The Secret Ways of Perfume

by Cristina Caboni

  Everything she was once sure of had crumbled, along with her carefully devised plans. She decided to go with her instincts.

  Just then, Elena found herself in front of a stand run by a young Indian perfumier. She stood to one side, listening to her. The woman had very clear ideas. Elena liked the description she gave of her perfumes: there was technical information, demonstrating a perfect understanding of her work, and simple language that could tap into the imagination of anyone who stopped to listen.

  Among these exotic perfumes, she found what she was looking for. When she opened it, there was a floral explosion: patchouli, gardenia, jasmine, and then a spicy heart, with mysterious notes of cloves and coriander. Lastly, the wood: it didn’t just harmonize the blend; it made it creamy. She imagined it on her own skin—the way it would dissolve, emanating elegance and refinement. She knew intuitively that this was the right perfume.

  Whether Jacques would like it, she didn’t know, but it was perfect for any woman who loved femininity and who didn’t want to relinquish every last hint of frivolity. To Elena, it was as if this perfume was speaking to her: telling her about itself, the places it came from, the women in red and gold saris for whom it had been invented, the modern city, the metropolis that Delhi had become. Paris would love it. She decided to listen to the perfume, and she bought it.

  She carried on walking around the Leopolda station with the perfume in her bag, and when she met up with Monique one hour later, Elena realized that she hadn’t felt so calm in a long, long time. Of course, Matteo’s betrayal still hurt, but as they were getting into the taxi that would take them to the Four Seasons, she felt something flicker inside her, a sense of expectation and excitement. Plus, she was absolutely ravenous.

  Much later, when night had fallen over the city, Elena’s gaze followed the lights of the plane taking her friend back to Paris. Before Monique left, they’d promised to speak to each other soon. And this time Elena had every intention of keeping her word.

  Four

  BERGAMOT: hope. Lively, scintillating.

  The fragrance gives energy and agility when all expectations have withered under the weight of monotony.

  Lights the way and helps us see alternatives.

  The palazzo on the medieval street of Borgo Pinti had belonged to Elena’s family forever. Legend had it that the beautiful building had been bought with the profits from a special perfume, an extraordinary essence secretly transported from Florence to France. A perfume that had charmed a princess. In return for this gift, the lady had given her hand and her dowry to the man who had commissioned the perfume, making him very rich indeed.

  That was the story. The few people who knew what had really happened were long dead.

  But the legend of the Perfect Perfume lived on.

  It was known, for example, that it had been created by Beatrice Rossini, the founder of the family business. In the first half of the seventeenth century, a period that saw two Florentine queens on the French throne, this remarkable woman had left her hometown to take on commissions abroad. She was an extraordinary perfumier. Florence’s most famous women wanted to be among her few, select clients. Beatrice had created a unique perfume for each of them. Even powerful noblemen competed for her services. They all wanted to distinguish themselves with their own special fragrance, a perfume worthy of their grandeur.

  Her fame was so great that Beatrice often had to travel to the courts of princes who requested her services. It is said that on one of these trips, she created a perfume so marvelous, so extraordinary, that it would stay forever etched on the memory of anyone privileged enough to smell it. An instant success, it was as brilliant as a shining star, as balanced as the purest scented waters, as simple as a breath of air. Its notes created a surprising, even delicate harmony. It was persistent and sensual. A perfume unlike anything that had been created before.

  But when she returned to Florence, richer than almost anyone there, Beatrice had no desire to talk about her experiences. She’d changed. She seemed absent, silent. She stopped going to court, gave up parties and all her friends. Deeply disillusioned by her rich suitors, she quickly married a man of humble origins, with whom she had a daughter, Laura. In the marriage contract, the man had granted her the privilege of keeping her own family name and passing it down to future generations. So she was born and forever remained Beatrice Rossini. And from then on, all the women in the family inherited her surname, like a prestigious, ancient brand.

  Widowed after just two years, she never wore mourning dress. There was no need, as the only color she’d worn since her return from France had been black. Satin, velvet, Irish lace: she allowed herself the finest materials, so long as they were in this somber color.

  She never revealed the secret source of her fortune to anyone, and she never remarried, despite numerous offers. She spent her days composing perfumes and making soaps and creams for people who wanted something special. Special, like the perfume that occasionally, on long summer nights, with only her own breath for company, she would take out of the secret compartment in her jewelry box. She didn’t open the silver vial. Ever. She just held it to her heart. That was also the only time she allowed herself the consolation of tears.

  The Perfect Perfume was the source of her joy and her pain.

  One December night, when her once-beautiful black hair was threaded with silver, and her breathing faltered more and more often, she knew her time had come. She asked her daughter, Laura, to bring her the chest and, after moving aside the jewelry, she showed her the perfume. She had to. Because the formula for the Perfect Perfume was the legacy awaiting her sole heir. But the exhaustion and the emotion were too much for her. She’d waited too long and she died in Laura’s arms, in front of the fire, remembering the past, talking about her secret instead of telling her the whole story. Beatrice never managed to give her daughter the formula for the perfume, but she did tell her it was hidden. She would find it in her books, among her notes, among the things she’d loved best. To get to it, all she had to do was follow the ways of perfume.

  But Laura never found it, nor did she manage to re-create it from the last drops of perfume in the vial. Beatrice had left too many formulas to make up, too many books to read, too much pain to deal with.

  After that, the other perfume-makers in the Rossini family passionately continued the search, driven by the certainty that all her compositions had been properly written down, always. Writing recipes down became rule number one—something they learned even before they knew that perfume was a mix of floral, wood and animal extracts, diluted in alcohol or oily substances. It was a pact, a promise. Every perfume was carefully recorded and stored.

  The formula was there, in the archives; of that, everyone had always been convinced—but it was like looking for a single coin in an overflowing treasure chest. How could they distinguish it from the thousands of others painstakingly stored in Beatrice’s archives? Which one of these was the formula for the Perfect Perfume? There were boxes full of paper to be examined: notes, studies and thoughts that all had to be processed meticulously. And then, of course, there was her diary.

  The fate of all the Rossini women was tied to their search. Each of them, in her own way, had deepened her study of perfumery. There were some who had experimented with new forms of alchemy, dared to try things that anyone else would have called madness or heresy. But they all knew that this wasn’t enough to discover what was missing: the Perfect Perfume.

  Elena’s grandmother Lucia had dedicated her entire life to the search for the Perfect Perfume. Year after year she’d experimented with the formulas written in Beatrice’s papers, with no success: none of those perfumes seemed that special to her. Based on her own knowledge and the experience she’d gathered from her ancestors, she was convinced there was a way to smell the perfume simply by reading the formula’s composition. For example, she herself could predict the result of combining two or mo
re essences. But her talents were limited and would not have been enough to identify the Perfect Perfume, as the formula surely had to be highly complex.

  Instead, she focused her hopes on her daughter, Susanna; but the girl had no intention of following that path. She was fascinated by the many possibilities offered by synthetic substances, rejecting tradition and her mother’s teachings.

  And then Elena was born.

  At a certain point in her life, when time had stiffened her fingers so much that she could no longer uncork the essence containers, Lucia decided to pass on her knowledge to the one person she was sure had the passion, depth of heart and intuition required to bring the Perfume back to life: her granddaughter. And so she left everything to her.

  • • •

  The palazzo walls, made of stone and bricks that had been fired in the old city’s kilns, reared up strong and dark, three stories high. On the ground floor there had always been the workshop, the laboratory and the courtyard, which was overlooked by the upstairs rooms. On the first floor were the kitchen and living room; on the second floor the bedrooms. The property hadn’t changed much over the centuries; even the herbs in the corner of the garden had stayed the same.

  The house had also always had a secret study, because the Rossinis had been making perfume since the days when alchemy was the natural extension of their profession. It was in the basement and no one had been down there for decades.

  The building was in excellent condition, thanks to the precious materials with which it was built: timber from ships toughened by storms and sea winds, stone straight from the rockface, bricks fired at infernal temperatures. They were silent witnesses to births and deaths, extraordinary discoveries, joy, blood, sweat and tears. The building had kept all its charm, character and a hint of mystery.

  Lucia Rossini lived for perfume; everything else was superfluous. One day she’d let a man into her bed, and that was the strongest link she’d ever had with the outside world. When Giuseppe Rinaldi died, she had raised their daughter, Susanna, teaching her everything she knew and, according to tradition, she gave her the Rossini name. For Lucia, like all the women before her, it was a symbol, a link to her ancestors; it was her identity and her duty.

  Susanna, however, couldn’t have cared less about her illustrious surname or about the Perfect Perfume. She didn’t share her mother’s ambitions. She was interested in perfume, but she wanted to learn state-of-the-art techniques; she’d had enough of the old-fashioned nonsense Lucia insisted on drumming into her, enough of all those dusty papers. She wasn’t interested in the past: all that mattered to her was the future. So she left. She sent postcards from Alexandria, Athens, Bombay . . . and when she stopped roaming, she settled in Grasse, in France.

  One day, many years later, she turned up on her mother’s doorstep with a little girl.

  “I can’t keep her with me anymore,” was all she said. The two women exchanged a long look, then Lucia threw open the door and smiled at her granddaughter for the first time.

  “Come along, Elena, let’s go inside. This is going to be your house now.” But the girl grabbed hold of Susanna’s skirt, tugging it hard. She closed her eyes and hung her head. It was raining hard that day, at the end of November. Susanna was wearing an almond, violet and iris perfume Maurice had made for her. A wedding present.

  From that moment on, Elena had always hated rain.

  Starting then, Lucia Rossini had passed on all her knowledge to her shy, quiet granddaughter. Even though the girl was only eight years old, she immediately proved to be incredibly receptive. She had an extraordinary relationship with perfumes. She handled them with dexterity and knew how to measure out essences perfectly. She could really smell perfumes, and she could describe them.

  For the first time, Lucia Rossini saw her hopes realized. This girl would find the Perfect Perfume; she was sure of it! And so she dedicated her body and soul to Elena’s training. No silly games, no time-wasting for this one. Sending her to the convent school, getting her the best possible education, would be more than enough. After all, Elena wasn’t like other children. She was a hope. She was the hope.

  In the beginning, Susanna paid regular visits to her daughter. Then the visits became occasional, and eventually they stopped altogether. Like the girl’s interest in perfume.

  Disconcerted, her grandmother questioned the reasons behind this sudden and absurd rejection, but the girl never answered. Later, Lucia understood. The problem was Susanna, or rather, the man she’d married: Maurice Vidal, who couldn’t stand the sight of his stepdaughter, as though the poor creature could be held responsible for the choices her mother had made.

  Lucia started to believe what Susanna had told her, years before, when she left Elena on her doorstep: “It’s for her own good.”

  Yes, perhaps it really was better for the child to keep her distance from that man.

  Men! How they were given so much power, Lucia could never understand. But Susanna had always had a weakness for this Maurice, a man she’d met when she was just a student; when what she should have done was kick him out of her life and concentrate on Elena.

  Maybe it was time she had a word with that irresponsible daughter of hers. But if Susanna took Elena back, the plans Lucia had for her granddaughter, the search for the Perfect Perfume, would vanish.

  The little girl was the only one who could find it. So Lucia made a choice.

  “It’s better this way,” she told her crying granddaughter one day, trying to console her. “It takes time, and you need to clear your head to be able to smell the perfumes in your mind, to understand them. Creating a perfume is a very delicate process. You can’t get distracted, even for a second. One drop too many and the whole thing could be ruined. Do you understand, sweetheart?”

  Elena dried her face and nodded. But perfume wasn’t her friend anymore. It had become pain and failure.

  “One day you’ll understand. It’s your destiny,” her grandmother told her, stroking her head.

  • • •

  Alone in the house, cleaning the workshop’s ancient marble floor the day after Monique had left, Elena was scrubbing a very stubborn stain when one particular memory came to mind—it was as though she could still feel the intense pain deep inside her chest, a biting cold.

  She was bigger by then, already twelve, and for months she’d been working on a plan, a project. Her grandmother always said that perfume was the way, that it was truth. So she tried to prepare one especially for her mother. She wanted to tell Susanna how lonely she felt, how much she missed even the sight of her. Being with her grandmother was fine, but it was hard work. All those names to learn and things to look up in books. She wanted her mom, that was all. A perfume would be better than anything else to explain what she felt in her heart. Her grandmother told her so all the time.

  “The message is in the perfume.”

  She put in tuberose: its flowers were white, like the dresses Susanna loved to wear. Then Elena had chosen gardenia: hot and green. Next she blended leather and wood, which could soften the bright, fruity sweetness. There was something jarring in this composition, though. It was the pain of abandonment: it was her way of asking Susanna to take her back.

  She prepared it diligently, remembering everything her grandmother had taught her, and then she put it in a crystal bottle.

  The Christmas holidays finally arrived and, holding her breath, she waited for the moment she could finally give her mother the present in Grasse.

  “For me?” Susanna asked. “A perfume? Did you make it yourself, darling?”

  Elena loved the sound of that voice. It was light and delicate—perhaps because she didn’t use it very much. That kind tone made her feel better. And since Elena had arrived, the night before, even Maurice had been kind. Maybe they would keep her with them, this time.

  “Yes, Mom, I made it myself.”

  Susanna op
ened it very carefully, smelling the contents. Smiling, she tried it on her wrist and sniffed.

  “Aren’t you clever, sweetheart? I like it; it’s delicate, but at the same time it has character.”

  She liked it! Elena’s heart was bursting; she couldn’t think of anything else. She went up to Susanna, one step at a time, as though she were afraid this perfect moment might vanish. But Susanna kept on smiling and talking to her.

  The sunlight streaming through the window lit up the polished wood floor. Her mother was sitting on the sofa and had put the bottle of perfume in the middle of the coffee table, still singing its praises.

  “An original composition. I can’t work out the base notes . . . oh, but don’t tell me, darling, I want to guess. Would you believe it, my little girl made a perfume just for me! Maurice, come and see—look what Elena did.”

  The man came over. He was smiling, but his eyes were cold. He took the tiny bottle and once he’d smelled it, he put it back on the table.

  “You shouldn’t encourage her so much. There are some serious mistakes there. The top notes clash, and really, what about the structural failure? No, Susanna. You’re not doing the kid any favors by deluding her like this. The perfume’s no good, and you know it. Stop leading her on.”

  “How can you say that?” Susanna murmured. “She’s only twelve years old!”

  Maurice spun around, slamming his fist onto the table. The bottle rolled along the polished surface and fell to the floor. The smell spread through the room, filling the air.

  “It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference how old she is. I’m just telling the truth, because you’re not brave enough to do it. That perfume is all wrong—it’s worthless.”