14

‘Do you know what you want?’

Today’s our last session before the traditional French full-month August holidays, and I’m seething. I’ve lived in Paris half my life but I’ve never become used to the whole country coming to a standstill for a month. Like half his compatriots, Bertrand will soon be waltzing off to the South of France and he’s in a rush to wrap up – again – so he lunges into technical explanations without any foreplay.

The three mods he’s just mixed, numbered 8, 9 and 10, are tweaks on Duende N°6: he’s added different green floral notes in varying doses. Algix, Canthoxal, Lyral, Lilial … As he bombards me with the names of molecules, I realize I’m tuning out. I’d need to smell them to understand what he’s saying. So I wait until he’s done with the chemistry lesson to ask him the question that’s been needling me lately: what’s the current state of the perfume compared to a finished product?

‘It’s subjective,’ he answers. ‘We might be practically done. Or consider that this is just the starting point. Some perfumes were great successes based on one or two mods. Others were monumental flops after going through five hundred mods over two years, with teams of perfumers working on them. The main thing is to know when to stop. To know how to choose. You need to know exactly what you want.’

And that’s when he pops the Question.

‘Do you know what you want?’

Indeed. What do I want? Do I have any idea of what Duende needs to be? Maybe I’ve just been going along for the ride, commenting, storytelling, philosophizing; entwining threads of words around his work … That’s what I always do: find a door that’s open, walk through, enter another person’s world, try to make sense of it, to capture it in words. Writers are greedy that way. Usually, what I ask from a perfume is to be taken elsewhere. This time, I’m the one who’s taking the perfumer to a place he’s never been. Bertrand, are you following me? I’m lost too …

After a few seconds of silence, Bertrand bursts out into a teasing laugh. Affectionate, but only just.

‘I know very well where I’m going. I’m starting to get the accord that will be about ninety per cent of my formula. I’ll embroider on the remaining ten per cent. Work on the top and base notes.’

I’m still mulling over his question. He’s thrust me into a position that I have neither claimed nor sought out.

‘Hey, you know what? I’m not your client. I’m not a brand owner, I’m not a project manager, I’m not an evaluator and I’m not commissioning a bespoke perfume. That’s not my position. I’ve handed my story over to you and now I’m registering how it develops.’

‘Still, you need to be able to tell me whether the perfume is adapted to your story.’

He’s not about to let me off the hook. Have I been failing him somehow? I haven’t even told him how beautiful I found what he was doing, especially the last floral accord we agreed on, N°6, which I’ve worn frequently over the week.

‘I think we’ve started getting there since the last time.’

‘Since I came up with N°6. Because the accord is already becoming good. That’s fundamental. We’ve got to create something that stands up. That’s original but pleasing. We’ve got to avoid segmentation. We can’t afford it. Otherwise, we’ll please a small number of aficionados but our perfume will never live.’

A perfume needs to fulfil three fundamental criteria so that it lives, and lasts, and goes on gaining recognition as time goes by, he adds.

‘One: originality. Two: diffusive power. Three: tenacity.’

This is the first time I’ve heard Bertrand use a marketing term like ‘segmentation’. The first time he mentions commercial success. Of course he wants his perfumes to sell well. This is how he makes a living. If ours never goes into production, he’ll have invested as much time and effort as for the stuff that does make it to the shelves. Even if he recycles his ideas, it’s still a frustrating process. I can’t blame him for wanting this one to be successful, should a company decide to commercialize it. But there’s more than profit involved. He wants his stuff to be loved. To be worn. To endure. Perfumers know their work is heartbreakingly ephemeral. Many products don’t even make it past their first year. And since there’s a bit of my soul in that bottle, I too want Duende to survive …

Meanwhile, it’s not Duende’s chances of making it into the 22nd century that concern us, but how long it lasts on skin. If I’m not up to Bertrand’s standards as a project manager, at least I can serve my purpose as a human blotter. Duende N°6 doesn’t have enough staying power, so it isn’t fulfilling the third prerequisite, tenacity. I’ve had compliments on it, so the diffusive power seems to be satisfactory. But a friend of mine told me: ‘If this perfume is meant to be you, it needs to be darker, more sensuous.’ Bertrand nods.

‘Interesting. So we’ll play up the sensuousness of the base notes, to give it more mystery and more persistence. This will inflect the global accord by five to ten per cent.’

‘I still think there’s something to pull out of that sensuous base I loved in N°5.’

‘We’ll go back to it if we need to.’

‘Because it reminds me of Habanita, somehow.’

‘What does?’

‘That wood, tobacco, musk and vanilla base reminds me of Habanita.’

‘You want me to play on that? Is it related to the story?’

Haven’t I told him about ten times?

‘It’s the perfume I wore back then.’

‘So it’s important.’

‘I’ve got an old bottle which probably goes back to the mid-80s. There are just a few drops left at the bottom, it’s like liqueur.’

Bertrand nods vigorously, eyes twinkling.

‘Brilliant! Bring me Habanita! I want it!’

*   *   *

One week later, after smelling the new mods at leisure, I fire off a text message to Bertrand, who must be somewhere in the area of Grasse: ‘I know what I want. Don’t work on anything before we see each other again.’

But what I really want to say is this: Bertrand, this isn’t my story. Not yet. The orange tree is there. But gorgeous as it is, there’s no one standing under it. My body pressing against Román’s, the scent of tobacco on his skin, his hand under my skirt … Duende should make me want to say a prayer and get my knickers ripped off, at the same time.