The Secret Ways of Perfume (7 page)

The rain finally stopped altogether, and the sky quickly cleared, swept by a cold wind that made Cail shiver. It would be at least another hour before the flower would warm up and open its petals. Cursing this sudden drop in temperature, Cail closed the umbrella.

“I'm sorry, John, we'll have to be patient for a little bit longer.”

He looked at the dog, who had come to his side, and then back at the rose. He wouldn't move until he knew for sure whether it had all been for nothing.

•   •   •

Monique waited for
Le Notre's driver to open the door for her. She could have walked, since the
maison
wasn't very far from Narcissus, but it was raining again. Alain had kindly offered a car to take her, and she had accepted: she had no intention of arriving soaking wet on what was going to be her last day at work. She settled into the comfort of the cream leather seats, breathing in the smell of leather and luxury. She could get used to this, she thought.

When they arrived at Narcissus, the driver walked her to the entrance, holding an umbrella. He waited for her to go in, then went back to the car.

“Bonjour, Philippe. Monsieur Montier
?
” she asked the manager.

The man smiled at her. “Mademoiselle, you're back from Italy! Did you find anything interesting?”

Philippe Renaud was something of a workaholic but he was a good man, Monique thought, if a bit of a snob. Usually, Monique liked to stay and chat with him, but just then she was nervous. Her contract with La Fougérie was signed: in a few days she would be working for a new
maison
. And Jacques would never forgive her. Monique knew that. Her move to La Fougérie signaled the end of their relationship once and for all.

“Yes, an original brief—really does the job, you'll like it. Now, where's Jacques?”

Philippe's smile lost some of its shine. He pointed at the door behind him. “Monsieur is busy in the laboratory. Do you want me to go and tell him?”

She should have guessed that Jacques would get straight to work on the perfume. Monique looked at Philippe and shook her head. “No thanks, I'll do it myself.” She walked away, past Philippe and down a long corridor. When she arrived at the laboratory she didn't knock, just opened the door gently. She wasn't dressed properly and didn't want to contaminate the atmosphere.

“I want to talk to you,” she said.

Jacques greeted her coolly. “Come in, but not too close. I don't want your scent to ruin the formula. Anyway, what is that perfume? I've never smelled it on you before.” He spoke to her without even turning around.

Monique looked at him for a moment. She was wearing a new fragrance, a perfume she'd just been given by Alain Le Notre. They
were launching it on the market soon, he'd told her. It was set to be their key product for the whole of autumn and winter. To Monique, it smelled of new possibilities.

“Don't you like it?” she asked.

Jacques didn't even bother to reply; he had his eyes closed, his nose over a
mouillette.
Monique knew that Jacques cared only about his own interests, and yet she was still hurt. In the end, getting it over with quickly was the only thing to do.

“Don't worry, I've got no intention of coming in,” she said crisply. “I just came to clear up a couple of things.”

“If it's about the perfume, I closed the deal with Shindia today. We'll be selling their perfumes. Your second choice is good, but the other one is better. Naturally I'll give you what I owe you for finding it.”

How could he make her feel worthless in so few words? For a moment Monique thought of telling him where he could stick his money, but all that would achieve would be to close the door to Narcissus for Elena.

“In Florence, I asked a friend to help me. Like I told you, I didn't choose that perfume myself.”

A few seconds of silence and then: “So who is this perfume wizard, this . . . nose?” The conceit in his voice convinced Monique that she was doing the right thing. He was a bastard, she reminded herself. And the worst kind. She would be better off without him.

“I'm leaving Narcissus. I just came to tell you.”

Another silence, longer this time, until he finally lifted his head and looked at her.

“Isn't that a little excessive? I wouldn't have thought you'd be so touchy.”

Jacques put on his lab coat, his expression grim. In front of him stood a row of tiny aluminum bottles containing essential oils. The
rest of the ingredients were in glass containers, vials and alembics of all shapes and sizes. On the steel table sat a number of droppers and paper funnels, and in the middle of it all, a measuring cylinder emitting an intense perfume. He opened his mouth to go on, and then looked at the cylinder, as if it were only then that he remembered what he was doing.

“Wait. I need to write down the last step, then we'll talk.” He leaned over the table and scribbled on a pad next to the perfume the exact number of grams of essence he had just used.

Monique watched him, then gave a sad smile. “There's always something more important,” she said quietly. She waited a few more minutes. Jacques went over to the computer on the next table, entered a code, took his time to read something, then went back to the pad and continued to write.

“Goodbye, Jacques.”

The sound of the pencil snapping cut through the silence between them.

“I can't listen to you now. You know that full well.”

Of course. What had she been thinking? Had she really expected anything different? Something like despair rose up in Monique.

“You'll find my resignation letter on your desk,” she said after a long pause, and closed the door behind her.

As she walked away, she half-expected to hear his footsteps behind her . . . She prayed he'd hurry to catch up with her, talk to her. She stood and waited another minute in front of the exit, counting the seconds, still prepared to give him a bit more time. Then she pushed the door with both hands, walking out onto the shop floor of Narcissus, elegant, bright, brimming with customers. She greeted a few colleagues, quickly collected her things from behind one of the counters and left.

With his eyes fixed on the security camera, Jacques watched her
even after she'd left the shop. When she disappeared from the video, he swore violently, running his hands through his hair, and collapsed into an armchair.

•   •   •

Another ruined one!

Elena wrinkled her nose, quickly pulling the bottle away. It smelled rancid. She'd cast aside around fifty essential oils that had gone bad; she'd have to throw them all away. There was no chance of saving anything.

She couldn't have reopened her grandmother's shop even if she'd wanted to. She'd gone to the basement to check what state things were in down there since the shop had closed. She still hadn't decided to go down the perfume route—she hadn't got that far. But since she didn't have the faintest idea what to do with her life, it was as good an option as any. It was funny, she thought, smiling at the irony. Now that there was nothing stopping her from opening the perfume shop, she couldn't do it: no essences meant no perfumes. And no perfumes meant no profits. Anyway, what was she thinking? She couldn't restart a perfume business just because perfumes suddenly didn't turn her stomach anymore.

She sighed. That wasn't fair. It wasn't disgust that she'd felt when she worked in the shop; it was something else—something she didn't want to think about right now.

Her mobile phone vibrated. Elena opened it, looked at the number and smiled.

“Did it go well?” she asked Monique.

“Define ‘well.' Actually, no, forget it. Anyway, I got the job. Le Notre is a real gentleman. Tell me about you. How's the stocktaking going?”

Elena rubbed the palm of her hand on her shirt. “All in the trash. All I've got left are a few bottles I made for a hotel that never collected them, and some really old stuff. Nothing that would be any good now.”

“Like perfumes from another era?”

Elena went up to the dark wooden cabinet, aged over time, and gave the doors a gentle tug, letting them swing on their hinges. “Yes. My grandmother kept them in the dark, and the temperature in the cellar never changes with these walls . . .”

“You mean to say you went down there, to the secret studio?” Monique sounded incredulous and excited at the same time.

Elena said she had. “You've got no idea what's down here. I could open a museum. There are alembics and extractors that must be hundreds of years old.”

“Did you have a look at the formulas?” Monique asked.

“Absolutely nothing has changed since the last time we looked at them together. Beatrice Rossini's Perfect Perfume is just a legend, Monique,” Elena said.

“The diary says otherwise,” her friend argued.

“We've read it from cover to cover, and there's nothing that could suggest a formula. They were just the ramblings of an obsessive woman.”

It was true: both she and Monique had read Beatrice Rossini's diary over and over again. Apart from references to a few ingredients commonly used in perfumery, and a series of symbols drawn on the pages, they'd never found anything relating to the production of one specific perfume. The symbols were interesting, of course, as were the drawings, poems and rhymes. But the main content of those pages was a heartbreaking tale of unrequited love that ended in tragedy. Beatrice had fallen for the wrong man. And she wanted him so much that she let herself be destroyed by what became an obsession. The Perfect Perfume was the essence of her delusion and betrayal. It was appearance; it was deception.

The two friends had reached a conclusion: the illustrious client had paid for the perfume in cash, rather than with his heart. That was all
there was for Beatrice Rossini: tears and money. Enough gold florins to ensure that she and her family would be comfortable for generations.

“Love can have that effect,” Monique murmured.

“I don't know. I'm pretty confused by love. Apart from the urge to vomit whenever I think about Matteo and Alessia, I've just got a kind of empty feeling in my chest.” Elena paused for a moment. “You know how much I wanted a normal family, a husband, children. A stable environment. I'm nearly thirty, Monie. I can't wait forever. And now I'm alone, I don't have a job . . .”

“Come on, you've got a long way to go before you hit thirty. Besides, you can't just marry the first idiot who comes along,” Monique blurted out.

Elena nodded. A shiver made her decide to leave the cold, dark room. “Matteo wasn't that bad, if you ignored a couple of things,” she said, turning off the lights and closing the door behind her. She went back upstairs, noticing that she felt tired again.

“Like the fact that you had to have lunch with his mother every Sunday. What a horrible woman!” Monique shuddered audibly. “She's an ignorant, rude snob. And anyway, she gave me the creeps.”

“Me, too. She used to give me such looks . . .”

“I'd have done a runner. I swear, I'd have made up some kind of excuse to avoid seeing her. But my God, why were you with him anyway?” Monique was as direct as always. Elena sat on the bench by the stairs. She needed to catch her breath.

“Kids. He wanted loads of them. He said they were the most important thing to him. And I wanted a baby. And then—I don't know . . . I keep asking myself how I didn't see what kind of man he was.”

“Listen, enough about him. Let's talk about you. Have you decided to go to Grasse?”

Elena closed her eyes. “I can't. Not now. It doesn't feel right.”

“So what about coming to Paris? My job at Narcissus is up for grabs. If Jacques knew who you were, he'd take you on straightaway.” Monique lay down on her bed, Le Notre's business card in her hand.

Elena frowned. “You what? You must be joking! We're talking about Narcissus here, not just any old perfume company.”

Her friend left a thoughtful silence. “Supposing the job's there, would you come? There's my family's old apartment in the Marais—you could stay there. Loads of Italians live in the Marais, and it's twenty minutes from my place on the Metro. So?” Her voice had become more determined, as though a vague idea that had gradually been developing had finally taken shape.

“I don't know,” Elena mused. “A job like that, really, I mean . . . and I'd have to arrange everything, close up the house.”

Monique sprang up so she was sitting on the bed. “Come on, Elena, think about it! A job in Paris, a new life. Of course, the apartment isn't perfect—it needs a lick of paint, some new furniture—but it'll make a nice change. Somewhere different, somewhere you can start from scratch. It shouldn't take you more than a week or two to sort things out in Florence, should it?”

Elena stood up. The silence of the house all around her only emphasized the loneliness she'd been feeling for days now. A sadness came over her, bringing a lump to her throat, but she swallowed it back down. She imagined Paris, the narrow streets of the Marais, the parks full of flowers, the wonderful museums. And a job. She could make some money, pick up the path she'd abandoned a couple of years ago, reestablish her contacts . . . Then, if it all went well, she could reopen the shop here in Florence. Not straightaway, no, but one day.

But she knew that these were just hopes; she couldn't truly believe in them. They were barely more than dreams.

Then something inside her stirred. It was her own will, reasserting
itself. How long had it been since she'd made a decision? She realized that lately, she'd missed the satisfaction of deciding on something and accomplishing it for herself, with no motivation other than fulfilling her own expectations. She
would
go to Paris! She wanted to go, she wanted a change . . . she wanted to, end of story.