Kathleen Tessaro - The Perfume Collector

‘No, of course not. I don’t mean to be ungrateful—’

‘Then don’t be,’ he cut her off, pushing it back into her hand as he headed for the door. ‘Now you’ll know better than to doubt me,’ he added, on his way out.

Madame glanced sideways at Eva as she lit another cigarette. ‘He’s trying to impress you, you know.’

‘Me, ma’am?’

‘Yes, you,’ she laughed. ‘Men aren’t as complicated as they seem. They simply want to be admired by everyone. Also,’ she nodded to the vial in Eva’s hand, ‘that’s good. The first really good perfume he’s ever made. Who would’ve thought he’d find inspiration in the heat of New York City? Oh, damn. Look, he’s forgotten his key again.’ She pressed it into Eva’s hand. ‘Do run after him, will you? I don’t know where I’ll be when he gets back.’

Eva hurried down the hallway and caught up with Valmont just as he was about to get in the elevator.

‘Wait!’ she called. ‘You forgot your key.’

He stopped, the elevator doors closed. They were alone in the corridor.

‘I’ve been meaning to say something to you,’ he began, looking down at his feet.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. ‘Yes?’

‘Well, the thing is…’ he hesitated, frowning, ‘I just wanted to say you were probably right about the lavender.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You remember, the lavender in the cleaning solution you made?’

Had he really been thinking about that all this time? ‘I didn’t put any lavender in.’

‘Yes, but that’s what I meant. To not put it in. There were a number of notes one could’ve concentrated on, all equally interesting,’ he continued, assuming his familiar, lofty tone, ‘and, although I might well have used lavender to great effect, I appreciate that your… your…’ he searched the air around him for the right word, ‘your resolution of the problem had merit.’

‘Thank you.’ She was unsure of what she was actually thanking him for.

‘It seems you have an appreciation for scents.’

‘I guess.’

‘So, did you try it? I’ve never made a perfume for anyone specific before,’ he suddenly admitted. ‘Have you put any on?’

She nodded shyly. ‘Just a little.’

‘May I?’ He held out his hand.

Eva extended her arm. Valmont took it, pressing the white skin of her wrist to his lips.

The effect was beyond what he could have imagined. His perfume highlighted her youthful freshness and yet blended naturally with her rich, musky undertones. It ‘finished’ her, gave her a polished elegance, joining the fractured sides of her together. It was astonishing how she added so much to his composition; how the very fact of her fuelled his imagination. And he felt an inner quickening. Already his mind was whirring with half a dozen refinements and variations.

Eva watched him. The expression on his face was familiar; it was the same look of transcendence and ecstasy she saw every week on the stone faces of the martyred saints in St Boniface, that teetered precariously between pleasure and pain. It frightened her.

She pulled away. ‘Why did you make this for me?’

Valmont stared at her in astonishment. It was impossible to put into words the way her natural scent had inspired him; driven him, in fact, to devise a fragrance that would match the complexity of her skin.

‘I had to,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, “had to”? You don’t even like me.’ She took a step forward. ‘Do you?’

The elevator doors opened and closed again.

Neither of them moved.

‘You don’t understand,’ his expression was reverent, almost sad. ‘You’re extraordinary.’

Pushing his wire glasses further back on his nose, the man behind the counter frowned, turning the card over to read the other side.

‘Where did you get this?’

Grace was reluctant to tell him the truth. ‘I found it. Quite by accident.’

She was standing inside the Guerlain boutique on 68 Champs-Élysées, speaking to master perfumer Jacob Androski, one of the assistants to the legendary Jacques Guerlain. Dressed in a white lab coat over his suit and tie, he’d been summoned from the workshop by one of the sales assistants to help her. He was examining the card that she’d found on the floor of the shop; the one she’d inadvertently put in her pocket.

‘You found it?’

His tone made her blush.

‘It was in an abandoned shop, a perfumer, on the Left Bank.’ She tried to answer without giving too many details. ‘I… had some business there… to see the property…’ She stopped herself, mid-lie. ‘The place was called Recherchez-moi . Do you know it?’

He looked at her strangely. ‘Of course. But it’s been closed ever since the war. Andre Valmont owned it.’

‘Valmont?’

‘Yes. Andre Valmont was a perfumer; one of the finest in all Paris.’ He turned the card over again.

Grace leaned closer, across the counter between them. ‘You see, I tried to translate it on my own but I couldn’t work it out. I’m afraid my French dictionary didn’t help much – even the words I could find I didn’t really understand in context. But I know it has to do with a perfume and some sort of a recipe…?’

‘It’s not a recipe, but a formula. It’s technical in nature – a correspondence between two professional perfumers. In fact, it’s a shopping list of really quite expensive perfume ingredients. See this,’ he pointed to the second line. ‘Oudh – that’s a very rich, intense oil taken from the heart of the aquiver tree. And there’s jonquil, also narcissus from Morocco. These are extremely rare and very difficult flowers to extract,’ he explained. ‘It requires an astonishing number of them to arrive at even a single gramme of absolute.’

‘Absolute?’

‘Yes. An absolute is the purest form of essential oil and therefore extremely costly,’ he explained. ‘In fact, it looks as though no expense was spared on these ingredients. Neroli from Tunisia, Bulgarian tuberose, vanilla from Madagascar. But here,’ he frowned, ‘these are very odd requests indeed.’

‘In what way odd?’

‘They want hair.’

Grace wondered if she’d heard him correctly. ‘Did you say hair?’

‘Yes,’ he translated. ‘“Am struggling to find any variety of hair that yields the warmth and depth you describe. Perhaps blonde will work. Though I believe you will be impressed with the accord of wet lambswool.”’

‘Wet lambswool?’

‘That’s what is says.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Grace was struggling to keep up, ‘but can you explain, what’s an accord?’

‘Of course,’ he smiled apologetically. ‘An accord is a mixture of two or more ingredients which produce a new scent, quite different from any of its individual parts. You see, a great perfume may include several fresh, new accords. They are like small scent compositions, inside a larger, more far-reaching canvas. The complexity and juxtaposition of the accords involved makes the difference between a truly revolutionary perfume and a merely pleasant-smelling scent.’

‘But why would anyone want hair in their perfume? Or wet lambswool?’

‘It’s not inconceivable. Not every smell in perfume is floral or pretty. In fact, a perfume would have very little staying power if that were true. Musk, for example, is extremely common. Almost every modern formulation has it in one form or another and yet it’s incredibly strong, gamey – an acidic, sexual scent that comes from the musk gland of a Himalayan deer. Civet from the civet cat smells like faecal material and pure oudh is unbelievable – it’s an infection of the aquiver tree in India. In response to the fungus the tree creates an incredible dense amber resin that smells of mould, sweet decaying wood, vivid green notes. Most people hate it when they first encounter it and yet it seeds itself in your imagination – becomes addictive. These darker notes are like a heart, pumping at the centre of a great fragrance.’