The Secret Ways of Perfume Read Online Free PDF Page A

all that. It’s up to you,
n’est-ce-pas
?”
    No!
    The answer exploded inside her. Perfume wasn’t like that—why couldn’t Monique understand? It was all or nothing. And she hated it. She hated it because she couldn’t help but love it.
    And so she’d decided: perfume wasn’t compatible with the life she’d chosen to lead with Matteo. That was why she closed the shop. The perfume would have bewitched her in the end, like it had all theother Rossini women, jeopardizing her plans for the future. It was that fear that had pushed her to distance herself from it forever.
    â€œI didn’t want to risk it,” she murmured aloud.
    No, she didn’t want to risk it. She didn’t want to give in. She didn’t even want to talk about it.
    â€œI’m not sure giving up everything you are has made you happy.”
    Elena went pale. “Everything I am?” she repeated.
    â€œThink about it, Elena: since you closed the shop and went to live with Matteo, have you ever really been happy? You gave up everything you know, everything that makes you who you are, to chase after an idea, something you thought would satisfy you. But you went from one extreme to the other. Was that the life you wanted?”
    No, it wasn’t, but it was still better than standing by and watching, wasn’t it?
    â€œI tried. I believed in it and I tried!” she said hotly.
    Monique stared at her, then smiled. “That’s not what I asked you. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s stop this depressing talk and focus on what we need to do, because you’re going to help me find the perfume for Narcissus, aren’t you?”
    â€œYeah, sure.” Elena nodded mechanically. But Monique’s words were still ringing in her ears. Had she really given up who she was?

Three

    B ENZOIN:
composure. A dark resin with a thick and intense balsamic essence.
    The fragrance relieves anxiety and stress.
    It enables spiritual energy to grow in strength and is the ideal preparation for meditation.
    E lena’s first memory was the dazzling sun on the French Riviera; her second was a vast expanse of lavender. Green and blue and pink and lilac and white, stretching on and on. Then there was the darkness of the studio, where her mother, Susanna, worked, leaning over tables covered with tiny glass and aluminum bottles.
    Her mother worked in Provence for most of the year. That was where they had a house. And that was where Susanna had met a man, her first and only love: Maurice Vidal.
    It was in the flower fields there that Elena had learned the basics of perfumery: which herbs to pick, which to use in distillation, which to transform into
concrètes
, which to use to extract
absolutes
. Petals of all colors and sizes swirled around, carried by the Mistral winds, or fell like little pink waterfalls from the ledges where they were kept. The petal-pickers filled huge silos with hundreds of kilos of flowers, squashing them down before the real business of production began:with
lavage
, as it was called in perfume jargon. This process produced the
concrète
: a concentrated, intensely perfumed, waxy substance. Lastly, a final washing in alcohol transformed it into an
absolute
, separating off any impurities.
    Each step was a clear image etched into Elena’s childhood memory. In her solitary existence, perfume had become the only language she could use to communicate with her mother, a woman of few words, who took her daughter everywhere but rarely spoke to her. Elena enjoyed looking at the liquid perfume; she loved its color. Some containers were as small as her hand, others so large she had to ask for Maurice’s help to lift them.
    Maurice was tall and strong. He owned the laboratory and the fields, and he adored Susanna Rossini. He loved her at least as much as he loathed her daughter.
    Elena knew why he never looked at her. She was someone else’s child. She didn’t know what