The Perfume Lover Read online

  * * *

  I wasn’t any crazier about musk as a teenager than I am now and, in the end, I opted for Tigress in the hope that I would find out some day what it was that turned men into animals … Since my own bottle disappeared decades ago, I’ve asked an American friend to decant a few drops for me from her own vintage stash. I’m on my way to Bertrand’s lab when I retrieve a padded envelope containing her sample from my mailbox. And so it is with him that I catch my first whiff of Tigress in over thirty years.

  ‘This is what you wore when you were fourteen?’ Bertrand grins.

  ‘I remember buying it because of the ad…’

  We Google it and he lets out a hoot.

  ‘I can see why! And did you wear it?’

  I sniff the blotter. No memories of slumber parties with Sylvie or flashbacks to sniggering classmates aping my ‘French’ accent pop up. All that Tigress brings to mind are the other perfumes its carnation, sweet balms and cheap rose notes remind me of. The masterful 1912 L’Origan by Coty – an olfactory punch in the gut the first time I smelled it four years ago; Tabu by Dana, which had become drugstore swill by the time I acquired my Tigress; Estée Lauder’s iconic Youth Dew, whose spicy facets permeated the ground floor of the local department store of my youth; its descendent Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. I could rebuild just about half the history of perfumery from those few drops of Tigress, but not my teenage years. My olfactory culture seems to have crushed any earlier memories. Have I actually worn this? I’m starting to doubt I even owned it.

  Besides, Tigress isn’t the reason that brought me to the lab today. I’ve come because Bertrand has composed what might become the core of our perfume.

  ‘So … You said you had something to show me?’

  * * *

  ‘These aren’t perfumes yet.’

  I nod. What Bertrand is showing me today are two sketches for the scent built around orange blossom and an incense we’ve code-named ‘Séville Semaine Sainte’.

  I’ve deliberately refrained from trying to envision what I’m about to discover, or even from recalling the smells I experienced in Seville. I don’t know what to expect, or what’s expected of me. I’ve never done this before: never been in on the very first steps of the conception of a fragrance, much less one inspired by me. In exchange for my idea, I’ll be following its development, recording our sessions and writing a journal of our creative journey; I’m also to keep a sample of every version of the formula. How far Bertrand will take the project, I can’t fathom. So far he’s walked his talk: said the story would make a good perfume, said he’d make the perfume, is now making it. For the time being, this is a purely personal undertaking on his part. Of course I can’t help wondering whether it’ll ever come out, but that’s not how things work: perfumers don’t just waltz into a client’s office brandishing a finished product. If the scent comes to term without being marketed, Bertrand will have made me a gift worth several thousand euros, the cost of developing a bespoke perfume for a private client. But this isn’t a bespoke perfume, is it? I’m not asking for an olfactory mirror. I just wanted to walk through the looking glass. And I’m about to.

  * * *

  Bertrand labels his blotters ‘1’ and ‘2’ and dips them into the phials.

  ‘You’ll find the first one is a lot more austere than the other.’

  I breathe in. This is soapy. I can pick out incense … Aldehydes with their characteristic snuffed-candle and citrus … Lavender … Eww, I hate lavender … But I can’t really detect the orange blossom, though Bertrand says he’s boosted its tarry notes with yara-yara, the material I discovered here a while back that reminded me of the medicinal effluvia of my childhood, and indole, a mothball-smelling molecule found in flowers like jasmine, orange blossom, honeysuckle or narcissi.

  ‘You’ve got to imagine a street in Seville baked by the sun, with the tar almost melting, just before a storm,’ he explains.

  ‘You got that from the story?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  I’m a little disconcerted, not only because I don’t remember mentioning any melting tar, much less storms, but because with its soapy lavender notes, I find N°1 jarringly masculine. N°2 is brighter, almost tart, but also softer and more suave. The orange blossom absolute has been fleshed out with jasmine and aurantiol, a base resulting from the reaction of methyl anthranilate (the main odorant molecule of orange blossom) and hydroxycitronellal (which smells of lily-of-the-valley).

  But there’s something else lurking beneath the sweetness. Something a little … beastly? The afternoon is uncharacteristically hot and muggy for the end of April and my body feels slightly damp under my black cotton shirtdress. Has my deodorant let me down?

  ‘Excuse me, I’m about to do something not very ladylike…’

  I lift my collar away from my shoulder and take a quick sniff. Bertrand lets out a mischievous little giggle, like a kid who’s played a neat trick on the grown-ups.

  ‘I’ve put in some costus, to give skin and female scalp effects.’

  Costus smells of fur and dirty hair, he explains: force the dose, and you’ll get badly cured sheepskin. Incense is also tricky to work with, since it can produce repulsive facets of raw flesh and butcher’s stall. So he can’t use a high percentage of it and has to boost it with other materials that have incense-like facets, like aldehydes and pink pepper.

  I must look a little disappointed – I guess I somehow expected the magic to work straight off. After a moment’s silence, Bertrand speaks up:

  ‘These are just first drafts. They’re still pretty austere for the moment. I’ve done them to find out where we set the cursor. But we haven’t necessarily found the accord yet.’

  N°1 is definitely too soapy, I tell him. There are soap notes in the story wafting from the crowd, but they should be fleeting impressions. And N°2 is too sunny. In my story, the only light comes from the candles flickering on the gold of the float.

  Bertrand frowns, clearly trying to figure out how this translates into olfactory terms. We’ve known each other for nearly five months now, we’ve talked for hours, but this is a new type of conversation and we need to adjust our languages.

  ‘You mean it’s too floral?’

  Well, no, the scent needs to be floral because there are a lot of flowers in this story, with all the lilies spilling out of the float, I venture.

  As Bertrand stifles a sigh, I realize I’ve just steered him in a new direction.

  ‘Would you rather go for a lily than an orange blossom?’

  Instead of answering, I blurt out:

  ‘And there are tons of carnations too…’

  Now I’ve done it again, haven’t I? But he nods patiently.

  ‘Right. Carnation. That’s very spicy. For the moment, I’m not very spicy. I’m indolic.’

  Eugenols, the molecules that produce the clove-like smell of carnations, belong to the same chemical class as indoles and phenols, Bertrand explains. But they ‘vibrate’ in different ways: eugenols burn, while indole and yara-yara melt, ‘like tar in the sun’.

  As soon as he mentions melting, I’m reminded of beeswax. During the Holy Week, little kids collect it from the penitents, who tilt their candles so that a few drops will fall on the children’s wax balls.

  ‘OK, we’ll put in beeswax … But all those things are very austere, you know? If that’s what I do for you, it’ll be as dark as the darkest night. You’ll barely be able to make out the gold. We’ve got to find the night lights.’

  He’s right. This shouldn’t be austere. I’m in the arms of a boy who’s got a hand under my skirt. That’s what makes the meeting of incense and orange blossom so symbolic, this blend of the sacred and the erotic …

  ‘It’ll be tough to do something pleasant,’ says Bertrand, ‘because orange blossom and incense are two hard notes. If you want to make them prominent, you’re going for hard on top of hard.’

  But the notes shouldn’t be a pretext, he adds, otherwise there’s no poin
t. You can’t say you’re doing an orange blossom and incense fragrance then stick in a couple of drops just so you won’t be an outright fraud, like most perfume companies do nowadays.

  I can’t help feeling a little smug. I’ve presented him with a challenge, and I’m starting to know him well enough to understand he thrives on challenges. So I try to help him the only way I know how, by telling him more about Holy Week, hoping that among my words he’ll find something that teases at his own memories, that translates into his own language; something that’ll make this scent as sensuous and seductive as Seville abandoning itself to the religious-pagan fiesta. The exhilaration of a city flowing from street to plaza to get a glimpse of the processions; the bar-hopping instead of the Stations of the Cross, the sea-salt aroma of the blond vino de manzanilla and the bittersweet herbal pungency of joints; the dizziness and flirting and laughter. The dark, thrumming beat of the drums, the solar jarring bursts of the brass bands, the beeswax coating the streets with a silky sheen, feet slipping as the crowd mills about. The darkened plaza where the float appears, blazing like the ocean liner in Fellini’s Amarcord, with the musty whiffs of derelict palaces seeping through shutter windows behind the wrought-iron grilles …

  It’s a strange sensation. This man is so open, so willing to be enthralled, that I get the feeling he’s with me in the jostling crowd.

  ‘Fascinating. This isn’t my world at all, but it could’ve been. I must’ve lived this before, in another life, because it speaks to me so much.’

  ‘It’s as though I were trying to draw you into my memory.’

  ‘But I am there. Completely.’

  9

  Was that guy following me?

  I tried walking faster but my strappy sandals made my steps wobbly and my 40s wraparound dress kept flapping open: I had to slow down to press it shut on my thighs. Paris is practically empty in August as Parisians migrate en masse to the beach, but there they were, the summer bachelors in their suits and ties, wife and children packed away, wandering out of their offices and picking up my trail. Appraising looks at a silhouette that was starting to shape up … Slowing down in front of shop windows when I looked over my shoulder … This was the first time I’d wandered off into Paris without my parents, and it felt as though the whole city was hounding me.

  We’d finished paying off the house and the dollar was high, so we could afford our first European holiday. Being French-Canadians, our destination was never even discussed: it would be the old country. Paris, the very place I’d so aspired to come to a mere six years ago. But at seventeen, you didn’t do excited when you were trailing behind your parents, wishing you didn’t look as though you were with them. This was just a scouting expedition. I’d be back on my own some day. By then I might have figured out how to handle the attentions of the older males of the Parisian herd. Who did those guys think I was?

  Sweat was rolling between my breasts. My stalker was still there, some guy idling away his lunch hour, probably enjoying my panic, his hunter’s instincts aroused. I ducked into a perfume shop – the touristic Avenue de l’Opéra hadn’t been hit by the annual holiday shut-down. A slight, dark woman with side-swept hair framing a heart-shaped face, her crimson lips a vivid contrast with the lapis lazuli of her drawstring-waist dress, gave me what I would later come to call ‘the Parisian bar-code gaze’: a jaded, swift, head-to-toe assessment of market value. She made me feel as though I’d crawled out of a trashcan.

  ‘May I help you, mademoiselle?’

  I peered through the window. My stalker was leaning down to spy on me between the Christian Dior displays.

  ‘Actually, I came in because this man was following me … No, don’t look! Can I stay here for a while?’

  I was beginning to amuse her. Slightly.

  ‘Stay as long as you want.’

  I fussed with the lipsticks, jabbering about annoying Parisian men. Lapis Lazuli cocked her head on her shoulder.

  ‘And why does that bother you?’

  ‘I find it … insulting. As though they thought I was cheap.’

  ‘They’re just trying their luck. No harm done. Let me know if I can help you with anything.’

  I turned my attention to the bottle display. Since Tigress, I’d managed to smuggle Shalimar talcum powder and a Coty Sweet Earth compact with three small pans of wax smelling of hyacinth, honeysuckle and ylang-ylang into the house. The latter’s scent stayed fairly close to the skin and I’d found I could risk it even in the vicinity of my father’s oversensitive nose. But the stuff on those shelves was better: a dive into the glossy pages of French magazines.

  ‘That’s a very pretty dress you’ve got there, mademoiselle. Did you find it at the flea market in Saint-Ouen?’

  I’d been to Saint-Ouen, of course, though the dress came from a vintage clothing stall in downtown Montreal. Since I’d stumbled on it, my closet had become crowded with what my mother disgustedly called ‘old clothes’ – 40s crepe dresses, ruched silk blouses and nip-waisted, shoulder-padded satin jackets. Clearly, I was on to something if this elegant Parisian thought my dress was pretty …

  I reached out my hand to a bottle shaped like a flattened drop, took off the cap and was on the verge of raising it to my nose when Lapis Lazuli snatched it, deftly dipped a blotter into it and waved it around in the air before handing it over.

  ‘Voilà, that’s how it’s done,’ she said in that dry, pedagogical voice Parisian women use when they’re handling clueless tourists. Her bronze-lacquered eyelids fluttered as she brushed me with another bar-code look, a little more slowly this time.

  ‘You’re lovely … so pulpeuse.’

  It was the first time I’d heard that particular French word, a synonym for plump, perhaps, but one conjuring ripe-fleshed fruit rather than blubber. Lapis Lazuli had pronounced it as though she’d kissed the air twice. I wondered whether she was coming on to me. In fact, she was closing in for the kill.

  ‘You need a luscious, ample, floral scent to suit those naughty eyes of yours peeping under your fringe – no wonder men are following you around … This is First, by Van Cleef and Arpels. I’ve always thought jasmine was wonderful with pale olive skin like yours…’

  Pearly bubbles popped inside my nose while I flailed about for my scant olfactory references.

  ‘This reminds me a little bit of … Rive Gauche, maybe?’

  Lapis Lazuli nodded.

  ‘It’s in the same family, but it’s more opulent. It may be too ladylike for you though. How about Azzaro? It’s also got jasmine, and rose, and gardenia, but with a warm amber and sandalwood base. The little touch of plum gives it a lovely rounded feeling…’

  I’d never heard anyone speak about fragrance that way. Apart from my dissections of ads with Sylvie to pick out the women we’d become if we sprayed on the potions, I’d never discussed fragrance at all. Of all the notes Lapis Lazuli had mentioned, only rose and plum came within the scope of my experience. But Azzaro did feel like a better fit than First. There was something tender about it, an earthiness seeping through the flowers.

  I wandered over to a round bottle with a cap in the shape of twin stylized arums. This brand I knew better. In a bid to wean me off my ‘smelly old rags’ my mother had sewn me a flowered chiffon drop-waist dress by Chloé from a Vogue Paris Original pattern and I loved the way the drawstring neck slid off my shoulder when I loosened it after leaving the house.

  ‘Why yes! Chloé. Why didn’t I think of it myself?’

  Smothered in an avalanche of white petals, I gasped, inhaled again, and let out a little delighted chuckle. This I could understand: FLOWERS.

  ‘I’ll take it!’

  Lapis Lazuli tut-tutted.

  ‘You need to know if it likes your skin and if your skin likes it. Try it on for a while.’

  What, she didn’t want to make the sale now?

  ‘Try Chloé on one wrist and Azzaro on the other. You can come back later.’

  I did come back the next day for a bottle of Ch
loé. Not because I was particularly smitten with it: for all her frothy blondeness and floaty flowered chiffon, Karl Lagerfeld’s first fragrance felt like she could pogo me off the dancefloor without breaking a stiletto heel. But it would have been hard to find a scent more obnoxious to my father; the olfactory equivalent of the Dior scarlet lipstick I also bought from Lapis Lazuli when I went back.

  Needless to say, that huge wake of flowers drew even more Parisian flesh-hounds. Some of Lapis Lazuli’s sexual self-confidence must have seeped under my skin, because I was starting to feel it was fun. I’d even dawdle and throw backwards glances from under my fringe. My body may not have had a Vogue model’s tawny long-limbed elegance or Lapis Lazuli’s dusky wiriness, but it had magnetic power. Men were such animals …

  * * *

  My Parisian initiation came at a turning point for the industry. The 1976 First by Van Cleef and Arpels was actually ‘the last major perfume of this century which was developed in the classical manner, the last perfume not to use marketing’, its author Jean-Claude Ellena told Michael Edwards in Perfume Legends. Later on, in his Journal of a Perfumer, he added that he had ‘collected, borrowed and piled up every sign of femininity, wealth, power’ to compose it.

  The following year, a perfume was launched that outdated the bourgeois charms of the Van Cleef and sent perfume executives scurrying to huddle with their marketing teams; a perfume that tapped directly into the subconscious perception of perfume as a mysterious, intoxicating substance that could magically transform women into exotic empresses.