Scent of Darkness
Margot Berwin
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The scent of my blood was mesmerizing in its intensity, a luscious, potent, ethereal haze that clung to the walls of the bathroom. It was far more intense than the opening of the vial itself. It was like a thousand ruby red vials. A million. It filled the room like an actual presence, and it dawned on us both at the same time that my blood not only contained the scent, but was the scent itself. Leather, like warm Egyptian incense, like a dark library in an old city. Jasmine, like the sweet, sweet scent of decay. Fire, like hot darkness. And red velvet rose, like a sheath of light and lilting femininity.”
“Gabriel will give you things you never expected to receive in this lifetime. He will take you places in love that you cannot imagine. Gabriel will haunt you. Gabriel can save you. Gabriel will make you want to live forever. Gabriel will make you wish you were dead." I looked around the packed church for my Gabriel. Father Madrid continued. "Gabriel is the messenger of God and the angel of death. How can one being be both of those things? "Gabriel signifies duality, complication, perplexity; the true human condition in the form of an angel. "How many of you have acted like Gabriel in your day-to-day life? On the one hand finding a special person to love and on the other hand bringing pain and heartache to that very same person? "On the one hand loving someone new and exciting. And on the other knowing that that very love brings destruction and hurt to others, who feel abandoned by you as you live only for your new love, and brings pain to those who desire your beloved for themselves.”
“Anyway, being afraid of a human being is nothing. We're here for such a short period of time, so what does it matter, scared, not scared; what matters is that we last. That's why the blue lotus is so important." "Why?" "In legends, immortals are attracted to its scent. Vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing. That's why the ancient Egyptians called it the scent of immortality." I took Levon's card out of my pocket and rotated the Magician between my fingers. Magical words for good or bad. "Gabriel told me that you painted werewolves." "I have painted the odd rougarou from time to time." "But you don't believe in them?" "I believe in immortality in whatever form it takes. Paintings, books, music, werewolves. They're all the same- the desire to last forever. In my opinion, every artist is a vampire or a werewolf, or a thief. All we want is to live on and on through the work we do and we'll take whatever we can from the people unlucky enough to be around us- their stories, pieces of their selves, their very souls if they'll let us, which they so often do with surprising ease- in order to reach our creative goals. How is that different from a vampire?”
“You always carry a black tarot card with you to breakfast?" she asked. "This is the first time." "I bet. I gotta ask you though, why the Magician?" "A friend gave it to me. Why? What do you know about it?" "I know you got yourself involved with a black-back magician. That means everything is hidden, and backward. You could run into an animal that doesn't act like one. A magical animal like a rougarou. A werewolf that feasts on evil souls." I put the card in my back pocket, horizontally, so it wouldn't fall out this time. "Protect your soul, Eggs." "I'm not evil," I said, already out the door and on the way to see Michael, who seemed more normal to me at that moment than the waitress at Johnny River's. "We're all capable of it sometimes," she yelled behind me.”
“What are you making?" "It doesn't matter. I'm only cooking so that I can smell something besides you." There was that edge in his voice again. He turned up the fire and poured oil into a skillet and water into a pot and then he lined up the jars of spice that Louise kept on the countertop: parsley, oregano, bay leaves, pepper, and thyme, and mini branches of herbs, including basil and dill as well as some lemons and fresh cloves of garlic. He added them to the oil. His plan worked- the kitchen filled up with new odors that did not quite overcome my own, but were certainly gaining ground. "The ancient Romans wore bay leaves on their heads for virility," he said. "You don't need any," I said. "Borage is used to induce abortion. We learned that in the first year of med school." "I don't need any." "Arabs believe that cardamom builds good feelings among friends." "We don't need any other people in our lives." "I'm showing off, you know." "I know. Keep going." "Let's see. Curry powder should always be browned in butter. Fenugreek is hairy and it'll make you dream of sex. Ginger makes men horny, but not women. Lavender should be spread on the bedsheets. Not yours, of course, we don't need to add any more scent to your bed, but it can also be used in making soup." "I'm impressed.”
“Walking around the Quarter with its horses and buggies, cobblestone streets, and kerosene lamps felt like stepping back in time, all the way back to the time when Louise was a small child living in Fayetteville. I imagined her in a linen jumper with a white collar, skipping along the cobblestones, avoiding the cracks that would break her mother's back. It was quiet outside as well as sweltering August temperatures kept tourists off the streets and residents inside their homes. The blocks felt private and sensual as Gabriel and I held hands and walked under the lush vegetation spilling from the baskets that hung off the balconies of the houses on St. Philip. I could smell the sweet olive and the jasmine and I had the pleasant sensation of knowing that they were coming from outside of my body. New Orleans was my equal in scent, and as long as it was night and the air was a degree or two cooler than in the daytime I was sure I could walk around freely without attracting any unwanted attention.”
“Vivian Weaver took us from pot to pot in her kitchen, lifting lids, stirring and tasting as she went along. There was seafood gumbo, fried fish and fried chicken, dumplings, butter biscuits, cornbread, fried okra, black-eyed peas, green beans, and bread pudding.”
“The scent had left a red mark on my neck like a boy had been sucking there. He put his finger on the mark. "Does it hurt?" It didn't, but I felt the liquid inside of me as if I'd drunk it down instead of putting it on my skin. Warmth spread through my limbs like the poison might from a scorpion's tail, branching and branching until it was trapped against the edges of my body, pooling in my fingertips and my toes, with nowhere to go. As the moments passed a definite scent came up through my pores. It began slowly. First from the inside of my arms, and then from my palms. It rose from my legs and then my thighs and then my breasts. Yes. It was coming from everywhere. Fire and jasmine, leather and rose. I was a repository for Louise's life's work, alive, and inside of me. "Can you smell it?" I asked Gabriel. He put his face so close to my body I could feel the moisture from his breath. "I can." Gabriel and I faced each other on the bed. We sat there for hours, I had no idea either of us possessed that kind of patience. Slow as time the scent ripened and deepened, growing more remote and strange with each passing minute. Hot and dark and sweet, my fragrance was as mesmerizing as looking up and seeing a fire on the moon. It was not like any type of perfume that I knew but like nature itself, organically beautiful, as if the scent had been made from the inside of my body and hadn't come from the vial at all. As if it had been sitting inside me for years, a wine that had finally found its perfect moment. Gabriel breathed in this new part of me. He seemed unfocused and unable to stand up or let go of my hands. "What's it like for you?" I asked him. He leaned closer, closed his eyes and inhaled. "Like sweetness," he said, "with a little bit of poison that makes the sweetness, sweeter.”
“The room was large and empty except for a four-poster bed and a framed picture of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans. "A free woman of color who owned her own business," said Vivian Weaver. "She made her own money, and rose to fame and power in a segregated South.”
“The cab pulled up to our building on St. Louis between Decatur and Chartres Streets, a three-story cement stucco town house in the old creole style. It was painted pale pink and covered with delicate ironwork like a lace veil. It had an arched opening with a wrought-iron gate and an old metal lock. Inside, the ground-floor hallway had high, rounded ceilings and a dark caramel tiled floor leading to a garden in the back. It was drippy and heavy with the scent of jasmine, just like me. Wisteria rolled down from the top-floor balconies all the way to the garden below and curled around the legs of the iron tables and chairs like beautiful prison shackles. Everything about the building looked like it was from another century, and having never been to New Orleans I did not yet know that everything was.”
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Book Keywords:
lotus, change, scent-of-darkness, new-love, businesswoman, blood, werewolves, summer-night, backwards, blue, herbs, queen, creole, the-magician, duality, immortality, distraction, leather, cooking, voodoo, new-orleans, scents, becoming-one, exterior, spices, artists, cryptids, ominous, new-orleans-french-quarter, warning, marie-laveau, archangel-gabriel, fire, vampires, tarot-card, double-edged, rose, victorian-houses, metamorphosis, interior-design, rougarou, cuisine, jasmine, old-fashioned
