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ch 1 ### Unfortunate Genius — 1
'Blanche.'
The whiteness of the white iris became her name. Her unusually white nose also played a part.
'May you live beloved by everyone in your pure whiteness. Don't become worn down by life like your mother.'
Though exhausted by life, her mother did not forget to bless her.
The baby survived.
But she did not truly live.
The shed where Blanche was born was a breeding ground for all kinds of foul odors. Grasse might have been the city of perfume, but this place was an exception. The rotting innards of fish and their fishy stench were bad enough, but the vacant lot beside the warehouse was even worse. It was where the residues of failed fragrances were thrown away. It was the dumping ground for tanners and perfumers.
Sometimes her mother would pinch Blanche's nostrils shut. The foul stench forcing its way into her nose seemed capable of splitting her head open and making her eyeballs fall out. Whenever that happened, the baby would suffer from chills and fever. On nights like that, her mother would hold Blanche and run to Place O Jer, the highest point in Grasse. From the highest place, she would cleanse Blanche's sense of smell with the cleanest air.
During the day, when her mother was working, Blanche was left alone. She smelled her mother's scent only twice, when her mother came to feed her. Apart from that, her daily routine consisted of flaring her nostrils and smelling everything around her.
"Does that kid live by eating smells?"
That was what fishermen who happened to stop by would say.
That nose was truly strange.
Rather than avoiding foul smells,
it drew them in.
Like an inhaler.
Every smell in the world.
And whenever her mother approached, she would smile brightly.
Even amid all the foul odors, she knew her mother's scent.
Countless ships came and went through the small harbor. Most of them carried merchants who came to buy flowers and essences. There were many people from other countries as well as France.
By the time Blanche was seven, she could tell their nationalities simply by their smells. Since flaring her nostrils was still her favorite pastime, her friends called her "Flared Nose."
Flared Nose's friend was also a Flared Nose.
She had met a sickly beagle that had been abandoned. Blanche took meticulous care of the dog. Since it became the companion of her lonely daughter, even her mother did not drive the beagle away.
Flared Nose's sense of smell was practically on the level of a gas chromatograph.
She wandered around with the beagle, smelling everything.
Because they were poor, there were limits to almost everything, but nobody could restrict her from smelling.
The beagle was one of the dog breeds with an exceptionally strong sense of smell.
Blanche was not inferior to it.
Her ability was powerful enough to locate truffles buried underground.
She smelled the mushrooms dug up by pigs and found truffles twice.
She was faster than the beagle, and for the first time in her life, she gave her mother a present.
This Flared Nose little girl did not simply possess a good sense of smell.
Whenever she found something with a new scent, she would crush it, break it apart, and sometimes even eat it.
She came close to death twice because of this, but thanks to it, Blanche's world of smells gradually became more detailed and expansive.
"Today it's cod, stingray, sea trout, and baby eel."
When her mother returned, she even knew what kinds of fish her mother had touched.
Of course, she also knew which man her mother had spoken to...
Blanche wandered around searching for every smell in the world.
When it came to flowers, she knew everything from iris to jasmine, violets, and muguet.
Even while lying inside the house, she could tell when flowers in distant farms had bloomed.
Her curiosity about smells extended even to the perfumers' failed creations.
Whenever she saw discarded fragrances, she knew whose they were.
She knew what was inside them too.
She even tasted spoiled pomades and essences.
That unstable peace ended when she turned ten.
One day in March, the beagle died.
It was too old, so there was nothing that could be done.
Misfortune headed straight into April.
That spring, when broom flowers and orange blossoms were blooming everywhere, Blanche was sitting on the walls of the eastern village of Opio, looking down into a perfumer's yard.
The perfumer, Alain, was also the owner of the warehouse and the land where the shed Blanche lived in stood.
The space beside her felt empty.
The beagle who had once shared her warmth was gone.
Alain's spacious yard was filled with baskets of orange blossoms.
There were some of those flowers in Blanche's hands as well.
The scent of orange was fresh yet full of vitality.
Orange essence wasn't obtained only from the flowers.
It could also be extracted from the peel, bark, and leaves.
The perfumer's full name was Alain Clement.
The original meaning of his surname was gentle mercy, but he was far from that.
He was a vicious man who hid evil behind his smile.
Even so, he had a decent eye for materials.
This year too, he had secured high-quality orange blossoms.
Alain knew every flower in Grasse.
But his ability to select them was not the best in Grasse.
Like any child, Blanche swung her legs while holding an orange leaf up to the sunlight.
When she did that, round particles could be seen on the leaf.
She had figured out how Alain selected his leaves.
She also peeled orange rinds to release their moisture and held them near flames.
High-quality oranges would catch fire when held near a candle.
Blanche was different.
Even sitting this far away, she could tell the quality of the orange blossoms by their scent.
She could even tell which farm Alain had squeezed the price down at.
That was when it happened.
As Blanche watched Alain's hands moving, she suddenly jumped to her feet in shock.
'Mother.'
A tiny birdlike cry escaped her pale lips.
It was her mother's scent.
Even from far away, Blanche could recognize her mother's scent.
But that scent had collapsed.
Not merely collapsed.
It had completely faded away.
Something was wrong.
Blanche began running.
"Blanche, I'm going to fetch water from the spring beside the broom field. Don't you want to come?"
Adelaide shouted from far away.
She was the only girl who was kind to Blanche, but Blanche didn't look back this day.
'Mother.'
When Blanche reached the shabby shed, she froze in place.
Her mother's scent had changed.
It was as distinctly different as a fish that was still thrashing about compared to one that had vomited out its own fish and innards.
She could tell simply by smell.
Thump.
Her heart pounded at a maddening pace.
Creak.
She slowly opened the door.
Her mother was there.
Blanche's prediction had not been wrong.
Her mother had died while sitting upright against the old wooden wall.
In her hand was a pair of new shoes for Blanche.
Come to think of it, tomorrow was Blanche's birthday.
Her mother had always been weak.
In a way, she had endured for a long time.
She did not cry.
Blanche took her mother's hand and smelled it.
She wanted to preserve even a single strand of her mother's fading scent inside her nose.
That night, Blanche stood before Alain.
Her mother had owed Alain a debt.
It was for the cost of medicine.
It also included the price of renting the shed.
Blanche's fate had fallen into Alain's hands.
That was how Grasse was at the time.
"Hand her over to the lustful monks at the Benedictine monastery and bring me back at least 100 francs."
The Benedictine monastery was infamous for monks who lusted after young boys.
There was even a rumor that anyone taken there would have their rear torn apart and die within a month.
Afterward, they would be buried in a gloomy basement.
The rumors circulating around Grasse were no exception for young Blanche.
She was afraid, but Blanche was not servile.
"Instead of 100 francs, I'll tell you where there's a flower that smells better than the orange blossoms you bought today."
She boldly made a deal.
You?
A mocking smile hung from Alain's lips.
He was a perfumer of considerable standing.
His position within the guild wasn't bad either.
Burning with ambition, he had built connections with nobles through his natural talent for flattery.
The orange essence he was making now was supposed to be the work that would establish him.
Those flowers were of the highest quality in the Grasse region.
He had personally selected them.
And now a ten-year-old brat was trying to lecture him.
"Do you know anything about fragrance?"
Alain's authority was almost abstract.
Given his position, he could decide whether Blanche lived or died without any consequences.
Even if he snapped her neck right there and threw her into a sewer, there would be no problem.
But then.
"The perfume you just sprayed is tuberose, isn't it? You suppressed the tuberose, which tends to fly away, by layering vanilla and sandalwood scents with violet, and finally adding heavy musk. That's because scents like tuberose and orange disappear easily."
"......?"
Just one sentence.
That one sentence made Alain's mocking smile disappear.
Those were not words that should have come from a ten-year-old child.
And it wasn't because she had learned about fragrances from her mother either.
Her mother was a woman who did nothing but handle dirty fish entrails.
What came next was even more remarkable.
"But there's too little musk. If it was difficult to obtain musk, you could have added more mimosa, orris, or rose. Or even nutmeg. Those also have a musky smell."
"......?"
"If you bury my mother properly, I'll tell you where to find the orange grove with the best-smelling flowers in Grasse. And I'll work to repay all of my mother's debt too."
The deal had grown bigger.
She had even added the condition that he bury her mother.
Then he noticed a bundle of rose residue.
They were rose petals left over after extracting their fragrance.
When he picked it up, it was crude in shape but had been properly compressed.
"Did you make this?"
"Yes."
"What were you going to use it for?"
"When the weather gets cold or winter comes, I burn it. Then the bad smell goes away. My mother liked it. She said it made it easier to breathe."
"......"
Alain began to waver.
It was unbelievable, but it wasn't a coincidence.
With Blanche leading the way, he went looking for the orange blossoms.
There was a grove at a small farm along the coast.
She could tell even from a distance.
Its scent was three times stronger than that of other orange blossoms.
Alain ordered a servant to bury Blanche's mother.
Blanche smelled the earth of her mother's grave.
She wanted to remember it together with her mother's scent.
Alain took Blanche to his workshop and tested her abilities for three days and three nights.
It was astonishing.
This little girl had never learned perfumery even once.
Although her techniques were somewhat crude, she produced incredible perfumes.
Over the course of two days, she replicated two perfumes that were considered the latest hits.
Except they weren't mere copies.
She had improved them, even correcting the weaknesses of the original perfumes.
Pfft.
It was almost laughable.
But perfume did not lie.
The scent had not changed even after three hours, making the result all the more undeniable.
Blanche was saved in that way.
Alain took her in instead of accepting the debt.
Officially, she was the assistant of the perfumer Alain Clement.
But in reality, it was the beginning of a nightmare.
She was nothing more than his slave.
Blanche didn't know.
The debt acknowledgment that Alain had placed before her and told her to sign.
That was what it said.
Because she was so young, she couldn't examine the contents of the contract.
Nor was she in a position to do so.
From the next day onward, the ten-year-old girl was subjected to hard labor.
Because of her genius-level sense of smell.
While Alain conducted his business in style, Blanche examined the quality of the materials.
No flower or ingredient could escape Blanche's olfactory analysis.
Not even musk, civet, ambergris, or Himalayan cedar.
The materials purchased based on her analysis were truly among the finest in Grasse.
With those materials, she made pomades, essences, and perfumes.
But Alain's greed for money did not end there.
He ordered her to make not only soap and lip balm, but even hand cream for noblewomen.
There was a mute servant who helped, but Blanche was at the center of all the work.
Every perfume they made carried Alain's name.
In truth, aside from a few practical techniques, Alain was of little help to Blanche.
Once she realized this, Blanche wanted books.
Every book about perfume.
"Books?"
"I need them for inspiration."
The reason was ingenious.
Inspiration for a good perfume.
That was something common to all perfumers.
The justification was sound, so Alain didn't object.
The bookshelves were filled with books by Goethe, Dante, and da Vinci.
Blanche especially loved Goethe's poem The Wild Rose.
Because her mother had been German, she had also learned German.
Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn
Röslein auf der Heiden
War so jung und morgenschön
Lief er schnell, es nah zu sehn
Sah's mit vielen Freuden
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot
Röslein auf der Heiden
A boy saw a little rose,
A young rose growing in the field,
Very young, fresh and beautiful as the morning,
He hurried over to see it up close,
And looked upon the rose with delight,
Little rose, little rose, little red rose,
A young rose growing in the field.
Blanche also liked da Vinci's paintings.
They were crude imitations, but she owned two of them, and she was particularly fascinated by the faint smile on the Mona Lisa's lips.
There were also many books from Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Before long, Alain had become one of the leading perfumers in Grasse.
Gold began piling up in Alain's safe.
He accumulated enough wealth to be considered one of the richest men not only in Grasse, but even in Paris.
But in the corner of Blanche's workshop, only books and exhaustion continued to pile up.
Alain's fame gradually spread to the major cities of Europe.
The more famous he became, the harsher the surveillance and exploitation of Blanche grew.
He was afraid that word might somehow get out that all of these works were the result of Blanche's abilities.
The space permitted to Blanche was restricted to the workshop.
The only person allowed to bring her meals was Adelaide.
Poor Adelaide.
She had originally run around like a doll with her younger sister, who was two years younger than her.
Before the grief of losing her mother and that younger sister, who looked so much like her they could have been twins, had even faded, her father also died in a carriage accident.
She was then sold as Alain's maid.
For Blanche, who lived a life more like livestock being raised than a human being, Adelaide was a source of comfort like Lotte in Goethe's book Werther or Beatrice in Dante's book.
As one perfume after another became a hit, Alain held out a carrot.
"When you turn twenty, I'll set you up with your own house and give you your freedom."
That promise was never kept.
The promise postponed until she was twenty-five was not kept either.
Bastard.
She never said the insult aloud.
She had endured because of the silver coins Alain had spent burying her mother.
But no longer.
She made a plan.
An escape from this life of slavery.
When the promise made for her twentieth birthday was broken, Blanche began preparing.
She started secretly taking musk, civet, ambergris, cedar essence, and other materials.
Whenever she worked, she saved a little at a time, and whenever new materials came in, she switched them out.
In case even the scent leaked out, she sealed them three times with beeswax and carved cedar to make a precise container.
If Alain asked about the shortage, she only had to say she had used them for experiments on a new product.
Alain didn't question it further.
He cared only about the finished products.
She also experimented with secret perfumes.
They were incomparable to the new products she handed over to Alain.
She made holy oil mentioned in the Bible and perfumes for dogs and cats.
After that, she attempted her ambitious masterpiece.
The Scent of Heaven.
That was the theme.
She intended to create the most beautiful perfume in the world.
After escaping to a distant country, she would unveil it and overturn Alain's reputation.
After six months of effort, she finally produced a scent that satisfied her.
She placed it in a secret perfume bottle carved from cedarwood.
It was the Scent of Heaven, encompassing the essence of every note on earth.
With this, she could captivate not only the queens of France and Italy, but even the heart of the god of hell.