Tom Robbins - Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates  

Praisefor Tom Robbins and
FIERCE INVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES

Robbinsproves again that he can tell a wicked tale... [He] has created a spokesmanfor a world order where the enlightened individual once again reigns. At leastindividuals who can handle it. Kansas City Star

Likeany Robbins tale, its deceptively funny yet dead serious in its confrontationwith Big Issues: the nature of God and Satan; the hypocrisy of organizedreligions; the insidious evils of government, big business, and advertising;liberalism vs. conservatism; the condition of humanity in an inhumane world.The Sacramento Bee

Forfans of Robbinss nonlinear playfulness, this story of a CIA agent hooked onsex, drugs, and rocknroll offers plenty of abandon and unexpected rewards.
San Francisco Chronicle

[Robbins]takes us on his typical rowdy and irreverent ride, surprising us both with thestory he tells and with the way he tells it... may be Robbinss best work todate.The Richmond Times Dispatch

Robbinsis still the Houdini of unchained similes and metaphors. Detroit Free Press

Ingenious... Tom Robbins writes operas chock full of mind-altering images and callsthem novels... Fans like him for going all-out cosmic, for twisting whatseem like unlikely words into brilliant Mobius strips of humor and beauty.The Seattle Times

[Robbins]has written a new novel that pops like a dogwood in springtime... it will doeverything to delight those who realize they need a jolt from his cosmic jumpercables every so often. Philadelphia News

Thefather (in this century) of all nose-thumbers... [Robbins] is also theinspiration for disreputable treaders of the line between thriller andliterature. Los Angeles Times

Robbinsbalances the comic and the cosmic much as a juggler might balance a kitchenchair on a spoon. Highly recommended.Library Journal

[Robbins]brews another deranged and delightful concoction about a man who does it allfor God, country, and the love of women.Fortune

Philosophicalscrewball comedy.People

Fullof little wisdoms,Invalidsis the literary equivalent ofwhitewater-rafting the rapids of Africa s Zambezi River with the MarxBrothers in tow.Entertainment Weekly

Oneof the most inventive writers on the planet.
The Dallas Morning News

Anincredibly humorous and completely outlandish romp... The high jinkscouldnt be any wilder.Booklist

Noone writes like Robbins... When you look closely at his work, there arevirtually no throwaway linesthey seem crafted. Tracy Johnson, Salon.com

Everything[Robbinss fans have] come to expecthumor, sex, adventure, ferocious rantsabout society and religion, characters who swear on the Bible andFinnegansWake, asides on everything from etymology to violence, and a disregardto anybody elses definition of good taste... His novels lure theadventurous and warn the timid.BookPage

Apicaresque masterpiece. These fierce invalids have synthesized in apage-turner way so many of the grand and burning questions of this time, thereader will have her energizing orgasms without surcease.
Andrei Codrescu

Robbinsleads the reader on a dizzying charge.
Playboy

Lushand sexy, containing a great deal of witty social and political commentary.Publishers Weekly

Alot of fun.Kirkus Reviews

Startlinglyevocative... has more dramatic reversals thanOthello...Robbins has made a viable art form out of over-the-topness, to say nothing ofcosmic muffinry.
San Francisco Examiner BookReview

Mystical,bizarre, and just plain funny.
Rocky Mountain News

Inhis seventh and perhaps most complex novel to date, Robbins shines asbrilliantly as he has in the past... Robbins, who satirized hippie communesa quarter century ago, hasnt lost a step, offering superb, current socialcommentary. New York Post

FIERCEINVALIDS HOME FROM HOT CLIMATES

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHINGHISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition publishedMay 2000

Bantam trade paperback edition /June 2001

Bantam trade paperback reissue /May 2003

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York , New York

All rights reserved

Copyright 2000 by Tom Robbins

Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-051683

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the writtenpermission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks ofRandom House, Inc.

e-ISBN 0-553-89790-X

v1.0

B OOKS BY T OM R OBBINS

Another Roadside Attraction

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Still Life with Woodpecker

Jitterbug Perfume

Skinny Legs and All

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Fierce Invalids Home From HotClimates

Villa Incognito

Fierce Invalids
Home From
Hot Climates

TOM ROBBINS

BANTAM
New York Toronto
London Sydney
Auckland

For Rip and Fleet and Capt. Kirk

I want God, I want poetry,
I want danger, I want freedom,
I want goodness, I want sin.

Aldous Huxley

Contents

Part 1

Sometimes naked
Sometimes mad
Now the scholar
Now the fool
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.

Hindu verse

Lima , Peru
October 1997

The naked parrot looked like ahuman fetus spliced onto a kosher chicken. It was so old it had lost everysingle one of its feathers, even its pinfeathers, and its bumpy, jaundiced skinwas latticed by a network of rubbery blue veins.

Pathological, muttered Switters,meaning not simply the parrot but the whole scene, including the shrunken oldwoman in whose footsteps the bird doggedly followed as she moved about thedarkened villa. The parrots scabrous claws made a dry, scraping noise as theyfought for purchase on the terra-cotta floor tiles, and when, periodically, thecreature lost its footing and skidded an inch or two, it issued a squawk soquavery and feeble that it sounded as if it were being petted by the BostonStrangler. Each time it squawked, the crone clucked, whether in sympathy ordisapproval one could not tell, for she never turned to her devoted littlecompanion but wandered aimlessly from one piece of ancient wooden furniture toanother in her amorphous black dress.

Switters feigned appreciation, but hewas secretly repulsed, all the more so because Juan Carlos, who stood besidehim on the patio, also spying in the widows windows, was beaming with prideand satisfaction. Switters slapped at the mosquitoes that perforated his torsoand cursed every hair on that hand of Fate that had snatched him into Southtoo-goddamn-vivid America .

Boquichicos , Peru
November 1997

Attracted by the lamplight thatseeped through the louvers, a mammoth moth beat against the shutters like astorm. Switters watched it with some fascination as he waited for the boys tobring his luggage up from the river. That moth was no butterfly, that wascertain. It was a night animal, and it had a night animals mystery.

Butterflies were delicate andgossamer, but this moth possessed strength and weight. Its heavy wings werepowdered like the face of an old actress. Butterflies were presumed to becarefree, moths were slaves to a fiery obsession. Butterflies seemed innocuous,moths somehow... erotic. The dust of the moth was a sexual dust. The twitchof the moth was a sexual twitch. Suddenly Switters touched his throat andmoaned. He moaned because it occurred to him how much the moth resembled aclitoris with wings.