As a manufacturer of aroma chemicals and fragrance compounds, LeFever was among the top twenty in the world. As a maker of fine perfumes, it was in the top five, and it was Marcel the Bunny who kept them there. The same Marcel who had been staring through a square foot of window glass for seven consecutive hours. Damn it, sensitive artist or no sensitive artist, pampered bedbug or no pampered bedbug, mystical eclipse or no mystical eclipse, it was time for somebody to throw a cigar at the smoke alarm.
“Pardon, Bunny, I didn't intend to startle you, but I'm afraid you're starting to get tangled up in the drapes.”
“Drapes? You mean draperies. Drape is a verb, the noun is drapery. One drapes a window when one hangs draperies. It is impossible for one to become entangled in drapes, so I assume you were referring to draperies.”
“Oh, yes. But drapes can be a convenient abbreviation when one has had too much to drink.”
“If one can't say draperies, perhaps one shouldn't drink.”
It must have been disconcerting to receive a grammar lesson through a whale mask, but, outwardly at least, Claude took it in stride. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I have drunk and drunk plenty. The eclipse made me do it. Wasn't it derealizing? Didn't it give you shivers? Didn't it transport you to another plane? Didn't it make your brown eyes blue?”
The whale head nodded.
“Is that what you were thinking about here at the window?”
Marcel did not dare reveal that his thoughts, when interrupted, were of carrots and beets, for Claude, sloshed as he was, would surely find a way to connect verbally those vegetables to his nickname and coin some bad joke about bunny rabbits. So Marcel said, “No, I was thinking about perfume,” which, given Marcel's perpetual obsession, wasn't a very large lie. “And I was thinking about V'lu.”
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed Claude. “You know, there's not much that can be done to heal the sting of a woman. As they say in her country, it's easier to scratch your ass than your heart.”
“You misunderstood me. Let me see if I can put it in words that even the inebriated might understand. For the past month I have spent most of my time down in the kitchen, perfecting the scent that we are calling New Wave. You are familiar with the rationale behind New Wave. We are predicting that for many people the fascination with nostalgia — with a past reputed to be more simple, more honest, more natural than the present — will soon subside. In the cities, there is a large, affluent, professional class that has already rejected the sweet, heavy, feminine, Oriental scents that the hippies ushered into favor in the sixties, as well as the clean, wholesome, fruity and herbal scents associated with the backpacker chic of the seventies. For this avant-garde, and for those who will flock to join it, LeFever is developing New Wave, a truly modern scent — sharp, hard-edged, assertive, unisexual, urbane, unromantic, nonmysterious, cool, light, elegant, and wholly synthetic—”
“I know all that, Marcel.”
“Yes, but what you don't know is how boring and, ultimately, frightening I am finding this scent. I slept last night with New Wave on my pillowcase, and my dreams were totalitarian nightmares. The boof is not unattractive, yet when I test it, I have somehow the feeling that I am smelling the sinister vapors of fascism.”
“Really, Bunny. Ha ha.”
“I am not joking.” Marcel removed the whale mask. His demeanor was serious, indeed. “I am not joking.”
“But, surely—”
“When I smell New Wave, I have the sensation that I am smelling control, conformity, domination. As I have said, it has a definite appeal. . ”
“Well, then—”
“There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all of us secretly attracted to violence.”
“A violent perfume? Ha ha. Remember that U.S. after-shave, Hai Karate?”
“Were I to add but a trace note of leather to New Wave, Claude, I would say that I had drawn on my canvas the olfactory silhouette of the Nazi.”
The word jolted Claude. He shuddered. The LeFever twins had been small boys during the Nazi occupation of Paris, but they recalled it as an adult recalls the breaking of a bone in childhood: the sickening crack, the fear, the pain, the sadness, the sudden ooze of blood that shows itself like the black blush of fairy-tale witches. It was a wound upon their memory, a thud of monster boots in a distant sandbox.
“New Wave is an intriguing perfume,” Marcel went on, “but I am growing to loathe it, and actually to fear its implications. Therefore, I have been thinking today about raw materials. The eclipse set me to wondering about those powerful and mysterious aspects of the natural world that the perfumer has not tapped yet. We moved into synthetics as natural raw materials became less available, more expensive. But there are scores, perhaps hundreds, of raw materials in different parts of the world that we haven't examined — consider the valley of the Amazon, consider the ocean, for God's sake — and there is history. . The recent love affair with the past was with a relatively recent past. Fifty years ago, a century at the most. But what of the fragrances of five thousand years ago, were they as primitive and unrefined and fundamental as we believe? History? What about the fragrances of prehistory?”
Marcel took a seat. He sighed. He was not an athletic man, and he'd been on his feet the whole strange day. “The eclipse also caused me to think of V'lu.”
“Yes, back to V'lu.” Claude grinned a sloppy Pernod grin. “Let me guess. This black face of the sun reminded you of her. Reminded you that her ancestors in the jungle used fragrances of which we know little—”
“Idiot. What I was reminded of, aside from things that are none of your business, was a remark she made. V'lu pointed out to me that the synthetics that predominate in perfumery today are practically all petroleum products. The price of crude oil is now subject to arbitrary decisions by the OPEC nations. V'lu suggested that since the Arabs are untrustworthy and since the future of the Mideast is uncertain, there is a strong possibility that petrochemicals will become even more scarce and expensive than natural materials. She suggested that we ought to be looking anew at the flowers.”
“That is elementary and quite sound,” agreed Claude. “It is an idea with some merit, I don't have to be sober to recognize that. Fuck the Arabs, anyhow. Hang them from the drapes! And the draperies, too; yes, Bunny? But what I can't imagine is how this shopgirl — out of the mouths of babes, uh? — communicated this to you; I mean how could you even understand her, speaking in southern Negro dialect and all?”