Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins Read Free Book Online Page B

constituted, perhaps, the original red carpet. Inside, the low rafter beams were luxuriously festooned with coniferous boughs, holly, and running cedar, although damp logs smoldering in the fireplace had smoked up the place to the extent that details of the greenery were barely discernible. It didn't matter, for there could be no mistaking the kegs of cider that rose majestically in the smoke. Frol and Alobar let their cups be filled repeatedly, though in fact most of the liquid was speedily sloshed out by the jostling of fellow citizens as they coaxed the newcomers to join with them in bawdy songs. Frol strained to learn each lyrical indecency, but Alobar simply sang over and over again the only song he knew or had ever known, an epic about battles that were fought long, long ago, back before the morning star impregnated the She-Bear who gave birth to beets.
    String and wind instruments were being played inexpertly. Soon, dancing commenced. Assisted by the chemistry of the cider, Alobar and Frol relaxed and slipped into the noisy spirit of things. Frol danced with every clodhopper who asked, while Alobar munched sausages and black puddings and played at dice and cards.
    Shortly before midnight, as if by signal, the singing, dancing, and games suddenly stopped. Thinking the party over, Alobar and Frol made to gather their wraps and sleeping babies and go home, but they were told that if they left they would miss the highlight of the season. At that moment, two peasant women, decked out in their finest embroidery, emerged from the greenery that was piled behind the cider kegs. They were carrying a board upon which was balanced a many-layered cake. A table had been moved into the center of the lodge, and upon it the cake was set. The way the men moved in to surround the cake you would have thought a naked maiden was about to jump out of it, but that particular advancement in the baker's art was nine or ten centuries away.
    One of the women took a knife from her fancy apron and began to slice the confection. When it was divided to her satisfaction, the other wife served. One piece at a time was passed out, to men only. When all the males, including Alobar, had been served, they began to eat their slices, chewing very slowly, watching carefully all the while the chew motions of their companions; the slow, muscular rise and fall of jaws. Except for the soft chewing, the hall had grown as silent as the gills of a fossil.
    The cake was so moist and sweet that Alobar would have been inclined to compliment the chefs, would not the faintest tribute have resounded in the still of the lodge like a falling tree. When he bit into something small and hard, a something that sent a shock of pure hot pain vibrating along the length of a neural wire, he dared not cry out, because if a compliment must be suppressed, then doubly so a complaint. Not wishing to hurt the feelings of the bakers, Alobar removed the object from his mouth as inconspicuously as possible, a gesture doomed to failure, for every smoke-reddened eye in the room was upon him.
    Upon examination, the object proved to be easily identifiable, and for all the temporary distress it caused his molar, rather unobjectionable. Since everyone was looking anyway, Alobar, somewhat colored by embarrassment, held it aloft for them to see. "Just a bean," he said shyly. Before the word was fully spoken, a huge roar went up in the lodge. "The bean! The bean! The bean! The bean!" they cried, men and women together, and the villagers advanced on him, slapping his back, mussing his hair, hugging him, and squeezing his private parts. A wooden chair, a rickety imitation of a throne, was fetched and placed beneath a rack of antlers recently nailed to the wall. Alobar was led to the throne and made to sit on it, whereupon, amidst a deafening cacophony of whoops and hollers, belly laughs and sniggers, purposeful belches and equally intentional farts, a lopsided crown of mistletoe was laid atop his