Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (15 page)

The Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse was thrilled with his new perfume. It was staggering, he said, even for the discoverer of the
fluidum letale
, to note what a striking influence on the general condition of an individual such a trivial and ephemeral item as perfume could have as a result of its being either earth-bound or earth-removed in origin. Grenouille, who but a few hours before had lain pale and near swooning, now appeared as fresh and rosy as any healthy man his age could. Why—even with all the qualifications appropriate to a man of his rank and limited education—one might almost say that he had gained something very like a personality. In any case, he, Taillade-Espinasse, would discuss the case in the chapter on vital dietetics in his soon-to-be published treatise on the theory of the
fluidum letale
. But first he wished to anoint his own body with this new perfume.

Grenouille handed him both flacons of conventional floral scent, and the marquis sprinkled himself with it. He seemed highly gratified by the effect. He confessed that after years of being oppressed by the leaden scent of violets, a mere dab of this made him feel as if he had sprouted floral wings; and if he was not mistaken, the beastly pain in his knee was already subsiding, likewise the buzzing in his ears. All in all he felt buoyant, revitalized and several years younger. He approached Grenouille, embraced him, and called him ‘my fluidal brother’, adding that this was in no way a form of social address, but rather a purely spiritual one
in conspectu universalitatis fluidi letalis
, before which—and before which alone!—all men were equal. Also—and this he said as he disengaged himself from Grenouille, in a most friendly disengagement, without the least revulsion, almost as if he were disengaging himself from an equal—he was planning soon to found an international lodge that stood above all social rank and the goal of which would be utterly to vanquish the
fluidum letale
and replace it in the shortest possible time with purest
fluidum vitale
—and even now he promised to win Grenouille over as the first proselyte. Then he had him write the formula for the floral perfume on a slip of paper, pocketed it and presented Grenouille with fifty louis-d’or.

Precisely one week after the first lecture, the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse once again presented his ward in the great hall of the university. The crush was monstrous. All Montpellier had come, not just scientific Montpellier, but also and in particular social Montpellier, among whom were many ladies desirous of seeing the fabled cave-man. And although Taillade’s enemies, primarily the champions of the ‘Friends of the University Botanical Gardens’ and members of the ‘Society for the Advancement of Agriculture’, had mobilized all their supporters, the exhibition was a scintillating success. In order to remind his audience of Grenouille’s condition of only the week before, Taillade-Espinasse first circulated drawings depicting the cave-man in all his ugliness and depravity. He then had them lead in the new Grenouille dressed in a handsome velvet blue coat and silk shirt, rouged, powdered and coiffed; and merely by the way he walked, so erect and with dainty steps and an elegant swing of the hips, by the way he climbed to the dais without anyone’s assistance, bowing deeply and nodding with a smile now to one side, now to the other, he silenced every sceptic and critic. Even the friends of the university’s botanical garden were embarrassedly speechless. The change was too egregious, the apparent miracle too overwhelming: where but a week ago had cowered a drudge, a brutalized beast, there now stood a truly civilized, properly proportioned human being. An almost prayerful mood spread through the hall, and as Taillade-Espinasse commenced his lecture, perfect silence reigned. He once again set forth his all too familiar theory about earth’s
fluidum letale
, explained how and with what mechanical and dietetic means he had driven it from the body of his exhibit, replacing it with
fluidum vitale
. Finally he demanded of all those present, friend and foe alike, that in the face of such overwhelming evidence they abandon their opposition to this new doctrine and make common cause with him, Taillade-Espinasse, against the evil
fluidum
and open themselves to the beneficial
fluidum vitale
. At this he spread his arms wide, cast his eyes heavenwards—and many learned men did likewise, and women wept.

Grenouille stood at the dais but did not listen. He watched with great satisfaction the effect of a totally different fluid, a much more real one: his own. As was appropriate for the size of the great hall, he had doused himself with perfume, and no sooner had he climbed the dais than the aura of his scent began to radiate powerfully from him. He saw—literally saw with his own eyes!—how it captured the spectators sitting closest, was transmitted to those further back, and finally reached the last rows and the gallery. And whomever it captured—and Grenouille’s heart leapt for joy within him—was visibly changed. Under the sway of the odour, but without their being aware of it, people’s facial expressions, their airs, their emotions, were altered. Those who at first had gawked at him out of pure amazement, now gazed at him with a milder eye; those who had made a point of leaning back in their seats with furrowed critical brows and mouths markedly turned down at the corners, now leaned forward, more relaxed and with a look of childlike ease on their faces. And as his odour reached them, even the faces of the timorous, frightened and hypersensitive souls who had borne the sight of his former self with horror and beheld his present state with due misgiving now showed traces of amity, indeed of sympathy.

At the lecture’s end the entire assemblage rose to its feet and broke into frenetic cheering. ‘Long live the
fluidum vitale
! Long live Taillade-Espinasse! Hurrah for the fluidal theory! Down with orthodox medicine!’—such were the cries of the learned folk of Montpellier, the most important university town in the south of France, and the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse experienced the greatest hour of his life.

Grenouille, however, having climbed down from the dais to mingle among the crowd, knew that these ovations were in reality meant for him, for him alone, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille—although not one of those cheering in the hall suspected anything of the sort.

He stayed on in Montpellier for several weeks. He had achieved a certain fame and was invited to the salons where he was asked about his life in the cave and about how the marquis had cured him. He had to tell the tale of the robbers over and over, how they had dragged him off, and how the basket was let down, and about the ladder. And every time he added more striking embellishments and invented new details. And so he gained some facility in speaking—admittedly only a very limited one, since he had never in all his life handled speech well—and, what was even more important to him, a practised routine for lying.

In essence, he could tell people whatever he wanted. Once they had gained confidence in him—and with the first breath, they gained confidence in him, for they were inhaling his artificial odour—they believed everything. And in time he gained a certain self-assurance in social situations such as he had never known before. This was apparent even in his body. It was as if he had grown. His hump seemed to disappear. He walked almost completely erect. And when someone spoke to him, he no longer hunched over, but remained erect and returned the look directed at him. Granted, in this short time he did not become a man-of-the-world, no dandy-about-town, no peerless social lion. But his cringing, clumsy manner fell visibly from him, making way for a bearing that was taken for natural modesty or at worst for a slight, inborn shyness that made a sympathetic impression on many gentlemen, and many ladies—sophisticated circles in those days had a weakness for everything natural and for a certain unpolished charm. When March came he packed his things and was off, secretly, so early in the morning that the city gates had only just been opened. He was wearing an inconspicuous brown coat that he had bought second-hand at a market the day before and a shabby hat that covered half his face. No one recognized him, no one saw or noticed him, for he had intentionally gone without his perfume that day. And when around noon the marquis had inquiries made, the watchmen swore by all that’s holy that they had seen all kinds of people leaving the city, but not the cave-man, whom they knew and would most certainly have noticed. The marquis then had word spread that with his permission Grenouille had left Montpellier to look after family matters in Paris. Privately he was dreadfully annoyed, for he had intended to take Grenouille on a tour through the whole kingdom, recruiting adherents to his fluidal theory.

After a while he calmed down again, for his own fame had spread without any such tour, almost without any action on his part. A long article about the
fluidum letale Taillade
appeared in the
Journal des Sçavans
and even in the
Courier de l’Europe
, and fluidally contaminated patients came from far and wide for him to cure them. In the summer of 1764, he founded the first ‘Lodge of the Vital Fluidum’, with 120 members in Montpellier, and established branches in Marseille and Lyon. Then he decided to dare the move to Paris and from there to conquer the entire civilized world with his teachings. But first he wanted to provide a propaganda base for his crusade by accomplishing some heroic feat, one that would overshadow the cure of the cave-man, indeed all other experiments. And in early December he had a company of fearless disciples join him on an expedition to the Pic du Canigou, which was on the same longitude with Paris and was considered the highest mountain in the Pyrenees. Though on the threshold of senescence, the man wanted to be borne to the summit at nine thousand feet and left there in the sheerest, finest vital air for three whole weeks, whereupon, he announced, he would descend from the mountain precisely on Christmas Eve as a strapping lad of twenty.

The disciples gave up shortly beyond Vernet, the last human settlement at the foot of the fearsome mountain. But nothing daunted the marquis. Casting his garments from him in the icy cold and whooping in exultation, he began the climb alone. The last that was seen of him was his silhouette: hands lifted ecstatically to heaven and voice raised in song, he disappeared into the blizzard.

His followers waited in vain that Christmas Eve for the return of the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse. He returned neither as an old man nor a young one. Nor when early summer came the next year and the most audacious of them went in search of him, scaling the still snowbound summit of the Pic du Canigou, did they find any trace of him: no clothes, no body parts, no bones.

His teachings, however, suffered no damage at all. On the contrary. Soon the legend was abroad that there on the mountain peak he had wedded himself to the eternal
fluidum vitale
, merging with it and it with him, and now for ever floated—invisible but eternally young—above the peaks of the Pyrenees, and whoever climbed up to him would encounter him there and remain untouched by sickness or the process of ageing for one full year. Well into the nineteenth century Taillade’s fluidal theory was advocated from many a chair at faculties of medicine and put into therapeutic practice by many an occult society. And even today, on both sides of the Pyrenees, particularly in Perpignan and Figueras, there are secret Tailladic lodges that meet once a year to climb the Pic du Canigou.

There they light a great bonfire, ostensibly for the summer solstice and in honour of St John—but in reality it is to pay homage to their master, Taillade-Espinasse, and his grand
fluidum
, and to seek eternal life.

Whereas Grenouille had needed seven years for the first stage of his journey through France, he put the second behind him in less than seven days. He no longer avoided busy roads and cities, he made no detours. He had an odour, he had money, he had self-confidence, and he had no time to lose.

By evening of the day he left Montpellier, he had arrived at Le Grau-du-Roi, a small harbour town southwest of Aigues-Mortes, where he boarded a merchant ship for Marseille. In Marseille he did not even leave the harbour, but immediately sought out a ship that brought him further along the coast to the east. Two days later he was in Toulon, in three more in Cannes. The rest of the way he travelled on foot. He followed a back road that led up into the hills, northwards into the interior.

Two hours later he was standing on a rise, and before him was spread a valley several miles wide, a kind of basin in the landscape—its surrounding rim made up of gently rising hills and a ridge of steep mountains, its broad bowl covered with fields, gardens and olive groves. The basin had its own special, intimate climate. Although the sea was so near that one could see it from the tops of the hills, there was nothing maritime, nothing salty and sandy, nothing expansive about this climate; instead, it possessed a secluded tranquillity as if you were many days’ journey distant from the coast. And although to the north the high mountains were covered with snow that would remain for a good while yet, it was not in the least raw or barren and no cold wind blew. Spring was further advanced than in Montpellier. A mild haze lay like a glass bell over the fields. Apricot and almond trees were in bloom, and the warm air was infused with the scent of jonquils.

At the other end of the wide basin, perhaps two miles off, a town lay among—or better, clung to—the rising mountains. From a distance it did not make a particularly grand impression. There was no mighty cathedral towering above the houses, just a little stump of a church steeple, no commanding fortress, no magnificent edifice of note. The walls appeared anything but defiant—here and there the houses spilled out from their limits, especially in the direction of the plain, lending the outskirts a somewhat dishevelled look. It was as if the place had been overrun and then retaken so often that it was weary of offering serious resistance to any future intruders—not out of weakness, but out of indolence, or maybe even out of a sense of its own strength. It looked as if it had no need to flaunt itself. It reigned above the fragrant basin at its feet, and that seemed to suffice.

This equally homely and self-confident place was the town of Grasse, for decades now the uncontested centre for production of and commerce in scents, perfumes, soaps and oils. Giuseppe Baldini had always uttered the name with enraptured delight. The town was the Rome of scents, the promised land of perfumers, and the man who had not earned his spurs here did not rightfully bear the title of perfumer.

Grenouille gazed very coolly at the town of Grasse. He was not seeking the promised land of perfumers, and his heart did not leap at the sight of this small town clinging to the far slopes. He had come because he knew that he could learn about several techniques for production of scent there better than elsewhere. And he wanted to acquire them, for he needed them for his own purposes. He pulled the flacon with his perfume from his pocket, dabbed himself lightly, and continued on his way. An hour and a half later, around noon, he was in Grasse.

He ate at an inn near the top of the town, on the place aux Aires. The square was divided lengthwise by a brook where tanners washed their hides and afterwards spread them out to dry. The odour was so pungent that many a guest lost his appetite for his meal. But not Grenouille. It was a familiar odour to him; it gave him a sense of security. In every city he always sought out the tanning district first. And then, emerging from that region of stench to explore the other parts of the place, he no longer felt a stranger.

He spent all that afternoon wandering about the town. It was unbelievably filthy, despite—or perhaps directly because of—all the water that gushed from springs and wells, gurgling down through the town in unchannelled rivulets and brooks, undermining the streets or flooding them with muck. In some neighbourhoods the houses stood so close together that only a yard-wide space was left for passageways and stairs, forcing pedestrians to jostle one another as they waded through the mire. And even in the square and along the few broader streets, vehicles could hardly get out of each other’s way.

Nevertheless, however filthy, cramped and slovenly, the town was bursting with the bustle of commerce. During his tour, Grenouille spotted no less than seven soapworks, a dozen master perfumers and glovers, countless small distilleries, pomade studios and spice shops, and finally some seven wholesalers in scents.

These were in fact merchants who completely controlled the wholesale supply of scent. One would hardly know it by their houses. The façades to the street looked modestly middle class. But what was stored behind them, in warehouses and in gigantic cellars, in kegs of oil, in stacks of finest lavender soaps, in demijohns of floral colognes, wines, alcohols, in bales of scented leather, in sacks and chests and crates stuffed with spices—Grenouille smelled out every detail through the thickest walls—these were riches beyond those of princes. And when he smelled his way more penetratingly through the prosaic shops and storerooms fronting the streets, he discovered that at the rear of these provincial family homes were buildings of the most luxurious sort. Around small but exquisite gardens, where oleander and palm trees flourished and fountains bordered by ornamental flowers leaped, extended the actual residential wings, usually built in a U-shape towards the south: on the upper floors, bedchambers drenched in sunlight, the walls covered with silk; on the ground floor wainscoted salons and dining rooms, sometimes with terraces built out into the open air, where, just as Baldini had said, people ate from porcelain with golden cutlery. The gentlemen who lived behind these modest sham façades reeked of gold and power, of carefully secured riches, and they reeked of it more strongly than anything Grenouille had smelled thus far on his journey through the provinces.

He stopped and stood for a good while in front of one of these camouflaged palazzi. The house was at the beginning of the rue Droite, a main artery that traversed the whole length of the city, from east to west. It was nothing extraordinary to look at, perhaps the front was a little wider and ampler than its neighbours, but certainly not imposing. At the gateway stood a wagon from which kegs were being unloaded down a ramp. A second vehicle stood waiting. A man with some papers went into the office, came back out with another man, both of them disappeared through the gateway. Grenouille stood on the opposite side of the street and watched the comings and goings. He was not interested in what was happening. And yet he stood there. Something else was holding him fast.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on the odours that came floating to him from the building across the way. There were the odours of the kegs, vinegar and wine, then the hundredfold heavy odours of the warehouse, then the odours of wealth that the walls exuded like a fine golden sweat, and finally the odours of a garden that had to lie on the far side of the building. It was not easy to catch the delicate scents of the garden, for they came only in thin ribbons from over the house’s gables and down into the street. Grenouille discerned magnolia, hyacinth, daphne and rhododendron… but there seemed to be something else besides, something in the garden that gave off a fatally wonderful scent, a scent so exquisite that in all his life his nose had never before encountered one like it—or, indeed, only once before… He had to get closer to that scent.

He considered whether he ought simply to force his way through the gate and on to the premises. But meanwhile so many people had become involved in unloading and inventorying the kegs that he was sure to be noticed. He decided to walk back down the street and find an alley or passageway that would perhaps lead him along the far side of the house. Within a few yards he had reached the city gate at the start of the rue Droite. He walked through it, took a sharp left, and followed the town wall down the mountain. He had not gone far before he smelled the garden, faintly at first, blended with the air from the fields, but then ever more strongly. Finally he knew that he was very close. The garden bordered on the town wall. It was directly beside him. If he moved back a bit, he could see the top branches of the orange trees just over the wall.

Again he closed his eyes. The scents of the garden descended upon him, their contours as precise and clear as the coloured bands of a rainbow. And that one, that precious one, that one that mattered above all else, was among them. Grenouille turned hot with rapture and cold with fear. Blood rushed to his head as if he were a little boy caught red-handed, and then it retreated to his solar plexus, and then rushed up again and retreated again, and he could do nothing to stop it. This attack of scent had come on too suddenly. For a moment, for a breath, for an eternity it seemed to him, time was doubled or had disappeared completely, for he no longer knew whether now was now and here was here, or whether now was not in fact then and here there—that is, the rue des Marais in Paris, September 1753. The scent floating out of the garden was the scent of the redheaded girl he had murdered that night. To have found that scent in this world again brought tears of bliss to his eyes—and to know that it could not possibly be true frightened him to death.

He was dizzy, he tottered a little and had to support himself against the wall, sinking slowly down against it in a crouch. Collecting himself and gaining control of his senses, he began to inhale the fatal scent in short, less dangerous breaths. And he established that, while the scent from behind the wall bore an extreme resemblance to the scent of the red-headed girl, it was not completely the same. To be sure, it also came from a red-headed girl, there was no doubt of that. In his olfactory imagination, Grenouille saw this girl as if in a picture: she was not sitting still, she was jumping about, warming up and then cooling off, apparently playing some game in which she had to move quickly and then just as quickly stand still—with a second person, by the way. Someone with a quite insignificant odour. She had dazzlingly white skin. She had green eyes. She had freckles on her face, neck and breasts… that is—and Grenouille’s breath stopped for a moment, then he sniffed more vigorously and tried to suppress the memory of the scent of the girl from the rue des Marais—that is, this girl did not even have breasts in the true sense of the word! She barely had the rudimentary beginnings of breasts. Infinitely tender and with hardly any fragrance, sprinkled with freckles, just beginning to expand, perhaps only in the last few days, perhaps in the last few hours, perhaps only just at this moment—such were the little cupped breasts of this girl. In a word: the girl was still a child. But what a child!

The sweat stood out on Grenouille’s forehead. He knew that children did not have an exceptional scent, any more than green buds of flowers before they blossom. This child behind the wall, however, this bud still almost closed tight, which only just now was sending out its first fragrant tips, unnoticed by anyone except by him, Grenouille—this child already had a scent so terrifyingly celestial that once it had unfolded its total glory, it would unleash a perfume such as the world had never smelled before. She already smells better now, Grenouille thought, than that girl did back then in the rue des Marais—not as robust, not as voluminous, but more refined, more richly nuanced, and at the same time more natural. In a year or two this scent will be ripened and take on a gravity that no one, man or woman, will be able to escape. People will be overwhelmed, disarmed, helpless before the magic of this girl, and they will not know why. And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm. In their obtuseness, they will praise the evenness of her features, her slender figure, her faultless breasts. And her eyes, they will say, are like emeralds and her teeth like pearls and her limbs smooth as ivory—and all those other idiotic comparisons. And they will elect her Queen of the Jasmine, and she will be painted by stupid portraitists, her picture will be ogled, and people will say that she is the most beautiful woman in France. And to the strains of mandolins, youths will howl the nights away sitting beneath her window… rich, fat old men will skid about on their knees begging her father for her hand… and women of every age will sigh at the sight of her and in their sleep dream of looking as alluring as she for just one day. And none of them will know that it is truly not how she looks that has captured them, nor her reputed unblemished external beauty, but solely her incomparable, splendid scent! Only he would know that, only Grenouille, he alone. He knew it already in fact.

Ah! He wanted to have that scent! Not in the useless, clumsy fashion by which he had had the scent of the girl in the rue des Marais. For he had merely sucked that into himself and destroyed it in the process. No, he wanted truly to possess the scent of this girl behind the wall; to peel it from her like skin and to make her scent his own. How that was to be done, he did not know yet. But he had two years in which to learn. Ultimately it ought to be no more difficult than robbing a rare flower of its perfume.

He stood up. Almost reverently, as if leaving behind something sacred or someone in deep sleep, he moved on, softly, hunched over, so that no one might see him, no one might hear him, no one might be made aware of his precious discovery. And so he fled along the wall to the opposite end of the town, where he finally lost the girl’s scent and re-entered by way of the porte des Fénéants. He stood in the shadow of the buildings. The stinking vapours of the streets made him feel secure and helped him to tame the passions that had overcome him. Within fifteen minutes he had grown perfectly calm again. To start with, he thought, he would not again approach the vicinity of the garden behind the wall. That was not necessary. It excited him too much. The flower would flourish there without his aid, and he knew already in what manner it would flourish. He dared not intoxicate himself with that scent prematurely. He had to throw himself into his work. He had to broaden his knowledge and perfect the techniques of his craft in order to be equipped for the time of harvest. He had a good two years.