Kathleen Tessaro - The Perfume Collector

Grace pulled her coat on. Even Mallory doubted her. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Where are you going?’ Mallory got up too.

‘I need to be alone.’

‘Wait!’ Mallory took her arm. ‘Did Roger apologize? Tell me, what did he say?’

Mallory’s face was so intent.

Grace stared at her, trying to yank her mind back into focus. But it wouldn’t go. For some reason the whole question of Roger, of what he said or did, didn’t matter as much as something else – something she couldn’t quite define. It hovered just out of reach of her awareness, like a shadow.

Mallory was waiting. Grace’s brain spun. She could hardly remember the details of last night’s conversation; only that Roger had arrived, swallowed up all the air, taken up all the space. And after months of wishing he would touch her, now she was the one pushing him away.

In contrast, the guilty memory of Edouard Tissot’s mouth on hers ricocheted through her entire body.

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure… I suppose so.’ Her voice was flat, lifeless. ‘He said everything I wanted to hear. Told me it was all… all a lie. Only, now I don’t want to hear it any more.’

She was sitting in the park across the street, with her back to the playground, looking out across the river. Her dog, the ageing terrier with his watery eyes and moulting fur, was crouched in a neat little ball underneath the bench, hiding from the screaming children.

It was easy to spot her – the long black coat, the wool felt turban-style hat. Even from behind, her stiff bearing gave her an imperious air.

Grace didn’t want to be here; with all her heart she didn’t want to speak to Madame Zed ever again. But here she was, just the same.

When she first left the hotel, she’d gone to the Louvre. It was so enormous; her plan was to lose herself in the miles of galleries. Spend the whole day or at least until her head quietened down. But no sooner had she gone inside than the sheer scale of the palace overwhelmed her. The pale marble walls and high columns echoed with voices chattering in half a dozen languages; the incredible opulence of the gilded walls and ceiling of the Apollo Gallery dazzled too brightly; all around her on the canvases, bodies writhed, wars raged, heroic actions prevailed. The grandeur jarred rather than soothed.

So she left; wandered the streets, bought a coffee she didn’t drink. Walking into a bookshop, she stood, staring, unseeing, at the titles on the shelves.

A gentleman in glasses approached. ‘ Comment puis-je vous aider ?’

‘ Pardon ?’

‘ Comment puis-je vous aider ?’ he repeated slowly.

It took Grace a moment to realize she was staring at a row of anatomy journals; this was an academic bookshop.

‘ Non. Non, merci .’

Soon it became clear that no place would offer the refuge she sought. Her mind stumbled and careered, tripping and falling again and again into the same unanswerable voids. One moment the taste, feel and smell of Edoaurd Tissot seemed to have taken over her body and then, equally as intense, the horrendous truth blinded her – that she could no longer trust herself; that everything she thought she was, was a lie.

Now she was back, on the Left Bank. Searching for the person who had cracked her life open like an egg.

Grace stopped in front of the bench. Hands in her pockets, she gripped her father’s old lighter, holding it tightly in the palm of her hand. ‘You must really hate me.’

Madame Zed looked up at her, surprised. Then, taking in Grace’s expression and demeanour, she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you.’ Her lips hardened into a thin, taut line. ‘But I loathed her.’

Grace stared at her in shock. ‘Why?’

‘Why not?’ she shot back, her black eyes fierce. ‘He was mine. I discovered him, I trained him! My money bought him the business. He was my whole world – the child I never bore, the husband I never married, the companion I never found. And then she arrived, out of nowhere!’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you know what was so devastating about her? She truly had a unique talent. She knew how to catch the flavour of the times, how to distil it into the perfect atmosphere. She was good at it. And more than anyone else, she knew how to make him listen.’ She gripped the terrier’s lead tightly, winding it round her boney hand. ‘When I spoke, my voice disappeared like the wind. Eva knew how to bring out the best in him. When she made a suggestion, he took note. It was obviously right. Do you realize how galling that was? I was reduced to an onlooker – an antiquity from another age.’ She stared out across the choppy grey water for some time. When she spoke again, she sounded empty, hollow. ‘Even when she left, he’d become so cocksure, so independent, he didn’t need me any more.’

Grace shook her head. ‘That’s not even true! What about the correspondence I found? The letter with those strange accords you were creating with him – wet wool, hair and so on?’

Madame wound the lead even tighter. ‘That wasn’t Valmont.’

‘Then who was it?’ she demanded. ‘Who else would want your help to create a perfume?’

‘Who indeed.’ She turned, locking Grace in with her unfathomable black gaze. ‘She only made one formula. I cannot believe it, even to this day. To have such success with one’s first real attempt.’ She shook her head, laughing bitterly. ‘Unheard of!’

Grace sat down on the edge of the bench. ‘What are talking about?’

‘The formula she sold Hiver – Eva created it.’

‘But you told me she’d betrayed Valmont! That it was his!’

‘It had his name on it. But no. She’d been working on it for a while, on her own. It was a private obsession.’

‘How could you do that?’ She stared at her in dismay. ‘Did you lie about anything else?’

‘Some day you will have a nemesis,’ Madame warned bitterly. ‘It’s not easy, you know. Someone who has the ability to do everything you wish you could, but with greater ease, style, success.’

Grace folded her arms across her chest. ‘I already have a nemesis, thank you.’

‘You’re too young to understand what it’s like to be dismissed from someone’s life – someone you love.’

Grace glowered at her. ‘I could write a book about it.’

They sat a while.

Then Madame Zed spoke again. ‘I’ve known her so many years, hated her for so long, she’s like a part of me. A limb. When you told me she had died, I actually felt bereft. Sometimes I wonder if we don’t hold our hatreds closer than our loves. Then you, of all people, came to me for answers.’

‘And you saw the chance to get your own back.’

‘No, that wasn’t my intention at all.’ She turned on Grace, suddenly indignant. ‘Do you think I want to be petty? That I’m not repulsed by my own jealousy and resentment? I wanted to be fair.’

‘But you weren’t.’

‘No, no I wasn’t,’ she agreed. For a while, she sat very still. ‘I lost my ability,’ she said at last.

Grace shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘In India I contracted meningitis. I never fully recovered. Over time, it eroded my sense of smell.’

‘But what about the perfumes you showed me…’

‘They were recounted from memory. But I can no longer make anything. I became useless.’

Grace thought back to the spoiled milk, the burning supper.

‘It’s true that I should not have agreed to talk to you.’ Madame admitted. ‘But in the end, I think Eva and I had more in common than I realized. She lost what mattered most to her too.’

‘Lost!’ Grace shook her head in disbelief. ‘You make it sound as though I was misplaced.’