I watched all this from the servants’ window, peeking out at them like a village maiden watching those brightly painted, ugly, but moving icons on the wagons of a passing religious fair: there was a mysterious, sanctified feeling about it, something faintly supernatural, not quite human. I often felt like that as I watched the family in my first few years with them.
Unfortunately, it was quite some time before I was allowed in to breakfast, since this was one of the major family rituals. I had to serve my time before I was permitted to minister to them. Of course they never sat down to it uncombed or unwashed, in their night things. They dressed for it with as much care as they would for a wedding. By that time they would have exercised, showered, and bathed, and the manservant would have shaved both my husband-to-be and the old man. They had already leafed through the English, French, and German papers. They listened to the radio while shaving, but not to the news, because they were afraid they might hear something that might spoil their morning appetites … They listened to simple, stirring dance music, a kind of jollifying that lifted their spirits and prepared them to face the rigors of the day ahead.
They dressed with great care. The old man had a dressing room with built-in wardrobes. Her Ladyship had something similar, as did my husband. They stored clothes for all seasons there, in slipcases hung with camphor, as if ready for mass. But they had ordinary wardrobes too, where everyday items were kept, stuff they wanted quickly to hand. Even as I’m speaking the smell of those wardrobes comes back to me, making my nose twitch. They had something brought over from England that looked like a cube of sugar but which, when you put your nose to it, filled the room with the smell of autumn haystacks. Her Ladyship liked the artificial scent of hay in her cupboards and linen chests.
But there weren’t just chests and wardrobes, there were shoe cupboards too … oh, heavens! It was the high point of my life, you know, as good as a Sunday off, when, at last, they let me loose on the shoe cupboard. There was so much cleaning material there — leather-care cream, a range of polishes — and I set about those shoes without using spit or saliva, using only those marvelous greasy ointments, the alcoholic liquid polish, the soft brushes, the rags! And believe me, I polished every one of those shoes and boots — the old man’s, my husband’s — until you could see your face in them! But it wasn’t just the clothes and shoes that had their own wardrobes and cupboards; so did the linen. The linen chest was divided into compartments according to material and quality, the shirts separated from the underpants! And, my God, what shirts, what underpants! … I think it was while ironing my husband’s “lawn underpants” that I first fell in love with him! He had his monogram even on his pants, heaven knows why. It was near where his belly button would be, and above the monogram there was the royal crest. The old man was, besides everything else, an adviser at the royal court, not just the head of a city council like his son … there was a difference in rank there, a step up on the ladder between baron and count. As I said, it took time for me to come to grips with all this.
But I forget the glove cupboard, where a variety of gloves lay in some mind-numbingly complex order, like preserved herring in a tin box. There were gloves to wear in the street, in town, for hunting, for driving; gray ones, yellow ones, white ones; gloves made of fawn leather, gloves lined with fur for the winter. There was a special drawer full of kid gloves for ceremonial occasions, and another with black mourning gloves for funerals, those grand occasions whenever someone important kicked the bucket. And soft gloves of pigeon gray to wear with the frock coat and top hat, though they never actually put those on, but carried them the way the king carries a scepter. Ah, those gloves! And then there were the jackets and vests of every kind, jackets with or without sleeves, long and short, thick and thin, in every color, of every quality, neat little tweed jackets and the like. There were times in the fall when they dressed for the evening, without a dressing gown, a little sportily, and sat down in front of the fire to smoke. The manservant would put dried pine twigs onto the embers so that everything should be just so, the way it was in the advertisements for brandy in English picture magazines, where you see the lord graciously puffing at his pipe by the hearth, replete with his daily intake of alcohol. And there he is, faintly smirking in his tweed jacket.
There were other jackets too: cream-colored ones they wore for grouse hunting, along with narrow-brimmed Tyrolean hats, complete with chamois feather. My husband had knit cardigans for spring and summer. And of course all kinds of colors and weights for winter sports. But the list is endless.
And to top it all, that smell of must and hay. The first time I lay down in my husband’s bed my gorge rose at the smell, this cunning, perverse male smell I remembered from all those years ironing his underpants and tidying his linen cupboard. When I was so happy, so excited by the smell and the memory, I was actually sick. My husband’s body smelled the same. It was the kind of soap he used too, you know. That, and the alcoholic cologne with which the servant treated his face after shaving, and the water he washed his hair in: it was all that same autumnal haystack smell … hardly perceptible, a mere breath. And somehow it wasn’t a human smell, but a haystack, yes, in very early fall, in a French painting of the last century … Maybe that was why I started heaving when I first lay down in bed and he embraced me. Because by that time I was his wife. The other one, the first, had gone. Why? Maybe she couldn’t bear the smell, either? Or the man? I don’t know. There’s no one clever enough to explain why a man and woman are attracted to each other and then why they part. All I knew was that the first night I spent in my husband’s bed, it was not like sleeping with someone human but with some strange, artificial being. The strangeness of it made me so excited that I was sick. Then I got used to it. After a while I stopped feeling sick whenever he called me to him or we embraced; my stomach was no longer heaving. People can get used to anything, even happiness and wealth.
But I can’t really tell you much about being rich, not the real truth, though I can see your eyes have lit up, and you’re interested to know what I learned and saw while I was with them. Well, it was certainly interesting. It was like a fantastic journey in a foreign country where they live differently, eat and drink differently, are born and die differently.
I like it better here with you, in this hotel. I feel I know you better. Everything about you is familiar … Yes, I even feel more comfortable with your smell. Some people say that living in a stinking machine age — what they call civilization — we are bound to lose our sense of smell, that it will simply wither away … But I was born with animals around me, a poor child born among animals, like baby Jesus … so I had the gift of smell that rich people have forgotten. My husband’s family didn’t even recognize their own smell. That was why I didn’t like them. I was simply their servant, first in the kitchen, later in the drawing room and in bed. I was always catering to them. But I love you because I know your smell. Give me a kiss. Thank you.