Chapter Six #2
“Yes, against his own wishes. My father was a typical Grassois—passionate, provincial, romantic but chauvinistic. He intended to instruct my elder brother, but alas, mon frère was such a good student of masculinity that he broke his nose in a fight and then suffered from nose blindness that was incurable. Alors, my father had no choice but to teach me.” She retrieved two wine glasses from her cabinet.
“To his further chagrin, I was better than all of them. Should we have our wine inside or in the garden?”
Chéri meowed at the back door, eager to be let out.
“ Bonne idée, mon Chéri , the garden it is.”
Iris opened the door and it was like opening a portal to Eden.
A trellised entrance presented a veil of wisteria, but the purple-flowered tendrils parted to reveal a walled garden, lushly planted.
The cats shot out ahead of their human, and Rapacine took a seat at a small wrought-iron table beneath the shade of a Chinese maple tree.
Back here, the city noise was muted, soundproofed by climbing roses.
The only sounds were birds chirping and bees buzzing—when was the last time Iris had heard a bee in Manhattan?
Rapacine raised her own glass to toast. “ Bonne anniversaire! Belatedly.”
Iris limply clinked glasses and thanked her. “Thirty-five.”
Rapacine rolled her eyes. “You know it is a myth that women lose their power as they age. A lie invented by men afraid of being challenged. Youth has currency, but not power. Every perfumer knows you do not pick green buds. A flower’s scent, its power of attraction, is most potent on the cusp of decay. ”
“Yeah, well, ‘decay’ needs a rebrand.” She stroked Jasmine’s tail as the white cat wove under her chair legs. “I’m not where I thought I would be at this age. I thought I’d have progressed in my career. I thought I’d be married with a kid by now.”
“To Monsieur Khaki? Would that be preferable?”
Iris chuckled. “ One time he wore pleated khakis in front of you.”
“You two had no heat. Who could with that man? Gutless, bloodless.”
Ben’s words haunted her, I don’t feel excited. “What if I’m the bloodless one?”
Rapacine blew air through her lips in a very French dismissal.
Iris watched Chéri stalk a butterfly. “My animal instincts have always been blunted.”
“Impossible. You simply stopped trusting them.”
“I told you about the house fire when I was a kid—I remember seeing and smelling the smoke from my bed, I was awake, but I froze. A family member had to come save me, otherwise I would’ve just laid there and died.”
“Freezing is also an instinct. We cannot blame ourselves for what we failed to do as terrified children.”
She was glad Mme Rapacine had turned to yank a weed after she said it, because her words released a swell of emotion that pricked her eyes with tears.
Iris didn’t easily feel compassion for her young self, so the older woman’s validation caught her off guard.
Most often, the memory of Iris’s savior brought her shame, but she didn’t want to get into that now.
She blinked away the vulnerability before Rapacine turned back.
“And you know, you can have a child without a partner.”
“I’m looking into freezing my eggs, but I was counting on this promotion at work to afford it, and I’m not sure that’s gonna happen now either.
” She shook her head. “I’ve always dreamed of having a family of my own, but this isn’t how I imagined it.
I wanted it to happen naturally , with someone I love, not in a petri dish or a doctor’s office. It’s depressing.”
“Do you know how we fertilize the Rose de Mai?” Mme Rapacine reached to an abundant rosebush behind her, tilting her chair up on its two back legs, making Iris nervous.
She grabbed hold of the thorny stem of a glorious bloom, light pink but vibrant, like the inside of your lip, and pulled its profusely petaled head forward.
Its honeyed, piquant fragrance caught the air, even from across the table.
“Also known as the Rosa Centifolia, the hundred-petaled rose, the Rose de Mai is the pride of Grasse, a legendary material in perfumery the world over for its powerful yet delicate fragrance. But it is a sensitive flower, very difficult to grow. So perfumers developed a surgical method: We make an incision into the stalk of a common shrub rose and graft the bud of a Rose de Mai and bandage them together. The wound produces extra sap to feed the bud, while the hardy shrub shelters it as it grows to glory. Et voilà. ” Rapacine snipped the flower, and the branch sprang back, swaying all the heavy blooms together.
She handed the lush rose to Iris. “Sometimes nature needs a little doctoring.”
Iris brought it to her nose and smiled. It did make her feel better.
Rapacine clapped her hands. “I have a birthday gift for you. Un moment .” She went into the apartment and reemerged with a small brown paper box tied with kitchen twine, a bloom of purple iris tucked into the string.
“Aww, you didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.” She smiled serenely. “Open it.”
Resting inside the box lay a bottle of perfume.
The bottle was a wonder: jade-green crystal in the shape of a winged insect, at once naturalistic and poetic.
The central vessel was frosted to a soft semiopacity, but it was enclosed by translucent wings of polished crystal, carved like lace, draping elegantly down the body of the bottle.
Iris turned it in her hands, enjoying its pleasing heft as the sunlight caught its facets.
When she set it down, the wings cleverly provided a wider base of support, so that the interior flacon appeared to hover, balanced only on a pinpoint.
“A cigale, I forget in English, the singing bugs in summer.”
“A cicada.”
Rapacine snapped her fingers. “ C’est ca!
La cigale is the symbol of Provence, where I come from.
To the Greek poets, they are a symbol of death and rebirth because of their life cycle—they bury themselves underground to emerge years later to sing, to fly, to make love, and then to die, as one does.
” She chuckled. “They have been depicted on perfume bottles since René Lalique made his first crystal flacon for Roger et Gallet’s fragrance Cigalia, and they have always been a resonant metaphor to me, and I think for you as well.
This flacon is French, late nineteenth century. I collect them, and it’s a good one.”
“It’s stunning, thank you.”
“The bottle is not the gift. C’est le parfum .”
Iris delicately pinched the top of the stopper, shaped like a flower at which the cicada was about to sip, and hesitated. “I’m afraid to break it.”
Rapacine took it and demonstrated the twisting motion to unstop the bottle and remove the blotter.
She took each of Iris’s hands, turning them to expose the thin, pale skin of her wrists and tracing the cool blotter along her blue veins, leaving behind a tingly sensation and an oily sheen.
Mme Rapacine dipped the crystal blotter again into the bottle, then gestured to Iris to expose her neck by tilting her own jawline up.
Iris mimicked her, leaning in and lifting her chin, so for a moment they sat like two swans, arching their necks toward each other.
Rapacine lightly touched the crystal to the pulse points of Iris’s neck, where the drops clung and alerted her entire body to the caress of the breeze.
Then the first, effervescent head notes of the scent began to tickle her nose like champagne bubbles.
She was awakened by a tart and refreshing zest coupled with sweet floral nectar like honeysuckle, bright, transparent, and airy.
She closed her eyes and imagined a blast of sun and sky carrying the finest spray felt from the edge of a sailboat, but one cresting waves of rosewater instead of brine.
Iris had to laugh, embarrassed by the pleasure of it.
“Oh, it’s beautiful. ” It was a helpless understatement. “What’s in it?”
“You tell me. Remember your smell training.”
“Something bright and juicy at the top, but I don’t think it’s bergamot, it’s not citrusy.” Iris closed her eyes. “I see pink, like a sweet, tart berry…” She opened them. “Currant?”
“Lychee, because like you, it has a prickly shell belying its sweet, tender interior. What else?”
“No, please, you do the rest. I love when you tell it.” She sounded like a child asking for a story.
“Like any good fragrance, it’s greater than the sum of its notes, and I must guard some secrets.
But I will share the primary notes of its olfactory pyramid.
In addition to the aquatic freshness of lychee fruit, the head has neroli, the flower of bitter orange.
It is delicate, a little green, and more aromatic than citrus, and known for its purifying qualities. ”
Iris thought the neroli must be the juicy nectar and the lychee the rosy pop.
“Then a voluptuous floral heart. Tuberose, la fleur charnelle, the carnal flower, whose narcotic femininity was once believed to be so powerful that it could send young women into spontaneous orgasm if they smelled it after dark. Next, the flower that raised me, jasmine, a tiny white flower with an enveloping sweetness, warm and resonant as a cello line. And Osmanthus, what the Chinese call the flower of wisdom, whose scent evokes an apricot’s velvet flesh, at once blushing and innocent yet strapped with a leather nuance. ”
Iris sniffed her wrist again. The floral facets were already unfurling as it settled, and she felt drawn into its warm depth. “And some spice?”
“ Brava, your nose has gotten better. There is a touch of cumin to bring harmony to the floral chord, a carnal romance at the heart of the fragrance.” Rapacine reached for Iris’s arm and smelled the fragrance on her; a satisfied smile spreading on her face.
“And at last, a sensual and animalic base: ambergris, salty and erotic; sandalwood, milky and sacred, and…I couldn’t resist an iris note, but iris is a mute flower, the bloom will not give its scent—”
“That tracks, I’m a mute flower at work, too.”
“No, you misunderstand. Live iris has a scent, but its scent is impossible to extract like other flowers. Iris guards its fragrance fiercely. What I used in the base is orris, a material that is made from the iris root, which takes years to mature, that is tender, powdery, and intimate. You are named for a rare and precious fragrance, one whose character is both ethereal and yet rooted in soft earth.”
Iris was in awe.
“ C’est un parfum vivant, a living fragrance. It will bloom on your skin differently depending on your body heat, your hormones, even your mood. Changes within you will change the dance between you and the parfum . You are the final ingredient.”
“What’s it called?”
“It is untitled. It is your story to write.”
“You composed this just for me?”
“And only for you. Iris, this is no ordinary perfume.”
Iris had buried her nose in her arm. “It’s amazing.”
“No, it is extraordinary . This perfume will change your life.”
Iris glanced up, incredulous. Madame Rapacine was not one for self-deprecation, but this was a bit much even for her.
“I’ve gotten to know you well these years we’ve been friends.
You are smart and kind. You are a thinker, you live in your mind, your worries, your plans.
You are very good, but you are not very happy.
When was the last time you relied on instinct?
When was the last time you acted on your desires? When was the last time you knew them?”
Iris snorted.
“When you connect to your sense of smell, you awaken your body’s intelligence, its desires, its repulsions, its instincts, its memory. I made this perfume because I want you to feel your power and to show the world what you’re capable of. But above all, I want you to get what you want .”
“I’d settle for just getting what I deserve.”
“Who’s to say they are not one and the same? You deserve everything you want.”
The thought pushed Iris back in her seat.
“An old friend, the great nose Dominique Ropion, said ‘Perfume is a language that all can understand but few can speak.’ I created this fragrance to speak to you and for you. To be bold when you are cautious, to be seductive when you are shy, to make manifest everything that is inside you!”
Iris lifted her brow. “That’s a tall order for a perfume.”
“Not for one of mine.” Rapacine’s eyes flashed like opal.
“To those near to you, you will be captivating. You will arouse all kinds of desires, not always sexual, but whatever someone feels or wants from you, they will want intensely. Your scent will speak to the part of them before language, beyond logic, and beneath their awareness. For a woman to be desired is both empowering and imperiling. Deploy the fragrance as you wish. Know it will neither make princes out of frogs nor wolves out of lambs. It will simply be a spur in the flank of their animal within—and yours.”
“But you taught me that fragrance is subjective. How can this work the same way on everyone?”
“It won’t, that’s what makes it so exciting! No two people will respond in exactly the same way. But no one will be impervious to it, unless you are too far to smell. It’s a pure parfum, with good sillage and longevity, but keep in mind, it will wear down like any fragrance.”
“So I’ll turn back into a pumpkin at midnight?”
“What good is a perfume that can’t perform overnight?” She popped an eyebrow. “But you still think I am joking.”
Iris stifled her smirk. “I’m sorry, I’m listening.”
Rapacine leaned forward and cupped Iris’s head by the base of her skull.
“That oldest part of your brain, the limbic system, which processes scent, memory, and emotion; the part that we drown out with rules, distraction, and shoulds—this perfume will be its microphone.” She released her.
“It will increase your natural animal magnetism. It will amplify your desires and lower your inhibitions. Who would you choose if you could have any man? What would you say if you had everyone’s attention? ”
“For that it would have to be magic.”
Another puff of dismissal. “I don’t believe in magic. But I believe in you.”