SCENE 10
Richis rushes toward the table, embraces naked and dead daughter. Then Officers help him cover up her body and take it away.
Light change.
Grenouille’s body is thrown into the “cell”.
Officers come in and tight up his legs and hands.
GRENOUILLE - … How stupid I was … I needed only two more days to finish my perfume … only two more days … (Laughs) They did everything for to catch me … I was more cruel than the plague for them, for you could flee before the plague, but not before me … The were sure I possessed supernatural powers and was most certainly in league with the devil. Some people took their wives and daughters with them, praying together, eating and sleeping in the church. Other, quicker wits banded together in occult groups and celebrated black masses to curry the Old Gentleman’s favour. Some particular members of the upper middle class and the educated nobility, put their money on the most modern scientific methods, magnetizing their houses, hypnotizing their daughters, gathering in their salons for secret fluidal meetings,, and employing telepathy to drive off the murderer’s spirit with communal thought emission …
But as usual the money solved their fear. After the magistrate offered a reward no less than two hundred livres for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer, did denunciations bring about the arrest of several journeyman and finally, merely by the chance the arrested me … They found Laura’s shredded nightgown and her hair …then they dug up the floor and found pieces of clothes and hair of other 24 girls… How stupid! Just two more days …
VOICE-OVER OF THE MOB – We want him! We want him! Kill him!
1 JUDGE – Are you perfumer Jean-Baptiste Grenouille?
GRENOUILLE – Yes, I am.
2 JUDGE – Are you confess to all 25 murders charges against you?
GRENOUILLE – Yes, I do.
(Judges look at him questioningly, but he doesn’t even look at them.)
1 JUDGE – What were your motives?
GRENOUILLE – What? Motives?
2 JUDGE – Yes, motives. What were your motives to commit such unspeakable crimes?
1 JUDGE – You don’t look like an idiot. You must have some motives and reasons to do these terrible things to your victims.
GRENOUILLE – Terrible things… My victims…They smelled so nice, so delicately…I…I…
2 JUDGE – What? What?
1 JUDGE – Tell us!
GRENOUILLE – I needed them…
2 JUDGE – You just needed them. So simple! And you killed them because “you needed them”? But what for?
1 JUDGE – Answer! What do you needed them for? You didn’t rape them! You stole their dresses, but you never sold them.
GRENOUILLE – I needed them…
2 JUDGE – Why? If it is not a sexual motives and not money – why then?
GRENOUILLE – I needed them…
1 JUDGE – Accused, listen the verdict!
2 JUDGE – The journeyman perfumer, Jean-Baptist Grenouille shall within the next 24 hours be lead out to the parade ground before the city gates and there be bound to a wooden cross, your face towards heaven, and while still alive be dealt twelve blows with an iron rod, breaking the joints of his arms, legs, hips and shoulders, and then, still bound to the cross, be raised up to hang until death.
1 JUDGE – The customary act of mercy, by which the offender should be strangled with a cord once his body had been crushed, is forbidden the executioner, even if the agonies of death should take days.
2 JUDGE – The body is to be buried by night in an unmarked grave in the knacker’s yard.
1 JUDGE – Do you have your last wish?
GRENOUILLE – No, nothing. I have everything what I need now.
2 JUDGE – Would you like to see the priest?
GRENOUILLE – The priest? What for?
1JUDGE – All right then. Prepare yourself as best as you can.
(Judges leave the cell.
Grenouille takes two small flacons hidden in his dress, mixes them together and sprinkles himself all over the body. )
VOICE-OVER OF THE MOB – We want him! Kill him!
GRENOUILLE – They want me…They want Grenouille…First time in my life someone want me…and listen how desperately! …
(VOICE-OVER)
… So, you will have what you want!
(He goes off.
The noise of the mob getting louder and louder.
Change of light.)