SCENE 9
Mime impro of a GIRL.
… Occasionally I walked along the wall of her garden … I wasn’t intoxicated or dizzy as I had been the first time when I smelled her … I was filled with the happiness of a lover who has heard or seen his darling from afar and knows that he will bring her home very soon. It was really true – me, the solitary tick, the abomination, Grenouille the Monster, who had never felt love and would never be able to inspire it, stood there and loved and was profoundly happy in my love …
True, I did not love another human being, certainly not the girl who lived in the house beyond the wall. I loved her scent – that alone, nothing else, and only inasmuch as it would one day be mine alone …
… But I understood that I had very limited time for my experiments, if I wouldn’t succeed to captivate her magnificent scent in the nearest future she will lose it, she will become an ordinary fishy smelling woman …
Also I understand another thing – it will be crude and unsophisticated to use her unique scent in a raw state, no! Does one wears gold in nuggets around one’s neck? Am I, Grenouille, a primitive pillager of scents like Baldini? Oh, no! I must set it like the most precious gemstone. I must design a diadem of scent, and at its sublime acme, intertwined with the other scents and yet ruling them, my scent would gleam… For such a perfume, for a human perfume, I have need of other ingredients…
… So I started to collect these ingredients …
(He goes off)
RICHIS and OFFICER.
(During this scene Grenouille improvising with a Girl on the table)
RICHIS – So, officer, what is going on?
OFFICER – I really don’t know, Monsieur … I have only facts but I still can’t find who stands behind them …
RICHIS – Alright … Read me your reports again …
OFFICER - … in May, the naked body of a fifteen-year-old girl was found in a rose field. She was killed by a heavy blow to the back of the head. The farmer who discovered her told the police that he had never seen anything so beautiful. She had black hair. The murderer had cut it off and taken it with him, along with her clothes.
… In June two more murders occurred. Again the victims were very lovely young girls, again of the languid, raven-haired sort, again they were found naked and shorn and lying in a flower field with the back of their heads bludgeoned. Again there was no trace of the perpetrator.
…The townsfolk set up nightly patrols in every neighbourhood, the police reinforced the watch at the gates. But all these measures proved useless.
…A few days after the double murder, they found the body of yet another girl, abused in the same manner as the others.
And although at the insistence of the citizenry the council initiated still further measures – the tightest possible control at the gates, a reinforced nightwatch, etc – all this summer not a single week went by when the body of a young girl was not discovered. And they were always girls just approaching womanhood, and always very beautiful. Soon, however, the murderer was no longer rejecting brown-haired girls and dark blondes. He tracked them down everywhere, not just in the open country but also in the town itself, right in their homes.
Whoever could afford it sent his adolescent daughters to distant relatives or to boarding schools.
The police lieutenant responsible for the investigation was removed. His successor had the college of medicine examine the bodies to determine the state of their virginity. It was found that they had all remained untouched.
Strangely enough, this knowledge only increased the sense of horror, for everyone had secretly assumed that the girls had been ravished…
RICHIS (takes the report from Officer) - …Unbelievable …I think I also must send my Laura as far as I can … I don’t care for all of my fortune if I will lose her … I don’t trust these night watch and grilled windows …
SECOND OFFICER comes in.
SECOND OFFICER – Monsieur … I am very sorry, but … your daughter …
RICHIS – What? Laura? What? Tell me!
SECOND OFFICER – I am so sorry, Monsieur … But she was murdered …