“You drink too much, Daldry.”
“Considering your current state, you’re not in much of a place to give me advice concerning my health. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I’m in better shape than you are.”
“Tonight perhaps, but on the average day it’s quite the opposite.”
“Why don’t you get some rest and stop worrying about me. Take your medicine, sleep well, and if the doctor was right, you’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Have you heard anything from Can?”
“Not for the time being,” said Daldry, “but I’m expecting his call. Speaking of which, I should probably free up the line and let you sleep.”
“Good night, Ethan.”
“Good night, Alice.”
She hung up. When she reached out to turn off her bedside lamp, she was seized by an uneasy feeling, so she left it on and fell asleep shortly afterward. That night, for the first time in a long time, no nightmares troubled her sleep.
There was a perfume maker who lived in Cihangir. His house was perched on a weedy plot of land at the top of one of the highest hills in the neighborhood. A clothesline hung with shirts, trousers, smocks, and even a uniform was strung across the space between it and the neighboring house. It had been difficult for the dolmu they had taken to scale the steep cobbled street in the rain. The Chevrolet had slipped backward, the overheating engine stinking of burning rubber, and the driver, who had never before questioned the state of his balding tires, grumbled that there was nothing for tourists to see in the depths of Cihangir anyway. Daldry finally joined him in the front seat and slipped him a banknote, and the driver calmed down and got them to their destination.
Can guided Alice by the arm as they picked their way through the weedy plot, “so that she would not put her foot in a water-filled hole,” as he put it.
The ground seemed dry enough, in spite of the mist that had fallen for much of the day, but Can was doing his best to show foresight. Alice was feeling better, but she was still weak and appreciated the attention. Daldry held his tongue.
They went into the house. The room where the perfume maker worked was spacious. Glowing embers smoldered beneath a large samovar, and the heat they gave off fogged up the windows of the dusty workshop.
The perfume maker did not understand why two people had come all the way from London to see him, although he was honored by their visit. He offered them tea and little Turkish pastries drizzled with syrup.
“My wife made them,” he told Can, who translated in turn that the perfumer’s wife was the most talented pastry maker in Cihangir.
Alice followed the perfumer to his organ. He had her smell some of his creations. The notes he was working with were sustained, the accords harmonious. They were well-made Oriental-style perfumes, but nothing very original.
At the end of the long table, Alice’s eye fell upon a wooden case that piqued her curiosity.
“May I?” she asked, picking up a small bottle filled with a liquid of an odd green color she had never seen before.
The perfumer took the bottle from her hands and put it back in its place before Can had the time to finish translating her request.
“He says they aren’t very interesting, just experiments for his amusement. A pastime.”
“I’d still be curious to smell one of them.”
The perfume maker shrugged and signaled that it was fine with him if she wanted to waste her time. Alice pulled out the stopper and was astonished. She took a strip of paper, dipped it in the liquid, and waved it under her nose. She put the bottle back and repeated the operation with a second bottle, then a third.
“So?” asked Daldry. He had been unusually silent up until then.
“It’s incredible. He’s recreated an entire forest in this box. I would have never come up with such an idea. Smell for yourself,” she said, dipping a new strip of paper in another vial. “It’s like being stretched out on the ground at the base of an old cedar tree.”
She put it down, dipped another, and waved it in the air before presenting it to Daldry.
“This one is pine resin, and in the next bottle”—she opened it—“the smell of wet grass with a slight note of autumn crocus and bracken. And here’s another, hazelnuts . . .”
“I’ve never met anyone who wanted to smell like a hazelnut,” said Daldry.
“They’re not for skin. I’d call them ambiance aromas.”
“Do you really think there’s a market for ambiance aromas? What the hell is an ambiance aroma anyway?”
“Imagine how wonderful it would be to have the scents of the natural world in one’s home. We could fill our living spaces with the smells of the seasons.”
“The smells of the seasons?”
“You could make autumn last a little longer when winter comes too soon, or move forward the date of spring’s arrival when January seems like it will never end. A dining room that smelled ever so slightly like a lemon tree, or a bathroom scented with orange blossoms. Indoor perfumes that aren’t incense . . . I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
“Well, if you say so. But first we need to make friends with this kind man, who seems rather astounded by your current state of excitement.”
Alice turned to Can.
“Could you ask him how he makes the cedar note last so long?” She picked up the dipper and smelled it again.
“The note?”
“Ask him what he does to make the smell last so long in the open air.”
While Can did his best to translate the conversation between Alice and the Turkish perfumer, Daldry walked over to the window and looked out at the Bosporus, blurred by the condensation on the windowpanes. This wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he organized their trip to Istanbul, he thought to himself. Alice might very well make a fortune in perfumes and, strangely enough, he couldn’t care less.
Alice, Can, and Daldry thanked the perfumer for spending the morning with them. Alice promised to come back soon and told him she hoped they would be able to work together. The perfumer could never have imagined that his hobby of recreating offbeat fragrances would interest another person so much. That evening he would be able to tell his wife that the late nights he spent in his workroom, and the Sundays he devoted to his walks through the hills to collect all sorts of flowers and vegetable matter in the woods and fields, were more than just an old fool’s pastime, as she so often said: it was serious work that had caught the attention of an English perfume maker.
“It’s not that I was bored,” said Daldry as they stepped out onto the street. “I just haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday at noon. I’m in need of a snack.”
“Are you not joyous from this visit?” Can asked Alice, ignoring Daldry.
“Yes, I’m simply overcome with joy. That perfume organ was a veritable Ali Baba’s cavern. You found exactly the sort of person I had been hoping to meet, Can.”
“And I am enchanted that you are enchanted,” said Can, blushing deep magenta.
“Hello? Did anybody hear what I just said?” Daldry was beginning to behave like an attention-starved child.
“I should inform you, Miss Alice, that some words of your vocabulary are new to me and very difficult to translate. And I did not see any baba cavern organ in this man’s house.”
“I’ll have to explain all the perfume jargon. The organ is that set of shelves with all of the little bottles on it. You’ll be the best perfumer’s translator in Istanbul when I’m done with you.”
“That is a specialty I would like very much. I would be eternally grateful, Miss Alice.”
“Has nobody heard a word of what I just said?” asked Daldry. “I’m hungry! Can, could you kindly take us to a place where Miss Alice won’t be poisoned?”
Can turned and looked at Daldry.
“I have the intention of driving you to a place that you will not be forgetting soon.”
“Ah, just in time, you remembered I exist.”