The mysterious chained murder. Women, virgin or not, died horribly. Their clothes were scattered, their hair and head skin were lost. Their body was completely pale and weak, but no one knew what really happened to them. The essence of their life disappeared like it was unknowingly consumed by the nature. Every murder exist was a complete confusion. It was wrapped so tidily without any single speck of traces. Days by days, people kept disappearing and every investigation held would end up by discovering the corpses of those disappeared people. The very inhumane and heart-shredding, but very tidy murders.
Jean Baptist Grenouille was born on the 18th century in France. Not like other famous paradoxes like Sade, Saint-Just, Fouche, or Bonaparte, Grenouille’s name is already forgotten. This happened because his talent and ambition were kept very strictly that history couldn’t even smell the sense of them. The times where cities in France were filled with aroma unfamiliar with modern people: streets with the smell of fertilizer, building yards with the smell of urine, stairs with the smell of fungus or rat droppings, kitchens full with trashes, dirty and bad-smelled pillows, and much more. Commoners have no different smell with the pastors. Students share their aroma with their teachers’ wives, and the noble families as well, even the King, their smell is like a lion while the Queen is like a very old, dirty woman, whatever the weather is. No one is able to stop the business of the rotting bacteria in the 18th century. No wonder why every human constructive or even destructive activity is always followed by disgusting smells.
Paris becomes one of the most suffering cities in the world caused by the putrefaction covering the country, and added with the terrifying rumor in there, located between Fers street and Ferronneire street, specifically in a graveyard named Cimetiere des Innocents. For eight hundred years, corpses were brought to this place from Dieu Hotel and local church. Day and night, dozens of corpses were carried into a long tunnel; the bones were arranged in and out of the grave building. When the French Revolution was about to come, after some of the buildings were collapsed, and the smell of the corpses were getting worse, that place was closed and abandoned. Millions of bones and skulls were swept away into the Moontmartre’s grave. And then a culinary market was build near that place
Once upon a time, in the most rotten place in the entire kingdom, Jean Baptist Grenouille was born on July 17th 1738. His birth was welcomed by the most scorching summer that year. It was very hot that the graves were burned and spread bad smell like the mixture of rotten honeydew and the burned animal’s droppings. So wide until the smell spread into the small streets around. While suffering in the pain of pregnancy, Grenouille’s mother was in the fish store in Fers street with the very pale face as her belly was just being split in half. The fish in that place were just harvested that morning from Siene River, with the bad smell defeating the smell of dead bodies. But like normal people in that era, her sense of smell was somewhat died that she couldn’t distinguish between fish’ smell and corpses’ smell, added with the excruciating pain in her belly that killed her senses. She only wanted to make the pain to stop, and it was the fifth times she was about to give birth to her child. Every medication she had done was always took place in that fish store, in the condition that the child was dead or half complete since the flesh and blood was in no difference with the fish spread all over the place. Even though the birth was a success, the baby wouldn’t stay alive in a long time. Grenouille’s mother never took it complicatedly because usually that mess would have been cleaned by the dawn and swept away to the graveyard or river. Even in that day
Grenouille’s mother was very young that time, about 25 years old below. She had a fair appearance, complete teeth with messy, less-cared hair, and didn’t suffer serious disease, perhaps gout, syphilis, and tuberculosis. She wanted to stay alive longer, perhaps five or ten more years, even married if lucky enough. That’s what she hoped. When she experienced the last contraction, she squatted under the table and, then gave birth without anyone’s help, like her previous four chances. Then she cut the baby’s navel with a dagger. But suddenly she fell unconscious caused by the killing hot season and the bad smell around her. She fell from under the table to the middle of the street while still holding the dagger. The crowd came in sudden. People gathered and watched, and some called the police. The woman was still lying down on the street, and then woke up slowly. She then went up, threw the dagger aside, and then walked slowly to clean herself up. Suddenly the baby left under the table screamed. People got confused, and from the stock of fish, flies and dirt, they found a newborn baby. But according to the law applied there, they found a woman to milk the baby while Grenouille’s mother was sentenced to prison
In several weeks, the baby had turned to the third mother to milk him. No one wanted to take care of him more than few days. They told that the baby had a huge appetite, that his milk portion was as equal as milk for two babies, spending the milk and life of those who milked him. Because of that, Grenouille was rejected in most places. The police officer responsible for this case was a man named La Fosse. He kept getting difficulties and wanted to send the baby to the orphanage located at the furthest edge of Saint-Antonie Street, where babies and children came to and from the public orphanage in Rouen. But it only happened if the baby had been baptized. The problem was that Grenouille was not baptized yet, so he couldn’t afford that, while it would be bad if the police had a baby hidden in an orphanage. After thinking some considerations, La Fosse threw the baby away to Saint-Merri Monastery located on Saint-Martin Street. There, he was baptized with the name Jean Baptist. And since the condition was not good and the charity box wasn’t dry, they didn’t send him to Rouen and instead took care of him under the monastery’s responsibility. At this point, he was handed over to a woman named Jeanne Bussie who lived in Saint-Dennis Street and got paid three franc in a week until further information
Few weeks later, Jeanne Bussie was standing at the gate of Saint-Merri Monastery while carrying a basket with Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in it. Grenouille was returned because he had one same problem: too high appetite. Father Terrier accepted it politely. He felt upset because Jeanne returned the baby, then he stretched himself up, exhaled. Jeanne kept refusing the baby although she was offered five francs, because she thought that the baby was possessed by a devil since he had no smell from his own body. That was it, the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille that was full of suffering where he was always refused by many people in many places, until one day he was accepted by a famous perfume expert. He inherited the art of processing and filtering oils from plants, since it was known that he had a very special ability to sense a smell from a very far radius, even kilos or even miles away. But Grenouille’s genius overpowered it all. After ‘catching’ the sense of a beautiful virgin, he was obsessed to create the best virgin-scented perfume, and that became the best perfume ever exist in the 18th century
This Perfume novel becomes one of the best-selling novels because this novel can reveal the story of one of the forgotten figure; the story of a figure that has a very hard life but amazing blessing and gift; the novel that can give so many lessons of the curiosity to know more about this Grenouille the Genius, a very attracting story with murder cases and biased murder methods and geniuses caused by the overwhelming ambition. This novel is very exotic and sensational, raising the scary curiosity about what happened when talent, passion, and someone’s tendency of sense and aroma changed him into a genius inventor yet a deadly murderer, killing for the sake of creating the best perfume ever exist, creating the perfume with the smell of a woman, especially a virgin
By: Marcellino Julius Putra
The Limitless 