How different everything, everything, would have been if I’d stayed. When I cling to my regret, I keep everyone close.
“Are you in love with Lutz?” I say, to startle Zoé away from studying my mistakes.
I can see the flinch in her jaw, like she just took a sucker punch. She starts to say something but stops. She says, “I’m not answering any more of your questions.”
“I’ve only asked one. You’re the one doing all the asking.”
“What made you think my father stole your idea?” she says. “When you met him in Marrakech?”
“He didn’t know about vendor number 37,” I say. “In the spice market. I’m the one who told him about his booth.” In no. 37, one of the world’s most brilliant perfumers, and one of the oldest, lay slung in a hammock, overcome by his hay fever. He looked like the silkworm cocoons sold in wicker baskets nearby, their pods like spools of cotton. He credited his insights into scent to the narrow nasal passages that were daily strangling him; the nerves of his nostrils were in constant alarm, always sniffing at the air for salvation. As he passed along wisdom, I fanned at him with a banana leaf to help him breathe, so he could suck in some air, and let out some words.
“There’s a flower in Cuba,” I tell Zoé, “that smells sweet at night, sickly in the daytime. Dama de noche. I wanted to bottle its prettier hours. But I could never quite conjure a match for it. I thought maybe I’d found my way to it with a little pot of ointment I bought from number 37, for scorpion stings, using the Malaki flower of India.”
“So you took from number 37,” she says. “And my father just took what you’d already taken.”
“Where is your father, Zoé?” I say. “Why can’t you just ask him?”
She pauses. She nods and returns her attention to her charm bracelet. But this time she unclasps the bracelet and takes it off her wrist. She walks to a grandfather clock on the other side of the room. Among the charms is a tiny key, and she unlocks the clock’s glass with it. She then puts the key to the center of the clock’s face, and with her pinkie, she turns the long hand around and around and around.
Was the clock wrong? What time is it? Paris, our village, has fallen victim to a fairy-tale curse. The sun rises; the moon drops. The cogs of the clockworks tick-tock north-south, or east-west, in whatever direction they’ve always turned, but time itself has turned to fog. The days: they don’t seem short. They don’t seem long. What day even is it? To make things worse, the Germans are always jumbling the hours of the curfew. You have to believe them if they stop you in the street to tell you it’s night at high noon. You’re out too late, a soldier might say, so you check your watch, and it tells you nothing.
Finally, with one more twist of the hands, the clock’s face pops open. Zoé pulls it open all the way on its hinge, to put that key one more time to the lock of a drawer beneath the workings. She opens the drawer, and takes from it an envelope. On her way to the credenza, she looks at me and nods toward the phonograph. I select a record, and start the music.
At the credenza, I stand right next to her—we’re shoulder to shoulder—as she takes a cigarette from her little novelty box, plucking it from the teeth of the wooden alligator. But she doesn’t light it. There’s an envelope on the credenza; with her fingertip, she slides it toward me.
When I remove the card from the envelope, the paper’s scent lifts, blooms, but just faintly. It’s fading. I wave the card beneath my nose—I recognize the perfume as one from her father’s collection. Ophelia. The scent has something soft and girlish about it, with a hint of cape jessamine.
Now that I’ve smelled the perfume, she lights her cigarette.
There’s nothing written on the envelope but her first name, and the card is unsigned. All it says: I write about you in my diary. Here’s the key to it. And beneath the writing is an insignia, a little twist and coil of design—part fleur-de-lis, part arabesque, part something else altogether. You could almost see a swastika in it, but these days, with swastikas everywhere, any shape with crossing lines seems suspicious.
“This note was left for me some weeks ago, here at the cabaret,” she says. “Or was it months ago? I never know when anything is anymore.”
I study the note. I write about you in my diary. Here’s the key to it. “Where’s the key? Is that on your bracelet too?”
“There was no key in the envelope,” she says.
I put the card back on the credenza. We both stare down at it. “What does it mean?” I say. “How do you know your father sent it?”
“It’s his handwriting,” Zoé says. And the handwriting is very distinctive. Though the card is unsigned, I can see Pascal’s signature in the shapes of the letters and the lines and the slant of the cursive. In recent years, his signature has appeared on all the new boxes of perfume from Parfumerie Chamberry.
Zoé says, “And it’s his perfume. Or my perfume. He designed it for me.”
“Ophelia?” I say. I hold it again to my nose.
“You know it,” she says. She seems pleased. Maybe relieved.
“Is Ophelia your real name?”
“It’s what he called me,” she says. She hands me the cigarette, and though I don’t smoke as a rule, I do take a puff, then hand it back. She says, “I did the mad scene from Hamlet when I was a little girl. Interrupted him in his studio at the house. I was desperate for his attention. I was always competing with his perfumes.” She breathes in the smoke. Breathes it out. She talks fast, rattling off the details. “I made a big production out of it, on a Sunday afternoon. I made a costume out of his smoking coat. I wound a winter scarf around my head. I even staged my drowning, by making a little river out of a blue silk sheet. It was silly—I didn’t even know the lines—but it sent my father over the moon. He was full of love for me those days, but he didn’t know what to do with me. My mother had just died. He called me Ophelia for all the years after.” She doesn’t seem emotional, but she pulls a handkerchief from her pocket to dab at her eyes. At her cheek. “But nobody can know,” she says.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be telling people about it,” I say.
“Don’t you get it?” she says. She taps her finger on the card. “It says right here. There’s a diary. And I’m in it.”
“What can I do?” I say, but I’m not asking Zoé how I can help. I mean to sound defeated. What could I possibly do?
“You’ll get the diary back,” she says. “There’s something about that insignia. That’s the key he’s talking about.” And, indeed, the design does look deliberate. Intentional. He drew it once, then drew over it, and over it, inking it blacker and blacker.
“If you’re right about all this,” I say, “then why didn’t he just tell you where the diary is?”
She’s disappointed in me yet again. “He was afraid for me,” she says, her voice falling soft. “He knew about me. He knew about Lutz keeping me here. He must have. He was afraid people were rifling through my mail. And he was right. He wanted to send a message that might look like any other note I might get. A perfumed note, from an admirer. I get letters all the time. Love letters from strangers. Flowers. Candy.” She breathes in the smoke deep. “And, like I told you, he thinks in puzzles. He knew I’d recognize the note as his.”
“When did you last see your father?” I say.
“I left home when I was seventeen,” she tells me, “to live with a man who said he was going to be my manager. My father was furious, of course. He told me to never come back, no matter what kind of mess I made of my life. ‘No matter how miserable you make yourself, you’re not welcome home,’ is the last thing he told me. ‘I promise I’ll stay away,’ is the last thing I told him. And I did stay away. I changed my name. I changed my story. And I never heard from him, until he made this perfume for me.” She picks up the card, holds it to her nose. “He had the very first bottle of it sent to me at the Casino, a few years ag
o. He sent a note along then too. He asked for my forgiveness.”
“And did you forgive him?” I say.
“I did,” she says. “I did. But I didn’t tell him. I didn’t even thank him for the perfume. Never sent a note back. But I knew I’d go to him someday. When the time was right.”
“Do you really have much to worry about, Zoé? Yes, the diary is still in the house, and they have the house. But are they going to sit down and read the thing? When the world is at war?”
She turns a bit so she can speak closer to me, softer. “His diary is more than just a diary,” she says. “It’s like a cookbook. But it’s more than that too.”
Inside were not just formulas, not just listings of ingredients like in Cleopatra’s beauty book, but key insights into his methods and experiments. And not only that, but personal details, reflections on his influences and inspirations. For Zoé’s father, a perfume was not just a combination of oils and extracts, not just a collision of chemicals. It was a peek at his soul. A thump of his heart. His every fragrance told something of his own story.
She says, “I’ve heard Lutz talk about it. Every night, after the cabaret, the Germans smoke in a gentleman’s lounge downstairs. They have grandiose schemes about what the war will win them. They want to keep the perfume in production. They want the fashion, the food, the chocolate, the wine. They see Paris as a parade, a carnival. A holiday resort. They want to keep it all alive, for the New Europe.”
“Then why…” But how could I possibly finish that sentence? Why everything? Why hold us captive? Why punish us? How do you sustain beauty with such torment and quarantine? If they don’t kill Paris outright, they’ll render the city a relic, a quaint excursion at best.
Zoé puts her cigarette to my lips and leans even closer, lowers her voice even more, so that I have to turn my ear to hear her. As I smoke, she tells me what she knows about me, from Day. She knows about thefts from years ago, from early on, when I mostly worked for widows: young women who’d married old men. They had inheritances to burn through. These women wanted me to bring them something so exceptional it’d stop their hearts. They wanted perfume in their veins. They wanted exotic liquors shot into their tongues with a needle.
I’m flattered, to be honest, that Zoé knows so much. My darling Day. She does pay close attention to me.
“This will take more than just slipping in through a window,” Zoé says. “This is going to require some very sophisticated weaseling.”
“Sneak out with me,” I say, slipping the cigarette back to her, tucking it into her fingers. I keep my hand against hers. “Let’s go now. I can hide you in my house. We can walk there.” I have Blue in mind too, I confess. Not only do I want to be the one to rescue Zoé St. Angel, but I can’t help but think about how happy Blue will be. My building has become a factory, a distillery, cellar to attic, a gasworks of copper pipes corkscrewing through the parlor’s ceiling and up through the kitchen floor, winding around the bedposts, whistling like snakes with a lisp. The building’s strange acoustics, and all the perfumery’s pipes and vents, warp and bend our voices. Sometimes you can whisper in someone’s ear from another room. I’m imagining our house filled with Zoé’s every whistle and hum, her every private, stifled trill of melody.
“No one’s going to let me out of this house,” she says. “I can’t go anywhere without Lutz. Do you think any of the women in this building can go anywhere on their own?”
I’m naive, I guess. It hadn’t occurred to me that the women of Boulette’s might be captives. On a short leash, yes, but imprisoned?
“And if I did get away,” she says, “Lutz would look for me. And he’d find me. I’ve been dripping with your perfumes for days. Your potions have been spiking his allergies. You make his eyes water. His nose run. He knows all about you. Your shop is the first place he’d look.”
I’ve had a long career of taking things from people, but rarely things I’d keep for myself. My clients would covet something priceless, and they’d hire me, the international expert at lifting perfume from the skin. But it’s always been fairly ignoble. A pursuit of indulgence. The rich at play. And by blaming the greed of others, I’ve absolved myself of my crimes. Maybe that’s how we’re all allowing ourselves to just go on along with our daily lives while people are arrested all around us, their homes and businesses taken away. We blame the greed of others.
If I can help Zoé, I might be saving her from arrest, or from something worse.
I do have to be careful myself. I’ve relied for years on France’s lax extradition policies. If the Nazis send me back to America, I’ll lose my house, my bank accounts. I’ll be arrested for old crimes. Even a short jail sentence might kill someone as old as me.
Zoé picks up the card and puts it in the envelope. She opens my jacket. She keeps her eyes on mine as she tucks the card into my inside pocket. “And wouldn’t you like to take a look at the book yourself?” she says. “Maybe you’re in it. Don’t you want to see what he wrote about Escroquerie? Does he cite you as an inspiration? Does he mention meeting you in Marrakech? You’ll finally know if you were robbed by the greatest perfumer in the history of Paris.”
She’s playing to my vanity, though even my vanity isn’t enough to make me take such a risk. Nonetheless, such a prize would be my greatest theft. It’s tantalizing, the notion of stealing the scents of Paris back from the Nazis. Paris certainly rescued me. But how would I even get my foot in the door of Pascal’s house?
Before I can ask, Zoé says, “There are some men I want you to meet.”
11
After the cabaret has closed for the night, I make my way back to the gentleman’s lounge. The only ladies among the men are Zoé and Day. Day stands amid a few admirers near the fireplace with a brandy; she is still wearing the dress she wore onstage, the sequins half a million itty-bitty hearts, shimmering in the firelight, pulsing with the beat of Day’s own heart.
Zoé, meanwhile, has changed out of her see-through gown into a see-through robe, some of her nakedness hidden by the robe’s willowy ostrich-feather trim. She’s on a sofa surrounded by doting German soldiers, some even in uniform.
Zoé leans toward the cocktail table in front of her, telling the men’s fortunes with a handful of hard candy. She shakes the candy in her loose fist, like she’s about to toss some dice. She’s casting runes. She rolls the pyramid-shaped candies across the tabletop. One tumbles off the edge, and Lutz, who sits on the sofa next to her, snatches it up and pops the confection into his mouth. Zoé taps her pinkie on each remaining candy, contemplating their order.
She predicts rotting teeth and ugly wives, and the men laugh.
Zoé looks up at me. “Should I look into your future?” she says.
As I open my mouth to decline, Lutz interrupts. “I’m going to buy that necktie from around your throat,” he says, standing up. “Those silver threads caught the candlelight even out there in the cabaret.” He tugs at the end of my tie. “How much for this?” And he gives it another couple of tugs. He’s so handsome, it’s almost absurd. I wonder if it’s embarrassing, how he probably can’t go anywhere without getting people flustered.
I speak French when I tell him he can simply have it, but he says, “You’re American,” in English.
“I am American,” I say, in French, unknotting the necktie.
Lutz pulls at the tie before I’ve quite undone it, so it catches and chokes me. He pauses to allow me to free myself. As I gasp a little, I ask him if he’s ever heard of a garrote.
“It’s the scarf you’d use to strangle someone,” Lutz says. He gives the tie another yank, and it’s off my neck with a snap. I can feel the burn of it at the back of my neck. He leans over a cocktail trolley to watch his reflection in a silver martini shaker, knotting the tie around his own neck. He says, “You should scurry on home, Uncle Sam.”
Zoé reaches over to pull on the ta
il of his jacket. He drops back down on the sofa next to her, fluttering his new tie. “Let her stay a minute,” she says.
“Her?” he says. He looks at me, suspicious, raising an eyebrow. “He’s a her, is he?”
“She’s the perfumer who’s been to see me,” she says.
“Oh,” he says. “Her. All that wispy stink makes my eyes water.” But he leans in toward Zoé’s neck, to inhale the perfume that’s there.
Zoé casts a glance at me. She’s concerned. Do your thing, she seems to want to say. Worm your way in.
Whenever I meet a handsome man, I study him quick for flaws. Handsome men know all too well what makes them less than perfect. If they see you seeing the thing they like the least about themselves, you’ve tapped in. You’ve rattled their perch. With Lutz it’s the flush of his cheeks, round, rosy, and cherubic, as if he’s smeared them with rouge. They’re like Blue’s in that way. Those cheeks were probably often pinched and admired when he was in his baby carriage. They’re much too pretty. He’s otherwise as square-jawed and steely-eyed as a matinee cowboy. In those plump, pink cheeks is his destiny; their unbearable sweetness has marched him into fight after fight, I bet.
“You’re smoking a Punch,” I say, speaking American, falling back into my cowpoke’s brogue, and though Lutz is first inclined to ignore me, I’ve made him curious. He picks up his cigar from the crystal dish and puts it to his lips.
“The lady knows cigars,” he says.
“I have a good memory for scent,” I say. I put my hands in my pockets. “I know that cigar’s smoke. And it is serious smoke. For serious smokers. It packs a wallop.”
“I guess that’s why they call it a Punch,” he says. “Isn’t that the word in English for it? A slug. A punch to the lungs.” I don’t correct him. It’s named after the puppet, a character named Punch, a little boy’s toy.
A pop of a champagne cork and Lutz is distracted again. The champagne has sprayed like a fountain among a circle of men near Day; Day laughs and tries to catch what she can in her champagne coupe. Lutz stands up to ridicule the men, but he continues to speak in English, as if he’s performing for me. “You have one night in Paris, and you spill your one shot at French champagne?” he says, walking toward them. “Suck it up out of the rug before it dries!”
The Perfume Thief Page 6