The Secret Ways of Perfume

by Cristina Caboni

  Cail stared at her. Elena was now about half a meter away from him.

  “You really want to know what’s bothering me?”

  She had known something was wrong. An icy ball of fear started to form in the pit of her stomach.

  “That’s the idea. I’m listening,” she replied, forcing the words out one by one.

  Cail took off first one glove and then the other. He held her gaze as he stood up and took a step forward.

  “Time,” he said.

  Silence, then Elena took a deep breath. There were days when it wasn’t enough to dream of hugging him, holding him, being with him. Then there were other moments, like this. Not only did he throw her off-course, he made her chase after him.

  “Would you care to explain how time comes into it?”

  He didn’t move. Just kept on staring at her intensely. “Time marks out our lives. Time changes everything.”

  That was true. But Elena had no intention of engaging in philosophical speculation.

  “I’m waiting, Elena. That’s what it’s all about.”

  She looked at John, who hadn’t moved a millimeter since the last time she checked, then turned her attention back to Cail. She was pretty calm, she noted approvingly. She could have a conversation without shouting; she could do it.

  He gave her a smile she hadn’t seen for a long time. “I promised you a surprise. Today’s the day. Let’s go.”

  He was giving her an easy way out. And for a moment Elena thought about taking it. “I do like your surprises,” she said, “much more than your enigmatic comments. But this isn’t the end of it.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what I was hoping for.”

  “Hoping?” He wasn’t the type to put his faith in simple hopes. Now she felt she’d never understood anything about their relationship. She had decided she couldn’t wait any longer to find out why he was being so reserved with her. And besides, she didn’t want a way out; the time for that was long gone.

  “Instead of going around in circles, why don’t we just sort this thing out?” she said reasonably.

  “What if there isn’t anything to sort out?” Cail replied.

  Elena held her ground. She wanted answers and she wanted them now.

  “Is there a particular reason why you think you don’t have any time?”

  “I never said the problem was the time I don’t have.”

  Elena bit back the swearword that sprang to her lips. She took a deep breath to recover her composure, and took a step forward. Now that she was a few inches away from him, she had to lift her head so she could look him in the eye.

  “You know, Cail, it is scientifically proven that pregnant women have very little patience. They use it all to stop themselves from thinking about how much pregnancy changes their appearance. After all, you spend your whole life keeping fit and then in the space of a few months, all your hard work goes up in smoke. It’s the kind of thing that would dent anyone’s self-esteem, don’t you think? So you see, there’s not much patience left for anything else. Which is why I’m asking you to be clearer. I’m on the verge of a meltdown. I’m warning you. There’ll be screaming; maybe even crying. And you’ll be sorry you didn’t listen to me.”

  “That’s a rather cruel threat.” Cail put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair. “I like your spirit; you can always joke about things. Come on, let’s go back inside, shall we? I’ll make some tea and we can sit on the sofa and talk.”

  Joke? She was furious, torturing herself over what might lie beneath Cail’s overly reserved behavior. “I’ll have some tea, but I’m being serious. I want to know all about your time, about what it means to you.” Now that she felt she’d finally breached his defenses, she wasn’t going to back down.

  Cail’s kitchen was bright and very tidy, with John’s blanket next to the door. The sun filtered through the curtainless window, illuminating the jars of shoots and emerald leaves arranged on the windowsills. The smell drifting through the apartment was in part due to the essences given off by the aromatic seedlings. On the table was a bunch of yellow tulips he’d bought at the flower market a couple of nights ago. It was a habit by now. Two bunches of tulips, one for him, one for Elena. And always the same color. They both adored them. At the other end of the room, Cail had created a living area with sofas, tables and a television that spent most of its time switched off.

  Elena, sitting on the sofa, watched him busying himself at the stove. They were still in silence. But now it wasn’t tense; it was more like searching for the right words. Cail placed the tray on the coffee table in the lounge and sat down next to her. He put an arm around her shoulders and started to play with her hair.

  “Do you remember the accident my father had?” he said, after a couple of minutes.

  “Oh God, is it that? Is he ill?” she asked, sitting upright.

  Cail shook his head. “He’s fine. It’s not about him. Not directly, anyway.” He sighed, and closed his eyes for a moment. “You see, five years ago, I had an accident, too, on the motorbike. What happened to my father brought back some old memories.” He thought the time had come to tell her the whole story, to talk about Juliette and how she died. But he couldn’t do it. There would be a better time, he decided. What they were going through at the moment was just about the two of them. And he realized he didn’t want to talk about his past. It had gone, just like Juliette—but he had survived. He paused, took a slow breath in and out. There were plenty of reasons behind his decision not to tell Elena, not least his reluctance to reveal the constant sense of guilt that kept him awake at night and made him behave in a way that meant he could always control the consequences of his actions. “I don’t remember much about it. But a deep sense of helplessness has stuck with me. Some things can’t be avoided, only endured.” He took her hand, bringing it to his scar. “This is a reminder of that day.”

  There were others, Elena would bet. As deep as that scar, only better hidden. “Were you very badly injured?”

  He nodded. “Six months of rehabilitation.”

  Elena had had no idea. Cail had the agile movements of an athlete; he didn’t seem like someone who’d been the victim of such a traumatic accident. Cail was sure of himself, he moved confidently, he went straight on his way with no compromises. Of course, he was also a practical man: it was as though he were more focused on substance than anything else. For example, he made very few concessions when it came to his outward appearance. Paris was full of men who made an emblem of their clothes. In that regard Cail stood out for his sobriety. Not that it was a problem: Elena couldn’t help but notice that the simple sports gear he wore suited him perfectly.

  “Yet you still go on the bike; you still use it. You’re the one making the decisions, not your fears. So it’s not about that.”

  That was true. He was no longer afraid for himself. Cail thought about telling her how important she’d become to him, and how much this frightened him. But what he was really afraid of was the emptiness he felt when they weren’t together, when he didn’t see her, or when he couldn’t talk to her. It didn’t take much to make him happy: he just had to look at Elena. His life had changed now that she was in it. And that itself was difficult, because she was pregnant by another man. A baby should bring them together but it couldn’t, because no matter how much he wanted things to be different, that child would always link her to someone else. And that was something he couldn’t change. All he could do was wait.

  He’d never been good at sharing. Even at work, he preferred to be alone, avoiding teamwork. He’d made an exception for Absolue. But that was another story. He wanted Elena to be happy and her happiness was what had driven him to invest in the business. In the past, he’d tried to change his ways, and the mistake had cost him dearly: the result had been that awful accident in which Juliette lost her life. If only she hadn’t convinced him to let her drive, things
might have been different. Never again would he be persuaded to do something he wasn’t sure about. He knew what it meant to have to put the pieces of your life back together and carry on, knowing that you’d done something horribly wrong, made a mistake with disastrous consequences.

  With Elena, he was only going to do what he thought was right. Even if it cost him every ounce of his determination to stay true to his intentions. He would wait. He would wait because there was nothing else he could do.

  “I could have prevented it. Ultimately, that’s the point.”

  Elena took a few moments to think about it, then she said, “I’ve never thought you were one of those men who want to control everything. That’s more Jacques Montier’s style.”

  Montier? What the hell had he got to do with it? “What do you mean?” Cail didn’t like that comparison at all. More to the point, he didn’t understand it.

  “He makes all the decisions, he doesn’t worry about the consequences, and he expects things to go his way. It’s madness. Things can only go the way they go.”

  “I didn’t know you had a fatalistic side.”

  “It’s not fatalistic, it’s practical. Cail, I didn’t think you were arrogant enough to claim to have control over everything that happens.”

  There was a long silence, then Cail looked her straight in the eye. “I’m a man, Elena. Of course I want to control things. Don’t think for a second that I don’t have desires; that I don’t feel the need to take this relationship to where it should be. Or that I don’t want to keep you safe. Because you’d be wrong.” His voice was deep and penetrating, like the look in his eyes. His fingers found the hairline at the base of her neck; he stroked it and moved down to find her skin, his caresses becoming more intimate.

  Elena swallowed. There, she had her answer. And while she sensed there was still more to Cail’s words, at least now she understood that their situation was difficult for him, too. Perhaps difficult wasn’t even the right word. His frankness filled her with admiration and fear in equal measure.

  “I’m waiting, too, Cail,” she whispered.

  Just for a moment, she thought she felt lighter. They’d gone a funny way about it, but in the end they’d told each other how they felt. Yet knowing that didn’t solve anything. The fact remained that they were on the edge of something that was much more than a simple friendship and less than a relationship, and it was driving her crazy. Sometimes she wished that the baby had already been born so she could work out whether they had any chance of being together. Sometimes she just wanted to let herself go, without a second thought.

  He smiled at her. “So, you see? Time is our problem. We’ll have a better idea of how we feel after the baby’s born. We need to be patient—but that’s not always easy.”

  She leaned against his shoulder, breathing in his perfume. She liked the way she felt in his arms. Cail pressed his lips to her temple, and she sighed with pleasure.

  Finally, the thoughts that were whirling around in her head started to take shape. She’d always thought his seemingly self-assured attitude came from a deep self-awareness. She found it strange now, to think that he actually had his own problems just like everyone else. She felt as if she hadn’t given him enough respect or consideration, and she was ashamed of that. As he kissed her, he was so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin, and smell his perfume, warm and spicy, the smell of soap and aftershave.

  She brushed his face with the tip of her thumb, softly tracing the scar down his cheek. “What would you do . . .” Her voice broke, but she had no intention of stopping. “What would you do if things were different?”

  Cail leaned his forehead against hers. There was no sweetness in his gestures now. Just desire. Elena felt the effects of that look, the strong sensuality of his movements. Cail moved back just a little, took her face in his hand and kissed her on the lips. Gently at first, then with more certainty. Leaning toward her, the thousand doubts about their relationship continued to haunt him.

  Then Elena ran her hands over his arms, across his chest. When Cail realized she was looking for his heartbeat, he was deeply moved. She pulled him close, erasing any space that was left between them. Such honest desire cast aside his worries. He held her tightly, pressing his lips against her hair.

  He was happy. Just happy.

  Twenty

  AMBERGRIS: beauty. The oldest of perfumes, sweet and seductive, adored by women.

  The fragrance is transported by the sea and deposited on beaches like a precious gift, after which it still retains its profound, mysterious charm.

  Evokes the awakening of femininity, elegance . . . and the heat of a summer’s night.

  Elena and Cail put on their coats and went outside. The sun set early at this time of year, but there was something he absolutely had to show her.

  “Wow, now this is a surprise,” Elena whispered, looking at the giant greenhouses in the Jardin des Plantes. They walked alongside them until they came to one that was smaller, but just as pretty. Elena went inside with a sense of reverence, and was captivated. Even as she stood in front of the thick vegetation, she couldn’t believe her eyes—but the smell, there was no way that could deceive her: intense humidity, fern, moss and flowers. She should have known Cail would leave her speechless.

  She didn’t know where to look; every corner of the place took her breath away. She moved forward, unable to tear her attention from bunches of colorful Phalaenopsis orchids, but there was too much to see to be able to dwell for long on one flower, however wonderful it might be. Nearby, a tuft of fuchsia-pink miltonias sprouted from the trunk of a tree, next to the ferns; they looked as if they had violets inside. Elena felt the urge to touch them, to smell their perfume. Some plants had huge, bright green leaves; others seemed to be made up of long ribbons. She’d never seen anything like it.

  She started to walk down the path. Immersed in the humid, perfumed air, she took off her coat and felt light and happy. She’d gone from a frozen winter to the heat of the jungle in a matter of seconds. When they had first arrived, she would never have guessed that these giant steel and glass domes concealed a little corner of the rain forest.

  She couldn’t get her head around such an extraordinary contrast. Under Cail’s amused gaze, she walked up to the glass walls and peered outside at the layers of ice surrounding the structure. The frost had encrusted everything; the silver patina reflected the lights of the greenhouse and everything seemed to be immersed in a pearly gray. But when she turned back again, as if by magic she was catapulted into another world, one overwhelmed by colors: every possible shade of green, the pink of the orchids, yellow, fuchsia, even blue. A little stream ran across stones where dozens of even stranger-colored butterflies had settled; some of them with transparent wings. Then suddenly they took flight, forming a teeming cloud, only to return to the stones and sand a moment later.

  Elena was entranced. But when a butterfly with enormous yellow wings landed on her shoulder, she grabbed Cail’s arm and closed her eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little moth?” he teased.

  “It’s bigger than a parrot—have you seen it?” Elena hissed, her eyes still closed.

  “But it hasn’t got a beak. It won’t hurt you, relax. Look, it’s gorgeous.”

  Elena opened one eye. A moment later the creature took off. Its wings were a pure, brilliant yellow, with two bold orange spots and two long tails of gold. She had never seen a butterfly so big.

  “Comet Moth,” Cail told her, as she watched it go.

  “Moth?”

  “Yes. Not all moths are nocturnal; there are some diurnal ones, too. This one is crepuscular, so it comes out in the early morning and evening.”

  “I thought it was a butterfly.”

  Cail shook his head. “Look at the antennae: a butterfly’s are long and thin; moths’ are bigger and different shapes. Some
of them look like tiny combs. Butterflies close their wings like a book, and moths fold them differently.” He pointed at the insects sitting on the sand at the edge of the brook.

  Elena was dying to know much more. It was always like this: every time she found out something new, she had to know everything she could on the subject. She’d always thought that butterflies were beautiful creatures, but she’d never stopped to properly consider them. She was about to ask Cail another question when a butterfly landed on her head. “Thank God this one’s smaller,” she whispered, in case her voice disturbed the insect. She didn’t want the marvelous creature to fly away. She stretched out her arm and waited for it, unmoving: when her perseverance was rewarded, she focused on the feeling of the butterfly’s legs on her arm, the bright colors of its wings and the smell of the place. She breathed it in a few times, fixing it in her memory. Because she wanted to remember this forever.

  “I had no idea you knew so much about butterflies,” she said to Cail.

  “Actually, I just know the name of the Comet Moth and a few others. In the spring I was a consultant for the Rose Garden here. Lucien Musso, the manager, told me about this project, and he showed me the different phases of introducing the insects into the garden. Putting butterflies in the Exotic Species House is just an experiment for now. The idea is to re-create a corner of tropical rain forest, and to include all the species you might find there. Butterflies are disappearing, Elena. Even though there are lots of breeders striving to reintroduce them to their natural habitats, they keep dying before they’ve completed their life cycle. They often fail to lay eggs.”

  “Let me guess—pesticides?”

  “It’s a lethal cocktail, molecules designed to destroy insects. They make no distinction between a fly, a bee, or a butterfly.”