The Perfume Collector

by Kathleen Tessaro

  ‘We are none of us the same girl, are we?’

  The Grand Casino at Monte Carlo was a triumph of elaborate Belle Époque design, a golden canopy of gleaming gilt and elaborate flourishes. In the evening, under its vast domed ceiling, all of Monte Carlo society could be observed, including one delightful, wayward young woman and her tragically debauched English guardian.

  Valmont watched from a remote seat at the bar as Eva worked her charms.

  Her role at the tables was just as she had outlined. She seemed to pay little if any attention to Lamb, acting instead like a very sexy, tempestuous child. Occasionally she’d steal a sip from his drink or tap out an impatient little rhythm while he was glowering over his cards. More often she’d flirt, dance, tell rude jokes. Sometimes Lamb would beg her to be quiet or try to get her to leave. But she always ignored him. Only Valmont guessed that her well-timed interruptions were, in fact, carefully orchestrated signals.

  Lamb’s reputation was crucial to the success of their venture. An alcoholic of heroic proportions, he regularly lost staggering amounts of money on sloppily played hands, ensuring that few devoted gamblers ever took him seriously. But then, after everyone had long written him off, and Eva was begging him to give up, he would place some magnificent bet and the tables would turn.

  Shortly afterwards, she would haul him back to the hotel in a stupor.

  That night he kept his distance. But Valmont couldn’t help but notice a seamless affinity between the two of them, an instinctual rhythm only he was aware of. Eva was so charming, outrageous, and seemingly oblivious of anything but herself. And Lamb so perfectly dismissive of her; it was almost impossible to imagine that together they were pulling off these nightly coups. And never once did Eva ever do anything that betrayed her level of true concentration and focus.

  When next her saw her, he complimented her on her skill.

  ‘You’re the only one who knows, Andre,’ she sighed. ‘But I’m bored with playing the fool. I want a new conquest. Let’s make you famous, shall we?’

  She was true to her word.

  Over the next week, Eva found ways of taking very public notice of Valmont, planting an air of mystery around him. She whispered to her companions as soon as he appeared in the lobby or at dinner and since he was under orders to ignore everyone, he would register her with nothing more than disdain, retiring to a table in the far corner on his own.

  She took him to a young tailor in the hills of Monte Carlo who made him a pair of very simply cut, clean-lined black gabardine trousers and two shirts of dark grey silk. ‘If you cannot fit into the mould, then you must step out of it,’ Eva smiled approvingly, running her fingers along the smooth fabric across his shoulders. The dark colours and simple silhouette made him seem taller, chicer and far more modern. ‘Anyone can wear a suit, but casual clothing is the great equalizer. What I adore is that you look as if you’re not taking anything too seriously. That makes everyone else appear overdressed.’

  In return, he repaid her in the only way he could. ‘I want to take you somewhere; to show you something miraculous.’ He took her by train one day to the jasmine fields of Grasse. They travelled third class, slipping away in the early morning like two teenagers playing truant.

  To Valmont, Grasse was like a sacred shrine.

  ‘I’m going to teach you how to smell,’ he told her, as soon as they got on the train. ‘Most people judge scents and they avoid looking into the heart of them.’ He found seats for them across from a couple of farm workers who were heading to market.

  ‘Inhale the sweat, the dirt, the oil from their unwashed hair,’ he whispered in her ear.

  She shot him a look. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ she whispered back.

  ‘Because this is the root of all perfume creation. To change the way we smell. It could be argued that all perfume is born out of shame; a self-consciousness of our natural odour. We want to hide it.’

  ‘Or change it,’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s right. In that way, fragrance is an aspiration. A goal. Not just a tool of seduction but of power and status. Do you realize how much the ancients used to pay for francinsense or myrrh? Whole empires were built on the trade of these commodities. You see, even then, when life was short and cruel, people wanted to smell differently. To be transported. But these coarse natural odours – filthy hair, pungent skin, unwashed women – they’re the root of everything – of our disgrace and desire. That’s what I meant by people judge them.’

  Eva rested her head on his shoulder. ‘And what are we meant to do with them, professor?’

  ‘Observe them. Appreciate them. They have a profound energy, a rich, sexual, animal vibration all their own.’

  ‘You make it sound like music.’

  ‘It is like music. An orchestration. And sweat is like silence; the reason why the composer reaches for his pen in the first place.’

  When they got out, they walked behind a mule cart down a country road that cut through two fields. ‘The smell of the shit is so pure – so absolute! That animal eats nothing but rainwater, grass and hay. If it were a note, it would be played on a cello.’

  Near the end of the road, the mule turned one way, they the other. ‘Here we are.’ Valmont took her hand. They were visiting Philippe Mul whose family had owned jasmine fields for centuries, pressing and distilling the precious flowers into the world’s costliest and rarest jasmine absolute. Monsieur Mul had known Madame Zed for years. He took them on a tour of his factory, and demonstrated how the plants were gathered in specially designed baskets, crafted from chestnut splits, that easily fitted around the harvester’s waist while allowing the blossoms to breathe without bruising. And then he showed them the fields.

  The plants were just beginning to flower; soft, indescribably delicate white blooms, tinged with palest pink. It would be September before they would be ready to harvest but already the air was sweetly scented each time the wind rustled through them.

  That day Eva and Valmont sat, for hours, with barely a word between them.

  Philippe let them picnic in the groves. Afterwards, they rolled their jackets up under their heads and dozed, the sun warming their faces. The air was luxuriant with the combined fragrance of fresh sea-salt breezes, sun-baked earth and translucent, milky flowers.

  ‘There is nothing like it,’ Valmont said, turning over to look at Eva. ‘You see, don’t you? The world is defined by smells – not words or shapes or sounds. This is the language that makes sense, that everyone understands.’

  She nodded, reluctant to fill the air with words or shapes or sounds.

  In the silence of fragrance, Eva saw how ambiguous, complex stories could be told. Shifting and mutating, they blossomed, bloomed and faded; their very impermanence was incredibly moving to her. You could be laughing in public yet wear, right on the surface of your skin, a perfume ripe with longing, dripping with regret, shining with hope, all at the same time. It would fade as the day faded, vanishing into gossamer on your skin. And still it had the power to catch you unaware, piercing right through you, when you hung your dress up that night.

  ‘This is my religion,’ Valmont sighed, closing his eyes again, completely at ease for the first time in weeks.

  And here is my salvation, Eva thought to herself. I will not go mad as long as there is beauty in the world and I can be near it.

  They stayed until the light dimmed, and, as they stood in the shadows of the spreading twilight, the blooms exuded their richest, silkiest perfume.

  Soon, whenever Valmont appeared, heads turned; people began to talk. A telltale hush followed in his wake. He fell into the role that Eva had assigned him with ease; chin in the air, a book tucked under his arm, he ignored everyone. And it was working. The concierge began to greet him enthusiastically each morning, the maître d’ to save a special table for him, off to one side but with an excellent view of the whole dining room; fresh flowers even appeared on his dressing table. Shortly afterwards, he was moved to a room with a sea v
iew courtesy of the management and he extended his stay.

  Then the invitations began to arrive.

  ‘“Madame Legrand requests the pleasure of your company at afternoon tea”!’ Eva read the invitation aloud, laughing as she tossed the card into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Valmont scrambled to get it out again. ‘Legrand is rich.’

  ‘What are you doing? You cannot go. You must turn them down.’

  ‘But this could be a client!’

  ‘Are you willing to throw it all away? And when we’re so close? Think, Andre. The wrong clients will kill you before you’ve begun. It’s up to you to set the tone. Tea? With Madame Legrand and her lady friends? Are you mad?’ She stood up, pacing the room. ‘Your perfume should be the magic potion that allows the average person to transform into a god or goddess. The people you create for should be these Olympians!’ She turned on him. ‘Have you seen Madame Legrand?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well,’ she folded her arms across her chest, ‘Madame Legrand looks very much like Monsieur Legrand in a dress. Is that worthy of your art?’

  He had to smile.

  Her passion was invigorating; her vision even more comprehensive than his own. And he loved to hear her talk about his work.

  ‘I leave it to your discretion,’ he conceded.

  And so Monsieur Valmont respectfully declined.

  Madame Legrand was in a frenzy.

  To make it up to him, the very next evening Eva introduced him to her friend Yvonne Vallée, the beautiful wife of film and cabaret star Maurice Chevalier. Yvonne had a childhood fondness for violets, a romantic memory of the scent that she’d never been able to recapture. Was there any way, she begged, that Valmont might be persuaded to create something based on this simple flower?

  Valmont sighed wearily, as if he couldn’t imagine anything more tedious.

  That very same night he set to work tempering the overwhelming sweetness of the flowers with heavy doses of damp green moss and rosewood, and sensual undertones of old leather, black earth and amber. It took several days, transforming his bathroom into a makeshift workroom; sending Eva to Grasse for supplies.

  Yvonne was delighted and amazed with the result.

  The perfume became her signature scent, made all the more tantalizing by the fact that Valmont would create it for no one but her.

  Soon afterwards, Thelma Furness arrived, the radiant, married paramour of the Prince of Wales. At Eva’s urging, Valmont conjured an exotic, narcotic creation of night-blooming jasmine, jonquil, narcissus, tuberose, sandalwood and musk… an operatic formulation full of decadence and lust.

  She was devoted. Monte Carlo swooned over both her and her scent.

  And Paris began to take note.

  This was followed by discreet enquiries by the Prince of Wales himself. No matter how vehemently Valmont denied all rumours of the association, his stock skyrocketed overnight. And the French, being besotted with the sex scandals of the English, were quick to equate him with two of the world’s greatest aphrodisiacs: exclusivity and illicit sexual desire.

  In a very short amount of time, Eva had managed what Valmont couldn’t have accomplished in years on his own. Soon he couldn’t imagine making a professional decision without discussing it with her first.

  In the evenings he stalked her. He didn’t mean to, but night after night he found himself in the Grand Casino, watching her from a distance. And he was aware that he wasn’t the only one. She had many admirers.

  There was the Italian newspaper editor with the curling moustache and cigar, the businessman from Vienna, and the French cabaret star, who kept delaying his departure to Hollywood on the off chance that Mademoiselle Dorsey might return one of his many telephone calls. Valmont observed in silent mortification as notes were exchanged, expensive gifts delivered to her room, ‘chance’ meetings staged so that they might speak to her.

  Somewhere in the background, Lamb presided over the entire drama. His demeanour was relaxed, even amused. He acted like a man in possession of an exceptional race-horse. Drink in hand, he was content to sit back and watch as she sidestepped one man, or flirted with another. But his composure alarmed Valmont. Whatever ties he had to her, they were unthreatened. And while Valmont drifted from one location to the next like a ghost haunting her wake, Lamb let her wander freely, from his room to anyone else’s, without so much as the bat of the eye.

  He was sure of himself.

  This sureness depressed Valmont more than if she’d been wearing a gold wedding ring and pushing a perambulator.

  He tried to confront her about it. ‘You could have any man here,’ he pointed out, trying to present the argument as an impartial witness. ‘Why do you stay with Lamb?’

  ‘One man is very like another,’ she answered vaguely.

  ‘That’s not true. He’s a drunk and a third-rate gambler! He needs you much more than you need him.’

  ‘If only that were true. He has something I want.’

  ‘What can he have that you can’t get more easily from someone else?’

  Eyes dimmed, she turned away. ‘It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand.’

  The conversation was over.

  His questions had forced her into a private world he could sense but not penetrate.

  One night, very late, he heard Lamb boasting about her in the bar. He was beyond drunk; his tie was undone, his jacket off, and he was badly in need of a shave. The sickly sweet odour of alcohol and sweat oozed from his very pores.

  A racing car driver was quizzing him. ‘How is it you have ended up with the most beautiful girl in Monte Carlo? An old man like you!’

  ‘An old man like me!’ Lamb took another swig and leaned back. ‘I tell you what, I’ll do you a deal. You can have her for a small fee.’

  ‘A fee? Are you mad?’ The man laughed.

  ‘No, I’m perfectly serious. Ten thousand pounds and she’s yours.’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds!’ The man whistled. ‘That’s no small fee.’

  ‘She’s worth it.’

  ‘But how can you sell another human being? It’s impossible.’

  Lamb shook his head. ‘If you buy the lead, my dear man, then you can have the dog for free.’

  ‘Dog? Lead? What is this? I don’t understand.’

  Lamb clapped him on the back, a little too hard. ‘Unless you have the money, the rest is unimportant.’

  The driver laughed awkwardly, and the conversation changed.

  Valmont was incensed. He wanted to strangle him.

  He was possessed by a painful, confused longing, charged with possibility. When Eva was close to him, he was satisfied, whole. But his desire to touch her was waning. Her scent was all he needed to satisfy and stimulate him. It filled his dreams, spurring him to new refinements in his art.

  He formulated Auréole Noire, inspired by the fiery halo that seemed to burn around her that first night she visited him. It was, in fact, a variation on the theme of her own natural scent. An elaborate composition on the central aria of her smell.

  Bright, icy clear and yet tender at the same time – built on the original idea of contrasting states that had inspired him with the rain. Top notes of velvety violet leaves, luxurious white flowers and light geranium, warmed to fiery depths, created from amber resins, smoky wood and smouldering dry citrus leaves. Underlying doses of ouhd and ambergris lent it a melting, shifting quality; metamorphosing from an apparition of pure light, to a burning dark core and back again. It was a scent that lacked coyness, made no concessions to charm. Like standing on the edge of a great and terrifying cliff, it was shocking, beautiful, sublime.

  Something of Eva’s disturbing beauty, slow-burning sensuality and razor-sharp mind was reflected in it.

  And yet he doubted himself.

  No other perfume smelled even remotely like it. It was too bold, unorthodox, veering from one extreme to another without any mollifying middle notes; it assaulted
the senses rather than seduced them. It had an unapologetic grandeur, ancient and iconic, like the hard, symmetrical face and staring unseeing eyes of Greek gods, carved in cold white stone.

  Valmont realized with a sickening sense of fear and disgust that suddenly Eva’s opinion mattered more to him than his own.

  No one, not even Madame Zed, had ever held such power over him.

  His muse possessed him, saturated him the way water soaks into a flimsy cloth until the fabric is more liquid than solid.

  He hid the perfume from her.

  It was his first act of betrayal. And, his first true act of independence.

  Then the actress Kay Waverley came to spend a fortnight by the sea.

  Kay Waverley had flared into stardom seemingly from nowhere. And like many would-be sirens of the silver screen, she was tight-lipped about her origins. The studio claimed she’d been discovered working as a clerk at a Woolworths’ in Missouri, backing the story up with a photo spread of her visiting one such store, surrounded by awestruck, young women in uniforms. But here in Europe there were other rumours, rumours that her past was considerably less wholesome – that in fact she’d earned her living as a highly paid prostitute before she acquired the trappings of a Hollywood starlet. But nobody knew for sure either way.

  The single fact that everyone agreed on was that she’d been the lover of the German film director Josef Wiener. He’d launched her career in the bizarre surrealist movie, Moon Dust, in which she’d received mixed reviews. Her one universal success had come from her portrayal of Salome in his film of the same name. But then he’d grown tired of her and replaced her with a beautiful young girl from Kentucky. (Some said that she was still a teenager at the time.) Alone and unattended, Waverley’s star flickered uncertainly in the Hollywood firmament. She moved from one lover to the next, from leading men to producers to scriptwriters. There were tales of morphine addiction after she’d fallen from her horse filming The Bandit of the West. She was replaced.

  Now she’d taken up residence in one of the sprawling pale pink villas in the hills that surrounded Monte Carlo. Apparently she needed to rest her nerves. But the sudden presence of the Italian playboy and her former co-star Enzo Gotti made it unlikely that rest was what she was getting.