Scent of a woman

Not the film this time, not even a tango. A passage from The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink.

“…In the past, I had particularly loved her smell. She always smelled fresh, freshly washed or of fresh laundry or fresh sweat or freshly loved. Sometimes she used perfume, I don´t know which one, and its smell, too, was more fresh than anything else. Under these fresh smells was another, heavy, dark, sharp smell. Often I would sniff at her like a curious animal, starting with her throat and shoulders, which smelled freshly washed, soaking up the fresh smell of sweat between her breasts mixed in her armpits with the other smell, then finding this heavy dark smell almost pure around her waist and stomach and between her legs with a fruity tinge that excited me; I would also sniff at her legs and feet – her thighs, where the heavy smell disappeared, the hollows of her knees again with that light, fresh smell of sweat, and her feet, which smelled of soap or leather or tiredness. Her back and arms had no special smell; they smelled of nothing and yet they smelled of her, and the palms of her hands smelled of the day and of work – the ink of the tickets, the metal of ticket puncher, onions or fish or frying fat, soapsuds or the heat of the iron. When they are freshly washed, hands betray none of this. But soap only covers the smells, and after a time they return, faint, blending into a single scent of the day and work, a scent of work and day´s end, of evening, of coming home and being at home.”

When I first read this passage I had to stop. I read it again and again and again. Then I read it out loud, so I could have the pleasure of actually listening to the words that could turn everything so precise, so familiar, so comforting in a way.

"How wrong can one be?", he would ask himself later. How wrong was he?