Read Online Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino - Free Book Online Page A

however faint, would not disturb my perception of the scents; another girl drew my silk handkerchief from my pocket so it would be ready to receive the sample drops from which I was to choose; a third sprinkled my waistcoat with rose water, to neutralize the stench of my cigar; a fourth dabbled odorless lacquer on my moustache, so it would not become impregnated with the various essences, confusing my nostrils.
    And Madame went on: “I see! A great passion! Ah! I’ve been expecting this for some time, Monsieur! You can hide nothing from me! Is she a lady of high degree? A reigning queen of the Comédie? Or the Variétés? Or did you make a carefree excursion into the demi-monde and fall into the trap of sentiment? But, first of all, in which category would you place her: the jasmine family, the fruit blossoms, the piercing scents, or the Oriental? Tell me,
mon chou!
”
    And one of her shopgirls, Martine, was already tickling the tip of my ear with her finger wet with patchouli (pressing the sting of her breast, at the same time, beneath my armpit), and Charlotte was extending her arm, perfumed with orris, for me to sniff (in the same fashion, on other occasions, I had examined a whole sampler, arrayed over her body), and Sidonie blew on my hand, to evaporate the drop of eglantine she had put there (between her parted lips I could glimpse her little teeth, whose bites I knew so well), and another, whom I had never seen, a new girl (whom I merely grazed with an absent pinch, preoccupied as I was), aimed an atomizer at me, pressing its bulb, as if inviting me to an amorous skirmish.
    â€œNo, Madame, that’s not it, that’s not it at all,” I managed to say. “What I am looking for is not the perfume suited to a lady I know. It is the lady I must find! A lady of whom I know nothing—save her perfume!”
    At moments like these Madame Odile’s methodical genius is at its best: only the sternest mental order allows one to rule a world of impalpable effluvia. “We shall proceed by elimination,” she said, turning grave. “Is there a hint of cinnamon? Does it contain musk? Is it violet-like? Or almond?”
    But how could I put into words the languid, fierce sensation I had felt the previous night, at a masked ball, when my mysterious partner for the waltz, with a lazy movement, had loosened the gauzy scarf which separated her white shoulder from my moustache, and a streaked, rippling cloud had assailed my nostrils, as if I were breathing in the soul of a tigress?
    â€œIt’s a different perfume, quite different, Madame Odile, unlike any of those you mention!”
    The girls were already climbing to the highest shelves, carefully handing one another fragile jars, removing the stoppers for barely a second, as if afraid the air might contaminate the essences in them.
    â€œThis heliotrope,” Madam Odile told me, “is used by only four women in all Paris: the Duchesse de Clig-nancourt, the Marquise de Menilmontant, the wife of Coulommiers the cheese-manufacturer, and his mistress.... They send me this rosewood every month especially for the wife of the Tsar’s Ambassador.... Here is a potpourri I prepare for only two customers:
the Princess of Baden-Holstein and Carole, the courtesan.... This artemisia? I remember the names of all the ladies who have bought it once, but never a second time. It apparently has a depressant effect on men.”
    What I required of Madame Odile’s specific experience was precisely this: to give a name to an olfactory sensation I could neither forget nor hold in my memory without its slowly fading. I had to expect as much: even the perfumes of memory evaporate: each new scent I was made to sniff, as it imposed its diversity, its own powerful presence, made still vaguer the recollection of that absent perfume, reduced it to a shadow.
    â€œNo, it was sharper ... I mean fresher ... heavier....” In this seesawing of the