled in a frozen pucker. A ship is pulling into view.

  As it nears dockside, Kudra sees that it is a barge, of considerable length, and canopied with pink linen, from whose edges fringe and tassels dangle. The barge is hung with paper lanterns, in which candles blaze gaily. Scattered about the deck are tables and chairs, resembling those of an inn, and here sit people eating spicy southern foods and sipping beer and pineapple coolers. Minstrels with droopy black mustaches wander the deck, strumming guitars. Women in shoes with heels like daggers dance, rattling tambourines all the while and cooing lubricious phrases to the many parrots that occupy crude wooden cages. Fro
m below deck, a katzenjammer of libidinous voices is heard. On the side of the barge, the name Hell has been painted.

  Despite the fact that there's no odor to give magnitude to the foods on deck or to the sex below, the passengers seem merry. Kudra believes that she recognizes one of them. Unless she is mistaken, it is Fosco, the calligrapher from the Samye lamasery. He is at table, in repartee with a pair of elderly Chinamen, whom he addresses as Han Shan and Li Po. They hurl lines of spontaneous poetry at one another, each trying to top the last, often slapping the tabletop and laughing wildly. Kudra waves and waves, but it is impossible to get Fosco's attention. The dead have little interest in the living, she surmises.

  The barge scrapes against the dock with a careless rasp. The captain, a seedy Spaniard in a comic-opera version of a military uniform, leans over the rail and takes the troubadour's pink ticket. Once the fellow is aboard, the vessel floats lazily away, bound for unknown sprays.

  As the barge departs, it turns, affording a view of its starboard side. On this side, the vessel wears a different name entirely. Heaven is what it says.

  Kudra returns to the scales. The young woman is hard at work, testing hearts, assaying the precious metals of the life well-lived. “How did you land this job?” asks Kudra.

  "I was not feather-light, but I was feather-bright,” she answers.

  "I am not sure I understand. Yet I cannot help but notice that we strongly resemble one another, you and I."

  "Indeed we do."

  "Are we related? Am I an incarnation of you? Or something?"

  "What makes you suppose that you would be an incarnation of me, rather than me of you?” She giggles and shakes her skunk-black curls. “It is so amusing the way that mortals misunderstand the shape, or shapes, of time."

  "I am not sure I understand."

  "And I cannot help you understand. In the realm of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. Remember that, when you return to Your Side. Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received."