17 July 1738

17 July 1738 marks the birth of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, one of the most gifted and abominable personages of eighteenth-century France. He is born on the hottest day of the year at the Cimetière des Innocents, the most putrid spot in the entire kingdom, where the stench of rotting corpses and decaying matter is so overwhelming that it masks even the smell of the fish his mother is gutting. This date is not merely a chronological marker; it is the moment when a creature enters the world who will later become the greatest perfumer of all time, a man whose sole ambition is restricted to the fleeting realm of scent, and whose life will be defined by his own lack of a personal odour.

The Circumstances of Birth

Grenouille's mother, a young woman in her mid-twenties, is standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers, scaling whiting, when her labour pains begin. The heat lies leaden upon the graveyard, squeezing its putrefying vapour—a blend of rotting melon and the fetid odour of burnt animal horn—out into the nearby alleys. She perceives neither the stench of the fish nor the corpses, for her sense of smell has been utterly dulled, and the pain deadens all susceptibility to sensate impressions. She only wants the pain to stop, to put this revolting birth behind her as quickly as possible. It is her fifth birth; she has effected all the others here at the fish booth, and all have been stillbirths or semi-stillbirths. When the final contractions begin, she squats down under the gutting table and gives birth, cutting the newborn thing's umbilical cord with her gutting knife. She then grows faint, topples to one side, falls out from under the table into the street, and lies there knife in hand.

The Immediate Aftermath

Tumult and turmoil ensue. The crowd stands in a circle around her, staring, and someone hails the police. The woman with the knife in her hand is still lying in the street. Slowly she comes to, but when questioned, she claims nothing has happened and that the blood on her skirt is from the fish. She stands up, tosses the knife aside, and walks off to wash. Then, unexpectedly, the infant under the gutting table begins to squall. Beneath a swarm of flies and amid the offal and fish heads, they discover a newborn child. They pull it out. As prescribed by law, they give it to a wet nurse and arrest the mother. Since she confesses, openly admitting that she would definitely have let the thing perish just as she had with those other four, she is tried, found guilty of multiple infanticide, and a few weeks later decapitated at the Place de Grève.

The Child's First Days

By the time of his mother's execution, the child has already changed wet nurses three times. No one wants to keep it for more than a couple of days. It is too greedy, they say, sucking as much as two babies and depriving the other sucklings of milk. The police officer in charge, a man named La Fosse, wearies of the matter and wants to have the child sent to a halfway house for foundlings and orphans, but bureaucratic and administrative difficulties arise. The babe has neither been baptized nor received a name to inscribe officially on the certificate of transport. Officer La Fosse revokes his original decision and gives instructions for the boy to be handed over to some ecclesiastical institution. He gets rid of him at the cloister of Saint-Merri in the rue Saint-Martin. There they baptize him with the name Jean-Baptiste, and because the prior is in a good mood and the eleemosynary fund not yet exhausted, they pamper him at the cloister's expense, giving him to a wet nurse named Jeanne Bussie who lives in the rue Saint-Denis.

The Wet Nurse's Complaint

A few weeks later, the wet nurse Jeanne Bussie stands, market basket in hand, at the gates of the cloister of Saint-Merri. When a bald monk of about fifty with a faint odour of vinegar about him—Father Terrier—opens the gate, she sets her market basket down on the threshold and declares, "There!" She explains that the child is the bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers who killed her babies. Father Terrier pokes about in the basket with his finger until he exposes the face of the sleeping infant, noting that he looks good, rosy pink and well nourished. The wet nurse retorts that the child has stuffed himself on her, pumped her dry down to the bones, and that she has put a stop to it. She insists that the child is possessed by the devil because he does not smell at all. Father Terrier, an educated man who despises superstitious notions, dismisses her claim, arguing that an infant cannot be possessed by the devil and that the child's lack of smell is a sign of health. He attempts to soothe her, but she remains resolute, refusing to take the child back. Eventually, Father Terrier discharges her and takes the basket himself.

The Monk's Unease

Father Terrier, alone with the infant, rocks the basket gently on his knees and strokes the child's head with his finger, repeating "poohpeedooh" in an attempt to soothe him. He holds his finger under his nose and sniffs, but can smell nothing except the choucroute he had eaten at lunch. He hesitates, looks around to make sure no one is watching, lifts the basket, and lowers his fat nose into it, sniffing all around the infant's head. He does not know exactly how babies' heads are supposed to smell, but he smells nothing. He rationalizes that an infant, assuming it is kept clean, simply does not smell, any more than it speaks, walks, or writes. Then the child awakens. Its nose moves, pushes upwards, and sniffs. The tiny wings of flesh around the two tiny holes in the child's face swell like a bud opening to bloom, creating an eerie suction. Terrier has the very odd feeling that the child sees him with its nostrils, scrutinizing him more piercingly than eyes could ever do, as if it is using its nose to devour something whole that comes from him. He feels naked and ugly, as if someone is gaping at him while revealing nothing of himself. The child seems to be smelling right through his skin, into his innards. Terrier shudders, feels sick to his stomach, and wrenches himself to his feet, setting the basket on the table. He wants to get rid of the thing as quickly as possible. He hitches up his cassock, grabs the bellowing basket, and runs off to the rue de Charonne, where he hands the child over to a certain Madame Gaillard, who takes children to board no matter of what age or sort. He pays a year in advance and flees back into the city, casting his clothes from him as if they were foully soiled, washing himself from head to foot, and creeping into bed in his cell, crossing himself repeatedly and praying long before finally falling asleep with some relief.

The Significance of the Date

The date 17 July 1738 is the starting point of Grenouille's entire trajectory. It is the day he is born on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom, a place where the stench is so foul that it drives the neighbours to insurrection decades later. It is the day his mother, who would have let him perish as she had with her other four children, is arrested and later executed for multiple infanticide. It is the day that sets in motion a series of rejections and transfers that will shape his character: the wet nurses who cannot bear his lack of smell, the monk who is repulsed by his olfactory scrutiny, and the foster mother who, though emotionally dead herself, provides the only environment where he can survive. The date is thus the foundation of his identity as an abomination, a creature who from the start decides against love and for life out of sheer spite and sheer malice, and who will go on to become the greatest perfumer in the world, a man who can command the love of mankind through scent but who himself remains odourless and unloved.