Resin and Wood

She finds herself attracted to strangers on a fairly regular basis. Lots of men have something about them that makes her nose stand to attention. She is twelve years old and obsessed with male beauty. Every morning she takes the train to the city, and more often than not she picks up a scent. There’s always some man or other brushing past her, morning after morning they pass through the cars looking for a seat. And often enough, there’s one she finds attractive. She likes it best when the man is walking toward her from the front of the train, such that he acquires first a face and then an odor, but the other way around works too, when he approaches from behind. It doesn’t take much: a glimpse of a nape, shoulder, mouth, or hand— followed by a scent in her nostrils. The train makes six stops, and at the sixth, she gets out. She loses herself in the crowd with its fifty heads advancing through the station to the exits on its hundred feet, then on the street corner she finds herself alone again, once more becomes aware of her body, loses the scent, hangs a quick right, and walks as fast as her legs will carry her in the direction of school. As soon as she sits down at her desk, the scent returns, accompanied by the image of the man—or some beautiful part of him. She inhales deeply through her nose, concentrating. Then she exhales and sniffs at the air. There he is. Now she sees him, top to bottom, in all his glory—naked as the day he was born. She prefers the front view, but seeing him from behind also works. The image of this naked Adonis lingers for as long as she wants it to, disappearing when she dismisses it and returning whenever she chooses to summon it over the course of her school day. It is impossible, however, to put the naked man’s clothes back on.

It pretty much snuck up on her. First, she found herself taking pleasure in the facial features of strange men. Then she started noticing body parts as well. Eventually she discovered her nose—an astonishing revelation. All at once here was this male odor, sharp and strong, and she couldn’t explain where it had been hiding all that time. Had her nose not been working right? It must have been out of whack somehow. Now it felt as if an invisible membrane had been peeled off, leaving her finally capable of smelling fully, properly, comprehensively, and with all her strength. It was like an awakening and took her breath away. So that’s what men smelled like—specific and strange, with so many variations. For a while, olfactory impressions took center stage. Vision was secondary. The only thing she used her eyes for was to get in range. Once an image gave way to a smell, she had no more use for it. She felt as if her entire body were a nose, as if she were smelling with her skin, her brain, her heart. She was virtually intoxicated by her sense of smell, waves of warmth flooded through her, and with each wave the smell grew a little more intense, her delight at this newfound ability a little deeper. This must be what that word happiness she’d heard so often meant, what it felt like.

Then one morning, she remembers, there was suddenly a body to go along with the smell, and this body was bare. She started in alarm and checked to see if the other passengers saw it too. But it didn’t look that way: they all sat placidly in their seats, doing whatever they’d been doing, reading the paper, flipping through documents, staring into space, conversing in hushed tones with the person next to them. She alone saw. The man-smell had transformed into the fiercely redolent image of a naked man. Her cheeks burned, her heart and breath were racing. The man dressed in a suit and coat who’d just walked past her was not only emitting a feral odor (long and hard as he may have showered), he was also stark naked! So now it wasn’t just her nose working in a special new way; her eyes also seemed to have developed a spectacular new ability: X-ray vision! Indeed, it seemed she could deploy this disrobing gaze at will, and when she tried it on the next man to pass by, it worked: she beheld a back rippling with muscle, a shapely pair of buttocks, slim brown-haired legs, and ankles that were a tad too thin. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It didn’t help. The smell persisted, as did her vision of the naked man. Both stuck with her through the rest of the train ride, her walk to school, indeed her entire day.

Alongside this new ability to undress men with her eyes, an ancient dream of hers returned, the same endlessly repeated nightmare that had plagued her since preschool days, in which she suddenly realizes she’s naked, wearing only her birthday suit, while surrounded by people with their clothes on—either on the street, in a store, in the classroom, on the skating rink, during gym, on a field trip, or at the library. Anywhere and everywhere. With everyone’s eyes on her. Staring right at her butt. As overwhelming shame crashes down on her like an enormous wave, tossing her about underwater, impossible to escape. And how inexplicable it all felt: How is it possible that I keep forgetting my pants? And now everyone’s mocking me, the whole village is laughing its head off, a ghastly hilarity, jeers and hoots—absolute hell. And not a scrap of cloth anywhere to cover my nakedness. Fingers reach out to grab me, grimacing faces, drunken howls, humiliation without end.

But the naked men aren’t ashamed. Not that she’s poking fun at them. She looks at them with curiosity—methodically, attentively. Her gaze is free of all malice, derision, or censure. She regards them not with pity but empathically, approvingly, complicitly, though the idea of herself sitting naked on this train fills her with horror. These naked men aren’t just her secret—she and they share a secret. She feels close to them, even though the brazenness of her game keeps causing her embarrassment. Every so often, for example, one of her victims unexpectedly turns and looks right at her. Her heart stops every time. But it’s never happened—not yet anyhow—that one of the men has spoken to her. And despite her attraction to these naked, fragrant swains, she has no desire to hear their voices, to be asked something, to be expected to respond.

The first time one of them turned around, she felt like a thief caught red-handed. As if she’d robbed him of his smell by inhaling it so vigorously as he walked past. Missing anything? she was tempted to ask with a sanctimonious smile. No. The man still had his smell. She confirmed it with a nice deep breath. Laughing privately, she sounded the all-clear. Apparently it wasn’t possible to steal a person’s smell even if you sucked it in as resolutely and completely as she’d just done. This smell that wasn’t her property lodged not only in her nose; it hovered on her palate, her tongue, and in her throat also, and didn’t seem to be going anywhere, it was clingy and stuck to her.

And now that’s what happens every time these hotties cross her path. These days, every smell is of the tenaciously sticking-around variety, and every man who walks past sheds his clothes. It’s even happened that the image, rather than arriving after a brief delay, has showed up in her mind’s eye as soon as she’s caught the first whiff. And each fragrant vision carries a hint of something more, ready to develop into a story: about stalking, abduction, blackmail, even love. To her, these stories don’t appear to be of her own invention. She merely stumbles into them: ready-made narratives that appear out of nowhere with these first fragrant hints. She need only take a sniff, and everything falls into place. Next thing she knows, she’s in the middle of a tale. These narratives start in a flash and develop at breakneck speed, unspooling before her eyes and sweeping her along. Her role is usually that of pursuer, sometimes abductor, very occasionally blackmailer, and always that of beloved. These are full-blown adventure stories that leave the commuter train and its passengers, the classroom and school, far behind. Most of the time, she’s in a fast car speeding down dirt roads, muddy lanes, and across desert sands. Often she stops the car and leaps out beneath a blazing sun, the air shimmering with heat, encountering sinister characters and freeing her paramour from a dangerous situation such as imprisonment; and only through skillful negotiation and cunning is she able to free him. Often she must resort to clever ploys, and always her firm resolve and willingness to put everything on the line are the keys to her success. In the stories where she’s the one doing the abducting, there’s always a good reason for it, usually the abduction serves to protect her beloved from some far greater danger, saving him from shady figures, scary kidnappers, real live miscreants. These stories are filled with plot twists and reversals of fortune: maybe she herself is captured, tortured, or blackmailed, or else her rescue attempts are followed by renewed imprisonment—it’s always up and down, back and forth; sometimes she even, out of necessity, becomes a blackmailer, this being the only way to gain her lover’s freedom. Indeed, she plays the role of ladylove in each of these tales, regardless of what other functions she performs: pursuer, abductor, blackmailer. This is the one thing she can count on amid all the imponderables, twisted fortunes, and surprises: there is a lover, and she is his beloved.

The train has just lurched into motion. The automatic door slides open, and she sees him coming toward her. She shifts back in her seat until she’s sitting upright, closes her legs, and looks at him. He approaches, swaying. She’s never seen him before. Is he new to the area, a transplant? Or is he just running late today? But he doesn’t look like the oversleeping sort. So maybe he’s early rather than late? Could be. But he definitely doesn’t look like someone whose workday starts at nine. His suit, shoes, trench coat, and haircut all scream eight a.m. Meaning that this is his usual train and he’s where he belongs—so where has he been all this time? Why is she only just seeing him today? What rock was he hiding under? He walks past her, she breathes in as deeply as her lungs will allow, oh, how lovely, just look how shapely his knees are, and the skin on his thighs shimmers golden beneath dark hair. He smells faintly of resin—resin with a hint of dry wood. It would be a shame to lose him now. Without stopping to consider, she decides to follow him. When he gets off the train, she’ll get off too. And school? What about it? She doesn’t even remember what day it is, let alone her class schedule. All her memories have been expunged. She turns around and sees him sitting down in an empty seat two rows back, on the other side of the aisle. Stop number four. She glances back, he’s still in his seat. Stop number five, everything’s fine, he’s sitting there looking out the window. Stop number six. She gets up and goes to the door. He stays where he is. Casually, she takes her seat again. The train keeps going. At the main station, he gets up, and she follows. Keeping a few meters back, she trails him with a pounding heart: up the escalator, toward the exit, down Löwenstrasse. Then he disappears into an office building at the corner of Schweizergasse.

Her heart is racing. Somewhere a clock strikes, it’s eight o’clock, class has just begun. Biology, of course—it’s Thursday. Her memory has returned. And now the horror of her situation dawns on her. She tries to quiet her breathing. A few deep inhalations. With each intake, she smells him: cloying resin, bitter wood. The face of the biology teacher who always calls her by the wrong name. He looks angry. She doesn’t dare show up late to his class, and at this point, she’d miss half of it. She returns to the station and gets back on the train. When she gets home and sees her mother’s astonished face, she bursts into tears. Her mother places one hand on her forehead. Time to lie down, she says, go on. She spends an entire week in bed. By the time she gets up again the following Friday, she has completed her first novel. She just needs to copy it over. She hides the pile of pages, which she stole from her mother’s desk a few sheets at a time, under her winter sweaters. She blows her nose. Outside a lark is singing.