By Alex Gordon in Haifa, Israel
Daniel loved people, especially women. People also loved Daniel, especially women. He lived in France, where people especially love each other, as they have long loved “liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity.” The French are very hospitable and sensitive to freedom, equality, and fraternity, especially toward the inhabitants of former French colonies, whom they welcomed on their land to atone for their colonial guilt toward them.
Among these new sons of French liberty, equality, and fraternity, even Muslim brothers have settled on the wonderful French soil. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t consider everyone a brother. Christians cannot become their brothers, and Jews even less so. Daniel was Jewish. Therefore, he couldn’t become a brother to the Muslim Brotherhood. But many Muslims worked at the furniture factory he managed. Daniel didn’t know how many Muslim Brothers were among them.
In his free time from love, Daniel made cabinets. The cabinets were all different types – wardrobes, kitchen cabinets, bookshelves. He was a great cabinet designer. The factory’s products were popular. But Daniel didn’t stop there. He designed and manufactured new original cabinets. He loved his work very much, and his work loved him back, as he was constantly receiving new orders and designing ingenious cabinet models for various purposes.
One day, Daniel was commissioned to build a cabinet for storing perfumes. This cabinet was supposed to be a perfume storage unit, but no scent was allowed to leak from the cabinet into the outside space. The new cabinets were made of a special wood, and their doors, interior and exterior walls were coated with a special varnish that didn’t allow odors to escape. When the cabinet was full of perfumes, the stunning range of scents excitingly captivated the person opening its door. Daniel used odorless wood for his perfume cabinets, most often oak. The inside of the cabinet was coated with varnish or enamel to create a barrier that wouldn’t allow the perfume’s aroma to escape. The cabinets were closed with tinted glass with UV protection from sunlight, which is harmful to the fragrance of perfumes.
His new mistress, Catherine, convinced her husband to buy at Daniel’s a new cabinet to store her perfume collections. Her husband, family and divorce lawyer Michel Levy, didn’t need much convincing to buy this cabinet, as he was a member of the board of trustees of the factory headed by Daniel and a great connoisseur of furniture and perfumes.
Daniel decided to celebrate with Catherine her husband’s purchase of his wonderful cabinet. He came to her house for lunch when Michelle was working in her office downtown. Catherine lived with her husband in a quiet, residential area of the city, far from its center. The area where Catherine’s house was located was surrounded by a wreath of tall trees, which were part of small, beautiful squares. It was quiet around the house, you could barely hear any traffic, even though the windows of their apartment were open to the warm summer.
Daniel brought his beloved woman a bottle of champagne and the latest brand of perfume. They were drinking to Daniel’s success, to his wonderful new cabinet. They enjoyed the comfort, the silence, and each other’s company. Catherine, radiating femininity, glowed in the presence of her beloved man. Daniel admired his wonderful cabinet.
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a sharp ring at the apartment’s front door. Catherine, barefoot and on tiptoe, fluttered to the front door, peeked thru the peephole, and whispered to Daniel, “Grab the champagne, glasses, and perfume and get in your cabinet!” Her husband came home unexpectedly. Daniel managed to hear Michel’s deep bass: “I forgot my keys, darling. I’m tired, and I wanted to eat at home. You don’t mind?”
Smell is an important and invaluable neurobiological function of the body. Streams of aromatic molecules rushed toward Daniel from every corner of his wonderful cabinet. His sense of smell was powerfully assaulted by the magical aromas of perfumes locked in his great cabinet. He started to get a headache. He was sitting curled up on the floor of his cabinet, swatting away the aromas wafting from all corners of his beautiful creation. He remembered that the aggressive onslaught of smells he was experiencing is called diffusion. Lunch on the other side of the tinted glass of the cabinet door continued. The UV filter protected the perfume from the sunlight that was dangerous for it, but it couldn’t protect Daniel from the all-consuming nausea that had set in.
He started having hallucinations. The perfume bottles were flying around the closet and begging him: “Smell me! Smell me!” A sign with letters lit up on the closet ceiling: “Hello, dear Daniel! I’m your favorite cabinet! I’m so glad you’re with me!” Daniel lost track of time and consciousness. He woke up, not knowing how much time had passed, when the cabinet door opened and Catherine’s head appeared: “How are you?” “Come out!” said the head. Daniel crawled out of the cabinet and threw up. He slowly, with great difficulty, got to his feet and, staggering, asked, “Give me a piece of shit, quick!”
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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, and the author of 12 books.