Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

suddenly caressing and cajoling my face? What sort of voices were these? … Spirits … cocoa.… extinguishing match … Why don’t matches smell like that anymore?

Yes, how has that happened? Have development, progress, catastrophe left their mark on you, too, you matches? Is it a yearning for something new, or the lack of time, that forms you from different, cold materials today? Your soul is gone. Do you have a new one? I don’t get that sense. Am I too old to capture the spirit of things with eager nostrils the way I once did?

Oh, blessed fragrance from the sun-kissed leather cushions of a carriage! The sun was baking, thin, fine dust lay on the street, and dried grass gave off its scent, green and herbaceous, up from the ground. The Corpus Christi procession had passed by here. There were whipcords. Stepping into the little shop, you would see them hanging there at the door by the dozens, dark, slender worms adorned with colored little woolen tassels, black and new, and emitting a fragrance that signified horse and stable and mighty rule over both. And out of one of the countless drawers that rose all the way up to the ceiling came the pervasive aroma of a singular, mysterious spice that had never been granted to any mortal being in the clientele’s circle to see, to feel, to put a name to. Enticing to young people wishing to enter the store three times a day, a trade secret revealed only to its greatest luminaries. They knew how to guard this secret well. If I asked, they explained, with duplicitous looks on their faces, that they didn’t know what I meant. Expensive smells. “Whipcord” and “general store,” what’s become of you?

And then: First day in the summer apartment. Scent of wet terra alba used to paint the staircase bright white. A musty, gritty smell arose from the cellar. Added to this enchanting duality was a mixture of polish and winter apples coming from the rooms. Oh, it was dazzling!—Swim class, that was like the smell of a new rubber ball, hot gray wood and paper to which some butter, softened by the sun, was still stuck. The hothouse was moist, wet earth, a site of silence. The silence had its fragrance as well. Even the air smelled so delightful on some winter days! What component of coal might that have been? There were three kinds of aromas at play. I called them “Song Without Words,” “Sonate Pathétique,” and “Mums.” Today, I think, coal comes from Silesia, and it just smells like coal. Silesian coal is neutral. Back then it may have been coal from Cardiff. Maybe in England it still smells like “Song Without Words.”

The light on the wall has gone out. I turn to the other side.—Lost! I say. They use new materials. During the war they ran out of many materials, which were replaced by different, cheaper ones. Now people are staying with them. That is progress. A world has disappeared and will never, ever come back. From an economic standpoint it is not important for the winter air to smell like “Sonate Pathétique.” Dried grass is referred to as hay. It is cattle fodder. Phosphorus can no longer be used to make matches.

Someday I may well get to Paris and in the central warehouse of the famed perfume factory inquire about the lost and lovely inspiring “Astris.” The old salesman will leaf through a catalog. “Oh, Sir,” he will say, “we stopped making that a long time ago. An older perfume. It’s no longer in demand.”—And with the sound of these words the appearance of that beloved being will vanish for good, holding his bathrobe high over his radiant head, wading through the shallow sea over to the island.—“You are sad, Sir,” the salesman will say. “We perfumers have a sad profession. We kill the past. Perfumes pass on, and so do their worlds.… And we create new ones again.”

“This bottle”—and he will show me a sparkling, spraying little crystal bottle—“our latest creation, L’avenir—what destiny, do you think, might lie dormant here?—We’re a bit godlike, aren’t we? No, perhaps it’s not so sad to be a perfumer after all.”

And I will ask him warily: “Do you know the scent of the cellar stairs? Or perhaps the smell of the dying match? Whipcord? Swimming pool? Why, Sir, always the future? Why everything to the young? Why anticipation? Why not memory? Parfums retrospectives! Escalier de cave; Cordelette de fouet; Petit nageur; Allumette mourante … I ask you—”

He gazes at me. His good bearded face blurs, and I fall asleep.

Berliner Börsen Courier, August 10, 1927

The Rose of Jericho

This miracle has existed, you might say, since “biblical” times. The prophet Jeremiah mentions the Rose of Jericho in a variety of contexts. In the quest for new export products, the Palestinian export trade has now brought this attraction to us as well. For two marks, everyone can now purchase this mysterious plant in fine flower shops. About the size of a pear, dirty yellow in color, its small dried-up leaves scrunched together, this scrawny moss might not even be regarded as a “flower” at all. But, as so often in life, appearances are deceiving. In boiling water this Cinderella undergoes a miraculous metamorphosis. With this flower, an otherwise lethal process turns life-giving, and the botanical monstrosity blossoms into the Rose of Jericho.

Overwhelmed by scientific curiosity, I sacrificed two marks and bought the plant. In the afternoon I visited Steffie. I got there as she was making coffee, as she was about to pour the boiling water. “Stop,” I cried, “watch this: a miracle will now take place.” I pulled the hidden Rose of Jericho out of my jacket pocket and tossed it into the coffeepot. Steffie and I watched intensely for quite a while. Roughly an hour. Then it slowly happened. The dirty yellow transformed into dark green, the small, dried leaves began to spread apart. It was certainly quite nice,