اقتباسات من رواية العطر؛ قصة قاتل

خلال ذلك كان الظلام قد حل، وتطايرت الروائح العبقة ممتزجة بزرقة الليل، متنقلة بذلك الى إيقاعات أشد فانتازية؛ بحيث احتفل الليل بلعبة ألعاب نارية من العبق لا مثيل لها، من حيث الفخامة والأبهة.

أما داخليًا، على بسط روحه المطهرة فقد تمدد بكل ارتياح آخذًا مداه الكامل، وغفى حالمًا بروائح راقية تداعب أنفه: بنسمه مبهرة مثلًا قادمة من مروج ربيعية؛ أو بريح خفيفة تهف عبر أوراق شجر الزان الأولى في أيار/ مايو، أو بنسمة بحرية مرّة بنكهة اللوز المملح.

فتنت هذه العملية غرنوي وسحرته. وإن كان ثمة في الحياة ما يثير حماسه- ولا يمكن طبعًا أن يكون خارجيًا مرئيًا، وانما داخليًا خفيًا، كحماس ملتهب على لهب بارد.

لم يكن هذا العطر كالعطور التي عرفها الانسان حتى الآن. انه ليس كالروائح المستخدمة بغرض تعطير الجو او الملابس والحاجيات أو مستحضرات التجميل. انه شيء جديد كل الجدة، عالم قائم بنفسه، عالم سحري غني، ينسي المرء كل القرف المحيط به ويجعله يشعر بالغنى والارتياح والانعتاق والسعادة.

وبامكانه ان يفعل كل هذا .بمجرد ان يشاء.فهو يمتلك القدرة على فعل ذلك.انها في يده.قدرة اقوى من سلطة المال وسلطة الارهاب وسلطة الموت.انها القدرة التي لاتقاوم والتي تجعل الناس يحبون....

وفجأة أدرك أن الحب أبدا لن يُشبعه وإنما الكره ، أن يكره وأن يكون مكروها لكن الكره الذي أحسّ به تجاه البشر بقي دون صدى. فكلّما ازداد كرهه لهم كلما عبدوه. أراد لمرة واحدة في حياته أن يُفرغ مافي ذاته، أراد لمرة واحدة في حياته أن يكون كما الآخرين عندما يُفرغون مافي دواخلهم؛ عندما يعبِّرون عن حبّهم أو تبجيلهم الغبي، هكذا كان يريد أن يُفرغ كراهيته، أراد لمرة واحدة فقط أن يدركه الآخرون في وجوده الحقيقي وأن يتلقّى من إنسان آخر ردّا على شعوره الحقيقي الوحيد ؛ الكراهيه

"But to eat a human being? They would never, so they thought, have been capable of anything that horrible. And they were amazed that it had been so very easy for them and that, embarrassed as they were, they did not feel the tiniest bite of conscience...When they finally did dare to look upon each other, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of love" (Suskind 310).

“…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated.”

― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some--more spectacularly--squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer to God. Their solitude is a self-mortification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind.

Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance nor waiting for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating--and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake had lived in the wide world outside.

The more Grenouille had become accustomed to purer air, the more sensitive he was to human odor, which suddenly, quite unexpectedly, would come floating by in the night, ghastly as the stench of manure, betraying the presence of some shepherd's hut or charcoal burner's cottage or thieves' den. And then he would flee farther, increasingly sensitive to the increasingly infrequent smell of humankind. Thus his nose led him to ever more remote regions of the country, ever farther from human beings, driving him on ever more insistently toward the magnetic pole of the greatest possible solitude.