The Diary of a Nose (8 page)

It is now difficult to open up the way for new tastes and smells, because we live not only in a world where traceability is of key importance, but at a time when everything has to be justified. Inventing a smell as innovative as amber in perfumery, or the taste of Coca-Cola in its day, is now a feat, indeed virtually impossible. In the space of a few years, we have gone from a commendable requirement for explanation to a moralizing requirement for justification.

The percentages of sugar, salt, or fat content listed on many food items just for our information threaten to turn into warnings for our consumption.

A similar thing is happening with perfumes, since most products of animal origin traditionally used in their composition are no longer utilized, in the name of morality rather than industry regulations, thus unwittingly depriving the African tribes who supplied them of revenue, and consequently condemning them to abject poverty.

Even though they have never posed any problem with toxicity, other very longstanding raw materials are no longer used as a precaution, and they are sometimes replaced with new products for which we have no objective track record, but merely tests to prove their innocuousness. More insidiously, market testing is used to justify market censorship, though it cannot hope to explain a person’s choice of perfume.

Is this the great fear of our time? We are all responsible for this excessive censorship that never favors creativity, but merely hinders it.

Between Paris and Gembloux, Monday 17 May 2010

Generosity

Pierre Gagnaire is arranging a private dinner party in Gembloux, near Liège. Delighted and intrigued in equal measure by the promised feast, which will bring together writers, experts in various fields and a university dean, I immediately accept and make my way to the Gare du Nord this Monday afternoon, to head for Liège. On the train I meet another guest. During the journey we chat and agree that we have no idea what to expect. But, spurred on by curiosity and affection for our host, we have both gladly accepted the invitation. A driver is waiting for us at the station in Liège, and he takes us to the faculty of agronomic sciences at the university in Gembloux.

After a visit to the campus, we are shown into a greenhouse of exotic plants where we are welcomed by Pierre and Sylvie Gagnaire. On one side of this unusual setting (which seems to invite us on a journey), the chef has set up his stage facing the guests’ table: a gas hob with four rings and a table by way of a work surface. Behind it are a sink, a fridge and a few cupboards in white wood to store plates, glasses, cutlery and utensils.

Gagnaire’s guests are not merely spectators but, along with him, actors for an evening. The play is called ‘For the Joy of Taste’ and we have each been given a small notebook and a pencil to jot down our impressions. I shall write very little this evening; I cannot live intensely and make notes about my feelings at the same time.

The dinner begins with a tartare of langoustine and razor-shell clams with pomegranate, a subtle combination of sweet and acid flavors, followed by cod fillet nestling in a velouté sauce made with nettles, a deft interplay of masks in which the greenness of the nettles disguises the tender flesh of the fish. Next come fresh morels flavored with liquorice, the woodland tastes and the bitterness of liquorice root in perfect harmony, then courgette flowers served with white asparagus tips. We are still in the realm of tender, slightly bitter flavors. The dinner continues with a pea and baby broad bean soup with red olive-filled ravioli, flavored with castoreum, accompanied by a wine with the same feral tones and hints of raspberry.

We are a third of the way through the menu. Pierre Gagnaire is completely focused on his cooking, bringing pans up to his nose, smelling them, listening to them, putting them back down and stirring their contents with a finger to check the temperature. All his senses are alert. We talk among ourselves and with him, our conversations punctuated by applause, bravos and hurrahs. The only obvious sign of exertion: his increasingly unruly hair, which testifies to the effort he is going to, and gives some idea of the pleasures he is affording us. He has to change his apron several times during the course of the evening.

The meal began at nine o’clock, and it is now two o’clock in the morning. Our aesthetic appetites are gratified by the menu’s boundless imagination; we are physically sated. The desserts are to be concise; after such generosity, sweet things are almost uncalled
for. Pierre has not left the stage for five hours. Five hours of generosity. His cuisine is not a response to a need, but a loving dialogue. And that certainly is art.

On the plane, then in Cabris, Friday 28 May 2010

Shameful smells

The woman next to me on the flight is wearing Van Cleef & Arpels’
First
. Her perfume is struggling to cover the smell of cigarettes impregnating her clothes. Sitting beside her, her husband jolts with occasional bouts of hiccups, which release the smell of undigested garlic.

My acute sense of smell means I can detect and identify all sorts of odors that may be intended to be secret or hidden. It is not unusual for me to discern alcohol, tobacco, sweat, breath or strong food; they are all easy for me to pick up and are not necessarily unpleasant.

Whereas the images we receive are exterior to us, smells actually penetrate us. This can be experienced as a breach of our person, and psychologists believe this forms the basis for the pleasure, displeasure or even disgust a particular smell can elicit. In everyday life, we are more tolerant of our own smells and those of our nearest and dearest than we are of other people’s. And yet they eat, defecate, urinate, sweat, make love and live like everyone else. In fact, our olfactory rejections often stem from differences in diet, which alter body odor and therefore involuntarily create distance. When it comes to changing our own baby’s nappies, we happily delegate the task, although we may then be eager to nuzzle every fold of the warm and duly cleaned little body. Once the mashed baby food phase is over, the child’s smell will match that of the rest of the family whose diet he or she now shares.

I’m always struck by the immutable tradition in old American films that portrays women taking a long time to prepare in the bathroom before love-making: the man lies on the bed waiting, while his partner emerges showered, smelling of nothing but perfume. Alongside this prudish example from 1950s films, I am reminded of Albert Cohen’s novel
Belle du Seigneur
, in which Ariane and Solal are determined to perpetuate the passion of their first meeting, a permanently insatiable love in which the smell of their bodies has to be mastered to express their purity.

Another memory comes to mind. Two years ago, in July, I drove some visitors through the Hautes Alpes region to see the fields of lavender and smell the clary sage. When we had reached the austere and beautiful site, some of the guests climbed swiftly back into the bus to get away from the human sweat smell of the sage that the wind was wafting into our nostrils. I myself was quite happy for these flowers to give me the smell of my own bestiality, my non-eternity, the smell of life.

Yes, I like smells that are not so easy to talk about, the ones it is seen as indecent or even disturbing to mention. As a composer
of perfumes, I delight in them and play with them. Birch-tar, castoreum, Atlas cedar, civet, cumin, indole, jasmine, labdanum, oak moss, clary sage, skatole … all are extracts and molecules that mimic or hide smells from our bodies.

From Van Cleef & Arpels’
First to Voyage d’Hermès
, in every instance I have taken pleasure in using these elements of artifice and revelation to emphasize what is specific to each of us: our own smell.

Cabris, whenever

Inheritance

I ‘met’ Edmond Roudnitska in 1966 on the day my father gave me an enchanting booklet with a cover illustration of a bouquet of flowers against a black background. The German perfumery company Dragoco had devoted its entire review,
Dragoco Report
, to Edmond Roudnitska. The title was: ‘The Young Perfume Composer and Smells.’ That year Roudnistska created
Eau Sauvage
for Christian Dior. At the time I knew his son, and it was thanks to him that, a few months later, Edmond Roudnitska invited me to his house in Cabris. I don’t remember that first meeting, except that he was friendly.

In the late 1970s I contacted him, buoyed by my experience as a perfumer. I hoped to overcome my shyness and prove my worth during the course of our conversation. I arranged the meeting by telephone, for four o’clock in the afternoon – the time recommended by his wife Thérèse. Our conversation absolutely had to end before a particular television game show called
Des chifres et des lettres
.
⁴
He liked to shut himself away and join in with the game, which he carried on watching until the end of his life. So I arrived at precisely four o’clock. He opened the door to me and immediately berated me: ‘You reek of washing powder! Go and wash and come back tomorrow in clothes that have been aired.’

I found this greeting disconcerting, but it did nothing to dampen my determination. I showed up again the next day, in the same clothes. He gave me a friendly welcome. His office was level with the garden and we had to go downstairs to get to it. There were test blotters waiting to be smelled on a side table in the hallway. The room itself was huge with a large bay window looking out on to the garden. On his desk there were no bottles, no test blotters, nothing to disturb the neutral smell of the room, just a few sheets of paper and some pencils.

He introduced me to his dog, a chow he was very proud of, and explained that every time he shampooed the dog, he rinsed it down in a vinegary solution to get rid of all the odors. To be honest, I thought it still smelled quite strongly – but it was not my dog. I made no comment, not wanting to risk being cornered into an argument about my clothes and their reek of washing powder.

He talked about simplicity, about ‘form’ in the Platonic sense of the word, and about
qualia
, a philosophical concept he was the first to apply to perfume. His aim was to capture the olfactory image of each raw material in order to set up a sort of Pantone of smells, establishing what he hoped would be a definitive chart. We then spent a while trying to find the exact words to define the smell of phenyl ethyl alcohol, a synthesized compound that smells of wilted roses and sake. But the thing I remember most clearly is the performance he put on as he escorted me back to the door. He started singing opera arias, explaining that he had always dreamed of becoming a baritone.

We met several times. Then, after reading an article of his published in a specialist review, I wrote him a long letter describing him as ‘dogmatic,’ which, to my mind, was not a criticism, but he did take umbrage. He replied rather frostily, wondering who had rattled my cage. He indicated that I would no longer be invited to his house and that there would be no more conversations. I am very happy to say that three years later a mutual friend dispelled the misunderstanding and arranged for us to meet again. Edmond invited me to Cabris. We resumed our discussions, and he confided in me that he was having problems communicating with, and being taken seriously by, the young marketing directors of the companies for which he worked. To him perfume was an art. The only response he hoped for was approval from those who had commissioned him. How could he pay attention to the rumblings of ‘market pressures’?

I inherited something from him (and inheritances that are chosen are the most generous): the notion of form, and a will to strive for simplicity, achieved by composing short formulae using a restricted collection. Where he was rigorous, I prefer moderation, which does not preclude exacting expectations. On the other hand, I managed to break away from a classic type of harmony expressed in the proportions of the raw materials, because I was convinced that the interplay of smells was more important. Like him, I think we need to talk and write about our craft, about which the general public knows so little. Perfume is at the heart of our lives.

Heritage

I cannot evoke the memory of Edmond Roudnitska without mentioning heritage. My father was a perfumer, but we spoke little of his work at home: it was his territory, and that was the rule; the make-up of my olfactory memory, therefore, derives in large part from unwittingly copying his habit of smelling any food or drink before tasting it. There was not one piece of fruit, one dish, salad, vinaigrette, slice of bread, glass of wine or even of water that escaped this olfactory moment of truth. My mother loathed this behavior and thought it contravened the good manners she was trying to instill in us. But when as many smells pass under our noses as images before our eyes, I like to remember the importance he gave to the role played by our noses.

In the late 1950s my mother wore
Madame Rochas
. Judging this perfume today, I would say it is a lovely, slightly quaint construction of florals and amber; but the image that has stayed with me is that it smelled ‘too much’ of perfume. This created a distance and elicited respect. Sometimes I dared to open the bottle secretly in the bathroom and I discovered a sweet generous smell of faded roses and old vanilla paper. It intrigued me and helped sustain the reassuring portrait I had of a woman of bourgeois elegance, who never changed her perfume. I could not imagine her wearing another, nor allow her to do so: my mother would no longer have been my mother.

Olfactory legacies are often acquired involuntarily. For example, in the summer my paternal grandmother used to offer to
help pick the crop of flowers for her neighbors, who were horticulturalists. I sometimes went with her, and spent the morning playing between rows of jasmine. I was safe in that world of flower pickers. Especially as, although I was as lazy as the cicada in La Fontaine’s fable, they were more generous than the ant:
⁵
at the end of the morning, they each laid a handful of flowers in my basket. This meant I need not lose face when I went up to the owner, who had a notebook in which he kept a daily tally of the flowers picked; the pickers were paid at the end of the month. Since then I have not found a more sensual scent than that of bare arms on which the smell of sweat is mingled with that of jasmine flowers. In fact, I was learning the smell of perfumes and the smell of women at the same time. And leaving childhood behind without realizing it.