Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins

Author:Tom Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780553901924
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

As Dickie Goldwire chewed mayonnaise sandwiches and paced the floor of his hut, Mars Stubblefield and Lisa Ko lounged on brocade cushions and sipped champagne at the big house across the divide. Between sips they talked about America.

The Asian woman described, to the best of her ability, hip-hop and Harry Potter, election fraud and Plymouth Cruisers, body piercing, reality TV, Britney Spears, glass art, working-class golf, kiddie obesity, and something called “political correctness”; and after she had reported on current fads, styles, and preoccupations, she briefly addressed the state of the union. Shaking her head, she said, “Your country seems to have everything and yet has almost nothing. It’s unbelievable. In that vast, beautiful, powerful land of unprecedented abundance live some of the most unhappy people on earth. Oh, generally speaking, they complement all that affluence by being generous and energetic and, except for their ruling class—which is wormy with evil like ruling classes everywhere—rather decent. But they’re chronically depressed and dissatisfied. Chronically. Have you heard of Prozac?”

Stubblefield nodded. Thanks to the periodic reports that Dern and Dickie brought back from Bangkok, he was somewhat aware of the astonishing rate at which his countrymen gobbled antidepressants. That knowledge, in fact, permitted him to justify, however spuriously, his own participation in the pharmaceutical business. (Incidentally, thanks to his venturesome comrades, he was also vaguely cognizant of some of the aforementioned fashions, pop icons, etc. That he wasn’t considerably more informed was due to the fact that he’d long ago forbidden the presence of a shortwave radio, satellite dish, computer, or telephone in Villa Incognito. The villa had its own small hydroelectric generator, but the power it produced was used primarily for spinning jazz on an old turntable, and, of course, for refrigeration: no one, not even in La Vallée du Cirque, liked warm champagne.) “In our Declaration of Independence,” he said, “we consecrate ourselves as a nation to the pursuit of happiness. That in itself is an admission of habitual discontent. One needn’t pursue what one already possesses.”

“It’s actually kind of touching,” Lisa said, “how Americans can be so proud, so full of adolescent bravado, and on the other hand be so transparently insecure.”

“Self-importance and self-doubt are usually interchangeable. They’re two sides of the same coin. But you know all that. You’ve always known it.” He refilled her glass. “So tell me, my dear,” he said, making an effort to sound facetious, “how many of my miserable brethren have you awakened from their medicated trance?”

She scoffed, as he knew she would. She waved her free hand. “Don’t be silly. That’s not remotely in my domain. The tanukis and I, we travel from city to city and put on our little act. Hip-hip, hoo-hoo, pla-bonga pla-bonga. People do get a certain delight out of it, but nobody’s inspired to rush home and flush their Prozac down the toilet.”

No, he didn’t suppose anybody was. And yet he’d never been able to entirely divest himself of the notion, the suspicion, that there was something

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