Jitterbug Perfume Read online

  Mangel-Wurzel, Mon Amour.

  Part

  II

  LOOKING

  UP

  CHOMOLUNGMA'S

  DRESS

  AS THE AFTERNOON PROGRESSES, our shadows grow longer. At night, in the dark, we become our shadows. That is as true today as then. In the old days, people were aware of it, that's all. In the old days, the whole world was religious and full of interest.

  Alobar had been at the lamasery twenty years when Kudra arrived, dressed as a boy. The lamas saw through her disguise immediately but put her to work moving stones. She had worked on the wall less than an hour before Alobar, too, realized she was a woman. Her shadow fell off of her with perfect discretion. Shadows do. It was her aroma that gave her away.

  They took their afternoon tea by the cold river. The lama who was overseeing the construction of the wall suggested that the workers disrobe and enjoy a dip. Alobar encouraged this idea, for it had been a long time since he had seen a naked woman. He found himself trembling.

  Kudra declined to swim. The lama persisted. “Come on, boy,” he said. “Everybody must bathe or else the wall will fall down.” In the high mountain air, there was mischief afoot.

  Finally, the “boy” dashed up to Alobar, who was just wading into the water, and whispered, “Help me, please. Don't you recognize me?”

  Of course, he didn't recognize her. Naked, he would not have recognized her. She had been eight years old when he had seen her last.

  “You called me by a foreign name. Wren, little Wrenna, I believe it was.” Kudra smiled. “You haven't aged at all, you know.”

  The icy water swirling around Alobar's ankles was causing his genitals to retract. He felt ashamed and wanted to turn his back. This mischief was a mistake.

  Kudra grasped his arm. “Remember? You tried to persuade me to eat a beet.”

  Of our nine planets, Saturn is the one that looks like fun. Of our trees, the palm is obviously the stand-up comedian. Among fowl, the jester's cap is worn by the duck. Of our fruits and vegetables, the tomato could play Falstaff, the banana a more slapstick role. As Hamlet—or Macbeth—the beet is cast. In largely vegetarian India, the beet is rarely eaten because its color is suggestive of blood. Out, damned mangel-wurzel.

  Alobar was remembering . . .

  He had been put off from the moment he sighted smoke. On a day so sultry that he moved through it the way an inchworm might move through a mound of lye, a day so bright that it sent his eyeballs retreating into the shade of their own sockets, he simply could not conceive of any advantage in torches. Surely torches could have waited until after sunset, although upon the sweltering Ganges plain it seemed to Alobar that one's sweat poured as profusely by night as by day. As he drew nearer to the flames, he realized that they were borne by mourners gathering for a funeral—all the more reason to detour to the cheerful cool of a grove. It should come as no surprise that the traveler from the west was, in funeral matters, slightly shy.

  The road, which had seen too many monsoons and forgotten too few, passed within yards of the funeral site, alas, and in the grassy savannas to the side of the road, Alobar had detected the odd hiss and slither, a persuasive inducement to stick to the well-worn path. Thus, he soon found himself in the midst of the white-clad mourners, an unwilling witness to unappetizing customs.

  Not far from the river, four tall beams had been planted in the ground to form the corners of a square. They supported four thick planks firmly held by mortises. Between the beams there lay a plexus of logs, arranged in such a manner as to leave a space in the center, into which wood chips and resin had been scattered. Around and upon the log pile, dry branches of the sort that might burn quickly and brightly lay in wait. The roof of the pyre was made of planks covered with turf. The end result was a kind of tinder shack, a cottage at which no insurance agent would ever call, a studio apartment of death.

  The corpse was placed in the middle of the square, upon the pile of logs. The dead man looked comfortable enough, all things considered (it bothered Alobar, philosophically, that the dead invariably seemed more self-possessed than the living), but obviously it only would be a matter of minutes before he began to char like one of those loaves the forgetful Frol was forever leaving too long on the hearth, an image that further hastened Alobar's departure. He had progressed but a few steps, however, before his path was blocked by a procession that, with great pomp, was leading a garlanded woman to the pyre.

  As the procession wound around the site, Alobar inquired of a mourner if the woman might be the widow. Hardly had the stranger nodded “yes” than the female moved slowly, but without hesitation, to the “door” of the pyre. A Brahman followed her and handed her one of the torches, with which she lit each corner of the square. Then, to Alobar's horror, she lay down beside her dead husband.

  It was with calm resignation, if not dim intelligence, that she at first regarded the flames that darted among the boughs like finches from hell, but when the heat grew more intense and she felt the early bites of pain, she cried out sharply and sat upright in her intended tomb. The Brahmans poked her with the long bamboo poles that they carried to funerals in case a widow should lose her enthusiasm for suicide suttee. A full panic seized her. She brushed the poles aside and made to leap from the square of fire. Using their poles, the Brahmans brought down the roof on her head, but her overheated adrenaline lent her a flash of superhuman strength, and she managed to spring from the blazing pyre and run, her sari smoking, toward the river.

  The Brahmans overtook her on the bank and wrestled her back to the pyre, which was now roaring like a furnace. While the woman struggled with the priests, the crowd screamed and yelled. To his surprise, Alobar noticed that he, alone, was cheering for the woman. Under a rash impulse to intervene, he was drawing his knife when three sturdy Brahmans pried her from the earth to which she clung and flung her into the middle of the inferno. She continued to struggle for a minute, parting the heat waves with her shrieks, but by the time Alobar reached the pyre, she was as still and silent as any log in the blaze.

  Shoving jabbering mourners roughly aside, holding his nose against the cannibal recipes that were pasting themselves in the air; scattering lotus garlands, hibiscus wreaths, rice balls, and milk bowls with kicks from what little was left of his boots, he barreled from the funeral grounds with an elephant's drive, and nothing, not Brahmanic curses nor the starched curtain of heat nor the craters and clouds of red dust in the road slowed him down. He might have continued at that pace for miles had he not come alongside a small girl, who was also fleeing the scene, sobbing hysterically.

  Alobar put his arm around the child and tried to comfort her. From the rags of his blanket roll, he fished a piece of honeyed coconut meat that he had been saving for his bedtime treat. The girl refused it, though her sobs subsided somewhat, and she rested her head against his side. When they reached a leafy mango tree, out of sight of hair smoke and lip ash and bowel cinders, Alobar sat her down, dried her tears, and sang for her his ditty about the world being, against all evidence, round. She took the sweet.

  Between bites, the child explained that she was unrelated to the funeral party but had come upon it by chance in the course of running a family errand. Thereupon she opened her basket and revealed its contents: a dozen round and ruddy roots, caked with loam.

  “Beets!” cried Alobar. “Aren't you the lucky one?” He smacked his lips. “You shall dine handsomely this night.”

  The girl made a face. “Nobody eats these ugly things,” she said. She went on to tell how her family boiled down beets for the color that was in them. Her father had dispatched her to gather this batch so that he might dye the strips of cotton cloth in which he wrapped the aromatic cones and sticks that he made and sold. She had been born, eight years earlier, into a caste of incense makers, and since business was flourishing at the holy sites along the Ganges where pilgrims bathed, and since she had but one brother, she was frequently called away from household chores in order to
help in the trade.

  “Dye,” grumbled Alobar. “A tragic waste of fine food.” But his lament was short-lived. There was something about the girl more interesting than her beet basket. She was a miniature version of Wren! The longer Alobar looked at her, the stronger the feeling. Her eyelids, like Wren's, were as thick and languid as the peel of some pulpy fruit; she had the same chin dimple: a wormhole in a pear; the same occupied codpiece for a nose. As did Wren's, her lips parted reluctantly, like waters protecting an oyster bed, to slowly disclose the aquatic shelf of bright teeth behind them, and in the girl's eyes there fluttered illuminated parchments upon which intelligent things were written, things that Alobar could scarcely hope to read. She was two or three shades darker, and several sizes smaller, naturally, but he could not help but call her Wren, his little Wrenna, unaware that his wife had been murdered by the jealous necromancer Noog a few weeks after Alobar was carried feet-first from his citadel eight years before.

  “My name is Kudra,” said the child. “Kudra, not Wren, and I believe I must go now.”

  “Yes, you must,” agreed Alobar, who was ashamed and alarmed at the way his cock was beginning to push against the folds of its tent. “I, too, must resume my trek.” He pointed to the north, in whose far mountains there supposedly dwelt the teachers he had long been seeking, the masters over death. He related to Kudra only a modicum of his travel plans, but she was to remember them in times to come, just as she was to remember his parting testimony in praise of the edibility of beets and as she was to remember how he had turned and run after her, grasped her shoulders and made her promise, through a fresh outpouring of tears, that what had transpired with the widow at the pyre that day would never transpire with her. . . .

  “Bones are patient. Bones never tire nor do they run away. When you come upon a man who has been dead many years, his bones will still be lying there, in place, content, patiently waiting, but his flesh will have gotten up and left him. Water is like flesh. Water will not stand still. It is always off to somewhere else; restless, talkative, and curious. Even water in a covered jar will disappear in time. Flesh is water. Stones are like bones. Satisfied. Patient. Dependable. Tell me, then, Alobar, in order to achieve immortality, should you emulate water or stone? Should you trust your flesh or your bones?”

  Alobar had stared at the lama and said nothing. After several minutes, the lama had asked him why he remained silent. “Water babbles to stone,” said Alobar, “but stone will not answer.”

  From then on, they showed him some respect.

  When Kudra revealed herself to him at the river, Alobar dressed quickly and led her away. “Where are you going with that boy?” called the lama. “Come back here! We have many stones to move.”

  “Stones are patient,” Alobar replied. “I thought you knew.”

  They climbed from the riverbed to a grassy outcropping, where they might find a bit of padding for their backsides and perhaps watch the mountains vying with one another to see who could be tallest. Chomolungma was winning. Chomolungma was what the world looked like when the world stood on tiptoes. Pale from the strain, blue from the lack of oxygen. The vegetation had all grown dizzy and slid down her back, snow swirled in perpetual spirals around her skull, she wore a glacier in her crotch like a sanitary napkin.

  “Could it be?” asked Alobar. “You are actually the child I met by the Ganges? Yes, I can tell by your chin depression, you are the one. Or else, her brother.”

  Kudra removed her turban, allowing her waist-length hair to spill out. She unbuttoned her baggy phulu jacket and loosened her vest. Unbound, her breasts bobbed to the surface like jellyfish coming up to feed. She sighed with relief. Alobar sighed with appreciation. “It might be better if you remained a boy,” he said.

  “Why is that?”

  “In this region, women are considered bad luck. They have a saying here: 'Dogs, children, and women are the roots of trouble.'”

  “Oh?”

  “They have another saying: 'If you pay attention to the talk of a woman, the roof of your house will soon be overgrown with weeds.'”

  “Is that so? Weeds, eh?”

  “They have another saying—”

  “All right, all right. I get the idea.”

  “I am sorry. You must feel that it would be better not to be born at all than to be born a woman.”

  “I am sorry. I don't feel that way in the least.”

  “You don't? Then why are you dressed in this manner?”

  Kudra produced a boar-bristle brush and laid it to her tangles. In a moment, her hair was rippling and shining. Mount Chomolungma raised a few inches higher on her toes to see where that black glow was coming from.

  “I suppose I have always been pleased to be alive, female or not,” she said. “These days I am more pleased about it than ever. Would you have any interest in hearing my story, or do you fear for your roof?”

  Alobar decided to be intrigued. Chomolungma, on the other hand, settled back down to her customary height of twenty-nine thousand, twenty-eight feet. On that spring day, sixty-eight pairs of snow leopards and eleven pairs of yeti had mated on her slopes. What did she care about a man and a woman trying to get acquainted?

  For weeks after her experience at the cremation grounds, Kudra had been troubled by nightmares. She would thrash and whimper until she would wake up the whole family. Some nights they would coo to her in soothing mantras and fetch her warm milk, other nights they snapped at her irritably. Her aunt threatened to make her sleep in the courtyard where the cow was staked, but her father objected that it would be rude to interrupt a cow at rest. While her mother was sympathetic, she could not understand the reason for the bad dreams. Suttee was a common practice, after all, and this was hardly the first time that Kudra had seen a widow join her husband's body on the pyre.

  “But . . . she ran away,” sobbed Kudra.

  “A stupid woman,” said her mother. “The life of a widow is worse than fire.”

  “An evil, cowardly woman,” said her father. “A husband and wife are one. Eternity depends upon them being together. A suttee woman is the heroic savior of her husband's eternity. Praise Shiva.” Usually, her father saved his spiritual instruction for her brother.

  “Someday I will inform you about the life of a widow,” said her mother.

  In time, the bad dreams ceased, although one day, several months later, when Kudra's parents returned from a cremation, she was unable to prevent herself from asking, “Did the widow try to escape?” Her father slapped her face.

  Nonetheless, the fiery dreams did fade, and inside rooms made of clay and painted blue, sweeter visions were nourished. At the start of monsoon season, when the great cloud ships rolled in from the sea to discharge their tanks of green rain in the rice fields and to haul away dust balls, scorpion skins, and mounds of worthless diamonds made of heat—summer's dolorous cargo—Kudra participated in the No Salt Ceremony. Each day, for five days, she dined in seclusion on unsalted food and worshipped tender seedlings that had sprouted from wheat and barely grains that she herself had planted prior to the ceremony. This ritual was to help psychologically prepare her for her designated role in life, the role of wife and mother, nurturing and sustaining her children, her husband, and the husband's relatives.

  In a universe that was perceived as inherently divine, where sacred animals munched sacred plants in groves of sacred trees, where holy rivers spilled from the laps of mountains that were gods, to nurture life was a lovely and important thing. Kudra enjoyed taking care of babies, and the notion of making babies excited her in some vague, itchy way. At age eight, she already was versed in the art of baking flat bread, and she was fast learning the secrets of the curry pot, with its fury and perfume. Her true delight, however, came in the hours when necessity called her out of the kitchen and into the workshop, to assist in one way or another with the manufacture or marketing of incense. She liked mixing gums and balsams more than she liked mixing rice and lentils, she liked rasping sandalwood m
ore than she liked mending clothes. She did not consider why. As she grew older and the incense trade grew alongside her, she began to spend as much time in the business as in the household, and it never occurred to her that a conflict might be sprouting, like one of the ritual barley seeds, in the moist soil of her heart.

  When Kudra was twelve, she and her brother accompanied their father on an ambitious business trip. It was a journey of nearly four months, during which Calcutta, Delhi, Benares, and many smaller towns were visited in an attempt to crack Buddhist markets, for the Buddhists had begun to use incense in a greater volume than the Hindus along the Ganges. The trip left the girl gaga, goofy, tainted, transformed, her nose a busted hymen through which sperm of a thousand colors swam a hootchy-kootchy stroke into her cerebral lagoon. Now, whenever she smelled the gums, the balsams, and the special aromatics that arrived with merchants from afar, her head reeled with images of temples, shrines, palaces, fortresses, mysterious walls, tapestries, paintings, jewels, liquors, icons, drugs, dyes, meats, sweets, sweetmeats, silks, bolts and bolts of cotton cloth, ores, shiny metals, foodstuffs, spices, musical instruments, ivory daggers and ivory dolls, masks, bells, carvings, statues (ten times as tall as she!), lumber, leopards on leashes, peacocks, monkeys, white elephants with tattooed ears, horses, camels, princes, maharajah, conquerors, travelers (Turks with threatening mustaches and Greeks with skin as pale as the stranger who had befriended her at the funeral grounds), singers, fakirs, magicians, acrobats, prophets, scholars, monks, madmen, sages, saints, mystics, dreamers, prostitutes, dancers, fanatics, avatars, poets, thieves, warriors, snake charmers, pageants, parades, rituals, executions, weddings, seductions, concerts, new religions, strange philosophies, fevers, diseases, splendors and magnificences and things too fearsome to be recounted, all writhing, cascading, jumbling, mixing, splashing, and spinning; vast, complex, inexhaustible, forever.