“Quite right,” said Alobar.
It was agreed that LeFever and Madame would each award Dr. Dannyboy four percent of their share, while Priscilla and V'lu would give him one percent apiece.
“Live by the heart if you would live forever,” said Alobar.
They toasted to that with champagne, after which Madame and Priscilla went into a corner to hug and cry and reconcile; Alobar fell asleep on the love seat, dreaming of his lady; and V'lu took Marcel up to her room, where, in the best French tradition, he sucked the venom from her bee sting.
The next day was Mardi Gras, but in the shop nobody really noticed. They held their private celebration, a celebration of the heart and the nose, which honored neither mindless excess nor neurotic asceticism, and from which neither church nor state would benefit — at least, not in any way that their leaders might have imagined.
Madame introduced Marcel to the Bingo Pajama jasmine. His nostrils opening and closing like the flaps of an airplane in distress, he pronounced it more precious than any in the South of France and swore that he would send a team of botanists to Jamaica to track it down. “So this is what Wiggs and his little girl were wishing to grow in their greenhouse. Ooh-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”
At noon they uncorked more champagne. They toasted Bingo Pajama. “And to mangel-wurzel,” added Alobar. “Long may it wave,” said Pris. Regarding Alobar in his beet suit, now crumpled (and flat in places) from having been slept in, Marcel said, “I wish I had my whale mask.” Everyone was too polite to ask what he meant. In truth, Marcel no longer owned a whale mask. He had stuffed it into Uncle Luc's coffin just before it was sealed.
The party agreed that it would call the perfume Kudra, a more romantic name than K23. Alobar was touched and pleased, although at one point Priscilla, only half facetiously, suggested christening it The Perfect Taco.
Madame looked at her long and hard.
They drank more champagne and sang breezy songs, mostly in French, for they spoke the language fluently except for Priscilla, who knew only six words in French, and that was counting ménage à trois as three.
They ate jambalaya (protection against the Humping Beast), drank yet more champagne, and waxed sentimental over Alobar, lamenting his proposed departure.
“It's been a huge adventure, an exploration of possibility, the invention of a game and the play of the game — and not merely survival. But I don't mind going now. This is not the best of times, you know.”
“You're referring to the political situation?”
“Oh, no, not that. Our political leaders are unenlightened and corrupt, but with rare exception, political leaders have always been unenlightened and corrupt. I stopped taking politics seriously a long, long time ago, therefore it's had practically no effect on the way I've lived my life. In the end, politics is always a depressant, and I've preferred to be stimulated.
“No, my friends, what bothers me today is the lack of, well, I guess you'd call it authentic experience. So much is a sham. So much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized. You know, less than half a century ago there were sixty-three varieties of lettuce in California alone. Today, there are four. And they are not the four best lettuces, either; not the most tasty or nutritious. They are the hybrid lettuces with built-in shelf life, the ones that have a safe, clean, consistent look in the supermarket. It's that way with so many things. We're even standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. The sham is everywhere.
“But wait, now. Don't let me spoil the party. Things will change, eventually, believe me. You can count on change. Even now, I'm curious about what's going to happen next. And I'll be back, if I can get back. The perfume will guide me back, I feel that it will.
“So make our perfume, my friends. Make it well. Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.”
“Right,” said Pris, under her breath. “And don't smoke in bed.”
Thus, their Fat Tuesday passed with some sadness, some gaiety, and much optimism. In the garbage-strewn, hungover hush of Ash Wednesday, a letter arrived from Wiggs Dannyboy. It slid through the slot with an appropriately soft sound, like a headachey matron folding her Mardi Gras fan.
Wiggs and Huxley Anne would fly in on Friday, the letter said. It said that it was raining in Seattle and that the greenhouse had been completely repaired. It concluded with a joke, an obscene suggestion, and a pronouncement or two. The pronouncements concerned Dr. Dannyboy's new theory of the evolution of consciousness. Perhaps because she had received the theory in bits and pieces, Priscilla hadn't paid much attention to it. Now, however, she sensed that Wiggs was attempting to make a major, radical statement, and she wondered if she shouldn't put it into focus.
Gathering all the letters that he'd written to her since she came to New Orleans, she snipped out the relevant sections, placed them in her handbag, and left the sublet flat. She walked through the Garden District, stopping finally at a park bench in front of Charity Hospital. There, almost directly beneath the window of the ward where her daddy died, she pieced together the fragments of Wiggs's hypothesis.
She wasn't positive that she accepted it or understood it. She wasn't positive that anyone else would accept it or understand it, or that anyone would care. She only knew that despite the numb torture of a champagne hangover, it made her want to go on living, a feeling she never quite got from the theories of Thomas Aquinas, Freud, and Marx.
DANNYBOY'S THEORY
(Where We Are Going and Why It Smells the Way It Does)
To put it simply, humankind is about to enter the floral stage of its evolutionary development. On the mythological level, which is to say, on the psychic/symbolic level (no less real than the physical level), this event is signaled by the death of Pan.
Pan, of course, represents animal consciousness. Pan embodies mammalian consciousness, although there are aspects of reptilian consciousness in his personality, as well. Reptilian consciousness did not disappear when our brains entered their mammalian stage. Mammalian consciousness was simply laid over the top of reptilian consciousness, and in many unenlightened — underevolved, underdeveloped — individuals, the mammalian layer was thin and porous, and much reptile energy has continued to seep through.
When our remote ancestors crawled out of the sea, they no doubt had the minds of fish. Smarter, more adventurous and curious than their fellows who remained underwater, but fish-minded, nonetheless. On the long swampy road to a primate configuration, however, we developed a reptile mind. After all, in those tens of millions of years, reptile energy dominated the planet. It culminated in the dinosaurs.
As Marcel LeFever suggested in his address to the perfumers' convention, reptile consciousness is cold, aggressive, self-preserving, angry, greedy, and paranoid.
Paul McLean was the first neurophysicist to point out that we still carry a reptilian brain — functional and intact — around in our skulls today. The reptile brain is not an abstract concept, it is anatomically real. It has been carpeted over by the cerebrum, but it is there, deep within the forebrain, and consists of the limbic lobe, the hypothalamus, and, perhaps, other organs of the diencephalon. When we are in a cold sweat, a blind rage, or simply feeling smugly dispassionate, we may be sure that, for the moment, our reptile brain is in control of our consciousness.
As the Age of Reptiles was drawing to a close, the first flowers and mammals appeared. Marcel LeFever believes that the flowers actually eliminated the great reptiles. Mammals also may have contributed to their egress (not “exit"), because for many early mammals there was nothing quite like a couple of dinosaur eggs for breakfast.