Jitterbug Perfume Part 12

Kudra shook her head. "We made our own new world," she said, "but something has gone wrong with it. I guess new worlds grow old. Pan was right. Immortality has its limitations."

"If only we had learned more in the caves!"

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," said Kudra. "Not that again."

"But, darling-"

"Alobar, I'd like to be alone for a while."

"But-"

"Please, Alobar!" She picked the hairs from the storax and flicked them to the floor. The teardrop had vanished, whether absorbed by resin, evaporated by candle heat, or welcomed into some mystery dimension, we cannot determine. No reward was ever offered for its return. "Please. Let me be."

So Alobar exchanged his slippers for boots that reached all the way to the hems of his knee breeches, pulled a woolen knee-length coat over his brocade waistcoat, tightened his lace collar until it pinched his Adam's apple, and went out into the night, where, by lamplight, the frosted cobblestone streets resembled marshmallow plantations at harvest time. Although he hadn't a destination in mind, he walked rapidly' soon finding himself in an obscene quarter of Paris, a squalid area without cobblestone or torch, an unpaved district whose frozen mud puddles reflected the s.h.i.+ne of red lanterns. From every doorway, the lewd breath of prost.i.tutes rose like hooks of smoke. Huddled against the cold, groups of them called to him as he pa.s.sed, and he began to get ideas. A misunderstood husband usually is armed with a blunt instrument, its k.n.o.b painted red like the face of a judge.

The prost.i.tute he eventually approached was tall and blonde. As they discussed rates, her companion, a dumpy, aged woman whom Alobar had not even considered, moved ever closer until she had wormed her way between him and the blonde. She had a rude, animal odor and so many wrinkles she could screw her hat on. Alobar was about to nudge her aside when the blond slapped her with her m.u.f.f, saying, "Get along, Lalo. This one's not desperate enough to want you."

"Lalo?"

"Alobar! I thought that it be thee!"

They shared a tearful embrace, then and there, while the blonde jeered and the first flakes of snow began to sift through the scarlet lanterns.h.i.+ne. Then, he escorted her to the incense shop, walking slowly now for Lalo was a nymph no longer, but an old tart who had quit the brothels of Athens when the demand for her services waned. It was said that in Paris no wh.o.r.e was too old or too ugly to survive.

Kudra was both saddened and delighted by the sight of her. She brought out their best cheese and served tea from the battered but cherished silver pot. Once Lalo was fed and warmed, they questioned her about Pan. The news was enough to sour the cheese.

Pan was a ghost, now, Lalo said; you could look straight through him. His heartbeat was no stronger than a sparrow's.

His pipes could still cause the flocks to shuffle their feet, could still raise the fuzz on a peasant's neck, but he lacked the vigor or the will to play them very often. Pan continued to visit men, according to Lalo, perhaps he always would, but in the modern world he came to them not in person, in sunlight, direct and immediate, but in dreams-erotic nightmares-or in flashes of terror, the kind that cause crowds to stampede for no reason, that they could neither explain nor understand. Lacking a direct relations.h.i.+p with Pan, modern Europeans were estranged from their flocks and their crops, from the natural world and, indeed, from their own natural impulses. "Grieve not just for Pan," said Lalo, in a voice as scratched as the teapot, "but for thyselves, as well."

"And what of the nymphs?" asked Kudra.

"It has been more than a century since Pan last chased a nymph. Without him in pursuit, the nymphs lost their ident.i.ty, grew thin and mad. Many took their own lives. Others, like me, became wh.o.r.es to homers, seeking in each s.e.xual coupling to recreate the old seduction, the old magic, the old feeling of unity." She sighed forlornly. "I don't know why I hold on, but I do."

They put Lalo to bed in their flat upstairs. Then they took to their own bed, where, as the snow did its sums on the windowsill, they snuggled and talked, eventually formulating a plan of action: they would get Pan out of Europe.

The New World was vast and virgin. They would make a place for him there, beneath smokeless skies where primitive equalities prevailed. Far from any city, they would establish a new Arkadia, complete with flocks of goats; and the pagan Indians, so hounded now by Christian missionaries, could join with them in a free landscape in which the old G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses would be given their due. Why, they would teach the Indians what they knew of Bandaloop immortality, and, moreover, Kudra would throw away her pennyroyal, and she and Alobar would at last have children of their own. They would found a race of immortals, with Pan as their princ.i.p.al deity. Yes! Wasn't this the grand destiny that had been eluding them all along?! They grew drunk with the vision of it while the sober snow looked on.

When weather permitted, Alobar would strike out for Greece (Lalo could help Kudra with the business) to fetch Pan to Paris. They would nurse him back to health right there in the flat, while they saved and schemed for their pa.s.sage across the Atlantic.

"How much money have we on hand?" asked Alobar. "Here, let us get up and count it. I cannot wait to get started."

Kudra pulled him back down into the blankets. "We can count when it is daylight," she said. "We have a new world to populate. I cannot wait to get started."

Prior to his departure for Greece, Alobar filled Kudra to the brim. She was saturated. She launched squadrons of sperm every time she sneezed. They circled Paris like microscopic angels, looking for harp concerts in the snow. Wherever she went, she leaked, leaving snail trails, sticky and translucent, upon work stool, carpet, and carriage seat. Needless to say, there was Standing Room Only in her uterus. Nevertheless, she failed to conceive. That the topography of her tummy offered no challenge to his abilities as a climber was the first thing Alobar noticed when he returned from Greece to her embrace. The second thing he noticed, raising his disappointed gaze from the abdominal plane, was that there had been an exodus of gray from her hair and that the skin around her eyes, which had been cobwebbing with crinkles, was now as smooth as custard. In the eight months that he'd been away, she looked to have youthed a good eight years.

"Kudra, you did it! You reversed it!" So pleased was he that he forgot, for the moment, the vacancy in her womb. "Was it difficult? Did you have to labor at it? Will you promise me that you will never backslide again?"

She ignored his jabber and concentrated on Pan, if "concentrated" is the accurate verb. She could determine Pan's whereabouts in the room only by focusing her nostrils upon the epicenter of the caprine aroma that was causing her entire inventory of incense to cry "uncle" and edge toward the door.

"Greetings, Kudra," said a familiar voice from the epicenter. "I thank thee for thy hospitality, puny and human though it be."

"You are welcome, sir," said Kudra. "I think." She turned to Alobar. "It is rather perplexing talking to someone you cannot see."

"Nonsense," said Alobar. "Thousands of Christians do it every day. At least this G.o.d will talk back to you." He shoved a wine flask into the eye of the stink storm. The flask tipped and pink Chablis commenced to gurgle out, though not a drop hit the floor. "I know what you mean, however. Traveling with an invisible who smells up the countryside is an ordeal I would hesitate to undertake again. I did not mind the stares and the insults and the occasional stone, but I have not enjoyed a warm meal or a decent night's rest since we left Arkadia. You would think rural innkeepers would be less particular."

"I fear it shall present a problem in Paris, as well."

"Indeed. He seems to have grown less observable and more pungent the further we journeyed from Greece. By the way, where's Lalo?"

Kudra hesitated. "Uh, Lalo. Yes, well, Lalo left. Ran off with a sailor from Brittany."

"How inconsiderate. She was supposed to a.s.sist you in the shop."

"Lalo is a nymph, not a shopkeeper," said Pan. "She only did what she was meant to do."

"Yes," agreed Kudra. "And you are a G.o.d of the woods and fields. How will you fare in this environment?"

"Perhaps not well," said Pan. "Art thou aware that I be the lone G.o.d who never hast had a temple built in his honor? Tis true, not a single one. Men have always wors.h.i.+ped me outdoors."

Alobar retrieved the flask, now half empty. "Our shop shall be your temple for a time. As soon as we are able, we shall transport you to greener pastures and wilder company. Meanwhile, you'll have to make do. There are parks nearby where you may roam. We must, of course, contrive a disguise for your odor. Kudra and I shall attend to that right away. Now that she has come to her senses and stopped aging, I am confident she can provide a scent for you and a baby for me with equal ease. Eh, Kudra?"

Kudra nodded in tentative accord. Alas, the tasks a.s.signed her proved about as easy as skinning a rhinoceros with a set of false teeth.

She knew from experience that patchouli wouldn't cut Pan's mustard. Frankincense and myrrh might have reodorized the diapers of sweet Baby Jesus, but they disappeared in the goat G.o.d's gulf of funk like rowboats in the Bermuda Triangle; and sandalwood, clean, gentle sandalwood, lasted as long, to the minute, as a s...o...b..ll in h.e.l.l. A resinoid of storax, fixed with tincture of labdanum (pressed from the fatty arteries of the rockrose), proved a sufficient camouflage for a walk around the block, but it had no more staying power than patchouli. As for civet, it only compounded Pan's indigenous musk, making his presence felt all the more strongly.

Within a fortnight, Kudra had exhausted her a.r.s.enal of aromatics. There was nothing to do but dip into their savings (the New World fund was growing very slowly) and purchase some perfumes from the monks next door. They would be unable to sail anyhow if they couldn't conceal from curious and repulsed noses their phantasmal friend.

What was required was a perfume penetrating enough to obscure the bouquet of rutting goat, yet not so overpowering that it called undue attention to itself: there was little to be gained by moving from one extreme to another on the olfactory scale. Ideally, moreover, the scent should have the capacity to linger, because a free spirit such as Pan could not be expected to go around dabbing at his wrists and neckbones every hour, as if he were a husband-hungry marquise at a Versailles ball.

There were critics who complained that at 23, rue Quelle Blague the beer tasted like lilac water and the perfumes smelled of hops. As to the quality of the beer we cannot testify-perhaps a taste of it today would leave us sadder Budweiser-but when it came to perfumery, the monks were not inexpert. They, in fact, laid the foundation for the French fragrance industry. The fragrance house of LeFever descended directly from their early operations. The Quelle Blaque monks were among the princ.i.p.al suppliers to the court of Louis XIV, where enormous amounts of perfumes were consumed. At the height of Versailles, twenty to thirty perfume fountains were gus.h.i.+ng rosewater night and day, and the men wore squirt rings loaded with patchouli-when their mistresses approached, they fumigated themselves and the air about them with a fine spray. Louis himself changed his scent every thousand miles. But all this excess failed to compensate for the feet that the royal sewage was disposed of inadequately and that there was not one bath in the court. A visiting English writer wrote of Louis that "all the odoriferous perfumes his courtiers could get him would not ease his nose and still he smelled a filthy stinke." This was a century and a half before the emergence of the great master blenders, but despite the monks' Inability to put the Sun King's unwashed nose at rest, the fragrances they distilled were far from primitive. Could they lay the wreath on Pan?

Hardly. Their famous rosewater was no match for his glandular output, and, one by one, he sent lily, lilac, lavender, and linden whimpering off with their 1's between their legs. It was a dark day for heliotrope when it was sprinkled upon the transparent G.o.d, and hyacinth was reduced to lowacinth in practically a flash. The monks' most expensive product was a recipe that mixed rose oil with cloves, cinnamon, mace, musk, ambergris, citron, and cedar. With some experimenting, Kudra probably could have duplicated it, but Pan was impatient and Alobar was worried, so they further fractured their finances and bought a vial. Expectantly, Kudra rubbed it into Pan's thigh wool, including in one of her pa.s.ses the smooth underside of his s.c.r.o.t.u.m, a swipe that gave him some pleasure and her some trepidation, for there is nothing quite like the intrusion of an invisible erection to thoroughly unnerve a woman. The old goat might have seized the moment- indeed, he reached for his pipes-had not Alobar threatened to address his private parts with a gesture appropriate to the preparation of eunuchs. So, Pan, richly anointed, departed for the grounds of the Louvre instead, only to return in a couple of hours, smelling all too familiar, and relating how his kibitzing, imperceptible to any eye, had disrupted a fas.h.i.+onable fete champetre.

The most effective scent purchased from the monks proved to be an essence of jasmine. The raw flowers had come from t the South of France, where to this day are grown the finest jasmine blossoms in the world (unless one counts the Bingo Pajama Jamaican variety, about which virtually nothing is known). Ah, yes, leave it to jasmine to soothe the savage beast, for jasmine in its delightful way performs an olfactory pantomime of glad animal movements from times gone by. A few other flowers may be as sweet, but jasmine is sweet without sentiment, sweet without effeteness, sweet without compromise; it is aggressively sweet, outrageously sweet: "I am sweet," says the jasmine, "and if you don't like it, you can kiss my sweet a.s.s." Expansive, yet never cloying; romantic, yet seldom melancholy, jasmine has the poise of a wild creature, some elusive self-sufficient thing that croons like an organic saxophone in the tropical night. Pan's glands heard jasmine's sugary howl and were hypnotized into partially suspending secretion.

"Jasmine may stand us in good stead," said Kudra. "Alone, however, it falls short of perfection. Like a grand orator, it requires a somewhat lesser voice to introduce it. I am positive that a qualified master of ceremonies can be recruited, and failing at that, it would not be ruinous should it be forced to introduce itself. But what is a great orator without a strong platform to stand upon, without an enveloping auditorium to hold his words? Do you follow me? Jasmine is longer-lasting by far than any floral we have tried, but we must find a theater to contain it, an anchor, if you will, to keep it in place, because to be efficient it needs to endure at least thrice as long as it does now."

In other words, they could use a top note and absolutely required a fixative and a base.

Since they couldn't afford to commission such a blend from the monks, Kudra must develop it. She had worked with aromatics much of her long life-we are talking seniority here-but having had no experience with distillation, she was not in the true sense a perfumer. Fortunately, jasmine oil is obtained by extraction rather than distillation, and that she could manage. After a period of trial and error, she found lemony citron an acceptable top note; it gave the featured jasmine a brief but flattering introduction. As for fixative, ambergris was already in wide use, and while its detractors might deride it as "behemoth barf," a finer fixative has yet to be discovered. In this case, however, ambergris failed to deliver total satisfaction. It nailed the bouquet to the perfume, all right, but it didn't nail the perfume to Pan-at least not for very long. Since ambergris couldn't be improved upon, what this meant was that the base note, in addition to its usual function as an accommodating and complementing "platform," must also a.s.sist the fixative in prolonging the life of the aroma. A very special base note was called for. Kudra didn't find it right away. Months, in fact, dragged by as she experimented and researched.

In the meantime, a sardonic cuckoo was scrambling Alobar and Kudra's nest eggs, replacing them with obnoxious layings of its own.

At the appointed hour when courtiers of Louis XIV were finally to call at the shop to test its wares, Pan returned prematurely from a stroll in the park, his malodor at high mast due to exercise and the sappy influences of spring. The courtiers, three in number, arrived on his heels. "My goodness," said the first courtier; "Snit," said the second; "Phew," saiJ the third. Whatever credibility incense may have held for them was immediately lost. Lost, too, was the most profitable market to which Kudra had ever aspired.

Pan's lasting impression also cost her several smaller sales, and this at a time when expenses were on the rise. As the hunt for an effective base note went on, money was continually being invested in raw materials that were of no use in incense making. And, now, of course, there was another mouth on the premises, a mouth that, though it could not be seen, watered at mealtime nonetheless. They had a cash flow problem, and unless it was solved, they would never ankle up that gangplank in Ma.r.s.eilles.

In the midst of worrying about finances and Kudra's failure to conceive-none of his deposits seemed to earn interest- Alobar was stopped in the street one day by a neighborhood monk who inquired in the rude manner of children, policemen, and journalists if he and his wife employed heathen practices. The monk was no more specific than that, but Alobar instantly a.s.sumed the reference was to longevity. "You mean like that old Bandaloop, Methuselah?" he shot back, and as the Christian brother gargled the froth of his bewilderment, he hurried away in a chilly sweat to warn Kudra, rightly or wrongly, that they'd been found out once again.

For all the reaction he got from Kudra, he might as well have told her that the poodle G.o.ds were p.o.o.ping on the paths of the Louvre. She was up to her elbows in a basket of bark, the leprous but fragrant epidermis of some African tree; unraveling its history, reading its fortune, learning its language, its vocabulary of botanical suffering; coaxing from its ancient sores an iridescent pus that smelled of rains and nests and yellow fruits squashed beneath the feet of heavy animals. "This could be it," she confided, milking. A single bead of resin rolled out of an ulcer and was caught in a vial. Somewhere in Africa a tree stood naked. "This could be the one to support the jasmine."

"Little good it will do if the monks set opinion against us."

When she neglected to respond, he said, "Kudra, what is to be our next move?"

"Express the bouquet from the resin."

"No, no, haven't you been listening? There may be trouble over-"

"Oh, that," she said. "Well, Alobar, I have been thinking. ..." She held another anguished crust of bark over the candle flame, squeezing and pulling until its black boil popped and out bubbled the feverish exudation, hard pearls of honey glistening as if in a prolonged delirium brought on by the pestilence of time. "I have been thinking that the altogether smartest thing would be to dematerialize-and then re-materialize in the New World."

Alobar looked stunned.

"Don't you see, that would save us money and time. We would not require a sou for pa.s.sage nor would we be forced to bob about in the oceans with a horde of vomiting missionaries. Why, if Pan could dematerialize along with us-he is all but dematerialized already-we would not even need to complete his perfume. Locating the perfect base note may yet prove impossible." She sniffed unconfidently at the wooden warts in her fingers.

"Kudra, we do not know how to de- and rematerialize!"

"Then it is time we learned! Have we lived seven hundred years for naught? Except for our longevity, we are no closer to the divine than ordinary folk. Our practices have kept us alive, but they have not revealed to us one divine secret nor one speck of the magic of the G.o.ds." She laid down the ugly chips and faced him. He commenced to wring his hands.

"Kudra . . ." he whined.

"But for his age, Alobar the great individualist is just like any common man."

"Kudra! We don't know-"

"What happened to the bold adventurer who seduced me in more ways than one up on the roof of the world?"

"Kudra! You are talking death, I sense that you are."

"There is no death. There are only different levels of life. You must know that by now."

"You who ran away from the funeral pyre! How can you speak with such authority?"

Dealing the bark basket a blow, much as she'd once kicked a wicker of rope, Kudra sent it spinning, setting into motion a brief blizzard of scabious crumbs.

"d.a.m.n you, Alobar! By the blue p.i.s.s of Kali, how you frustrate me! How could any man venture as far as you have and then be unwilling to go further? Is it a failure of imagination that has snipped off your curiosity, or a failure of nerve that leaves you so eager to settle for the one concession you have won from the fates?"

"One concession, eh? You make it sound so trivial. Let me tell you something, Kudra. Each and every morning when I awake, my eyes brim with tears at the realization that I am still here breathing when all who shared my natal day have for half a millennium been dust; each and every morning when first I see the dawn ray take your sleeping face tenderly in its tongs, I tremble in a kind of ecstasy that you and I continue to lie in love together, century after juicy century, while every other pair of lovers who have lived has had to helplessly watch their pa.s.sion suffocate in the sags of their sickly flesh. Now that may strike you as some small, unworthy thing ..."

Kudra took his cheeks in her hands (he was clean shaven then, in the seventeenth-century style) and kissed him. She shook her head from side to side, blinking back a few tears of her own. "No, my darling, it strikes me as magnificent beyond description." Again she kissed him. "But it happens not to be the end-and-all. If a person have a gla.s.s, does that mean he should refuse a bottle; if he have a bottle does it mean he should not want wine? Come now, darling, do not pull away, but hear me out. We have crossed the threshold of the house of divine knowledge, yet we linger in the anteroom admiring its wallpaper and shun the main chambers of the house. Why is it we resist exploring the mansion to which it has been our unique privilege to gain admission?"

"Because," answered Alobar, "Death is the master of that house. My ambition has been to free myself from Death, not to visit him in his parlor and share tea."

"Death is not a resident of the house. 'Death' is merely the name we give to certain rooms of the house, rooms that we, the so-called 'living,' fear for the simple reason that we have not pa.s.sed through them."

Alobar righted the overturned basket and began to pick up pieces of bark. "Again, my little refugee from suttee, I must question your authority in such matters."

Kudra wished then to tell him the truth about Lalo, that the nymph had not run off with a mariner while Alobar was in Greece but had died, peacefully, happily, in the bed where Pan now slept; that she had attended Lalo's demise and, indeed, had followed her out of her body, traveling with her for a ways into the white light of the Other Side, until a sudden thought of Alobar caused her to turn back. Her concept of death was altered thereafter, and she wished to tell Alobar about that, as well, but she had promised the nymph to keep secret her pa.s.sing. "The world must not think of nymphs as aged or dying," said Lalo, "for that runs counter to the girlish s.e.xual things that we represent." Perhaps Lalo was vain to the end, but it must be noted that she cared about the world, even the modern world (whose replacement of cosmic order with a riotous contest between would-be equals had helped to kill her).

"Listen," said Kudra. "When we were in the caves, we learned by experimenting, by trial and error, guided by some intelligence, perhaps divine, that radiated from the minerals there. What harm would there be in experimenting with dematerialization here in our shop? It is a temple of Pan now, after all. I feel strongly that we will be guided once again. The divine energy doesn't limit itself to some caverns in India. It is everywhere if we are only open to it. Trust my intuition, Alobar. What harm to try?"

"Well, all right, I shall consider it," grumbled Alobar. "Just so long as it does not involve aging."

She thumped him with a look of iron. "Should the monks or any other folk start to trouble us before we have either discovered dematerialization or a base note for Pan's perfume, then I shall age fast and furiously, without hesitation, and you would be wise to follow suit."

At that, their quarreling commenced all over again.

Their quarreling chewed through the curtains, pierced the cas.e.m.e.nts, and rattled over the cobblestones outside. How strange it must have sounded, this quarreling about de-materialization, voluntary aging, goat G.o.ds, and immortality, to a city that was primed for the Age of Reason, a populace that was beginning to put Descartes before des horse.

Although the contention that matter can transcend, at will, its material character would have had Descartes spinning in one or the other of his graves, a person who can believe in physical immortality is merely a step away from believing in dematerialization. Kudra believed in it and was prepared to experiment. Alobar probably believed in it but was reluctant- frightened, honestly-to pursue it. Wiggs Dannyboy of the Last Laugh Foundation, trained in the tradition of Cartersian doubt (deliberate suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain), had, unlike Kudra, never witnessed the Indian rope trick, nor had he, unlike Alobar, ever been flabbergasted by Bandaloop, yet to him the notion of material transcendence was credible. Perhaps that was because he was Irish.

"Subatomic particles apparently de- and rematerialize fairly routinely," Dr. Dannyboy has written. "Some of them actually can be in two places at once. Their freedom from the normal confines of the s.p.a.ce-time continuum is thought to be the result of a weird electricity, an intelligent, creative, playful, and unpredictable interaction among oppositely charged ent.i.ties in motion." On at least one occasion, Dr. Dannyboy has described those energized particles'as "fairies," and, unfortunately, there is doubt that he was speaking metaphorically. But, again, he is Irish and, moreover, has swallowed in his day a lot of drugs.

At any rate, Dr. Dannyboy continued: "We ourselves are built of subatomic particles (and the s.p.a.ces in between them), and our organisms are electrically as well as chemically powered. Our cells, or something that occupies our cells, transmit an electrical pulse. When we breathe, bathe, eat, make love, and think the way that Kudra and Alobar did, we alter the cellular amperage until we find ourselves vibrating at the frequency of the eternal: immortality.

"When interrogated about how they can walk through flames without being burned, 'primitives' have conveyed to anthropologists that they raise the vibratory level of their flesh to equal that of the fire. In like manner, then, an adept might raise-or lower-his or her vibratory rate to match that of another dimension, thereby disappearing from our customary universe and popping up in the other: dematerialization."

From his vantage point in the twentieth century, Dannyboy was privileged to marshal a fair amount of scientific evidence that supposedly explains Alobar's and Kudra's accomplishments. No doubt, such data have their benefits, if for no other reason than that the couple's immortalist methodology often sounds too simplistic to be feasible: the result was far more dramatic than th process, even though, for all practical purposes, the result was the process.

Whether guided by a divine intelligence, as Kudra suggested, or inspired in some supranatural fas.h.i.+on by the absent Bandaloop doctors (maybe the Bandaloop were agents of a divine "intelligence), or simply informed by their own intuition, she and Alobar devised, during their residency in the caves, a program based upon the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire. If encouraged, Wiggs Dannyboy will expound upon each element in turn, detailing how it legitimately manifested itself in Kudra and Alobar's program. Dr. Dannyboy is simply mad for the subject of immortality and will yak about it until the cows come home, although the precise time and date of bovine arrival has yet to be reckoned to his satisfaction.

At some later point, it might be rewarding to examine Dannyboy's arguments. For the moment, let it suffice to say that he has connected air to breath, water to bath, earth to food, and fire to s.e.x, supplying a mixture of empirical fact and medical theory to support his case for the life-extending properties of this quartet, when ritualistic-ally and resolutely embraced.

I-n addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thought. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an organism steeped in pleasure is an organism disposed to continue, he has said that the will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. Indeed, Dr. Dannyboy goes so far as to claim that ninety percent of all deaths are suicides. Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with-and attract-disease, accident, and violence.

Enough for now. In urbanized, technologized society-that inst.i.tutional home for the orphans of Pan-there may be few who can even relate anymore to the Four Elements. At least not in any primal sense. V'lu Jackson, for example, once inquired of Madame Devalier if the Four Elements weren't some Motown jive group, while Ricki the bartender has defined the Four Elements as cocaine, champagne, p.u.s.s.y, and chocolate.

Paris. April. Twilight. A few flat clouds folded themselves like crepes over fillings of apricot sky. Pompadours of supper-time smoke billowed from chimneys, separating into girlish pigtails as the breeze combed them out, above the slate rooftops. Chestnut blossoms, weary from having been admired all day, wore faint smiles of antic.i.p.ation with the approach of the private night. Or else the blossoms were being tickled by the sleepy insects that were entering them as if they were hotels. Stiff-legged corks squeaked loose from bottlenecks where they'd stood guard since noon. Stiff-legged nags, tiny harness bells jingling, dragged market carts toward the suburbs. At intervals along the boulevards, lamplighters set their gay fires. A wounded tongue licked the s.h.i.+ne off cathedral domes. A bat broke loose from a belfry, a loaf broke loose from an oven, six chimes broke loose from a clock. Everywhere a huge, enveloping softness; soft as face powder, soft as petticoats, soft as the snuff in a courtesan's box.

Now, the clock chimed seven times. Nightfall was almost complete. The softness was suddenly interrupted by harsh hoofbeats, not four hooves, oddly enough, but two, striking a stone bridge-clink! clink!-upon which no beast could be seen to trod; and the peachy, powdery softness was further violated by a release of fumes so fetid it seemed almost evil. Clink! clink! Sparks were "struck from cobblestones. Clink! clink! To the innocent nostrils of spring there was caterwauled a filthy serenade.

Pan had waited until dark to return home so that he might more stealthily transport the wig stolen from Descartes's redundant funeral. He'd not eaten since early morning, and to the sc.r.a.pe of his hooves (not meant for city streets) and the blast of his stench (meant for no place save the rutting grounds) were added stomach growls, terrible and rude. From gra.s.s, he had woven a short rope, which he tied to the wig so that he might pull it along behind him. In the dim light, those pedestrians who saw it scurrying up the street believed it to be blown along by the breeze. Several gave pursuit, only to have it yanked away each time they thought they had it in their grasp. One by one, they gave up. "It stinks, anyway," said the last to quit the chase. And Pan arrived at the incense shop with wig in tow, having painted the gentle April gloaming with shades of Halloween.

Ceremoniously, Pan presented the wig, frescoed now with grit and offal, to Alobar. Were Alobar bewigged, Pan reasoned, he could hold the white hairs of age at bay for as long as he wished, and no outsider would be the wiser. With that pressure removed, maybe Alobar and Kudra would curtail their quarreling, maybe the household would be merry again.

As it turned out, Pan found his hosts in a quite congenial mood already. When, that afternoon, the latest candidate for a base note had fallen short of expectations, they had sat down over a flagon of wine and negotiated an agreement to dematerialize.

For a week, they fasted. They meditated for hours each day and bathed repeatedly. They made love between baths but resisted climax, holding the o.r.g.a.s.mic cyclone inside themselves, channeling it up their spinal columns to their brains. Then, one afternoon, the green blush of April still upon the city, they closed the shop an hour earlier than usual and climbed the stairs, one of them for the last time.

The experiment was to be conducted in their small sitting room. After a brief discussion about whether or not they should disrobe, they concurred that nudity might distract Pan, who was to monitor the attempt, and they remained, but for their shoes, fully clothed. Upon the threadbare carpet, a far cry from the rugs that had purred to their b.u.t.tocks in Constantinople, they sat cross-legged, facing one another. They closed their eyes and . . .

Just then there was a commotion in the street. Excited voices were being raised outside their shop. Alobar asked Pan to investigate. "I be a G.o.d not an errand boy," grumbled the old faun, but he hobbled downstairs nevertheless.

The ruckus was caused by the monks. For more than a year, ever since Pan moved into the neighborhood, things had not been right at the monastery. The good brothers had become increasingly plagued by erotic dreams. Dreams of a lascivious nature are fairly common among those of whom the church requires celibacy, but the frequency and intensity of the dreams on rue Quelle Blague had the confession booth smoking. Some monks had begun to resist sleep and walked about heavy-lidded and nervous. Others lived for bedtime and during the day appeared drained, weak, disinterested. Rome dispatched an exorcist to uproot their torment, but the sticky demons mocked his incantations: he, himself, was visited by a succubus of such seductive talent that upon awakening he packed his exorcisory tools and returned to the Vatican.

The abbot, too, was stricken. At least twice a week he was stiffened by creamy visions; the other nights, he told his confessor, he dreamed "of rabbits caught in snares, of snakes that swallow birds' eggs whole, of trailing vines that threaten to trip me up, of rockslides, ewes in foal, yammering hornets, belching vultures, yellow eyes that peer out from hollow trees, and all manner of disagreeable things such as Satan has strewn about G.o.d's perfect world, things such as I have not seen since my boyhood in rural Provence."

The monks under his authority were subject to these "rural" nightmares as well. If they weren't being tortured by the rub of feminine thighs, they were being nauseated by the drool of he-bears eating their cubs. Late in the evening, a person afoot on rue Quelle Blague might, by the moans and shrieks and saccadic protests, have imagined themselves pa.s.sing not a monastery but a hospital or a brothel or a combination of the two.