The perfumist of paris, p.12
The Perfumist of Paris, page 12
Lakshmi waits patiently for me to begin.
“Remember when I was thirteen and you warned me that motherhood wasn’t as easy as I was making it out to be? You were right—at that time. But now I’m older, and it’s actually okay. Not perfect, but okay. The girls can do many things for themselves. It’s just that I want more—more than just being a mother. Now that I’m in India, you’d think I could just forget about my daughters, as if I were flicking off a switch, but I can’t. We passed a girl on the street with red ribbons threaded through her braids, and I wondered if Shanti’s hair is long enough for us to try that. When we saw the boy watching that bike being repaired, I wondered if I should get Asha the bike she keeps asking for or is she still too young? Then I worry if Florence is feeding them the foods they like or only the foods she likes.”
I crane my neck around to look at her. “I love my daughters. And I love my work. It feels as if Pierre is asking me to choose one over the other.”
Jiji puts her arm around my belly and hugs me from behind.
I turn my head back and let out a sigh. “I don’t want to admit it, but since the girls came into our lives, Pierre is not the one I think about the most. I love him—it’s not that. But I think I’m changing in ways that he’s not.”
“How?”
I grab her hand with my free arm and hold it against my chest. “When I was graduating from Auckland, I wanted an adventure. And there was Pierre willing to take me on one. All the way to Paris. So I went. And what an adventure! I loved walking the streets of each arrondissement, trying the falafel in the Marais, the fresh crepes from the street vendors, the croissants in every bakery. Admiring the architecture, the ancient buildings—so different from ours here at home, Jiji. My French improved. I was able to carry on conversations. Then Mathilde introduced me to her grandfather Antoine and I discovered perfume. You can’t imagine what joy it was to be immersed in all those lovely scents again! It conjured up India and brought it back into my life in a tangible way. Until then, I hadn’t realized how homesick I was. I loved going to Antoine’s parfumerie with its aroma of jasmine sambac as I entered and ruh gulab as I walked to the back corner and saffron by the display cases on the side. I had no idea so many of the ingredients in those perfumes would seem so familiar! I missed them all, Jiji.”
I pause, remembering that happy overwhelm of scents, homesickness and belonging. Paris has its own unique and beautiful charm, but the city lacks the crush of a rainbow of saris, the brightly colored spices and the thousands upon thousands of smells that India produces naturally. I was so excited this year when the first Indian grocery opened in La Passage Brady, but it was like finding the tiniest chip of a diamond rather than the whole stone. It wasn’t the same.
I shift my body so I’m lying on my back again. In the dark, I turn my face and search for her eyes. “Why should I feel guilty about finding something I love to do and want to keep getting better at? I want to be the best perfumer—as good as Delphine. She thinks I can do it. Why is it so wrong to want that, Jiji?”
The tears come of their own accord. They run down my cheeks. They drip into my ears. They wet my hair. Jiji uses the edge of her sari to wipe my face. She makes cooing noises. I adjust my body to bury my face in Jiji’s neck, and she puts her arm around me. Her skin smells of coconut oil. For the hundredth time I wonder why she didn’t have children. She has a way about her that makes me feel safe, cared for—the way my girls must feel when I’m tending to their hurts. Jiji has been more like a mother to me than our own mother was. Maa was so disappointed in her marriage to Pitaji, who promised her family he would keep her in the comfortable city lifestyle she was born into. Instead, his penalty for advocating the return of the British to their own homeland was to be sent to a nowhere rural village to teach poor children who, more often than not, didn’t come to school. He sold Maa’s gold to keep himself in sharab and self-pity, and for that, she couldn’t forgive him.
As if she wants to soften my sadness, my sister sings to me the lullaby she suggested I sing to Shanti at bedtime. “Rundo Rani, burri sayani. Peethee tundha tundha pani—”
“Lakin kurthi hai manmani.” I finish it for her, slobbering the words through my sobs. It calms me.
“Tell me what you would like to have happen.”
I sniffle. “It’s 1974, Jiji! The women’s revolution started a decade ago. But it feels like the changes took place only in the newspaper—not in our homes.” I get off the cot to fish for a handkerchief in my bag and blow my nose. “I want Pierre to understand me. I don’t want him to resent the time I spend on my career. I want him to do as much as I do. I don’t want to argue with him about it—I just want him to see me as an equal partner. I know I only make half of what he makes now, but I will make a lot more when I’m a perfumer. But even that shouldn’t make a difference. Because I do a lot of the work when it comes to the girls and the laundry and cleaning and shopping.” I sit down again on the cot, cross-legged. “He thinks doing any of that will make him un mari américain.” I lower my voice to imitate Pierre. “Un homme qui est mene par le bout du nez. A man led by the tip of the nose.”
Jiji is quiet for a moment. “What about Florence? Has anything changed between you two?”
“Hah!” I stifle a laugh. “If anything, it’s worse. Every year, the same fight. She wants the girls to go to Marymount, the Catholic school. How can I raise my girls in a religion with only one God when I’ve grown up with Swaraswati and Vishnu and Durga and Lakshmi and Ganesh and Hunuman? I would rather let the girls decide what they want to believe when they’re older.”
“And that’s what Pierre thinks, too?”
“Pierre never stands up to his mother. He leaves that to me.”
She raises her brows. “Now who’s being led by the tip of his nose?”
I let out a giggle. I know I’m being disloyal to Pierre, but it feels good to be naughty like this—in private.
She smiles. “I used to worry about you, but with each step you take, it’s obvious you’re growing, challenging yourself in all sorts of ways.”
I feel the hot tears of guilt building up again. All those times I resisted Lakshmi’s suggestions and pleas when I was younger! She is my older sister. She raised me from the age of thirteen. And what did I do in return? I slept with the son of her biggest patron and ruined her business! Jiji may have moved beyond it, but I still feel the searing shame of my betrayal. It’s almost as if her forgiveness makes me feel worse.
She taps my knee. “You have found gold. That thing you want to do, that compels you to get up in the morning and keep getting better and better at. There’s nothing like that feeling, is there?” She takes my hands into hers and kisses them. “Tomorrow, we’ll plan. Tonight, we’ll get some sleep. Accha?”
I nod and lie down again, pulling the rajai over both of us. I know she’ll sleep only a few hours. She’ll probably lie awake thinking about what I’ve just told her. Having finally shared what’s been bothering me for so long, I feel more relaxed than I have in years. Within minutes, I’m asleep.
* * *
Four hours later, I’m the one who’s wide awake. I check my wristwatch. Here in Agra, it’s three in the morning on Wednesday. I would normally just be getting to sleep in Paris. My body doesn’t know whether to sleep or get up. I get off the charpoy, quietly. Perhaps I can make myself some chai down in the kitchen. I walk four stories down the stone steps to the ground floor. The lights are on in the kitchen. A girl with a long braid hanging down her back is washing dishes in the deep stone sink. When I clear my throat to get her attention, I startle her. I take it she’s not used to the people upstairs coming down to the work areas.
She turns to see who’s there. “Can I get you something, Mam?” She wipes her hands on a kitchen towel. Her complexion is dusky and her demeanor is servile. But her smile is genuine happiness. “Chai? Subji? Chef has left some atta for chappatis.” She seems eager to please. She must be around twelve or fourteen. If she didn’t get enough food in her belly as a baby, she’s probably small for her age.
“Chai, please.”
“Right away.” She wags her head and gets to work. She strikes a match to light the burner, pulls a saucepan off a shelf lined with multiple pressure cookers, adds milk to it from the container in the refrigerator (only the wealthier households have a fridge) and water from the tap. Along the walls, stainless steel plates, bowls, tiffins and utensils are another testament to the haveli’s wealth. On one side of the room is a floor hearth with a clay oven where I assume chappatis and tandoori chicken and lamb are cooked. There is no furniture in the room. I would imagine that most kitchen staff, whether they’re shelling peas or peeling potatoes or making atta, sit on the spotless stone floor to do their work.
“You can go back to your room, Mam. I will bring it to you,” she says, when she sees me looking around for a chair.
But I don’t want to wake Jiji by going back, so I lean with my back against the kitchen counter. “What’s your name?”
She smiles, pleased to be asked. “Binu, Mam.”
“How long have you worked here, Binu?”
Without interrupting the process of adding whole spices to the chai, she says, “Since four years, Mam. My mother worked here before me. But her legs give her pain now.”
Binu wears no makeup, and her salwar kameez is cheap cotton. The red sweater over her kameez has holes under the arms. Neither she nor her mother are courtesans. Of that, I’m certain.
“Are you in school?”
She giggles, as if I’ve said something funny. “No, Mam. I work here all night. From midnight to ten in the morning. I wouldn’t be able to stay awake in school.”
This could have been my fate if I’d stayed in Ajar after my parents died. I would have been married off to an older widower or young farmer and filled my days drawing well water, cooking food, beating laundry on rocks along the riverbank, looking after my many children—some still crawling, others playing hopscotch or jumping rope. Inwardly, I shudder.
“Do you like this work?” I ask.
She doesn’t look up from the saucepan. She shrugs.
“What would you like to do instead?”
She turns to me with a smile full of joy. “Spaceman! I want to be like those people who go to the moon. My brother—he goes to school—told me about it. They do it in Amreeka. And Soviet Union.” She dances on her tiptoes to reach the loose-leaf-tea bin on the top shelf and drops two spoonfuls into the saucepan. The familiar scent of black tea infused with warm, fragrant spices coats my nostrils and makes my mouth water.
“You’d like to be an astronaut?”
The English word makes her a little uncertain. Finally, she wags her head yes.
The tea is ready. She pours it from the saucepan into a strainer atop a porcelain cup without spilling a drop. “Le lo, Mam.” She hands it to me and waits for my review.
The tea is very good, and I tell her so. “Why don’t you join me?”
Binu holds up her palms as if I’m asking for too much, smiles and goes back to washing dishes.
I lean back against the counter and sip my chai. “Binu, wouldn’t you make more money working in a factory?”
She lets out another giggle. “Who would hire me? Factory jobs are for men. They would laugh at me if I showed up looking for work, Mam.”
There’s so much fire in this girl. So much exuberance. Is her life limited to working in a courtesan’s kitchen for the rest of her life—until her legs give out, too?
* * *
Today, the perfume vendor from Kannauj is expected. It’s about a four-hour drive from Agra, so he should be here by lunchtime.
From my vantage point at the latticed window of the performance salon, I’d been on the lookout for a man in a dhoti arriving on a moped. Instead, I see a handsome Indian man of around fifty years of age emerge from a black Mercedes. He’s wearing a dark linen suit with a cream shirt. He’s clean-shaven with a strong, square jaw, a receding hairline. He nods at someone below us, probably the bike shop owner who showed us into the kotha yesterday. His driver removes a large wooden case from the trunk and follows his boss to the stairs.
We are seated in the main entertainment hall. Nasreen takes the lead this time. She introduces the vendor to us as Rajkumar Mehta. It’s obvious that Mr. Mehta can’t keep his eyes off the lovely Nasreen. She must be at least ten years older than him, but her coquettish manner transcends age. She removes his suitcoat and motions for him to sit on a velvet, tasseled cushion. Both he and his driver removed their shoes upon entering. The driver set the oblong case down next to his boss before being escorted to another part of the house, to eat with the cook.
Lunch is now brought in on thalis, just as our meal was yesterday. Nasreen doesn’t eat. She sits next to Mr. Mehta, fanning him with a khus fan, the fragrance of natural vetiver filling the room.
While we eat, Hazi asks after his health and his family’s health and the health of his business. He regales us with dramatic stories and funny ones. “Would you believe that if you want to send a letter today, you have to wait in one line to buy the stamp, another line to get the stamp and a third line to make sure the postal clerk puts the seal on the stamp before the scoundrel pockets it for his own use?”
After half an hour, Hazi nods at Jiji, who turns to me to indicate that I may ask questions now.
I turn to face Mr. Mehta. “Ji, I am so honored to meet you. I work in Paris for the House of Yves.” I address Mr. Mehta.
“I know it,” he says pleasantly, taking a sip of water from his glass. I notice the gold ring with a large, fiery opal on his pinky finger.
“We use many essential oils—you call them attars—that remind me of India. But I am looking for something that I haven’t found in our lab. Could you please tell me about some of the ones you make that even the French may not be aware of?” I feel as if I’m groping in the dark for something, and I’m not sure what it is.
He studies me for a moment while he finishes chewing. He looks amused. “In India, you know we have been making attars for thousands of years?” I notice he pronounces it ittirs. “Long before your Grasse became known as the perfume capital of the world.” He’s putting me in the category of French perfumers who combine essential oils with alcohol to dilute the scent. “Our Indian and Middle Eastern customers wouldn’t dream of putting alcohol on their person. They believe in rubbing the oils directly on their skin for the most beneficial effect.” He turns to Nasreen with a sly smile. “Isn’t that right, Ji?”
She puts a hand to her throat and looks coyly at the carpet. I imagine the two of them on her bed, her skin glistening with the attar from his magic box of scents.
Mr. Mehta mixes a handful of rice and dal on his thali with his fingers and scoops it into his mouth. “I’ve brought some of our finest attars—scents they would never be able to duplicate in the West.”
I want to hurry him along because I’m impatient to sample his fragrances, but that isn’t the Indian way. I tamp down my eagerness. I take a bite of my parantha and ask, “Why is that?”
“We use thick copper pots. We use bamboo pipes. We seal the containers airtight with clay and wool to distill the essence of roses or what have you. All by hand. In the open air. We have men working night and day tending to the stills, feeding the fires cow dung, not kerosene. The scented vapor goes directly into the sandalwood oil—sandalwood that’s grown right here in India!” He points his hands at the earth for emphasis. “We store the oils in bottles made of camel skin, not glass. You use enormous vats, sometimes copper, sometimes steel, gas fires, rubber closures—bakwas!” He pushes his hand to one side as if throwing something away. “It’s not the same.”
I wish he wouldn’t keep referring to me as you, the foreigner. But that’s my fault. Jiji brought a salwar kameez for me to wear in India, but, without thinking, after my bath up on the roof, I put on the same hip-hugging bell-bottoms as yesterday and a full-sleeve blouse covered in a flower print. Now I notice that Hazi and Nasreen—and Jiji—look far more formally dressed in their saris than I do. I realize I’ve embarrassed my hosts by dressing in such casual, immodest clothes. Have I disrespected our guest, too? Hazi’s and Nasreen’s bodies may be loosely shrouded in five yards of silk with only a smidgen of brown skin on display, but they allow a man enough latitude to fantasize what lies beneath. I’ve spent almost half my life in France, and I’m making the same mistake foreigners make when they visit India. Have I changed so much? I chastise myself for yet another faux pas.
Lunch is cleared. We are all given a warm bowl of water and a fresh towel to wipe our hands and dry them. I love all this—the luxurious pace of a meal, the silk carpet we’re sitting on, the gentle smoke from the bakhoor in the corner dispensing the sweet scent of oud.
Mr. Mehta now takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the oblong case. He pulls out an intricately carved rectangular box. At first, I think it’s marble, but if it were, he would be carrying the weight differently. This box seems lighter. I lean in for a closer look. The box is constructed from pieces of bone that have been sanded, trimmed and glued together. I glance at Lakshmi, who I’m sure has also noticed the carvings of flowers, deer and persimmon trees on the lid. It’s a design she might have painted with henna on a woman’s body. Mr. Mehta lifts the lid. Inside, eight glass bottles, no more than three inches high, with elaborate finials, are set into eight round holes. The ninth hole contains long cotton swabs. Each bottle is filled with an amber liquid—a few are more green than gold, a few are reddish-gold. Each bottle is labeled in Hindi.
