Perfume. The story of a murderer

His very nature had risen up against it, that was all he could say; and now that his grace the marquis had used his art to restore him to a life free of fluidal air, he would rather die on the spot than once again be at the mercy of the dreaded fluidum. At the mere thought of a perfume extracted from roots, he could feel his whole body cramping up. He was firmly convinced, however, that he would recover in an instant if the marquis would permit him to design a perfume of his own, one that would completely drive out the scent of violets. He had in mind an especially light, airy fragrance, consisting primarily of earth-removed ingredients, like eaux of almond and orange blossom, eucalyptus, pine, and cypress oils. A splash of such a scent on his clothes, a few drops on his neck and cheeks-and he would be permanently immune to any repetition of the embarrassing seizure that had just overwhelmed him…

For clarity’s sake, the proper forms of reported speech have been used here, but in reality this was a verbal eruption of uninterrupted blubberings, accompanied by numerous coughs and gasps and struggles for breath, all of which Grenouille accented with quiverings and fidgetings and rollings of the eyes. The marquis was deeply impressed. It was, however, not so much his ward s symptoms of suffering as the deft argumentation, presented totally under the aegis of the theory of fluidum letale, that convinced him. Of course it was the violet perfume! An obnoxious, earth-bound-indeed subterranean-product! He himself was probably infected by it after years of use. Had no idea that day in day out he had been bringing himself ever nearer to death by using the scent. His gout, the stiffness in his neck, the enervation of his member, his hemorrhoids, the pressure in his ears, his rotten tooth-all of it doubtless came from the contagious fluidal stench of violet roots. And that stupid little man, that lump of misery there in the corner of the room, had given him the idea. He was touched. He would have loved to have gone over to him, lifted him up, and pressed him to his enlightened heart. But he feared that he still smelled too much of violets, and so he screamed for his servants yet again and ordered that all the violet perfume be removed from the house, the whole mansion aired, his clothes disinfected in the vital-air ventilator, and that Grenouille at once be conveyed in his sedan chair to the best perfumer in the city. And of course this was precisely what Grenouille had intended his seizure to accomplish.

The science of perfumery was an old tradition in Montpellier, and although in more recent times it had lost ground to its competitor, the town of Grasse, there were still several good perfumers and glovers residing in the city. The most prestigious of them, a certain Runel-well aware of the trade he enjoyed with the house of the marquis de La Taillade-Espinasse as its purveyor of soaps, oils, and scents— declared himself prepared to take the unusual step of surrendering his studio for an hour to the strange journeyman perfumer from Paris who had been conveyed thither in a sedan chair. The latter refused all instructions, did not even want to know where things were; he knew his way around, he said, would manage well enough. And he locked himself in the laboratory and stayed there a good hour, while Runel joined the marquis’s majordomo for a couple of glasses of wine in a tavern, where he was to learn why his violet cologne was no longer a scent worth smelling.

Runel’s laboratory and shop fell far short of being so grandly equipped as Baldini’s perfume shop in Paris had been in its day. An average perfumer would not have made any great progress with its few floral oils, colognes, and spices. Grenouille, however, recognized with the first inhaled sniff that the ingredients on hand would be quite sufficient for his purposes. He did not want to create a great scent; he did not want to create a prestigious cologne such as he had once made for Baldini, one that stood out amid a sea of mediocrity and tamed the masses. Nor was even the simple orange blossom scent that he had promised the marquis his true goal. The customary essences of neroli, eucalyptus, and cypress were meant only as a cover for the actual scent that he intended to produce: that was the scent of humanness. He wanted to acquire the human-being odor-if only in the form of an inferior temporary surrogate-that he did not possess himself. True, the odor of human being did not exist, any more than the human countenance. Every human being smelled different, no one knew that better than Grenouille, who recognized thousands upon thousands of individual odors and could sniff out the difference of each human being from birth on. And yet-there was a basic perfumatory theme to the odor of humanity, a rather simple one, by the way: a sweaty-oily, sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung to all humans equally and above which each individual’s aura hovered only as a small cloud of more refined particularity.

That aura, however, the highly complex, unmistakable code of a personal odor, was not perceptible for most people in any case. Most people did not know that they even had such a thing, and moreover did everything they could to disguise it under clothes or fashionable artificial odors. Only that basic odor, the primitive human effluvium, was truly familiar to them; they lived exclusively within it and it made them feel secure; and only a person who gave off that standard vile vapor was ever considered one of their own.

It was a strange perfume that Grenouille created that day. There had never before been a stranger one on earth. It did not smell like a scent, but like a human being who gives off a scent. If one had smelled this perfume in a dark room, one would have thought a second person was standing there. And if a human being, who smelled like a human being, had applied it, that person would have seemed to have the smell of two people, or, worse still, to be a monstrous double creature, like some figure that you can no longer clearly pinpoint because it looks blurred and out of focus, like something at the bottom of a lake beneath the shiver of waves.

And to imitate this human odor-quite unsatisfactorily, as he himself knew, but cleverly enough to deceive others-Grenouille gathered up the most striking ingredients in Runel’s workshop.

There was a little pile of cat shit behind the threshold of the door leading out to the courtyard, still rather fresh. He took a half teaspoon of it and placed it together with several drops of vinegar and finely ground salt in a mixing bottle. Under the worktable he found a thumbnail-sized piece of cheese, apparently from one of Runel’s lunches. It was already quite old, had begun to decompose, and gave off a biting, pungent odor. From the lid of a sardine tub that stood at the back of the shop, he scratched off a rancid, fishy something-or-other, mixed it with rotten egg and castoreum, ammonia, nutmeg, horn shavings, and singed pork rind, finely ground. To this he added a relatively large amount of civet, mixed these ghastly ingredients with alcohol, let it digest, and filtered it into a second bottle. The bilge smelled revolting. Its stink was putrid, like a sewer, and if you fanned its vapor just once to mix it with fresh air, it was as if you were standing in Paris on a hot summer day, at the comer of the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Lingerie, where the odors from Les Halles, the Cimetiere des Innocents, and the overcrowded tenements converged.

On top of this disgusting base, which smelled more like a cadaver than a human being, Grenouille spread a layer of fresh, oily scents: peppermint, lavender, turpentine, lime, eucalyptus, which he then simultaneously disguised and tamed with the pleasant bouquet of fine floral oils-geranium, rose, orange blossom, and jasmine. After a second dilution with alcohol and a splash of vinegar there was nothing left of the disgusting basic odor on which the mixture was built. The latent stench lay lost and unnoticeable under the fresh ingredients; the nauseous part, pampered by the scent of flowers, had become almost interesting; and, strangely enough, there was no putrefaction left to smell, not the least. On the contrary, the perfume seemed to exhale the robust, vivacious scent of life.

Grenouille filled two flacons with it, stoppered them, and stuck them in his pocket. Then he washed the bottles, mortars, funnels, and spoons carefully with water, rubbed them down with bitter-almond oil to remove all traces of odor, and picked up a second mixing bottle. In it he quickly composed another perfume, a sort of copy of the first, likewise consisting of fresh and floral elements, but containing nothing of the witches’ brew as a base, but rather a totally conventional one of musk, ambergris, a tiny bit of civet, and cedarwood oil. By itself it smelled totally different from the first-flatter, more innocent, detoxified-for it lacked the components of the imitation human odor. But once a normal human being applied it and married it to his own odor, it could no longer be distinguished from the one that Grenouille had created exclusively for himself.

After he had poured the second perfume into flacons, he stripped and sprinkled his clothes with the first. Then he dabbed himself in the armpits, between the toes, on the genitals, on the chest, neck, ears, and hair, put his clothes back on, and left the laboratory.

Thirty-two

AS HE CAME OUT onto the street, he was suddenly afraid, for he knew that for the first time in his life he was giving off a human odor. He found that he stank, stank quite disgustingly. And because he could not imagine that other people would not also perceive his odor as a stench, he did not dare go directly into the tavern where Runel and the marquis’s majordomo were waiting for him. It seemed less risky to him first to try out his new aura in an anonymous environment.

He slipped down toward the river through the darkest and narrowest alleyways, where tanners and dyers had their workshops and carried on their stinking business. When someone approached, or if he passed an entryway where children were playing or women were sitting, he forced himself to walk more slowly, bringing his odor with him in a large, compact cloud.

From his youth on, he had been accustomed to people’s passing him and taking no notice of him whatever, not out of contempt-as he had once believed-but because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another’s face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and the person encountered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even to exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present-and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later…

But now, in the streets of Montpellier, Grenouille sensed and saw with his own eyes-and each time he saw it anew, a powerful sense of pride washed over him-that he exerted an effect on people. As he passed a woman who stood bent down over the edge of a well, he noticed how she raised her head for a moment to see who was there, and then, apparently satisfied, turned back to her bucket. A man who was standing with his back to him turned around and gazed after him with curiosity for a good while. The children he met scooted to one side-not out of fear, but to make room for him; and even when they came hurtling out of a side doorway right toward him, they were not frightened, but simply slipped naturally on past him as if they had anticipated an approaching person.

Several such meetings taught him to assess more precisely the power and effect of his new aura, and he grew more self-assured and cocky. He moved more rapidly toward people, passed by them more closely, even stretched out one arm a little, grazing the arm of a passerby as if by chance. Once he jostled a man as if by accident while moving to pass around him. He stopped, apologized, and the man-who only yesterday would have reacted to Grenouille’s sudden appearance as if to a thunderbolt-behaved as though nothing had happened, accepted the apology, even smiled briefly, and clapped Grenouille on the shoulder.

He left the back streets and entered the square before the cathedral of Saint-Pierre. The bells were ringing. There was a crush of people at both sides of the portal. A wedding had just ended. People wanted to see the bride. Grenouille hurried over and mingled with the crowd. He shoved, bored his way in to where he wanted to be, where people were packed together most densely, where he could be cheek by jowl with them, rubbing his own scent directly under their noses. And in the thick of the crush, he spread his arms, spread his legs, and opened his collar so that the odor could flow unimpeded from his body… and his joy was boundless when he noticed that the others noticed nothing, nothing whatever, that all these men, women, and children standing pressed about him could be so easily duped, that they could inhale his concoction of cat shit, cheese, and vinegar as an odor just like their own and accept him, Grenouille the cuckoo’s egg, in their midst as a human being among human beings.

He felt a child against his knee, a little girl standing wedged in among the adults. He lifted her up with hypocritical concern and held her with one arm so that she could see better. The mother not only tolerated this, she thanked him as well, and the kid yowled with delight.

Grenouille stood there like that in the bosom of the crowd for a good quarter of an hour, a strange child pressed sanctimoniously to his chest. And while the wedding party passed by-to the accompaniment of the booming bells and the cheers of the masses and a pelting shower of coins-Grenouille broke out in a different jubilation, a black jubilation, a wicked feeling of triumph that set him quivering and excited him like an attack of lechery, and he had trouble keeping from spurting it like venom and spleen over all these people and screaming exultantly in their faces: that he was not afraid of them; that he hardly hated them anymore; but that his contempt for them was profound and total, because they were so dumb they stank; because they could be deceived by him, let themselves be deceived; because they were nothing, and he was everything! And as if to mock them, he pressed the child still closer to him, bursting out and shouting in chorus with the others: “Hurrah for the bride! Long live the bride! Long live the glorious couple!”

When the wedding party had departed and the crowd had begun to disperse, he gave the child back to its mother and went into the church-to recover from his excitement and rest a little. Inside the cathedral the air was still filled with incense billowing up in cold clouds from two thuribles at each side of the altar and lying in a suffocating layer above the lighter odors of the people who had just been sitting there. Grenouille hunched down on a bench behind the choir.

All at once great contentment came over him. Not a drunken one, as in the days when he had celebrated his lonely orgies in the bowels of the mountain, but a very cold and sober contentment, as befits awareness of one’s own power. He now knew what he was capable of. Thanks to his own genius, with a minimum of contrivance he had imitated the odor of human beings and at one stroke had matched it so well that even a child had been deceived. He now knew that he could do much more. He knew that he could improve on this scent. He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but superhuman, an angel’s scent, so indescribably good and vital that whoever smelled it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him, Grenouille, the bearer of that scent.

Yes, that was what he wanted-they would love him as they stood under the spell of his scent, not just accept him as one of them, but love him to the point of insanity, of self-abandonment, they would quiver with delight, scream, weep for bliss, they would sink to their knees just as if under God’s cold incense, merely to be able to smell him, Grenouille! He would be the omnipotent god of scent, just as he had been in his fantasies, but this time in the real world and over real people. And he knew that all this was within his power. For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.

Grenouille sat at his ease on his bench in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre and smiled. His mood was not euphoric as he formed his plans to rule humankind. There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.

He sat there for a while, with an air of devout tranquillity, and took deep breaths, inhaling the incense-laden air. And yet another cheerful grin crossed his face. How miserable this God smelled!

How ridiculously bad the scent that this God let spill from Him. It was not even genuine frankincense fuming up out of those thuribles. A bad substitute, adulterated with linden and cinnamon dust and saltpeter. God stank. God was a poor little stinker. He had been swindled, this God had, or was Himself a swindler, no different from Grenouille-only a considerably worse one!

Thirty-three

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 Sadies desirous of seeing the fabled caveman. 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 caveman in all his ugliness and depravity. He then had them lead in the new Gre-nouille 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 skeptic 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’sfluidum letale, explained how and with what mechanical and dietetic means he had driven it from the body of his exhibit, replacing it withfluidum 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 evilfluidum 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 realer 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 farther 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 odor, 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 odor 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 lecturer’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.

Thirty-four

HE STAYED ON in Montpellier for several weeks. He had achieved a certain fame and was invited to 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 lovely 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 practiced 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 odor-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 humpback 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 secondhand 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 caveman, whom they knew and would most certainly have noticed. The marquis then had word spread that with his permission Grenouille had left Montpeliier 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 for 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 Sqavans and even in the Courier de I’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 fluidal feat, one that would overshadow the cure of the caveman, 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 forever 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 aging 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 Perpi-gnan 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 honor 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.