The Secret Ways of Perfume

by Cristina Caboni

  “It’s so good,” she said, snatching up another straightaway.

  Cail watched her in silence, an amused glint in his eye.

  “Have you had . . . Hermione . . . for long?” Elena asked between mouthfuls.

  “Five years. I had another bike before.”

  He tensed up. Elena watched him fiddling with one of the napkins the waitress had put on the table. She could tell that this wasn’t his favorite topic of conversation, so she dropped it, and instead bit into a macaron such a bright shade of lilac it seemed unreal. An explosion of black currant cream made her close her eyes. It was a pleasure she could hardly describe; the perfume was intense and the cream filled her mouth like warm honey.

  “Oh my God, this is one of the best things I have ever eaten,” she whispered.

  Cail looked at her again, and his expression softened. It wasn’t really a smile, she wouldn’t say that much, but it was close enough to let her see how handsome he might be.

  “Have you been working with perfume for a long time?”

  “All my life,” she told him after a moment. Then it was her turn to look away.

  Cail pushed the plate of pastries toward her; he was enjoying watching her eat. He liked watching her, period. He waited patiently for her to take another. Elena chose one, took a bite and then started to talk.

  “Lots of women in my family were perfumiers. The most talented ones created famous perfumes, and the others helped with the family business, too.” She paused and looked outside. “You know, we actually made our fortune in France. One of my ancestors created a very special perfume. It was so intense, so perfect, that it seduced a princess. The man who commissioned it married the princess, gained her kingdom and paid the perfumier an unbelievable sum. The perfumier, my ancestor, then left the country and went back to her home in Florence.”

  “I get the feeling there’s a bit more to it, something you’re not telling me.”

  Elena held his gaze. “She never forgot him—the knight, I mean. She always loved him, even after she married someone else. She used to write about him in her diary. It’s a sad story.”

  Cail put his cup down on the table and leaned back in his chair.

  “Maybe they weren’t destined to be together,” he said.

  “You can change your destiny,” Elena replied. “You just have to really want to. That’s the only way you can alter the course of events.”

  “Not always. Sometimes things happen that you can’t change.” He was distant again now. Suddenly the look in his eyes was as hard as the line of his lips. He seemed sad, and Elena sensed that a deep pain lay beneath Cail’s words. And then she understood.

  “You’re talking about death.”

  “No,” he replied sharply. “Only good things today.” That wasn’t much of a response, Elena thought. It raised more questions than it answered, but the message was loud and clear: he had no intention of talking about death and destiny, even if she wanted to.

  “Tell me about you,” she said, changing the subject. “What do you do apart from live in the Marais and look at the stars?”

  “My work is a bit like yours, really,” Cail told her. “I breed flowers, specializing in scented roses. I try to keep the look of the old roses—the ones with real character, bold colors and unique perfumes. Complex perfumes, ones that have different levels of smell—that’s what I’m aiming for. The perfume might start with simple fruits, but then it might bring in citrus or myrrh, scents that can say something intense, something unique. I don’t want the new creations—which barely have a fragrance—to overshadow the old roses just because they’re outwardly beautiful.”

  “So you protect them?”

  Cail raised an eyebrow. “I’m not doing it for the good of the world, Elena. I make a lot of money.”

  “That may be so, but you still do it. If you hadn’t decided to create an alternative, the old roses might have been doomed to oblivion.”

  They carried on talking. Cail gave her a few, brief answers and spoke about his latest creation: very disappointing, if he was honest, but it might make a good mother rose.

  “It’s a bit like it is with people. A mother with blue eyes and a father with green eyes could have a child whose eyes are also light, but a different color altogether.”

  Elena listened, enthralled. More than once she lost the thread of the conversation, but she kept her eyes firmly on Cail. When they left the pink bakery it was already dark, but under a thousand colored lights the Île was as bright as day.

  “It’s too late to go anywhere else. Notre Dame is right there—come on.” Cail pointed toward the looming cathedral with its arches reaching up to the sky, the pinnacles topped with stone gargoyles that seemed to be ogling passersby.

  Elena looked up. “I didn’t know you could get in from this side,” she said as they reached the enormous doors.

  “This entrance is on rue du Cloître. There are four hundred spiral steps,” Cail said, by way of warning. “The lower part of the cathedral is very pretty, though, if you’d rather not climb all the way.”

  “I know. But I wouldn’t be able to see the bells from there.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, that’s true.”

  “They all have beautiful names,” Elena added.

  Cail nodded. “Angélique-Françoise, Antoinette-Charlotte, Hyacinthe-Jeanne, and Denise-David are the most recent. The largest is Emmanuel: almost thirteen tons.”

  “Amazing,” Elena murmured. “The sky seems so close from up there,” she said, recalling the last time she’d climbed those towers. Then she turned to Cail. “Let’s go up. If you want to,” she said, patting him on the back.

  He took her hand, squeezing it for a second, then nodded and let go. “All right.”

  Luckily, the line of tourists had thinned out. They started to make their way up, slowly, their fingers numbed by the autumn air. The steps kept appearing, endlessly, one after another. There was an ancient smell trapped within the walls, the smell of damp, of centuries of footsteps, old incense and beeswax. How many people had climbed these stairs before her? Elena’s imagination drifted off with the perfume and everything it evoked. Women, men, everyone with their own past, their own story.

  Suddenly she stopped, unable to breathe. She bent her head and raised it again. Panic made her blood run cold. No matter how hard she tried to catch her breath, the feeling of suffocation was overwhelming.

  Cail was behind her. When he realized something was wrong, he took her by the waist and turned her around to face him. He quickly saw that she was about to faint.

  “We’re going down now, don’t worry,” he said gently.

  He didn’t wait for her response but picked her up as if he were lifting a child. Jostling through the tourists on their way up, tight-lipped, ignoring their complaints, he made his way down, one step at a time, holding her to his chest. It was only when they were finally outside and he set her down that he realized Elena wasn’t responding. He unwound her scarf and carefully brushed back her hair. She was pale but breathing normally.

  “Elena, can you hear me?”

  Her eyelashes fluttered, then she blinked, and looked at him as though nothing made sense.

  “What happened?”

  “You fainted. I’m taking you to a hospital.” The emergency department of the Hôtel-Dieu was just a few meters away. Taking her in his arms again, he crossed the road.

  Twelve

  VANILLA: protection. The warm, sweet perfume of childhood.

  The fragrance gives comfort, boosts mood and relieves tension.

  Goes well with leather. A few drops combine to direct affairs of the heart.

  Monique sniffed the mouillette again, closed the graduated cylinder tightly, and shook the mélange so the alcohol would start to dilute the molecules that made up the essences. Then she put it back in its container to keep it i
n the dark. She checked one last time that the formula she’d entered in the program matched her notes, threw out the used paper filters, stretched—then left the laboratory.

  It would be another twenty days before she would have a clear idea of the nuances of the perfume she had just created. “A month to mature,” as Lucia Rossini always used to say. Even though Monique had not strictly followed the procedure Elena’s grandmother had taught her, the structure of the scent was still clear, and the end result was in sight. Yes, she’d had a productive day. After the twenty days had passed she would add water, filter the compound again, and only then would she determine whether it would become an eau de parfum. But that decision had to be made with Le Notre.

  She went down the stairs and straight into the underground car park, saying goodbye to a few colleagues on the way. Once she was in the car she switched on her mobile phone.

  “There you are,” she said, hearing it vibrate. But it wasn’t a message from Elena. She skimmed the dinner invitation from Jacques and deleted it.

  “Idiot,” she muttered, ignoring the temptation to call him and tell him exactly what she thought of him. She waited a few more moments, staring at the screen as other messages appeared one after another. It was strange that she hadn’t heard anything from Elena, but then her friend was probably too busy enjoying herself, she decided, smiling as she started the car. She couldn’t wait to take a long, hot shower. Afterward, she was planning to watch television and call her mom; she hadn’t spoken to her for a few days. She needed some TLC, and Jasmine always knew how to cheer her up.

  • • •

  Sitting on a hard chair in the hospital waiting room, Cail’s gaze was fixed on a random spot on the floor. They’d taken Elena away an hour ago, and he’d done nothing but check his watch every five minutes since. He hated hospitals. They reminded him how helpless people were, how fragile life was.

  He ran his hands over his face and then through his hair, brushing it back. It was nothing serious, he told himself for the thousandth time. Otherwise he would have known by now. And besides, if she was really ill, Elena wouldn’t have refused to sit in a wheelchair—she’d only agreed to be seen by a doctor if they let her walk to the examination room by herself. He felt a pang in his chest, and the same fear that had struck through him when she fainted.

  As she walked to the examination room, Elena had waved at him, like a child, her eyes fixed on his, her face white with fear. He would have given anything to go with her. Once more he felt that irrational need to hold her to his chest, to feel her warmth, smell her perfume.

  What was taking so long?

  He got up and started to pace nervously. Reaching the window, he stopped, faced with the wonders of the city and its thousands of lights. With his palms pressed against the thick glass, staring out into the dark night, he felt as if he was being sucked into the past, into a previous life.

  He wasn’t there when they took Juliette away. After all these years, his memories were blurred and what he knew, he’d learned from the police reports. He could vaguely remember the deafening truck horn, the screech of tires on asphalt a few seconds before he was thrown from the seat of the motorbike. It was a miracle he’d escaped with just a scar and a few broken bones. But he was sure of one thing: that night, a part of him died with Juliette. He hadn’t been the same since.

  He swallowed and closed his eyes. A moment later he reemerged from that dark place in his soul where he buried everything, and where he very rarely went. Reflected in the window he saw the nurse who had accompanied Elena; he turned to her and asked, “Is there any news?”

  The woman stopped, then she seemed to understand. “Ah, yes,” she smiled. “Are you Mrs. Rossini’s husband?”

  Cail stood there, speechless, and somehow managed a mechanical nod.

  The nurse patted him gently on the arm. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious. Your wife just needs to rest and take her vitamins. Dizzy spells are normal in her condition. With a bit of luck the nausea should pass after the third month. Pamper her a little bit—women love that, you know?”

  He didn’t reply. He had no idea what to say. She smiled at him again, almost amused by the sudden pallor and look of astonishment on the man’s face. Cail thanked her, then he found a seat and sank into it.

  “She’s pregnant. Elena’s pregnant.” He sat staring at his hands, as a mass of contradictory emotions swirled inside him.

  When the nurse came back into the waiting room around half an hour later, he stopped her.

  “Could I see . . . erm . . . my wife?”

  “I think that would be a good idea. She’s in quite a state,” she told him with a searching look.

  This time, she didn’t seem so friendly, and she set off down the corridor without even bothering to wait for him. After a short walk she pointed him to a door and said frostily, “There. You can go in. You’ll need to wait for the last test results before you can leave, fill out the forms and get her discharge slip. It’ll take at least another hour,” she warned. “Like I told your wife, if you decide to intervene, you only have a couple of weeks. After that it would be too late.” She turned and disappeared around a corner.

  Intervene?

  Cail knocked and opened the door. Elena was sitting on the edge of a bed with her head in her hands. She looked lost, with her hair in her face and her shoulders hunched. Occasionally she would shudder. She hadn’t even noticed him.

  He walked over to her and knelt down, so that his eyes were at the same level as hers. Then, very gently, he lifted up her chin.

  “Hi. Are you feeling better?”

  Elena shook her head, her eyes glistening with tears. “I’m pregnant,” she told him in a tiny voice.

  She was approximately two months’ pregnant and alone. How could she not have realized? Elena asked herself. OK, so she’d never had a regular cycle, but not to put two and two together? So much had happened, so much all at once. Now she had a baby on the way and no idea what to do. A deep fear, fear such as she’d never known, gripped her. She couldn’t think; she couldn’t speak. She’d always thought that one day she would do this with a partner, a husband. But Matteo . . . The very thought of him made a wave of revulsion wash over her. No, she didn’t want to think about him right now. She didn’t want to think, period. How could it be possible? she kept asking herself. Why now?

  Cail swept a strand of hair off her forehead and then another, stroking her skin gently. He wasn’t doing it for her, but for himself. He needed to touch her. Just touch her. There would be consequences, and many, he knew that for sure. But he decided he’d cross those bridges when he came to them. One at a time. There was no point in thinking about it now, not when Elena’s fingers were clutching his sweater tightly.

  “It’s a good thing. A baby is always a blessing.” Where the hell did that come from? What did he know about babies?

  But it didn’t matter what he thought. Right then, she needed all the support she could get. The single tear that had tracked a damp furrow down her cheek, and the way her fingers still clung to him, told him that. Cail had no idea of the right thing to say—he wasn’t good with words or big speeches. So he let his instincts guide him, and somehow he found the strength to give her the smile he’d still never shown her. He dried her face with his thumb without saying a word, waiting for her to calm down enough to say something. Anything.

  “I always wanted a baby.” Elena’s voice was less than a whisper.

  Cail held his breath.

  “What about you? Or maybe you already have them?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t have any children. I’ve never thought about it, to be honest. I suppose one day, sooner or later, I will. But it’s not on my list of ten things to do before Christmas.” He forced himself to keep his tone light. “Anyway, look at me. I wouldn’t even know how to hold one. Newborn babies are tiny.” Just the idea
of holding a child in his arms brought him out in a sweat. Not to mention the fact that his scar would probably scare it to death.

  “Why only ten things?” Elena joked weakly.

  “I’m a realistic kind of guy.” Cail stroked her hand. “So, this is a good thing, then? I mean . . . the baby. You said you wanted one,” he pointed out, concerned by the despondent look on her face, her eyes swollen from crying.

  But Elena couldn’t speak. She felt as if she was falling apart.

  Instinctively, Cail opened his arms and she sank into his embrace. He held her like he’d wanted to all afternoon, hugging her close. Elena buried her face in Cail’s neck, clinging to him with all her might, to his warmth, his perfume. So good, so perfect.

  He stroked her hair, let her pour her heart out and listened as Elena told him how much she’d wanted a child, but with Matteo it hadn’t happened right away; how life seemed to be playing a joke on her; how her world was turning upside down. She was thinking out loud, saying things that made no sense, except they did make a worrying kind of sense. Cail continued to hold her, and in that moment nothing else mattered to him. Nothing. Just her—just Elena.

  “I don’t even know what to call it,” she said a little later, taking deep breaths, searching for the composure she’d been struggling to find.

  He felt his heart leap. Relief and a flash of joy: Elena was going to have the baby.

  “I don’t think that’s a big problem.”

  She chewed her lip, then agreed. “Right, that’s not a problem.” But actually, it was. What was she going to call this baby? And what if it was a girl? Her thoughts instinctively turned to her own mother, and the despair she felt became deep and biting. Again that sense of loneliness and dread.

  “Don’t think about that. You’ve got plenty of time.” Cail’s voice cut through her train of thought, brushing everything else aside. He was here, now. And he was the most real thing she had. She didn’t know what she would have done if it weren’t for him.