seven years

The seven years Grenouille spent in voluntary isolation on the Plomb du Cantal, from August 1756 to late February 1763, constitute the most radical withdrawal from human society in the novel, a period during which he abandons all external ambition to dwell entirely within his self-created olfactory empire, only to be driven back into the world by the horrifying discovery that he himself emits no scent.

The Retreat to Absolute Solitude

After leaving Paris in the spring of 1756, Grenouille had gradually shed all contact with human beings, avoiding cities, villages, and even isolated farms. His journey became a flight from the human odour that had oppressed him since birth. The pole of his flight, the point in the kingdom most distant from humankind, was the peak of a six-thousand-foot volcano named Plomb du Cantal in the Massif Central of the Auvergne. He reached the mountain one August night in 1756. Standing on the peak at dawn, he turned full circle and let his nose move across the vast panorama of volcanic wilderness: to the east, the broad high plain of Saint-Flour and the marshes of the Riou River; to the north, the pitted limestone mountains from which he had come; to the west, the soft wind of morning bringing nothing but the smells of stone and tough grass; to the south, the foothills stretching for miles to the dark gorges of the Truyère. Everywhere, in every direction, humanity lay equally remote from him, and a step in any direction would have meant closer proximity to human beings. The compass spun about. It no longer provided orientation. Grenouille was at his goal. He erupted with thundering jubilation, shouting for joy, casting aside his rucksack, blanket and walking stick, stamping his feet on the ground, throwing his arms to the sky, dancing in circles, roaring his own name to the four winds, and shaking his fists triumphantly at the great, wide country lying below him and at the setting sun.

Life in the Cave

Near his watering spot he discovered a natural tunnel leading back into the mountain by many twists and turns, until after a hundred feet or so it came to an end in a rock slide. The back of the tunnel was so narrow that his shoulders touched the rock and so low that he could walk only hunched down. But he could sit, and if he curled up, could even lie down. He smelled at once that no living creature had ever entered the place. As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse-blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France — as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. He began to cry softly. He did not know whom to thank for such good fortune. He went into the open only to lick at his watering spot, quickly to relieve himself of his urine and excrement, and to hunt lizards and snakes. He climbed back up to the peak a few more times during the first weeks to sniff out the horizon, but soon gave up these excursions. For well over twenty hours a day in total darkness and in total silence and in total immobility, he sat on his horse blanket at the end of the stony corridor, his back resting on the rock slide, his shoulders wedged between the rocks, and enjoyed himself. He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be nearer to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.

The Inner Empire of Scents

The setting for his debaucheries was the innermost empire where he had buried the husks of every odour encountered since birth. To enhance the mood, he first conjured up those that were earliest and most remote: the hostile, steaming vapours of Madame Gaillard's bedroom; the bone-dry leathery bouquet of her hands; the vinegary breath of Father Terrier; the hysterical, hot maternal sweat of Bussie the wet nurse; the carrion stench of the Cimetière des Innocents; the homicidal odour of his mother. He wallowed in disgust and loathing, and his hair stood on end at the delicious horror. Then the pent-up hate would erupt with orgasmic force. Like a thunderstorm he rolled across these odours that had dared offend his patrician nose. He thrashed at them as hail thrashes a grain field; like a hurricane, he scattered the rabble and drowned them in a grand purifying deluge of distilled water. After this volcanic act, he could rest. Deep inside, on the cleanly swept mats of his soul, he stretched out comfortably to the fullest and dozed away, letting delicate scents play about his nose: a spicy gust as if borne here from springtime meadows; a mild May wind wafting through the first green leaves of beech; a sea breeze with the bitterness of salted almonds. He rose up, the great innermost Grenouille, like a giant, and planted himself in all his glory and grandeur. This was his empire, the incomparable Empire of Grenouille, created and ruled over by him, laid waste by him if he so chose and then raised up again. He sowed fragrance of all kinds, wastefully here, sparingly there, in plantations of endless dimension and in small, intimate parcels. He let descend a shower of rectified spirit, soft and steady, and everywhere the seeds began to germinate and sprout. Then he sent the gentle sun of his smile upon the land, and the hosts of blossoms unfolded their glory. He caused the wind of his breath to blow across the land, and the blossoms spilled over with scent and intermingled their teeming scents into one constantly changing scent that in all its variety was nevertheless merged into the odour of universal homage to Him, Grenouille the Great. His heart was a purple castle, with a thousand private rooms and a thousand underground chambers and a thousand elegant salons, among them one with a purple sofa where dear little Jean-Baptiste would recover from the labours of the day. The castle's private rooms were shelved from floor to ceiling with all the odours he had collected in the course of his life, several million of them. In the castle's cellars the best scents were stored in casks, drawn off into bottles that lay in miles of damp, cool corridors. He drank a glass of cool scent from the year 1752, sniffed up in spring before sunrise on the Pont-Royal, the odour of the approaching day, of the first daybreak that he had ever known in freedom. That odour had been the pledge of hope. He drank it daily. He also drank the scent of the girl from the rue des Marais, reverently, glass after glass, growing sadder and sadder as he drank, until he toppled sideways on to the purple sofa and sank into a numbed sleep.

The Catastrophe and Awakening

After seven years, catastrophe struck — not an earthquake, nor a forest fire, nor an avalanche, but an internal one. He lay on his sofa in the purple salon and slept, having drunk two whole bottles of the scent of the red-haired girl. His sleep was threaded with ghostly wisps of dreams. It seemed as if he were standing in the middle of a moor from which fog was rising. The fog slowly climbed higher. Soon he was completely wrapped in fog, saturated with it, and it seemed that he could not get his breath. The fog was his own odour. His own body odour was the fog. And the awful thing was that although he knew this odour was his odour, he could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself. He gave a scream as dreadful and loud as if he were being burned alive. The scream smashed through the walls of the purple salon, hurtled across the nocturnal landscape of his soul like a fire storm, howled its way out of his mouth, down the winding tunnel, out into the world, and far across the high plains of Saint-Flour — as if the mountain itself was screaming. He awoke at his own scream, thrashing about as if he had to drive off the odourless fog trying to suffocate him. He was deathly afraid, his whole body shook with the raw fear of death. He knew one thing for sure: he would change his life, if only because he did not want to dream such a frightening dream a second time. He threw his horse blanket over his shoulders and crept out into the open. It was a late February morning. The sun was shining. The earth smelled of moist stones, moss and water. On the wind there already lay a light bouquet of anemones. He squatted on the ground before his cave. The sunlight warmed him. Whenever he thought of the fog that he had escaped, a shudder would pass over him. He laid the index and middle fingers of his left hand under his nose and breathed along the backs of his fingers. He smelled the moist spring air spiced with anemones. He did not smell anything of his fingers. He turned his hand over and sniffed at the palm. He sensed the warmth of his hand, but smelled nothing. He rolled up the ragged sleeve of his shirt, buried his nose in the crook of his elbow. He could smell nothing. He could not smell anything in his armpits, nor on his feet, nor around his genitals. He took off his rags, which for seven years he had not removed from his body, and tossed them into a pile at the cave entrance. He climbed to the top of the mountain, held his nose to the west, and let the wind whistle around his naked body. He held this quite ridiculous pose for several hours. Towards evening he climbed back down. He made the sniffing test he had learned from Baldini, snatching up the air and then letting it out again in spurts. He did everything possible to extract his own odour from his clothes. But there was no odour in them. There were a thousand other odours — stone, sand, moss, resin, raven's blood, even the odour of the sausage he had bought years before near Sully — but not his own odour. He went back into the tunnel, to the end where the rock slide slanted upwards. He squatted down, laid his hands over his eyes, and smelled. He had lain here for seven years. There must be some smell of him here, if anywhere in this world. He breathed slowly. He analysed exactly. He allowed himself time to come to a judgement. He squatted there for a quarter of an hour. The spot smelled exactly as it had seven years before: stony and moist, salty, cool and so pure that no living creature could ever have entered the place. He continued to squat there for a while, quite calm, simply nodding his head gently. Then he turned around and walked out into the open air. Outside he pulled on his rags, threw the horse blanket over his shoulders, and that same night left the Plomb du Cantal, heading south.