“Since the perfumer is dealing in sexual magic and romantic fantasy, he or she is operating in a realm that is both deeply primitive and highly exalted. This realm has its rhymes and reasons, and they are not quite the same, I regret to inform you, as the rhymes and reasons of the marketplace.”
The last remark was ad libbed, apparently. In spite of himself, Claude felt a tingle of pride in his cousin. He turned to Luc, shaking his head and chuckling. “That Bunny is a quick one,” he said. “And afraid of nothing.” Luc did not reply. Luc had other things on his mind. Luc had been awake most of the night. Luc had money to invest, and now that Morgenstern had hooked up with the Last Laugh Foundation. . well, it was worth investigating. Surely, the foundation needed funds. Who knew, maybe it could do something for him. Luc chewed his cigar and listened intently. Luc felt rotten. The circles under his eyes were the purple of bad meat.
“Now,” Marcel the Bunny was saying, “I wish to call your attention to yet another prehistorical event. About two hundred thousand years ago, the human brain tripled in size. Science has been unable to explain this relatively sudden enlargement, since beyond a certain size, a size that the brains of our ancestors had already reached two hundred thousand years ago, intelligence does not increase with brain volume. What evolutionary purpose was served, then, by tripling our cerebral real estate?”
Bunny paused for effect, then went on. “I submit that the brain was enlarged in order to store more memories. We have learned in recent experiments that memory is stored not in specific neural centers but, holographically, throughout the brain. As the human mammal came to live longer, and to widen the scope of its intellectual activities, it had more to remember. It needed more closet space, so to speak. But the interesting thing is, the increase in memory capacity was far beyond what was needed at the time. It was, in fact, far beyond what is needed today, although we now live on the average more than three times as long as our prehistoric ancestors, and the range of our activities has increased geometrically. Could it be that evolution was preparing us for a time in the future when we will live considerably longer than we do at present? Could the mushrooming of memory space have been long-range longevity planning? An immoralist ploy?”
Luc grunted. “This must be the part,” he said. “I passed over it the first time.” He sat up in his chair. The movement made him dizzy. (Five months earlier, Wiggs Dannyboy had been pulled forward in his seat by the same remark. Wiggs had crashed the convention on a hunch, and it looked as if the hunch was paying off.)
Bunny: “We may only speculate about such matters. We do know, however, that of our five senses, the one most directly connected to memory is the sense of smell. Although man has become increasingly visual in his orientations, although his olfactory receptor has shrunk until it is no larger than an American dime, sight simply cannot compete with smell when it comes to the ability to awaken memory. Memories associated with scent are invariably more immediate and more vivid than those associated solely with visual imagery or sound. Psychiatrists have begun, in fact, to use perfume to aid the patient in recreating the suppressed memories of early childhood.”
The old man cocked his head. Bunny was speaking in English, and what with the Blood Pressure Chorale caroling in Luc's temples, he had difficulty comprehending every word. English was a language fit only for narrating animated cartoons and inciting crowds at sporting events, according to Luc.
Bunny: “Scent is the last sense to leave a dying person. After sight, hearing, and even touch are gone, the dying hold on to their sense of smell. Does that sharpen your appreciation of the arena in which we perfumers perform?
“Fragrance is a conduit for our earliest memories, on the one hand; on the other, it may accompany us as we enter the next life. In between, it creates mood, stimulates fantasy, shapes thought, and modifies behavior. It is our strongest link to the past, our closest fellow traveler to the future. Prehistory, history, and the afterworld, all are its domain. Fragrance may well be the signature of eternity.”
“That's laying it on a bit thick,” commented Claude. Luc made an effort to nod in agreement, but his head was so full of hot, noisy, polluted blood that it felt like a bistro on a weekend midnight, and he could not move it.
The tape was enjoying perfect health, however. It stuck steadfastly to its pace. “There is a long-standing argument about whether perfuming is a science or an art. The argument is irrelevant, for at the higher levels, science and art are the same. There is a point where high science transcends the technologic and enters the poetic, there is a point where high art transcends technique and enters the poetic.
“A perfumer, of course, is neither a quantum physicist nor a painter, but at his best, when his purposes are high purposes, when his imagination is liberated, his choices inspired, he, too, enters the poetic. And it is revealed to him, then, what the ancients meant when they said with conviction that the soul receives its sustenance via the sense of smell.
“I have spoken to you this afternoon of poetry and of sexual magic. Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and L'Heure Bleue—The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors" — there were murmurs and gasps in the audience—"names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass?
“Vanderbilt and Bill Blass are what the 'marketing people' have given us.”
Marcel paused, as if trying to contain a coiling rage. Claude slapped the creased thigh of his expensive gray trousers. “Give them hell, Bunny,” he said, with a mixture of affection and mockery. Luc, meanwhile, had laid down his cigar so that he might employ both his hands to massage his exploding temples.
“Vanderbilt and Bill Blass, alas. But you know, you perfumers, in the deep unfolding rose of your hearts, you know that fragrance is no automobile or table setting, no insurance policy, no Preparation H. Attempts to reduce perfume to a predictable product with which cost accountants can safely deal; attempts to own it, control it, and make it happen when the mysterious spirit is not there are fated to end in crude failure and coarse farce.
“Perfuming is most unlike manufacture. And perfumers should be proud to assume our historic roles as enchanters, soul feeders, sacred pimps, and alchemists. 'Marketing people' are fine enough when it comes to peddling wares, but let us remember always that it is the perfumer, the flowermaster, the guardian of the Blue Hour, who can charm the birds and bees in the human spirit — and destroy its dinosaurs.”
Scattered applause. Shocked murmurs. Nervous laughter. Then, the white-on-white whirr of blank tape.
“That's that,” said Claude, relieved that it hadn't been worse than the first time that he heard it. “The wonderful Wizard of Oz. My guess is that Wiggs Dannyboy identified with Bunny. Someone told him about the speech, and he thought, 'Here's a man who's as big a bedbug as I am.' That must have been why Bunny was invited to that clinic.”