Perfume. The story of a murderer - Suskind Patrick - Страница 53

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Grenouille stood there and smiled. Or rather, it seemed to the people who saw him that he was smiling, the most innocent, loving, enchanting, and at the same time most seductive smile in the world. But in fact it was not a smile, but an ugly, cynical smirk that lay upon his lips, reflecting both his total triumph and his total contempt. He, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born with no odor of his own on the most stinking spot in this world, amid garbage, dung, and putrefaction, raised without love, with no warmth of a human soul, surviving solely on impudence and the power of loathing, small, hunchbacked, lame, ugly, shunned, an abomination within and without-he had managed to make the world admire him. To hell with admire! Love him! Desire him! Idolize him! He had performed a Promethean feat. He had persevered until, with infinite cunning, he had obtained for himself that divine spark, something laid gratis in the cradle of every other human being but withheld from him alone. And not merely that! He had himself actually struck that spark upon himself. He was even greater than Prometheus. He had created an aura more radiant and more effective than any human being had ever possessed before him. And he owed it to no one-not to a father, nor a mother, and least of all to a gracious God-but to himself alone. He was in very truth his own God, and a more splendid God than the God that stank of incense and was quartered in churches. A flesh-and-blood bishop was on his knees before him, whimpering with pleasure. The rich and the mighty, proud ladies and gentlemen, were fawning in adoration, while the common folk all around-among them the fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters of his victims-celebrated an oigy in his honor and in his name. A nod of his head and they would all renounce their God and worship him, Grenouille the Great.

Yes, he was Grenouille the Great! Now it had become manifest. It was he, just as in his narcissistic fantasies of old, but now in reality. And in that moment he experienced the greatest triumph of his life. And he was terrified.

He was terrified because he could not eajoy one second of it. In that moment as he stepped out of the carriage into the bright sunlight of the parade grounds, clad in the perfume that made people love him, the perfume on which he had worked for two years, the perfume that he had thirsted to possess his whole life long… in that moment, as he saw and smelted how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him-in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for-that other people should love him-became at the moment of its achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred -in hating and in being hated.

But the hate he felt for people remained without an echo. The more he hated them at this moment, the more they worshiped him, for they perceived only his counterfeit aura, his fragrant disguise, his stolen perfume, and it was indeed a scent to be worshiped.

He would have loved right now to have exterminated these people from the earth, every stupid, stinking, eroticized one of them, just as he had once exterminated alien odors from the world of his raven-black soul. And he wanted them to realize how much he hated them and for them, realizing that it was the only emotion that he had ever truly felt, to return that hate and exterminate him just as they had originally intended. For once in his life, he wanted to empty himself. For once in his life, he wanted to be like other people and empty himself of what was inside him— what they did with their love and their stupid adoration, he would do with his hate. For once, just for once, he wanted to be apprehended in his true being, for other human beings to respond with an answer to his only true emotion, hatred.

But nothing came of that. Nothing could ever come of it. And most certainly not on this day. For after all, he was masked with the best perfume in the world, and beneath his mask there was no face, but only his total odorlessness. Suddenly he was sick to his stomach, for he felt the fog rising again.

Just as it had back then in his cave, in his dream, in his sleep, in his heart, in his fantasy, all at once fog was rising, the dreadful fog from his own odor, which he could not smell, because he was odorless. And just as then, he was filled with boundless fear and terror, felt as if he were going to suffocate. But this time it was different, this was no dream, no sleep, but naked reality. And different, too, because he was not lying alone in a cave, but standing in a public place before ten thousand people. And different because here no scream would help to wake and free him, no flight would rescue him and bring him into the good, warm world. For here and now, this was the world, and this, here and now, was his dream come true. And he had wanted it thus.

The horrible, suffocating fog rose up from the morass of his soul, while all around him people moaned in orgiastic and orgasmic rapture. A man came running up to him. He had leapt up out of the first row of the notables’ grandstand so violently that his black hat toppled from his head, and now with his black frock coat billowing, he fluttered across the parade grounds like a raven or an avenging angel. It was Richis.

He is going to kill me, thought Grenouille. He is the only one who has not let himself be deceived by my mask. He won’t let himself be deceived. The scent of his daughter is clinging to me, betraying me as surely as blood. He has got to recognize me and kill me. He has got to do it.

And he spread his arms wide to receive the angel storming down upon him. He already could feel the thrust of the dagger or sword tickling so wonderfully at his breast, and the blade passing through his armor of scent and the suffocating fog, right to the middle of his cold heart-finally, finally, something in his heart, something other than himself! And he sensed his deliverance already at hand.

And then, suddenly, there was Richis at his breast, no avenging angel, but a shaken, pitiably sobbing Richis, who threw his arms around him, clutching him very tight, as if he could find no other footing in a sea of bliss. No liberating thrust of the dagger, no prick to the heart, not even a curse or a cry of hatred. Instead, Richis’s cheek wet with tears glued to his, and quivering lips that whimpered to him: “Forgive me, my son, my dear son, forgive me!”

With that, everything within him went white before his eyes, while the world outside turned raven black.

The trapped fog condensed to a raging liquid, like frothy, boiling milk. It inundated him, pressed its unbearable weight against the inner shell of his body, could find no way out. He wanted to flee, for God’s sake, to flee, but where… He wanted to burst, to explode, to keep from suffocating on himself. Finally he sank down and lost consciousness.

WHEN HE again came to, he was lying in Laure Richis’s bed. The reliquary of clothes and hair had been removed. A candle was burning on the night table. The window was ajar, and he could hear the exultation of the town’s revels in the distance. An-toine Richis was sitting on a footstool beside the bed watching him. He had placed Grenouille’s hand in his own and was stroking it.

Even before he opened his eyes, Grenouille had checked the atmosphere. Everything was quiet within him. There was no more boiling or bursting. His soul was again dominated as usual by cold night, just what he needed for a frosty and clear conscious mind to be directed to the outside world: there he smelled his perfume. It had changed. Its peaks had leveled off so that the core of Laure’s scent emerged more splendidly than ever-a mild, dark, glowing fire. He felt secure. He knew that he was unassailable for a few hours yet, and he opened his eyes.

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