Jitterbug Perfume Read online

  “A mattress is softer. It is not my habit to copulate in the grass like an animal.”

  “Well, you had better get used to it. I mean, if you are going to be reincarnated as a bug . . .”

  “Unhand me, please. I am a widow and do not even know you.” The smile was gone now, although whether it had drawn back inside her head or flown off toward the ices of Chomolungma was anybody's guess.

  “You know me well enough,” said Alobar. Reluctantly, he dropped the satin coconut. He imagined that it gurgled when he let go. “Did not you come up into these mountains looking for me?”

  “Not exactly. Back then when I was a child, you informed me that you were traveling to the Himalayas in search of masters who had power over death. When I ran away, I had no place to go, and I thought I must make my way to Calcutta to become a woman of the streets, but first I decided I would have a look for these masters myself. You were kind to me back then, and the promise you extracted from me influenced my decision not to submit to suttee. Partly because of you I took a less virtuous path. But there is a limit to how much virtue I shall allow you to talk me out of.”

  “If being alive is not a virtue, then there is little virtue in virtue, that is what I say.”

  “Disgustingly enough, I am finding joy in my continued presence in this world of illusions.” She turned to face him. The smile came back, surprised them both, then left again abruptly without saying good-bye. “Tell me, Alobar, are these lamas you live with the masters whom you sought? And have they taught you the secret of life everlasting?”

  “Um? Well, er, in some ways, I think . . . I'm not sure. Uh . . .”

  “What do you mean? Are they or are they not? Have they or haven't they? They look like Buddhist monks to me, and where I come from, Buddhists die just as regularly as everybody else.”

  Alobar stood up and gazed at the mountains for a while. The mountains looked like the white picket fence around the cottage of eternity, although Alobar clearly thought about them in another way entirely. Perhaps he thought of them as storehouses stocked with thunderclap hinges and earthquake parts and dusty bolts of lightning; perhaps he saw them as just another opportunity for the gods to make him seem puny and weak and mortal. In any case, he stared at the peaks for a while, and then he turned back to Kudra.

  “When I crossed the border from your land into this one, I asked some herdsmen where the great teachers lived, and they answered, 'At Samye,' so I made my way here. I knocked at the gatehouse of the Samye lamasery, and some men in red robes took me in and gave me food and tea, they heated buckets of water with which I bathed myself, and they supplied me with warm clothes and boots, for my own were in tatters and falling off me. Then they asked what I wanted—I was a curious sight to them—and I replied, 'I wish to live a thousand years.' They looked at each other, and then one of them asked, 'In this body?' And when I said 'yes,' they shook their heads and clucked their tongues. They said they could not help in the fulfillment of my vain, misguided wish, and that after a good night's rest I must be on my way. As I was leaving the next morning, one of them, Fosco, a painter of poems, whispered to me that I might get what I was looking for from the Bandaloop doctors. He said I could find these personages in the foothills caves back down toward India. So I thanked him and off I went.”

  “But you didn't find them, these Bandaloopers?”

  “Oh, yes, I found them, all right, although it was not easy. They had no fine stone buildings, as they have here at Samye, but lived in a honeycomb of caverns, far off the main path.”

  “But you found them?”

  “Yes. Or, rather, they found me. I was resting in a ravine one day, thinking, 'Oh, how I wish I had something to eat,' when suddenly I was pelted with ears of corn. Hard. Very hard. Made my nose bleed and my ears ring. I drew my knife and looked up at the cliff whence the corn had come, and there were three hairy men dressed almost as motley as I, laughing at me. I shook my blade at them, and they yelled, 'Well, you said you were hungry.'”

  “Praise Shiva. How did they hear your thought?”

  “I intended to find that out. After I roasted and ate the corn, I sniffed out their trail and tracked them to a hillside riddled with caves. 'You must be the Bandaloop doctors,' I said when several of them approached. 'You must be Alobar,' one of them replied. 'How did you learn my name?' I asked. 'How did you learn ours?' he shot back. 'A Samye holy man told me,' I said. At that, they all had a hearty laugh.”

  “They strike me as rude.”

  “Rude? Yes, they were plenty of that. But, you see, a long time ago, far off in the west where I come from, I met two rude characters, one a shaman, one a god, and though each treated me disagreeably in the beginning, one gave me special courage, the other special fear, both of which I required for this journey that I am on. Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along and asks for it. A person must be prepared to receive wisdom, or else it will do him more harm than good. Moreover, a lout thrashing about in the clear waters of wisdom will dirty those waters for everyone else. So, a man seeking knowledge must be first tested to determine if he is worthy. From what I have gathered, rudeness on the part of the master is the first phase of the test.”

  “You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you fit to hear his view of things?”

  “Quite the contrary. You must defend you integrity, assuming you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly, not by imitating his own low behavior. If you are gentle where he is rough, if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as potentially worthy. If he does not, then he is not a master, after all, and you may feel free to kick his ass.”

  “Interesting. Is that how it went with the Bandaloop doctors?”

  Alobar shook his head. “No,” he said. He took another long look at Chomolungma and the runners-up in the world's tallest mountain competition. The sun was starting to sink, and the peaks were pinned with colored clouds, like ribbons designating where each had placed in the contest. It was fairly easy to spot the winner, and numbers two and three. Miss Congeniality was a bit more difficult to identify. “No, that is not the way it went with the Bandaloop doctors. They were alternately hospitable and antagonistic. They would pour me milk to drink, then drop a turd in the cup. They would flatter me, then spit in my face. They would ignore me, then as I made to leave, they'd implore me to stay. It was damnably confusing. And there was no question of kicking ass. They invited me to strike them, but they were so quick I could not lay a hand on them. Their movements were imperceptible, yet they were always a fraction of an inch to the left or right of wherever I aimed my blow. Not one of them touched me, but I beat my own self bloody missing them and falling down.”

  “You were humiliated.”

  “My lady, that is an understatement. In my own land I had a reputation as a warrior.”

  “Did you leave then?”

  “I was too winded to even crawl away on my knees. They gave me some oil for my scrapes and scratches and invited me into the caves. What do you think it was like in them? Sharp rocks, cold water dripping from the ceilings, bats screeching by in the darkness? Oh, no, those caves were covered with beautiful carpets and tapestries, thick and warm and opulent. Every nook and cranny glowed with butter lamps, and in little saucers powders were burning that caused the air to smell like orange groves and gardens.”

  “Incense!” exclaimed Kudra.

  “Whatever. And there were women inside preparing spiced lamb and heating wine. Everyone drank wine until their eyes were red. They also smoked pipes of ground-up leaves from the hemp plant—”

  “I know the plant. We made rope from it. Smoked it, you say?”

  “Yes, and it seemed to make them dreamy. They would stare into the fire, laughing for no apparent reason. They offered me a pipe, they offered me wine and meat, they even offered me a woman, or two women if I chose. Of cour
se, I refused. I thought it was a trick, a test of my purity. I fell asleep alone, splitting with desire, only to be awakened in the middle of the night by a bucket of icy water emptied upon my head. Well, then I got out, let me assure you. I was angry and confused—and scared. Because, Kudra, no hand held the bucket that dumped that water on me, the bucket was suspended in midair, just tipping itself on me of its own accord.”

  “Alobar, you were confused, all right. Or else dreaming. Or . . .” She lowered her eyelids, lids that resembled purses sewn from the skins of thick, dark grapes. “Or you are telling me a fable.”

  “It is all true, I swear it.”

  “Then I suppose I must believe you. Tell me, did they permit you to leave freely?”

  “One of the company—there were perhaps a dozen of them in all, not counting the women—followed me outside to inquire about my intentions. I told him I thought I would return to the Samye lamasery. 'Good,' he said. 'You will learn much there. Then you can come back to us.' Well, that heated me up, to be sure. 'There are not enough demons in this world or the next to drag me back to this accursed place,' I yelled. I swore that I would never return. He laughed and reached into my clothes and pulled an egg from where no egg had been. He cracked the egg on the ground, and a huge dog bounded out of it—it looked exactly like Mik, my own dog from my own city that I had not seen in the span of eight Feasts of Feasts. It licked my feet in a familiar way, and then it ran into a cave and disappeared . . .”

  “Alobar!”

  “I swear it to be true.”

  “Remarkable. And did you run after it?”

  “Oh, no. I staggered off into the night and eventually did, indeed, return to Samye, where you have caught up with me. I wanted to forget the whole experience with Bandaloop. Unfortunately, it has remained alive in my mind.”

  “But you have never gone back?”

  “I made a vow. If we mortals can better the gods in no other way, we can at least keep our promises.”

  “Why did you return to Samye?”

  “I do not know for sure. When I arrived, I asked to see Fosco. He entered the gatehouse with his calligraphy brush in his hand, and I seized him by his robe and shook him until ink flew. 'Why did you send me to that crazed place?' I demanded. He answered me mildly. 'The Bandaloop doctors are much despised by my superiors, and I risked reproachment for directing you to them. They practice a base, orgiastic form of religion that we cannot condone. But they are powerful magicians and healers and fortunetellers, and I thought they might assist you in your obsession with your earthly vessel. Forgive me.' Fosco was so obviously sincere that it behooved me to ask his forgiveness. Not only did he grant it, he persuaded the abbot to let me remain at Samye as a laborer and student. It appears that I have been here a long time.”

  Kudra looked him over. “Samye has agreed with you. You appear healthy and strong. I did not lie when I mentioned down at the river that you have not aged since I saw you last. Perhaps you are receiving here the knowledge you were after all along. What have the lamas taught you that would keep you in their tutelage for twenty years?”

  “You really think I have not aged? We had a magic glass back at . . .” His voice trailed off, held hostage by memory. Bound, gagged, and blindfolded with a swath of ermine ripped from a concubine-stained bedspread, his voice lay in an unlit corner until memory collected its ransom or else took pity. The sun had sunk so low that it was looking up Chomolungma's dress by the time Alobar's freed voice resumed its normal life. “There are no mirrors hereabouts. The river shows me how to shave, but it shows me little in the way of skin condition or hair color. Hmm. It pleases me, what you say.” He sat down, and once again he touched her shoulder. She did not pull away.

  “I have found peace here. Years of one sort of turmoil or another had rubbed against my spirit until it was raw, but it has been healed by tranquility, a calm that comes from within as well as without. The architecture, the painting, the sculpture, the music and liturgy and refined garments, but most of all, I think, the meditation, the hours each day of sitting silent and motionless, these things have smoothed my frayed edges and left me floating through life like a toad bladder in a mountain stream. The lamas have suffered endlessly from my resistance to their dogma and strict morality, but I daresay we have all benefited. I have grown serene, and they, well, many a ton of stone has been moved for them, and they have been kept on their toes. Ha ha.”

  “Am I to assume that they have not instructed you in the practice of long life?”

  “Not openly. They speak to me occasionally on the subject, but they obtain their ideal through gradual stages of spiritual progress. And their ideal is neither immortality nor longevity, but release from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.”

  “Yes, yes. That is my people's ideal, as well. Do you fail to appreciate the perfection that lies at the heart of that goal?”

  With his free hand, Alobar scratched his head, a head herring-boned with equal parts chestnut and silver, like a cow pie on a frosty morning. The other hand held fast to its roost on Kudra's shoulder. “Frankly, I do not appreciate it as deeply as I probably should. Or, maybe it is that I long not for the perfect but for the complete, and there is something incomplete about a life that is dedicated to escape from life.”

  “Please, explain.”

  “Here they teach that much of existence amounts only to misery; that misery is caused by desire; therefore, if desire is eliminated, then misery will be eliminated. Now, that is true enough, as far as it goes. There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? A life with neither misery nor pleasure is an empty, neutral existence, and, indeed, it is the nothingness of the void that is the lamas' final objective. To actively seek nothingness is worse than defeat; why, Kudra, it is surrender; craven, chickenhearted, dishonorable surrender. Poor little babies are so afraid of pain that they spurn the myriad sweet wonders of life so that they might protect themselves from hurt. How can you respect that sort of weakness, how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?”

  Alobar was surprised by the ferocity with which he felt himself attacking the teachings of the men who had pacified him for the past two decades. Perhaps his need for Kudra was whipping long-smoldering dissatisfactions into flames. For her part, Kudra could not locate the words with which to defend her faith. Perhaps her faith had been taken from her. She looked at Alobar and said nothing. He accepted her silent gaze as encouragement to continue his diatribe—and to inch his fingers toward orbit of her coconut moons.

  “If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however, I shall protest their taxes at each opportunity, and if Woden or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow—what's his name?—cannot respect that, then I'll accept their wrath. At least I will have tasted the banquet that they have spread before me on this rich, round planet, rather than recoiling from it like a toothless bunny. I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods.”

  Alobar paused to consider what he'd said. He had not given voice, even inwardly, to such thoughts in years, although one day, watching a yak calf gambol about the rocks like a goat, he asked himself what the Great God Pan might think of the Buddhist way of life. The answer promoted a prolonged twinge of discontent.

  “The lamas declare that they have no fear of
death, yet is it anything less than fear that causes them to die before they die? In order to tame death, they refuse to completely enjoy life. In rejecting complete enjoyment, they are half-dead in advance—and that with no guarantee that their sacrifice will actually benefit them when all is done. They are good fellows, and I must respect their choice, but fullness, completion, not empty perfection, is this fool's goal.”

  “I take it that if the Bandaloop doctors were to give you another go at their provisions, you would not this time abstain?”

  “There is the matter of quality, my lady. Have I implied that a person must abandon discretion in what he enjoys, then my tongue, or your ear, has erred.”

  As if to correct the one or the other, he thrust his tongue into the nacreous coils of her ear, smothering all the while her breasts with his hands, lest their rocking motion somehow interfere with the process of correction. Her right ear thusly plugged, her left nevertheless clearly heard a donging back at the lamasery.

  “I'm famished!” she announced, springing to her feet with such force that for a moment he feared she'd taken his tongue with her. “I do hope that is the dinner bell.”

  Reluctantly, he led her down from the outcropping, whose grass was destined to go unmoistened by their mingled dew. She was reassigning her hair to the turban as they walked, and frequently stumbled, on the uneven ground. She was thick-thighed, broad-hipped, and heavy-breasted, but so slender of waist that a snail with a limp could circle her beltline in two minutes flat; in short, she manifested the Indian ideal of the woman built for physical satisfaction, and while Alobar had developed slightly different standards, he could not help but watch wide-eyed as this turbulent culture of flesh fought to gain control over its barbaric frontiers (bouncing breasts, swinging buttocks) and consolidate into an integrated empire as it slipped and slid down the hillside.

  Much as the departure of daylight had turned the mountains into violet silhouettes, so had the departure of inner peace silhouetted Alobar against the overcast of his frustration. He was in such a funk that when he fetched a dish of buttered barley to the rockpile outside the gatehouse, where the “boy” Kudra waited, he completely missed the significance of the pennyroyal that she sprinkled on her food.