Perfume. The story of a murderer

Grenouille filled two flacons with it, stoppered them, and stuck them in his pocket. Then he washed the bottles, mortars, funnels, and spoons carefully with water, rubbed them down with bitter-almond oil to remove all traces of odor, and picked up a second mixing bottle. In it he quickly composed another perfume, a sort of copy of the first, likewise consisting of fresh and floral elements, but containing nothing of the witches’ brew as a base, but rather a totally conventional one of musk, ambergris, a tiny bit of civet, and cedarwood oil. By itself it smelled totally different from the first-flatter, more innocent, detoxified-for it lacked the components of the imitation human odor. But once a normal human being applied it and married it to his own odor, it could no longer be distinguished from the one that Grenouille had created exclusively for himself.

After he had poured the second perfume into flacons, he stripped and sprinkled his clothes with the first. Then he dabbed himself in the armpits, between the toes, on the genitals, on the chest, neck, ears, and hair, put his clothes back on, and left the laboratory.

Thirty-two

AS HE CAME OUT onto the street, he was suddenly afraid, for he knew that for the first time in his life he was giving off a human odor. He found that he stank, stank quite disgustingly. And because he could not imagine that other people would not also perceive his odor as a stench, he did not dare go directly into the tavern where Runel and the marquis’s majordomo were waiting for him. It seemed less risky to him first to try out his new aura in an anonymous environment.

He slipped down toward the river through the darkest and narrowest alleyways, where tanners and dyers had their workshops and carried on their stinking business. When someone approached, or if he passed an entryway where children were playing or women were sitting, he forced himself to walk more slowly, bringing his odor with him in a large, compact cloud.

From his youth on, he had been accustomed to people’s passing him and taking no notice of him whatever, not out of contempt-as he had once believed-but because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another’s face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and the person encountered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even to exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present-and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later…

But now, in the streets of Montpellier, Grenouille sensed and saw with his own eyes-and each time he saw it anew, a powerful sense of pride washed over him-that he exerted an effect on people. As he passed a woman who stood bent down over the edge of a well, he noticed how she raised her head for a moment to see who was there, and then, apparently satisfied, turned back to her bucket. A man who was standing with his back to him turned around and gazed after him with curiosity for a good while. The children he met scooted to one side-not out of fear, but to make room for him; and even when they came hurtling out of a side doorway right toward him, they were not frightened, but simply slipped naturally on past him as if they had anticipated an approaching person.

Several such meetings taught him to assess more precisely the power and effect of his new aura, and he grew more self-assured and cocky. He moved more rapidly toward people, passed by them more closely, even stretched out one arm a little, grazing the arm of a passerby as if by chance. Once he jostled a man as if by accident while moving to pass around him. He stopped, apologized, and the man-who only yesterday would have reacted to Grenouille’s sudden appearance as if to a thunderbolt-behaved as though nothing had happened, accepted the apology, even smiled briefly, and clapped Grenouille on the shoulder.