THE GOATSKINS for the Spanish leather! Baldini remembered now. He had ordered the hides from Grimal a few days before, the finest, softest goatskin to be used as a blotter for Count Verhamont’s desk, fifteen francs apiece. But he really did not need them anymore and could spare the expense. On the other hand, if he were simply to send the boy back... ? Who knew-it could make a bad impression, people might begin to talk, rumors might start: Baldini is getting undependable, Baldini isn’t getting any orders, Baldini can’t pay his bills... and that would not be good; no, no, because something like that was likely to lower the selling price of his business. It would be better to accept these useless goatskins. No one needed to know ahead of time that Giuseppe Baldini had changed his life.
“Come in!”
He let the boy inside, and they walked across to the shop, Baldini leading with the candle, Grenouille behind him with the hides. It was the first time Grenouille had ever been in a perfumery, a place in which odors are not accessories but stand unabashedly at the center of interest. Naturally he knew every single perfumery and apothecary in the city, had stood for nights on end at their shop windows, his nose pressed to the cracks of their doors. He knew every single odor handled here and had often merged them in his innermost thoughts to create the most splendid perfumes. So there was nothing new awaiting him. And yet, just as a musically gifted child burns to see an orchestra up close or to climb into the church choir where the organ keyboard lies hidden, Grenouille burned to see a perfumery from the inside; and when he had heard that leather was to be delivered to Baldini, he had done all he could to make sure that he would be the one to deliver it.
And here he stood in Baldini’s shop, on the one spot in Paris with the greatest number of professional scents assembled in one small space. He could not see much in the fleeting light of the candle, only brief glimpses of the shadows thrown by the counter with its scales, the two herons above the vessel, an armchair for the customers, the dark cupboards along the walls, the brief flash of bronze utensils and white labels on bottles and crucibles; nor could he smell anything beyond what he could already smell from the street. But he at once felt the seriousness that reigned in these rooms, you might almost call it a holy seriousness, if the word “holy” had held any meaning whatever for Grenouille; for he could feel the cold seriousness, the craftsmanlike sobriety, the staid business sense that adhered to every piece of furniture, every utensil, to tubs, bottles, and pots. And as he walked behind Baldini, in Baldini’s shadow-for Baldini did not take the trouble to light his way-he was overcome by the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else, that he would stay here, that from here he would shake the world from its foundations.
The idea was, of course, one of perfectly grotesque immodesty. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could justify a stray tanner’s helper of dubious origin, without connections or protection, without the least social standing, to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop in Paris-all the less so, since we know that the decision had been made to dissolve the business. But what had formed in Grenouille’s immodest thoughts was not, after all, a matter of hope, but of certainty. He knew that the only reason he would leave this shop would be to fetch his clothes from Grimal’s, and then never again. The tick had scented blood. It had been dormant for years, encapsulated, and had waited. Now it let itself drop, for better or for worse, entirely without hope. And that was why he was so certain.
They had crossed through the shop. Baldini opened the back room that faced the river and served partly as a storeroom, partly as a workshop and laboratory where soaps were cooked, pomades stirred, and toilet waters blended in big-bellied bottles. “There!” he said, pointing to a large table in front of the window, “lay them there!”
Grenouille stepped out from Baldini’s shadow, laid the leather on the table, but quickly jumped back again, placing himself between Baldini and the door. Baldini stood there for a while. He held the candle to one side to prevent the wax from dripping on the table and stroked the smooth surface of the skins with the back of his fingers. Then he pulled back the top one and ran his hand across the velvety reverse side, rough and yet soft at the same time. They were very good goatskins. Just made for Spanish leather. As they dried they would hardly shrink, and when correctly pared they would become supple again; he could feel that at once just by pressing one between his thumb and index finger. They could be impregnated with scent for five to ten years. They were very, very good hides-perhaps he could make gloves from them, three pairs for himself and three for his wife, for the trip to Messina.
He pulled back his hand. He was touched by the way this worktable looked: everything lay ready, the glass basin for the perfume bath, the glass plate for drying, the mortars for mixing the tincture, pestle and spatula, brush and parer and shears. It was as if these things were only sleeping because it was dark and would come to life in the morning. Should he perhaps take the table with him to Messina? And a few of the tools, only the most important ones... ? You could sit and work very nicely at this table. The boards were oak, and legs as well, and it was cross-braced, so that nothing about it could wiggle or wobble, acids couldn’t mar it, or oils or slips of a knife-but it would cost a fortune to take it with him to Messina! Even by ship! And therefore it would be sold, the table would be sold tomorrow, and everything that lay on it, under it, and beside it would be sold as well! Because he, Baldini, might have a sentimental heart, but he also had strength of character, and so he would follow through on his decision, as difficult as that was to do; he would give it all up with tears in his eyes, but he would do it nonetheless, because he knew he was right-he had been given a sign.
He turned to go. There at the door stood this little deformed person he had almost forgotten about. “They’re fine,” Baldini said. “Tell your master that the skins are fine. I’ll come by in the next few days and pay for them.”
“Yes, sir,” said Grenouille, but stood where he was, blocking the way for Baldini, who was ready to leave the workshop. Baldini was somewhat startled, but so unsuspecting that he took the boy’s behavior not for insolence but for shyness.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is there something else I can do for you? Well? Speak up!”
Grenouille stood there cowering and gazing at Baldini with a look of apparent timidity, but which in reality came from a cunning intensity.
“I want to work for you, Maitre Baldini. Work for you, here in your business.”
It was not spoken as a request, but as a demand; nor was it really spoken, but squeezed out, hissed out in reptile fashion. And once again, Baldini misread Grenouille’s outrageous self-confidence as boyish awkwardness. He gave him a friendly smile. “You’re a tanner’s apprentice, my lad,” he said. “I have no use for a tanner’s apprentice. I have a journeyman already, and I don’t need an apprentice.”
“You want to make these goatskins smell good, Maitre Baldini? You want to make this leather I’ve brought you smell good, don’t you?” Grenouille hissed, as if he had paid not the least attention to Baldini’s answer.
“Yes indeed,” said Baldini.
“With Amor and Psyche by Pelissier?” Grenouille asked, cowering even more than before.
At that, a wave of mild terror swept through Baldini’s body. Not because he asked himself how this lad knew all about it so exactly, but simply because the boy had said the name of the wretched perfume that had defeated his efforts at decoding today.
“How did you ever get the absurd idea that I would use someone else’s perfume to...”
“You reek of it!” Grenouille hissed. “You have it on your forehead, and in your right coat pocket is a handkerchief soaked with it. It’s not very good, this Amor and Psyche, it’s bad, there’s too much bergamot and too much rosemary and not enough attar of roses.”
“Aha!” Baldini said, totally surprised that the conversation had veered from the general to the specific. “What else?”
“Orange blossom, lime, clove, musk, jasmine, alcohol, and something that I don’t know the name of, there, you see, right there! In that bottle!” And he pointed a finger into the darkness. Baldini held the candlestick up in that direction, his gaze following the boy’s index finger toward a cupboard and falling upon a bottle filled with a grayish yellow balm.
“Storax?” he asked.
Grenouille nodded. “Yes. That’s in it too. Storax.” And then he squirmed as if doubling up with a cramp and muttered the word at least a dozen times to himself: “Storaxstoraxstoraxstorax...”
Baldini held his candle up to this lump of humankind wheezing “storax” and thought: Either he is possessed, or a thieving impostor, or truly gifted. For it was perfectly possible that the list of ingredients, if mixed in the right proportions, could result in the perfume Amor and Psyche-it was, in fact, probable. Attar of roses, clove, and storax-it was those three ingredients that he had searched for so desperately this afternoon. Joining them with the other parts of the composition-which he believed he had recognized as well-would unite the segments into a pretty, rounded pastry. It was now only a question of the exact proportions in which you had to join them. To find that out, he, Baldini, would have to run experiments for several days, a horrible task, almost worse than the basic identification of the parts, for it meant you had to measure and weigh and record and all the while pay damn close attention, because the least bit of inattention-a tremble of the pipette, a mistake in counting drops-could ruin the whole thing. And every botched attempt was dreadfully expensive. Every ruined mixture was worth a small fortune....
He wanted to test this mannikin, wanted to ask him about the exact formula for Amor and Psyche. If he knew it, to the drop and dram, then he was obviously an impostor who had somehow pinched the recipe from Pelissier in order to gain access and get a position with him, Baldini. But if he came close, then he was a genius of scent and as such provoked Baldini’s professional interest. Not that Baldini would jeopardize his firm decision to give up his business! This perfume by Pelissier was itself not the important thing to him. Even if the fellow could deliver it to him by the gallon, Baldini would not dream of scenting Count Verhamont’s Spanish hides with it, but... But he had not been a perfumer his life long, had not concerned himself his life long with the blending of scents, to have lost all professional passions from oae moment to the next. Right now he was interested in finding out the formula for this damned perfume, and beyond that, in studying the gifts of this mysterious boy, who had parsed a scent right off his forehead. He wanted to know what was behind that. He was quite simply curious.
“You have, it appears, a fine nose, young man,” he said, once Grenouille had ceased his wheezings; and he stepped back into the workshop, carefully setting the candlestick on the worktable, “without doubt, a fine nose, but...”
“I have the best nose in Paris, Maitre Baldini,” Grenouille interrupted with a rasp. “I know all the odors in the world, all of them, only I don’t know the names of some of them, but I can learn the names. The odors that have names, there aren’t many of those, there are only a few thousand. I’ll learn them all, I’ll never forget the name of that balm, storax, the balm is called storax, it’s called storax...”
“Silence!” shouted Baldini. “Do not interrupt me when I’m speaking! You are impertinent and insolent. No one knows a thousand odors by name. Even I don’t know a thousand of them by name, at best a few hundred, for there aren’t more than a few hundred in our business, all the rest aren’t odors, they are simply stenches.&rdqu............