HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/chibacity/egress.005

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                        -=EGReSS PRODUCTIONS INC=-

                                present:

                 Chapter 2 of Patrick Suskind's "PERFUME"


Chapter 2
---------

     A few weeks later, the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stood, market basket in
hand, at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri, and the minute they were
open by a bald monk of about fifty with a light odor of vinegar about him -
Father Terrier - she said "There!" and set her market basket down on the
threshold.
     "What's that?" asked Terrier, bending down over the basket and
sniffing at it, in the hope that it was something edible.
     "The bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers who killed her
babies!"
     The monk poked about in the basket with his finger till he had exposed
the face of the sleeping infant.
     "He looks good. Rosy and pink and well nourished."
     "Because he's stuffed himself on me. Because he's pumped me dry down
to the bones. But I've put a stop to that. Now you can feed him yourselves
with goat's milk, with pap, with beet juice. He'll gobble up anything, that
bastard will."
     Father Terrier was an easygoing man. Among his duties was the
administration of the cloister's charities, the distribution of its moneys to
the poor and needy. And for that he expected a thank-you and that he not be
bothered further. He despised technical details, because details meant
difficulties and difficulties mean ruffling his composure, and he simply would
not put up with that. He was upset that he had even opened the gate. He
wished that this female would take her market basket and go home and let him
alone with her sucking problems. Slowly he straightened up, and as he did we
breathed the scent of milk and cheesy wool exuded by the wet nurse. It was a
pleasant aroma.
     "I don't understand what it is you want. I really don't understand what
you're driving at. I can only presume that it would certainly do no harm to
this infant if he were to spend a good while yet lying at your breast."
     "None to him," the wet nurse snarled back, "but plenty to me. I've lost
ten pounds and been eating like I was three women. And for what? For three
francs a week!"
     "Ah, I understand," said Terrier, almost relieved. "I catch your drift.
Once again, it's a matter of money."
     "No!" said the wet nurse.
     "Of course it is! It's always a matter of money. When there's a knock at
this gate, it's a matter of money. Just once I'd like to open it and find
someone standing there for whom it was a matter of something else. Someone,
or instance, with some little show of thoughtfulness. Fruit, perhaps, or a few
nuts. After all, in autumn there are lots of things someone could come by
with. Flowers maybe. Or if only someone would simply come by and say a
friendly word. 'God bless you, Father Terrier, I wish you a good day!' But I'll
probably never live to see it happen. If it isn't a beggar, it's a merchant, and
if it isn't a merchant, it's a tradesman, and if it isn't alms he wants, then
he presents me with a bill. I can't even go out into the street anymore. When
I go out on the street, I can't take three steps before I'm hedged by folks
wanting money!"
     "Not me," said the wet nurse.
     "But I'll tell you this: you aren't the only wet nurse in the parish.
There are hundreds of excellent foster mothers who would scramble for the
chance of putting this charming babe to their breast for three francs a week,
or to supply him with pap or juices or whatever nourishment......."
     "Then give him to one of them!"
     ".......On the other hand, it's not good to pass a child around like
that. Who knows if he would flourish as well on someone else's milk as on
yours. He's used to the smell of your breast, as you surely know, and to the
beat of your heart."
     And once again he inhaled deeply of the warm vapors streaming from
the wet nurse.
     But then, noticing that his words made no impression on her, he said,
"Now take the child home with you! I'll speak to the prior about this. I shall
suggest to him that in the future you be given four francs a week."
     "No," said the wet nurse.
     "All right - five!"
     "No.:
     "How much do you want, then?" Terrier shouted at her. "Five francs is
a pile of money for the menial task of feeding a baby."
     "I don't want any money, period," said the wet nurse. "I want this
bastard out of my house."
     "But why, my good woman?" said Terrier, poking his finger in the
basket again. "He really is an adorable child. He's rosy pink, he doesn't cry,
and he's been baptized."
     "He's possessed by the devil."
     Terrier quickly withdrew his finger from the basket.
     "Impossible! It is absolutely impossible for an infant to be possessed by
the devil. An infant is not yet a human being; it is a prehuman being and
does not yet possess a fully developed soul. Which is why it is of no interest
to the devil. Can he talk already, perhaps? Does he twitch and jerk? Does he
move things about in the room? Does some evil stench come from him?"
     "He doesn't smell at all," said the wet nurse.
     "And there you have it! That is a clear sign. If he were possessed by
the devil, then he would have to stink."
     And to soothe the wet nurse and to put his own courage to the test,
Terrier lifted the basket and held it up to his nose.
     "I smell absolutely nothing out of the ordinary," he said after he had
sniffed for a while, "really nothing out of the ordinary. Though it does appear
as if there's an odor coming from his diapers." And he held out the basket to
her so that she could confirm his opinion.
     "That's not what I mean," said the wet nurse peevishly, shoving the
basket away. "I don't mean what's in his diaper. His soil smells, that's true
enough. But it's the bastard himself, he doesn't smell."
     "Because he's healthy," Terrier cried, "because he's healthy, that's why
he doesn't smell! Only sick babies smell, everyone knows that. It's well known
that a child with pox smells like horse manure, and one with scarlet fever like
old apples, and a consumptive child smells like onions. He is healthy, that's
all that's wrong with him. Do you think he should stink? Do your own children
stink?"
     "No," said the wet nurse. "My children smell like human children ought
to smell."
     Terrier carefully placed the basket back on the ground, for he could
sense rising within him the first waves of his anger at this obstinate female.
It was possible that he would need to move both arms more freely as the
debate progressed, and he didn't want the infant to be harmed in the process.
But for the present, he knotted his hands behind his back, shoved his
tapering belly toward the wet nurse, and asked sharply, "You maintain, then,
that you know how a human child - which may I remind you, once it is
baptized, is also a child of God - is supposed to smell?"
     "Yes," said the wet nurse.
     "And you further maintain that, if it does not smell that way you -
you, the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie from the rue Saint-Denis! - think it ought
to smell, it is therefore a child of the devil?"
     He swung his left hand out from behind his back and menacingly held
the question mark of his index finger in her face. The wet nurse thought it
over. She was not happy that the conversation had all at once turned into a
theological cross-examination, in which she could only be the loser.
     "That's not what I meant to say," she answered evasively. "You priests
will have to decide whether all this has anything to do with the devil or not,
Father Terrier. That's not for such as me to say. I only know one thing: this
baby makes my flesh creep because it doesn't smell the way children ought to
smell."
     "Aha," said Terrier with satisfaction, letting his arm swing away again.
"You retract all that about the devil, do you? Good. But now be so kind as to
tell me: what does a baby smell like when he smells the way you think he
ought to smell? Well?"
     "He smells good," said the wet nurse.
     "What do you mean, 'good'?" Terrier bellowed at her. "Lots of things
smell good. A bouquet of lavender smells good. Stew meat smells good. The
gardens of Arabia smell good. But what does a baby smell like, is what I want
to know."
     The wet nurse hesitated. She knew very well how babies smelled, she
knew precisely - after all she had fed, tended, cradled, and kissed dozens of
them.......She could find them at night with her nose. Why, right at that
moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. But never until now had
she described it in words.
     "Well?" barked Terrier, clicking his fingernails impatiently.
     "Well it's -" the wet nurse began, "it's not all that easy to say,
because.......because they don't smell the same all over, Father, you know what
I mean? Their feet, for instance, the smell like a smooth warm stone - or no,
more like curds.......or like butter, like fresh butter, that's it exactly. They
smell like fresh butter. And their bodies smell like.......like a griddle cake
that's been soaked in milk. And their heads, up on top, at the back of the
head, where the hair makes a cowlick, there, see what I mean, Father, there
where you've got nothing left......." And she tapped the bald spot on the head
of the monk, who, struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed
inanity, had obediently bent his head down. "There, right there, is where they
smell best of all. It smells like caramel, it smells so sweet, so wonderful,
Father, you have no idea! Once you've smelled them there, you love them
whether they're your own or somebody else's. And that's how little children
have to smell - and no other way. And if they don't smell like that, if they
don't have any smell at all up there, even less than cold air does, like that
little bastard there, then.......You can explain it however you like, Father,
but I" - and she crossed her arms resolutely beneath her bosom and cast a
look of disgust toward the basket at her feet as if it contained toads - "I,
Jeanne Bussie, will not take that thing back!"
     Father Terrier slowly raised his lowered head and ran his fingers
across his bald head a few times as if hoping to put the hair in order, passed
his finger beneath his nose as if by accident, and sniffed thoughtfully.
     "Like caramel.......?" he asked, attempting to find his stern tone again.
"Caramel! What do you know about caramel? Have you ever eaten any?"
     "Not exactly," said the wet nurse. "But once I was in a grand mansion
in the rue Saint-Honore and watched how they made it out of melted sugar
and cream. It smelled so good that I've never forgotten it."
     "Yes, yes. All right," said Terrier and took his finger from his nose.
"But please hold your tongue now! I find it quite exhausting to continue a
conversation with you on such a level. I have determined that, for whatever
reason, you refuse to nourish any longer the babe put under your care, Jean-
Baptiste Grenouille, and are returning him herewith to his temporary guardian,
the cloister of Saint-Merri. I find that distressing, but I apparently cannot
alter the fact. You are discharged."
     With that he grabbed the basket, took one last whiff of that fleeting
wooly, warm milkiness, and slammed the door. Then he went to his office.


(c)opyright 5.1.94
Story (c)opyright 1985
English translation (c)opyright 1986