Free Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer by Patrick Süskind Page B

grew dizzy.
    He had made a mistake buying a house on the bridge, and a second when he selected one on the western side. Because constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river, while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current. Sometimes when he had business on the left bank, in the quarter of the Sorbonne or around Saint-Sulpice, he would not walk across the island and the Pont Saint-Michel, but would take the longer way across the Pont-Neuf, for it was a bridge without buildings. And then he would stand at the eastern parapet and gaze up the river, just for once to see everything flowing towards him; and for a few moments he basked in the notion that his life had been turned around, that his business was prospering, his family thriving, that women threw themselves at him, that his own life, instead of dwindling away, was growing and growing.
    But then, if he lifted his gaze the least bit, he could see his own house, tall and spindly and fragile, several hundred yards away on the Pont au Change, and he saw the window of his study on the second floor and saw himself standing there at the window, saw himself looking out at the river and watching the water flow away, just as now. And then the beautiful dream would vanish, and Baldini would turn away from where he had stood on the Pont-Neuf, more despondent than before—as despondent as he was now, turning away from the window and taking his seat at his desk.

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    Before him stood the flacon with Pélissier’s perfume. Glistening golden brown in the sunlight, the liquid was clear, not clouded in the least. It looked totally innocent, like a light tea—and yet contained, in addition to four-fifths alcohol, one-fifth of a mysterious mixture that could set a whole city trembling with excitement. The mixture, moreover, might consist of three or thirty different ingredients, prepared from among countless possibilities in very precise proportions to one another. It was the soul of the perfume—if one could speak of a perfume made by this ice-cold profiteer Pélissier as having a soul—and the task now was to discover its composition.
    Baldini blew his nose carefully and pulled down the blind at the window, since direct sunlight was harmful to every artificial scent or refined concentration of odours. He pulled a fresh white lace handkerchief out of a desk drawer and unfolded it. Then, holding his head far back and pinching his nostrils together, he opened the flacon with a gentle turn of the stopper. He did not want, for God’s sake, to get a premature olfactory sensation directly from the bottle. Perfume must be smelled in its efflorescent, gaseous state, never as a concentrate. He sprinkled a few drops on to the handkerchief, waved it in the air to drive off the alcohol, and then held it to his nose. In three short, jerky tugs, he snatched up the scent as if it were a powder, immediately blew it out again, fanned himself, took another sniff in waltz time, and finally drew one long, deep breath, which he then exhaled slowly with several pauses, as if letting it slide down a long, gently sloping staircase. He tossed the handkerchief on to his desk and fell back into his armchair.
    The perfume was disgustingly good. That miserable Pélissier was unfortunately a virtuoso. A master, to heaven’s shame, even if he had never learned one thing a thousand times over! Baldini wished he had created it himself, this ‘Amor and Psyche’. There was nothing common about it. An absolute classic—full and harmonious. And for all that, fascinatingly new. It was fresh, but not frenetic. It was floral, without being unctuous. It possessed depth, a splendid, abiding, voluptuous, rich brown depth—and yet was not in the least excessive or bombastic.
    Baldini stood up almost in reverence and held the handkerchief under his nose once again.