The list of smells

When Marcel bit into Madeleine, it wasn’t the taste of her that got him going, it was the scent released by teeth that transported him back to a time of his youth. Smells sneak up on you.

You can list what they do: reek, pong, stink, stench, waft, fleet. You can list what they are: fragrant, sweet, redolent, fetid, gamey, rancid, putrid, malodorous, corky, stuffy and even unscented. You can list how you catch them: whiff, smell, scent, trace. You can list what they’re like: rotten eggs, skunks, roses, frangipani, baking bread, cigar smoke, vanilla and musk. This last list is endless. But if you haven’t smelled any of these, how do you know?

Smells can seduce you. Or they can slam you in the solar plexus and get you where it hurts. Take the frangipani. It has a strong smell. Exotic. You’d tend to link it with friendship. In Hawaii they welcome you with leis of the stuff. But the frangipani also has a thick cloying smell. It can make you dizzy. It can make you feel that you’re suffocating. It can represent all that you wanted to escape when you left home so long ago.

You can make as many lists as you like, but there’s no way that they’ll help you get to the bottom of what smells can do. They’re slippery. My poison, your lei. And not everyone likes aniseed or asparagus soup. I’d throw up on the latter for ages. It was linked somehow to a slap I got from my mother just before dinner. Smells are tricky. They bypass language and go straight into your body, plumb the depths of hidden undergrowths and explode. Nose in on them and you’re lost in a jungle of associations. That might be better list, if you dare.