I know I do. The woman whose ‘sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much’, is the one I sought out in the churches and museums of Europe, from Bernini’s Penitent Mary Magdalene in the Chigi Chapel of the Siena Duomo, marble made swirling ecstatic flesh, to Christ and the Magdalene in the Musée Rodin, of which the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote ‘like a flame tormented by the wind, [she] tries to embed and hide the ineffable suffering of this so greatly loved body in her own broken love.’
It is to her that I have come today at La Madeleine. To the fallen woman who bore perfumes, and who has ever since fascinated men and women into spinning her myth until it was as inextricably woven with passion and sensuality as her hair was around the feet of the Saviour. To the woman whose sorrow was as luxuriant as her sins; whose tears were sweeter than the essence roses yield in distillation, ‘sweating in a too warm bed’ in the 17th-century poem by Richard Crashaw. Who could know more about duende than the Magdalene, who found her beloved arisen from the dead only to have him refuse her embrace? In Latin, his words to her in the Garden of Gethsemane, Noli me tangere, mean ‘Touch me not.’ But the original Greek in John’s Gospel, mê mou haptou, could be better translated as ‘Stop clinging to me’ or ‘Cease holding on to me.’
As I watch the wick catch and the flame flicker feebly in the chilly dankness of the cavernous church, I wonder whether ‘Stop clinging’ couldn’t be my own motto. Perhaps pride supersedes luxuria in my soul? I neither cling nor let myself be clung to. My body has been touched, and my heart clawed bloody by many hands as I tore myself from embraces or threw myself into arms that drew me in before pushing me away, as I knew they would. So I have forged myself an armour – remove the ‘r’ and you get amour – out of words and adornment: the leather and silk, the black that frames my eye, the seashell curl of my lip, the velvety powder that stretches over my face like a veil. The stilettos punching patterns in the ground while their red soles beckon, in a 21st-century equivalent of the soles of courtesans’ sandals in Ancient Rome, which printed advertisements for their wares on the sand they trod.
‘Sans talons hauts, on a le cul bas’: ‘Without high heels, your ass is low’ was the bit of advice passed on by Mistinguett, who reigned in French music-halls from the 1900s to World War II, to her junior, the raspy-voiced Arletty. I’ve heeded Mistinguett’s advice and freed my cul from the laws of gravity. Having done so, I am forever at risk of falling – a grating, a pothole, a puddle will trip me up. In truth, I tell you, I am a fallen woman just waiting to happen …
Whatever I believe or disbelieve, it all comes down to this: fallen woman. I may have cut loose from my Catholic upbringing, but I am still a Catholic by culture, the Virgin and Penitent Whore seared into my psyche. Is it any surprise that my path was bound to cross the Magdalene’s often? That I’ve ended up dedicating myself to the art she protects? And that I uphold the heretic tradition of the Magdalene by revealing the Gnostic secrets of perfumery?
I come bearing perfume, but I also bear words. Touch me not, then, but follow my steps, hear my voice, see my smile, bear my gaze, surrender to my perfume. It is my perfume that calls you and draws an invisible bond between what you breathe and what I exhale.
* * *
The Magdalene first beckoned to me in the late 80s, when I was invited to watch the rejoneadora Marie-Sara fight bulls on horseback in the village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue. This was where, according to tradition, Mary Magdalene landed after being cast off in a rudderless boat by the pagans. It is tempting to think that from there she went off to kick-start the perfume industry. But she didn’t make a beeline for Grasse: according to The Golden Legend, she converted the pagans in Marseilles before retreating to a grotto in the Massif de la Sainte-Baume to spend the rest of her life in contemplation and mortification. Again, it is tempting to imagine that the mountain took its name from her association with aromatic materials. But though baume is the French word for ‘balm’ or ‘balsam’, in this case it is derived from the low-Latin balma, which means ‘grotto’.
At Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Mary Magdalene’s cult has been superseded by that of Sara-la-Kali, ‘Sara the Black’, who is said to have been either the servant of Mary Jacoby or a local noblewoman who helped the Christian refugees, and is the patron saint of the Gypsies, who make a pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer every year on her feast day. But though it was Sara the Black’s image that was plastered all over the village, it was of the Magdalene I thought as I was carrying on a tipsy late-night conversation with Luis Rego in a bar near the small village bullring. Luis, a Portuguese-born singer and actor in slapstick comedies, was a soulful, serious man off-stage. I’d been up to no good in Seville and the stories had somehow reached Luis – or was I the one who told him? With the arrogance of a young woman – and a slightly miffed one, as Luis showed no sign of being aware of my charms – I boasted that, when I sinned, my sins were great.
‘Don’t be so pretentious,’ Luis answered. ‘Your sins are insignificant on the scale of things.’
I stood corrected, but not cured of my Magdalene complex. More often than not, as Mary Magdalene was to the Virgin Mary, I’ve been the Other Woman. At least, that’s what I was the last time I paid a visit to the sinner-saint.
* * *
Monsieur and I had just spent the night at L’Espérance, a luxury hotel just outside Vézelay, after gorging ourselves on the chef Marc Meneau’s truffled poularde de Bresse. When we left in the morning, I asked him to go through the town so I could pop into Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, the Romanesque basilica set atop a hill, where it was claimed the saint’s relics had been found (you could probably make up at least five Mary Magdalenes with the remains boasted by various churches). Monsieur’s mobile phone rang as he parked in front of the basilica, so I went off on my own to take a few steps up the nave. A small choir of Vietnamese nuns was rehearsing in one of the chapels. I’d already been there with the Tomcat as we were driving back from our honeymoon in Italy, but at that moment I wasn’t thinking of either of my men, the one I was still married to or the one who was married to another woman. Just surrendering to the light-headedness that comes from an evening drowned in wine and a few hours’ sleep at dawn; sated flesh dancing in a beam of sun under the tall graceful Romanesque vaults. That feeling of lightness, the soaring of a body redeemed by beauty – not my body’s beauty, but the beauty surrounding it, lifting it, carrying it upwards – was all that mattered. That day too I’d lit a candle, but as I hadn’t repented I asked for no favour: I wasn’t expecting the saint to bend the rules.
* * *
And now, here in La Madeleine, once I’ve dropped a coin in the alms box, I ask for none either. My business with Mary Magdalene is strictly professional. I ask for the perfume born from my memories of the celebrations of the Passion of Christ – of his night in the Garden of Gethsemane and of Good Friday when Mary Magdalene wept at the foot of the cross – to be as beautiful as I’ve ever dreamed it.
That’s a prayer I’m sure she can answer.
29
The Roadrunner had a face for radio but a voice whose wavelengths could travel from your ears to the soles of your feet, pushing all the right buttons along the way. We entertained the kind of flirt the French are so adept at weaving into their professional relationships, at least when they know how to handle their native tongue in all its titillating subtleties. He’d been wounded by a sniper shot in Bosnia and was taking a break between war zone assignments by doing a radio series on historic Parisian hotspots of an entirely different kind. I was his guest expert and had been digging up the addresses of some of the brothels that had been closed down after World War II. We’d buzz the intercoms and interview the current occupants to find out if they knew anything about their building’s former function.
The Roadrunner seemed pretty knowledgeable about women, so when he sprang the question on me in the same tell-me-everything-my-child tone he used on his interviewees, I skipped a beat before responding
, unable to decide whether he was kidding:
‘Do women fake it?’
Well … of course.
Then he wanted to know whether I did.
I did. I have. I do. Unless a man puts his hand to my heart, I’m pretty sure none has ever been able to tell that the back-arching, limb-twisting spasms and moans were just part of a show … once in a while. I’m not above stroking a man’s ego as deftly as anything else that comes to hand. But this time I’m not faking it. There’s no need to. There never is, with perfume.
The sigh comes unprompted as I’m sniffing my wrist, sitting on a swivel stool in Bertrand’s lab. Aesthetic judgement plays no part in this type of frisson; it’s purely animal, the body easing into an exquisitely sensuous scent-zone. It’s the first time I get the urge to try a new mod directly on my skin in the midst of a session – I’ve always waited until the next morning to test with a rested nose. But this couldn’t wait. Duende 25 was begging for flesh. So I rummaged through the drawers to find a pump, screwed it onto the phial and sprayed.
* * *
This is our first meeting since Bertrand’s creative crisis. When I walked in an hour ago trailing the frigid December wind, I knew he’d come up with new mods even though I’d suggested we could just take stock. I was glad he’d resumed working but starting to wonder whether there was any point to my testing the mods he handed me after each session since he never waited for my remarks. So I asked him straight out: did anything I said matter?
‘Until I’m happy with what I’ve done…’
He waved his hand in front of his face and torso as though he were running it along a glass wall. Then backtracked. Of course, he listened: that was why he’d been in such a jam, trying to work my requests into the formula. But the Habanita accord I’d asked for was just too old-fashioned. In fact, he told me as we settled down to smell the new mods, he was still wondering whether the orange blossom and incense accord was such a good idea.
‘You have to tame it, make it smile, lighten it up, and I’m not going to get there with incense! We’ll end up with something imbitable and that’s not the aim of the game.’
Imbitable, pronounced ‘ahn-bee-tah-bluh’, is a French slang word which means incomprehensible, unbearable. Bertrand’s clients have been begging him to steer clear of his usual imbitable. He doesn’t want to do imbitable any more, even for the sake of originality. This isn’t the first time Bertrand mentions the need to be less quirky. But if he weren’t experiencing a tug-of-war between composing on his terms and giving clients what they want, the subject wouldn’t be cropping up so often, as though he were trying to convince himself.
Wait a minute … did he mention clients? We’ve never discussed the specifics of pitching Duende to one of the brands he works with, but that would be the logical final step of our creative venture and it’s always been tacitly understood that we’d take it. I’ve been waiting for Bertrand to bring the matter up. The product probably needs to be closer to its final form before it’s shown to anyone.
That time may not be far off. The proof is in the sigh.
I’m not staging it for Bertrand’s sake. Right now, he’s got his back turned to me. He’s writing out the formula for Duende 28, also a first: he’s never formulated right under my nose. He thought it up as we were discussing mods 25, 26 and 27, all variations on the idea of Habanita rather than a literal rendition. Habanita’s coumarin has been swapped for tonka bean absolute, which naturally contains coumarin but gives off richer almond, hay and tobacco effects, along with slightly roasted notes. Bertrand has added cistus to N°26 and tobacco absolute to N°27, but N°25 is the one we’re interested in. There’s flesh in it, flower flesh: like sucking the nectar out of a plucked blossom, I blurt out. Bertrand says that’s exactly what he was aiming for: orange blossom honey, nectar, petals … But the vanilla is a little overwhelming. Rather than taking some out, he decides to cover it up with the green notes of Duende 5. That’s what he’s doing now: one last mod before we wrap up for the day.
He’s often teased me about being such a chatterbox, so this time I’m shutting up and letting him concentrate. Except, that is, for the sigh. Clearly, he hasn’t heard it. He’s scribbling away, mumbling about putting in a trace of this or that, reaching out for various materials … So I go on sniffing my arm like a good girl.
Then it comes out. Not just a sigh. The Moan.
And there goes Bertrand, blending away obliviously. By the time I breathe out the second moan, I decide he should be apprised of the situation. After all, he’s got a grown woman going loose-limbed in his lab just by sniffing his stuff. He really should be paying a little more attention. I clear my throat. Still no reaction.
‘Ahem … Bertrand?’
‘Yup?’ he answers, barely looking over his shoulder.
‘I’ve … uh … been making a lot of little noises that should be pretty flattering to you.’
That catches his attention. He swivels on his stool to face me.
‘What do you mean?’
As I launch into a mini-recital of the orgasmic noises I’ve been cooing, the Roadrunner’s question pops into my mind, so I add:
‘Of course, you know as well as I do that those sounds can be faked. In this case, though, there wouldn’t be any point, would there? This came out spontaneously. I’d say it was a very good sign.’
He nods.
‘Go ahead. Let loose…’
Then he goes back to work. But we’re both giggling.
30
‘You should tighten your belt. You’re flashing plumber’s cleavage.’
Bertrand’s iPhone is booming its ‘Sonar’ ringtone from someplace in the lab and he’s been frantically trying to locate it, digging into his pockets, shifting sheaves of paper. He’s just leaned down to rummage through his satchel.
‘Excuse me?’
He straightens up, phone in hand. It’s stopped booming.
‘You know … the bit plumbers bare when they’ve got their head under the sink?’
I point to the small of my back. He grins sheepishly and hoists up his jeans.
‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’
Actually, wardrobe malfunction apart, Bertrand’s quite spiffy today in a hip-geek way. He’s swapped his rimless rectangular glasses for big cherry-red Buddy Holly frames, topped off with a narrow-brimmed grey tweed trilby. His long-sleeved tee-shirt is adorned with the face of a Papuan in primary-coloured tribal paint, who stares out from where nipples should be so that I never quite know who, of Bertrand or the Papuan, to look in the eye – it’s the male version of Wonderbra’s ‘my eyes are up here.’
The iPhone bloops to indicate he’s got a message. After listening to it, Bertrand pours out a string of expletives. I’ve always suspected he had a temper … While he launches into a series of calls to settle what seems to be a delivery problem, I go on serenely sniffing my wrist. This is our last session before Christmas and, this time, he hasn’t presented me with a new version of Duende. We’ve simply been debriefing mod 28. I’m not sure it’s because I complained he never waited for my input before tweaking: he’s just been too busy to tackle number 29, I suspect. When I walked in half an hour ago, he was already grumbling ‘merde’ as he hurriedly weighed a formula that a client suddenly wanted to get before 6 p.m.
Mercifully, he’s not taking his stress out on me. As soon as he’s settled his problem, he apologizes for the interruption and we resume our conversation in tones that feel much mellower than they’ve ever been. We’ve got good reason to feel mellow: we’re both pretty happy with the direction Duende is taking, though Bertrand is wondering whether the green top notes aren’t a little too cologne-like. I start prattling on about the fact that Latinos love colognes. When I stayed with friends in Spain I used to see giant bottles of Agua de this or that sitting in the bathroom for the whole family to splash themselves with. The effect can work itself into a Spanish story, I add.
‘Still, I’ll try to mask it a bit, make it more sophisti
cated. But it’s important to keep the cologne effect, because at L’Artisan Parfumeur, they quite liked it.’
‘Hold on … Why should you take into account what they like?’
Bertrand puts on his poker face.
‘Well, I’ve been telling them about our project.’
‘And?’
‘They’re interested.’
Shouldn’t Bertrand be helping me off the floor at this point? Have I still got a pulse? Granted, I’m a sophisticated Parisian and squealing is beyond my moral reach, unless I’m in the general vicinity of any spider whose body is bigger than a raisin. Still, I’m taking this much too calmly. Is it because I knew all along this was bound to happen?
Duende and L’Artisan Parfumeur feel like a perfect fit. They’ve done a lot of travel-based scents, a few of which are Bertrand’s. Though he’s been taking on other clients, he’s still their star perfumer, so they were the logical people to turn to.
But we haven’t got a name yet! The earlier we find something that hasn’t been copyrighted all over the planet, the better. I’ve known from the start Duende wouldn’t be available. Before I gave Bertrand the book by Federico García Lorca, he’d called the project ‘Séville Semaine Sainte’. Would that stick? Bertrand shakes his head. Too religious. We can play neither on ‘Fleur d’oranger’ as L’Artisan Parfumeur already has one, nor on ‘Orange blossom’, which exists in its sister brand Penhaligon’s. ‘Azahar’, the Spanish word, has already been taken by the Spanish designer Adolfo Dominguez, though Bertrand quite likes the word ‘Azar’ which springs from the same root and means ‘chance’. Maybe we could play on that. I’m groping round for words related to Holy Week …
‘How about madrugada?’
‘I love it! Love it!’ Bertrand gushes.
The Perfume Lover Page 22