I took a quick look at one of the envelopes, which contained materials related to a visit Jordan had made to Moscow and Leningrad, five years earlier—one of his last trans-Atlantic voyages. Before that brief trip, Jordan had never been behind the Iron Curtain. He’d gone, he said, to satisfy his curiosity, and he’d returned home without much to report. Moscow’s metro system with its beautiful mosaics and lighting fixtures had fascinated him, and he’d praised the perfume bottles he’d seen in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The ballet was excellent, the theater iffy—though he’d seen a revival of a satirical play by Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Bedbug, whose staging he’d pronounced masterful even given that he understood none of the words. Apart from those highlights, the Soviet Union hadn’t impressed him. He’d returned with a few bars of unpleasant chocolate and a little gift for Eve and me: we each got one of those painted dolls with a set of smaller dolls inside them.
“Never saw this stuff,” I answered Stuart. “It’s from Jordan’s trip to Russia.”
He returned to his packing, and I glanced at the remaining contents of the Russia box. As far as I could tell, its envelopes contained tourist information: articles from travel magazines, brochures on the Kremlin galleries, a catalog from the Pushkin Museum. Several flyers advertised hotels that looked like hideous concrete bunkers.
Reinserting these materials into their envelope, I cut my thumb. I remember wrapping it in some paper towel and securing the pseudo-bandage with brown packing tape. Afterward Stuart and I filled up the van and drove to the Salvation Army office in Somerville, where we dropped off all of Jordan’s clothing and several pieces of furniture. A nice woman at the Salvation Army gave me a smaller bandage for my thumb so I could drive back to the city with a firm grip on the wheel.
Soon thereafter I looked over all of Jordan’s theater files. As I’d suspected, they contained nothing noteworthy, nor anything I wished to keep, so I threw them out. I decided to examine the Russia files some other time; that carton went into my basement storage bin. Occasionally, as the years passed, I’d remember it was still there and wonder if a few theater or concert programs might be tucked away in it—maybe even something signed. Or Jordan might have jotted notes on performances he’d attended at the Bolshoi and the Alexandrinsky. Possible, but unlikely. Jordan hadn’t kept records of his travels; he didn’t own a camera or photo albums. He wasn’t the type to leave traces. That, he would have said, is what fragrances are for.
MY FATHER’S perfumes melded coolness and warmth, elegance and carnality. It was impossible not to feel drawn in by them. They operated at a deep level of sublimation, a place where safety and risk mingle and cannot be untangled.
For Jordan, perfume was more than anything else an acknowledgment of impermanence. Fragrance is time-bound: it ends in decay. Rather than attempting to deny or overcome this reality, Jordan found ways of exploiting it. He orchestrated his fragrances’ life spans like beautifully shaped musical compositions. Magically mobile, they registered in the mind like a dream.
He taught me the basics of perfume making when I was young—enough for me to gain a dim sense of what he did in his lab, and to appreciate the ways in which his efforts resembled those of a painter or a composer. Jordan worked with a remarkably broad palette, celebrating even the most familiar pairings, such as rose and jasmine, or lily and narcissus. The harmonies of his perfumes were complex, and the extraordinary range of their textures—from airy to dense, silken to flinty—sparked envy among his colleagues. Gradually I came to understand that Jordan’s scent-notes met the nose as an arpeggio meets the ear. They were successions of olfactory sensation, always quick and light, in perpetual motion.
Once I asked my father why the same fragrance didn’t ever seem to smell the same way twice on the person wearing it. Jordan replied that I must have a good nose: not many people were aware of what I’d noticed. This bit of praise I relished for its unexpectedness. Then he went on to describe the complicated interplay of fixatives (chemical agents added to a perfume so it could “cling” to its wearer) with the wearer’s own unstable skin secretions and body temperature—both of which made it impossible for a perfume applied on one day to smell just as it would if reapplied on another.
Perfume’s like a song, he concluded. Or a play. Each time it’s performed, it gives you something different.
Jordan was a master of forest scents culled from ferns, mosses, lichen, roots, bark, and resin. He harnessed their shade and smoke to the sweetness of hyacinth and violet, or the assertive spiciness of sandalwood and patchouli, creating perfumes that were overtly lush and serene but covertly turbulent, their sensuality in constant flux. He was one of the few perfumists of his generation who could handle fruits with real authority, using their essences to generate spritely top notes in fragrances buoyed by grassy or floral layers and underpinned by a calming basis of oakmoss and musk. Jordan’s fruity fragrances managed to convey what few in that category do: an unmistakable erotic charge, at first innocent seeming but soon enigmatic, insinuating, unnerving.
And with the “orientals”—opulent scents such as amber and vetiver—Jordan created fragrances that were provocative without ever resorting to vulgarity. Theirs was a lingering touch that imprinted itself on memory yet tricked memory, too, for it couldn’t be duplicated. I think of Jordan’s perfumes as secret passwords each wearer decoded on her own.
I HAVE my own theory about fragrances and how they work. Perfume disturbs self-recognition, and this disorientation is deeper than the confusion brought about by, say, wearing tinted contact lenses or someone else’s clothing. Suddenly the perfume wearer coexists with a person who looks, sounds, tastes, and feels to the touch exactly like herself or himself but smells different. And this gives the perfume wearer permission to be different—not necessarily in an alarming or radical way, but still, the capacity has been activated.
My father loved creating substances that possessed the power to redirect personalities. Fragrances allowed him to play an endless game of possibility in the theater of desire. And then there was that other theater, death’s. As any undertaker can attest, fragrances are excellent not only for enhancing a romance but also for disguising the smell of decay. Especially fragrances featuring Jordan’s favorite white flowers: orchids, lilies, narcissus, and gardenia.
Most people can’t imagine the death of a loved one without the presence of bouquets of white flowers. Tranquil and reassuring, these blossoms often show up on coffins and in funeral processions. My father, however, spurned this use of scent for himself. He wanted his long and intimate relationship with fragrance to terminate with his own ending. The day of his death, I found a note under his pillow, written in a spidery but legible hand. Cremation, it read, and no flowers, please.
IN MIDAFTERNOON, I hung my BACK IN TWENTY MINUTES sign in my window and made a quick delivery to the townhouse of a client on Barrow Street. The day was mild, my fast walk revivifying.
A few days earlier, this client had purchased from me a photo of an old theater in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which had been renovated in the 1970s. The picture (which I’d found in a piano bench in a Union Square antiques dive) showed the theater’s unrenovated interior. My customer had been involved with a performing-arts center housed in this theater, and although she had plenty of pictures of the refurbished space, she’d never seen a photograph of the mess it had once been. I offered to frame one of her “after” photos alongside my “before” photo, and to deliver the pair to her in time for a dinner party she was to host that evening. For this she’d compensated me handsomely.
After running my errand, I returned to The Fourth Wall. A little decal was affixed to the glass of my shop’s front door. It was a clown, brightly costumed, beneath whose outstretched hands a folded note had been tucked.
Stuart, I thought. But when I pried the note away from the decal’s sticky backing and opened it, I saw it was from Danny, thanking me for hearing her out. Would I please set aside whatever qualms I might have and tak
e a ride with her to Ithaca?
Refolding her note, I caught from it a quiet whiff of Danny’s perfume. The little clown would be tricky to peel off the glass; its adhesive resisted my thumbnail. Leave it, I decided, pressing the decal back on the door with my forefinger. And go to Ithaca with Danny. Why not?
INTERLUDE
CAMILLA’S FRIEND Stuart is too hard on jugglers. Seva always held them in high regard, and I agree with his assessment.
A fine juggler isn’t an entertainer, after all, but an artist who works in the most challenging medium of all: air. I’d say Stuart is rather competitive, which is only to be expected. The tension a mime generates onstage derives entirely from his physical presence. If he wants to incorporate objects into his act, he must evoke them himself, inciting the viewer’s imagination. His is the art of making the immanent actual, which is even more difficult than keeping multiple balls afloat at once.
Stuart’s a good mime, though lazy. He’s physically elastic and possesses a sharp eye for details. He’s also got a sense of humor—and he’s a theater man, so he knows his antecedents. More centrally, he’s aware of his vulnerabilities yet not ensnared by them.
Weakness acknowledged is a performer’s most renewable resource, the wellspring of his power. This paradox happens to be as valid offstage as on, a fact I emphasized to Seva on numerous occasions. He and I never saw eye to eye on the question of self-exposure. When he was imprisoned, I tried everything in my power to get him to pretend compliance—to think pragmatically, in other words—but his love for Russia had by then gotten all tangled up in his love for his work. Was my failure to allow for this ultimately responsible for what finally happened? Or by the time he got to Butyrka, was it already too late for a different outcome?
Occasionally I bring to mind a speech that Niels Bohr, the Danish theoretical physicist, gave to an audience of his peers, back in the mid-Twenties. Bohr was describing something he called the complementarity principle, which he applied to quantum systems. For any quantity that can be measured, Bohr explained, there is another, “complementary,” quantity—and the more accurately you measure the one, the more impossible it is to measure the other at the same time.
As might be imagined, this idea took some digesting, though Bohr explained it elegantly. At one point somebody asked him rather provocatively, “What is complementary to truth?”
“Clarity,” Bohr answered, without missing a beat.
Amen to that. Too bad Seva wasn’t there to hear him say it.
CAMILLA WASN’T at ease with her decision to go to Ithaca with her cousin’s daughter. And for good reason: Danny’s father-quest looked to be a fraught undertaking.
I predicted that when things boiled over (as they were bound to do), Danny would have a harder time of it than Camilla. She seemed a bit of a golden girl, untested by difficulty. She might require serious babysitting.
Yet before long, I began viewing her situation differently. The chief challenge she faced wasn’t finding herself suddenly alone after her mother’s death, but rather being forced to manage unwieldy emotions. Not everyone handles improvisation with aplomb! Even good actors can be thrown by it.
Seva used to assign each of his players a set of praktikabli, prepared places on the stage. Sometimes the cast members would fall apart completely when their praktikabli were altered without their foreknowledge. Watching Danny get tossed around by anger, grief, and confusion, I revised my opinion of her. She was handling her assignment just fine, all things considered.
BUT I spin ahead of myself—rather, of the two road-trippers . . .
The first of Camilla’s nighttime dramas provided her father with a minor role; the next placed him front and center. Not yet encountered on Camilla’s dream-stage, however, was her mother. That crucial personage, I decided, would have to make an appearance before Camilla left for Ithaca. No point delaying the encounter.
So for our third co-production, I prompted my collaborator to return to her earliest theater—that apartment on Ninth Street where she was raised—and unlock its doors and enter. Once inside she’d find everything topsy-turvy: the perfect Meyerholdian set, in other words!
THREE
THE KEY to the building’s front door is the large brass one. I put my left shoulder to the door and turn the key in the lock. The door gives way, as it always used to do, with a little groan. Passing through the tile-floored vestibule, I walk down the familiar hallway to the stairs on the right, ascend three flights, and proceed a few paces until I’m standing in front of the door to the apartment.
It swings open noiselessly. Instead of finding myself in the front hall, however, I see I’m somewhere else altogether: in an enormous laboratory. Small vials arrayed on large chrome racks line the vast room’s walls. The space smells of nothing at all, the perfect absence of odor.
Thinking it impossible that I could be smelling actual nothingness, I turn to my father, who is standing at my side. Underneath his white lab coat (I too am wearing one, its cotton stiffly clean, its cuffs neatly folded back), Jordan is sporting a tuxedo. His shoes are black patent-leather loafers, very dressy.
I sniff loudly, then raise my eyebrows questioningly. Jordan says nothing, though I know he’s understood my query: Why no smells?
I begin inspecting several vials lying on the huge worktable in front of me. The table’s gray surface looks like a slick metallic sea, so long and wide that I can’t make out whatever’s on its opposite side. Each of the vials before me has been labeled in my father’s meticulous hand. Their contents appear to be powders in various neutral shades. Some look like dust, others like finely ground mica, still others like cornmeal, sand, or flour.
Jordan hands me a large mortar and pestle, and I empty several vials into the mortar’s deep marble well.
Did you read their labels first? Jordan asks.
No, I say. Why should I? What difference does it make?
It makes a big difference, he snarls. Stop acting like you haven’t a clue what you’re about to do.
Oh come on, I respond, my tone placating. This isn’t the time for you to start picking on me about the details. Be glad I’m here! How would you do this without me? Smiling, I wag my forefinger at him. I’m it, Jordan: your one and only! Show me some gratitude, why don’t you?
He nods brusquely. Get on with it, he orders. Mix in some of that—he points at another vial—and then add this beaker of water. He hands me a clear plastic cup filled to its brim, and I pour the water into the mortar after adding the vial’s contents.
Now swish it all around with the pestle. Make sure you break up any lumps, he says.
I do as I’m instructed. The mixture gives off an unfamiliar smell; my nose wrinkles. Whew, I say. Strong.
Jordan nods.Solanum dulcamara: bittersweet.
He loosens his silk bow tie, which I recognize. Eve gave it to him for his birthday—which one, fiftieth, sixtieth? I can’t recall. Everything that’s come before this moment is a blur; all I know is I’m in this lab with my father, assisting him.
Now the pudding, says Jordan.
I open the door of a refrigerator behind me and pull out a small crystal bowl filled with a jelled brown substance. A silver spoon stands upright at its center. As I hand the bowl to Jordan, the spoon wobbles slightly.
Follow me, he states. And don’t forget that, he adds, pointing at the mortar.
He climbs onto the table, still holding the crystal bowl. I manage somehow to climb up as well, mortar in hand, and seat myself in front of him.
We’re now in a small sailboat whose rudder Jordan grasps with his free hand. We are sailing across the gray sea of the table, cutting swiftly through the placid waters, our bow aimed directly at a dark object on the other shore. A steady wind is strong enough to propel us forward without rocking us. Although only one sail is up, we’re making good progress. The table edge from which we’ve departed recedes, nearly vanishing as the upcoming shoreline—the opposite edge—comes into view.
What�
��s that? I ask, pointing at the object on shore. Seen from our vantage point, it looks to be a fairly narrow wooden box about six feet long.
Grasse, Jordan answers. In France. Near the Riviera.
I didn’t askwhere,I askedwhat.
Don’t be peevish, he retorts. You always wanted to go to France with me, and now I’m taking you. Aren’t you glad?
It’s a little late for that, I say, turning around to glare at him.
His smile is sidelong. Ah well, some daughters are just hard to please.
Hard to please? I say, incredulous. Are you out of your mind? No, I get it—you’re trying to guarantee my final memories of you will be angry ones, aren’t you? Aren’t I right? I stand, but the boat nearly tips, so I sit down again.
Calm yourself, Cammie, Jordan says. We’re almost there.
He brings down the sail, and we continue drifting toward the box. In a few moments we pull up alongside it and hop out of the boat, which promptly disappears.
We approach the box. I am following Jordan, who walks with his usual gracefulness, though I notice his gait has changed: it’s slightly wolfish, as though he were stalking prey. He’s no longer wearing a lab coat, nor am I. I’m in an elegant suit with a closely fitted peplum jacket and knee-length skirt, very early-Dior and lovely. My father’s tux is cut like the one Humphrey Bogart wore inCasablanca.We look like a French couple from the 1950s.
Reaching the box, Jordan moves to one of its sides; I stand at the other. He lifts its lid, hinged on my side; I feel it graze my kneecaps. We both stare in.
A woman is lying on her back in the box, her eyes closed. Although her face is heavily veiled, her naked body is swaddled in a layer of sheer fabric—muslin, it must be—through which I can perceive her full breasts and hips, the red polish on her fingernails and toenails, the dark hair of her pubis. She is at rest on a white satin coverlet. Next to her is an empty space, lightly indented.
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