perfume - Chapter 21
The smell. This smell seeps into the wild through open windows and cracks in the house, polluting the seemingly isolated and helpless...
Nature. The more accustomed Grenouille was to cleaner air, the more sensitive he became to the scent of such a person.
An unexpected odor wafted in at night, as nauseating as the smell of feces, indicating that a certain pastoral area...
The sheep-man's dwelling, the charcoal burner's hut, or the thief's den were right before him. He continued to flee, towards the dwindling number of people...
His nose reacts more sensitively to smells. Therefore, it leads him to increasingly remote areas, making him travel further and further.
The separation from people pushed him more and more violently toward the loneliest magnetic pole.
This extreme point, the farthest point in the entire kingdom, is located in the central Auvergne mountain range, about five days south of Clermont.
The previous stop on the journey was the summit of a two-thousand-meter-high volcano called Mount Cantal.
This mountain peak is composed of a massive, lead-gray, cone-shaped rock, surrounded by an endless expanse of barren, only...
A plateau covered with gray moss and gray shrubs, occasionally dotted with brown rock peaks resembling rotten teeth.
A few charred trees rose from the ground. Even on the brightest day, the area was desolate.
Even the poorest shepherd in the poorest provinces wouldn't drive his flock here. At night, under the pale moonlight...
This desolate region, abandoned by God, seemed detached from the world. Even the wanted bandits of the Auvergne Mountains...
Bren would rather endure hardship in the Severn Mountains, rather be captured and torn apart by five horses, than hide in the Cantal Mountains.
Up here, of course no one will come looking for him, and he won't be found, but he will surely die alone here for the rest of his life.
It was even more terrifying. The area within several miles of this mountain was uninhabited, devoid of any decent warm-blooded animals, with only a few...
Only bats, a few beetles, and snakes are seen. No one has climbed this mountain for decades.
Grenouille arrived at the mountain one night in August 1756. At dawn, he stood on the summit.
Up. He didn't yet know that his journey had come to an end. He thought, this was merely his entry into increasingly pure air.
One stage along the way. He turned around, letting his nose experience the panoramic view of the barren land on the volcano:
To the east lie the vast Saint-Flour Plateau and the marshes of the Riou River; to the north lies the region he came from.
This was the place where he had wandered through the karst mountains for several days in a row; to the west, the gentle morning breeze blew towards him, carrying with it the scent of rocks.
The scent of stone and hard grass; finally, to the south, the foothills of the Cantal Mountains stretch for miles all the way to the dark Trier River.
The canyon, in all directions, is deserted; at the same time, every step taken in these directions means stepping further into the distance.
The man took a step closer. The compass spun like a top. It could no longer indicate direction. Grenouille had reached his destination.
He was captured.
As the sun rose, he remained standing still, sniffing the air. He was desperately trying to detect danger.
Where does the human scent come from? He tries to smell the opposite direction from which he must continue fleeing. There is only the calm of smell. All around him is...
A uniform scent of lifeless rocks, gray lichen, and withered grass drifted by like a gentle breeze, nothing else.
No.
It took Grenouille a long time to believe he hadn't smelled anything. He had no concept of his own happiness.
He remained skeptical, his doubts resisting any further observation. As the sun rose, he even searched the ground with his eyes.
A horizontal line, to look for the smallest trace of people, the roof of a thatched hut, smoke from a chimney, a section of fence, a bridge.
And signs of a flock of sheep. He put his hands to his ears, listening intently, for example, to the sound of a hammer striking a large scythe.
The sounds of dogs barking and children crying filled the air. He remained persevering in the sweltering heat atop Cantal Mountain all day, waiting in vain.
He clung to the smallest piece of evidence. Only as the sun set did his skepticism gradually give way to an increasingly intense mental urge.
Feeling: He escaped a tragic hatred! He was truly all alone! He was the only one in the world!
He was overjoyed. Like a shipwrecked man who, after weeks of being lost at sea, cheers with extreme excitement.
The first inhabited island, Grenouille was also celebrating his arrival in the remote mountains.
He shouted with joy. He threw away his travel backpack, wool blanket, and cane, stomped his feet on the ground, and raised his arms...
He lifted himself high, twirled around, and danced, shouting his name in all directions, clenching his fists and pointing them at his feet.
The vast plains and the setting sun seemed to pound their fists in jubilation, cheering and jumping for joy, as if he himself had already...
It was as if he had chased the sun away. Until late at night, he acted like a madman performing for himself.
For several days, he prepared himself to stay on the mountain, because for him, leaving wouldn't be so soon.
It was a place blessed by God, that was for sure. He first smelled the water and searched in a ravine at the foot of the mountain.
When he reached the water, it flowed along the rocks like a thin film. The amount of water wasn't much, but if he patiently licked it...
The previous hour's hydration had satisfied his daily water needs. He had also found food, namely crickets and snakes.
He chopped off their heads and swallowed them whole, skin and bones. He also ate lichen, grass, and bitter herbs.
This nutritional approach is problematic from a citizen's perspective, but it doesn't bother him at all. In fact, as early as a few months ago...
For weeks, and even in recent months, he has stopped eating human-produced foods such as bread, sausages, and cheese; he feels...
When hungry, he would eat anything edible he came across. He was no less discerning than a gourmet.
He wasn't using the scent of a purely intangible entity, but something else, so he didn't crave it at all. He didn't pursue it either.
He sought comfort, and would have been content even if his berth were placed on a smooth rock. But then he discovered something better.
Right where he found the water, he discovered a natural tunnel that wound its way into the mountainside.
After walking about thirty meters, he was blocked off. The tunnel ended in a narrow passage where Grenouille's shoulders bumped against the rocks.
He was also very short, so much so that he could only stand with his back bent. But he could sit, even if he hunched over.
He could lie down comfortably. This perfectly satisfied his needs for comfort. This place has several advantages:
At the end of the tunnel, daytime was like night, deathly silent, the air salty, damp, and cool.
Grenouille immediately sensed that no living creature had ever been to this place. As he claimed the land, an immense sense of awe filled him.
A feeling of fear washed over him. He carefully spread a coarse wool blanket on the ground, as if covering an altar. Then
He lay down. He felt like he was in heaven. He lay fifty meters underground in the most desolate mountains of France, like...
He lay in his own grave. He had never felt so safe in his entire life, not even in his mother's womb.
Even as the outside world bursts into flames, he remains oblivious. He begins to weep silently. He doesn't know it.
He's so happy, who should he thank?
After that, he went outside the tunnel only to lick water, relieve himself, and hunt scorpions and snakes. At night they...
They are easy to catch because they have returned to the underside of the stone slabs or into small caves, which he can spot by sniffing them.
In the first few weeks, he went up to the mountaintop several more times to sniff out the horizon. But this soon changed.
It had become a habit that was more of a burden than a necessity, because he had never sensed any danger.
Therefore, he eventually stopped such tours. Whenever he had done what was most urgent, purely for survival,
His only concern was returning to his tomb as soon as possible, because that was where he originally lived. That is to say,
He spent more than twenty hours a day sitting motionless on a coarse wool blanket at the end of a completely dark and silent stone path.
Leaning slightly against the pebbles, shoulders nestled between the rocks, he seemed quite content. People have seen those who seek solitude: confession.
Successors, failures, saints, or prophets. They prefer to live in seclusion in the desert, surviving on locusts and wild honey. Some people...
They also live in caves, canyons, or even cages on deserted islands—which is a bit sensational—cage-wearing.
They sway high in the air on the pole. They do this to get closer to God. They carve their lives out in solitude.
They practiced asceticism, repenting through solitude. They acted out of the belief that they would live a life pleasing to God. They did this for months.
They waited for years in solitude to receive God's will, and then they wanted to spread that will among the people as soon as possible.
None of this suited Grenouille. He had no intellectual connection with God. He did not repent.
He didn't expect to gain any greater inspiration. He simply secluded himself for his own, singular pleasure, simply to live alone.
He was alive. He was immersed in a life undisturbed by anything, and he found this life beautiful. He was like a...
The body lay in the rocky tomb, barely breathing, its heart barely beating, yet resilient and untamed.
They lived there, a way that no living person in the outside world had ever lived before.
This unrestrained realm of activity is—and can't be any other—his inner empire, which he has existed since birth.
From the moment he began, he meticulously etched the outlines of every scent he had ever smelled into his mind. To elevate his mood, he first...
It was as if by magic that the earliest and most distant scents were summoned: the hostile, steamy stench of Mrs. Galar's bedroom.
The scent; the fragrance of her dry, brittle hands; Elder Thalie's breath, sour as vinegar; hysteria
The wet nurse of Deli-Bissau smelled of the same hot sweat as a mother; the stench of the Santo Niño cemetery; the mother's body
That kind of ferocity. He was immersed in disgust and hatred, his hair standing on end with a pleasant terror.
Sometimes, these nauseating, appetizing smells weren't enough to stir his emotions; he would add memories of Grimaldi.
This short program, "The Smell of the Place," reminisces about the stench of raw meat skin and tanning wastewater, or imagines 600,000 bar in the sweltering heat of midsummer.
Steam rising from the Li people gathered together.
Later, driven by intense desire, the hatred he had been suppressing suddenly erupted—this is the significance of the exercise.
It was released one by one. It swept over those scents that dared to insult his noble noses like a thunderstorm. It...
Destroy those smells like hail hitting a field, spray those filth like a hurricane, and make them...
Submerged in the vast, pure torrent of distilled water! How fitting his anger was! How immense his hatred was! Ah!
What a sublime moment! The little Grenouille trembled with excitement, his body convulsing with joy, looking upwards.
He arched up, so that in no time his head hit the top of the tunnel, then slowly pulled back and lay down.
I felt relieved and extremely satisfied. The scene of all the nauseating smells disappearing like a volcanic eruption was simply too...
Adorable, so incredibly adorable… He almost felt that this show was the most adorable performance in the entire theater of his inner world.
The most popular show because it evokes strange emotions when one is extremely tired, which only happens when one truly makes a great show.