My nose was struck by a scent it had never perceived before. The girl was descending the stairs wearing a different dress, a short-sleeved, round-necked, knee-length thin grey cotton dress. I didn’t give much thought to it at the time. She asked me to follow her and went out through a door-less opening to the back garden and kitchen. Again my forehead knocked against the top of the opening, and then I realized that the whole house was only suitable for dwarfs like her. The appropriate word when describing her home would be “small”.
I stepped onto the cemented area of the secret backyard garden. She directed me to sit on a wooden chair.
“Litsea Cubeba,” she said, while putting a steel bowl on the small stove.
“Pardon me?” I said. My eyes were jumping from one plant to another in the greenery of the garden. It was so magnificent and uplifting, as if a piece of imaginary paradise spot had appeared on earth. A white-brown cat started walking among the flowers and approached my feet with a yawning mouth. Surprisingly it had one green eye and one blue! Even the cat hadn’t missed out on the artistic touches.
“My name is Litsea Cubeba.” She was working on the cup of tea she had invited me for.
“Gerald.” I shut my mouth to suppress the laughter that was about to emerge on hearing her name. Litsea Cubeba! I repeated in my mind.
“Litsea Cubeba?” Now it came out my mouth. Does any such name exist? Are we allowed to name our children any shit that crosses our mind? I had always thought that Russian names were the most difficult to pronounce.
“Hey, it is true! Litsea Cubeba. Strange name, isn’t it? But a unique one.”
The noise of the spoon colliding with the glass announced the readiness of my tea. She turned around and put two cups of tea on the tiny round table that barely had space for both cups. She sat opposite with one leg crossed atop the other. The shiny whiteness of her upper leg was attractively pure and apparently smooth. My eyes rested upon her dress in the particular area of her chest. It presented in a charismatic manner the perfect roundness and exact shape of the two young breasts and the perfect curves of her cleavage area. Her thin dress made it impossible to imagine a single wire of bra underneath and suggested she had none. But how proudly her breasts stood without any support! So superb.
“So you are a balloon maker?” She reached back and picked a red rose from the garden.
In that position the shadow of her flat nipple emerged, and I felt my lust growing even more. She adjusted herself back and started gently rubbing the rose with her thumb. The rounded shapes of the petals were highly suggestive of Litsea Cubeba’s full-bloomed mature body, the redness provoked thoughts in me of her tiny lips in my mouth, and the opening and closing of the petals under the influence of her fingers evoked the dreamy image of the opening and closing of her vulva under my influence.
I nodded with a smile. “And you are a gardener?”
“Not really. I am a perfumer.”
“A perfumer? Interesting,” I commented.
She took her tea and sipped it, and remembering mine, I did the same, but that single sip didn’t go in properly and so I had to spit it out.
“Is it tea?” I said, wiping my mouth with the bottom of my T-shirt.
“It is tea with myrrh,” she answered. “I like it. You don’t have to force yourself to drink it if you cannot.”
I really wasn’t going to take another sip from it, even if it meant not bedding her.
“My father used to be a good perfumer.”
She started to tell her story while that unpleasant taste still lurked on my tongue. I forced myself to stop swallowing for the sake of giving her some respect and then built things upon that.
So, her father was a passionate Lebanese perfumer and one of the best in his time in the country. He went to Taiwan to start a perfumery business, and her mother was his secretary in a small company he established there. Working overtime together resulted in them developing feelings for each other, the fruit of which came in China during a work visit, when she found out that she was one month pregnant. Happiness captured the parents, marriage followed, and they both prayed for a girl. Being in China, the origin of the Litsea Cubeba plant, and the father’s fondness for it, led to the decision to name his daughter after it. So it in the end it happened to be a girl and the name had already been decided upon since the first month of pregnancy. The mother was fond of lavender; lavender was everywhere in her life, and if she had the choice she would have named her child lavender.
Their marriage soon started to deteriorate, however, and one incident made the father open his eyes belatedly to his wife. That was when she tried to poison him, but he survived. This incident taught him to hate her, but he peacefully separated from his wife. The incident also halted his research and work as a perfumer, and he disregarded lavender specifically. The first time he came into contact with the hostile scent of lavender was when little Litsea Cubeba came home one day home holding a lavender flower. The father had an immediate heart attack, but once again he survived. His unfortunate reaction to the lovely scent of lavender happened once again when he was shopping for fruits in a supermarket that happened, for the first time in its history, to be selling lavender flowers. Another heart attack occurred, but this time it sent him to his grave. Litsea Cubeba inherited nothing from her father. All his fortune went to the mother under an old forgotten will that found her father giving his wife all rights to his entire fortune. Litsea Cubeba (and I find myself forced to use her full first name always for the sake of the plant it represents) built her life alone.
She finished her story and started sipping her tea.
“I learned perfumery on my own, you see.”
“I see.”
Time was passing, and I found that I hadn’t got any closer to her. I had to break the dampness of the positively charged tranquillity in the air. I could read the sly shyness in her to finish what she had started when she asked me in. I believed she had in mind what I had, and I was thinking now of a way to break the ice so that rather than being strangers, we should become adventurers seeking zest of the flesh. But then the hoped-for initiative came, to my relief, from her. Her tiny foot caressed my knee and its fingers started pinching there.
“I always like to have a massage. It keeps me relaxed.” A bright smile appeared on her round face. “Do you know how to massage, balloon man?”
“The hands that worked on balloons have experience working with so many things.”
“Have they?”
She stood and walked inside, giving no signal for me to follow except for the shared thought in our minds of our hidden desire. I walked after her, and my forehead again hit the top of the opening. She walked up the scary stairs and so did I. She opened the door located just at the last step of the staircase, and I discovered that there was only one room on the second floor. A whiff of cosy citrusy scent struck my nose. The four walls of the room were painted in a different colour each, all of them light—green, pink, yellow, and violet—and on each coloured wall hung a framed dried flower the same colour as the wall—a green rose, a light-pink rose, a yellow rose, and a lavender rose.
“Lavender!” I said.
“Yes. It is still one of my favourites.”
The room was quite spacious, and it was one more element of fantasy-like magic in that fairy home. A small pink painted book shelf stood along the pink wall, and I could read all the books’ titles about perfumery. Colourful scented pillow sachets in small plates were placed on the dressing table and on small stands on each side of the bed. What was special about the bed was that the mattress, as I learned later, was stuffed with rose leaves and lavender flowers. What human wouldn’t enjoy sleeping in such a bed?
Litsea Cubeba went to the bathroom and brought out a towel and a bottle of massage oil. I didn’t believe till then that she really needed a massage. I thought it would be just direct
sex, but nonetheless it was important, as the scene was becoming more fascinating and our time together more interesting. She pulled off her dress, and my eager gaze saw that she had no underwear. Pulling the light-red blanket aside, she lay on the bed on her tummy. Everything was scented in her house, and so was her body. Behind her left shoulder was a small tattoo of blue rose.
“Please me,” she said in low voice, crossing her hands under her head.
I had never massaged anyone before, but I had watched a video about vulva massage in my time in college. I poured the scented oil on her back, and my inexperienced hands started rubbing for a couple of minutes. Her smooth skin became shiny and slippery, and my eyes couldn’t stop staring at her small round buttocks, the left side of which bore a rash of tiny red pimples.
“Please me, Gerald.” The tone was harder now.
I was already churning with lust. My oiled hands seized and squeezed those two buttocks and dug in between. I rolled her over and started stroking with oil her small flat-nippled melons. I slowly dragged one hand down her belly till my palm found its destination on her well-paved vulva. I stroked the outer and inner lips and more. My fingers put her on fire, and her moaning, shivering, and damp wetness caused erotic tension to rise within me and surely within her. Sliding my fingers in strained her body even more. Her head drifted backwards, her shoulders pushed up, her hand tightened around my elbow, and lovely beads of sweat covered her flushed crimson skin. The moments between her groans were quickly growing shorter, and they aroused an intense thirst in me, so that I forgot myself, jumped on my prey, and consumed all of her.
I opened my eyes in the evening and the fascinating image of Fang was in my mind. How strange it was that her image sensually reappeared in my mind from time to time. I turned my head, expecting to see Fang by me, but instead I saw Litsea Cubeba. Though I felt a slight hidden disappointment, I didn’t regret sleeping with the new girl. I put my hand on her bare chest to reward myself for what I got for the day. I closed my eyes to fall back to sleep, but a second scene appeared in front of me that alarmed me; it was that deadly haunting image from the dreadful past of my father covered in my mother’s blood. My eyes were now wide open, and an itching fear struck my heart of the kind that I had only experienced when thinking of that scene. I pulled my hand back off the chest, and the fast motion, I guess, disturbed Litsea Cubeba. She yawned and rubbed her eyes and checked the clock on the small table beside the bed.
“Eight.” She yawned again, and tears appeared in her eyes. “You are already awake? Haven’t you enjoyed your sleep with me?”
“I surely did. It was only a nightmare.”
“A nightmare on such a day? How disappointing!”
She threw the blanket over me in a joking gesture and got out of the bed and went into the bathroom. Her short naked body glittered under the dim light of the room, and her tits jumped, as before, up and down. I smelled a little sweaty, but she of roses; I guess the rose petals in the mattress had their chemistry with her body. One tiny petal strangely, and I don’t know from where, was glued in the area between her buttocks. I jumped out of the bed and removed that red paper from where it was lost and misplaced. That motion hurled her body forward and forced a scream out her mouth, which was followed by a loud giggle.
I walked to the other end of the room, where the only window was covered with a floral curtain. I withdrew it a little and caught sight of an image from the next home of a family—mother, father, and young son—sitting at a table, eating and sharing laughter. It stirred a wave of sadness within me for not being able to recall when was the last time in my childhood I had similar joy with my parents. I blessed the family in my heart and wished the son a pure life, unlike mine. I let the curtain fall back and turned to a slim closet on the floor nearby. I sat down and opened its tiny door with two fingers, and then I had one more surprise about Litsea Cubeba. It contained some DVDs of massage porn. Now I could see where she was coming from when she asked me to massage her.
At that point Litsea Cubeba came out the shower room with the purple floral towel in her hands, rubbing her hair dry. She wasn’t wearing any garment yet. A few dew drops were flowing onto the glassy surface of her golden body. She was holding a bottle of oil.
“Would you like to massage my breasts?” she asked, shaking the bottle.
I stared at her for a while, and she stared back at me, and our eyes examined each other’s naked bodies. We both smiled at the same moment. I nodded, and she approached and sat on the edge of the bed and handed me the oil bottle. I climbed onto the bed and rested on my knees, which were attached behind her. My penis started hardening against her back, and I realized that she could feel it, but it was all part of a process she desired, I guess.
“What is this?” I asked, looking at the oil’s green hue.
“This is grape seed oil mixed with sweet almond. Added to that are some herbal oils. This blend is my creation and invention. It helps maintain the shape, size, and firmness of the breasts.”
I could now see the secret behind her perfectly shaped breasts. I opened the bottle and poured some oil in my palms and started in a random way to massage her breasts. After a while they started to slip through my palms like balls of jelly. My hand could sense the symphony of her heartbeat playing in stronger pulses as the process continued, and I saw that even my inexperienced hands had some magical effect.
“We should always anoint our chest because it is the realm of the heart.” Her tone strived to stay normal, but it showed extreme softness.
The breast-massaging session was over, and she asked me to lie down on the bed. She pulled out some expensive civet oil and brushed it on my genitals, which made me wonder whether she was feeling the sexual desire I had for the second sex of the evening or whether it was just the mere idea of sharing crazy massages. That civet smelled very bad to my taste, but shockingly she followed with deep licking and sucking. She reminded me of Bram Stoker’s blood-sucking Dracula character. Who would like licking an animal? She did!
The next day, she asked me to work with her and I instantly agreed, having an interest in learning something about the field of scent and perfumery. She had a room downstairs on the ground floor, hidden by a door half the height of any other dwarf-size door in the house. Once I stepped inside, one single word was always the king of the realm—scent. I had heard that there was a whole new world to discover in the making of perfume, and I saw how much truth was in that saying. In her laboratory everything had a name, and its meaning derived from the special characteristic that its scent has provided. So many bottles were located on different shelves. She had the raw undiluted essential oils, along with her finished products. She told me that the bulb-type bottles were her alcohol-based perfumes, while the dark glasses held her oil-based perfumes. Her creativity didn’t stop in making perfumes; she made modified products for body lotions, shampoos, massage oils, hair treatment oils, and other purposes. There I discovered the captivating powers of essential oils; the powers that rendered joy and mirth and fill our senses to the brim.
I started my learning process making perfume. Litsea Cubeba explained to me that any perfume has three notes—the top, the heart, and the base. The top note is weak and gives the first impression of the perfume; the heart note adds body to a blend; and the base note is used to add lifespan to a blend. Litsea Cubeba had her essential oils properly categorized on her shelves. The top notes were wrapped with yellow paper tape, the middle notes with blue, and the base notes with red.
She had loyal customers who would visit her and buy some selected products, or they would tell her about the occasion for which they wanted the perfume, and Litsea Cubeba would apply her experience, knowledge, and creativity in creating the right blend. Litsea Cubeba would order her essential oils from different suppliers, and when I asked her about it, she said that different suppliers have different qualities of certain essential oils. Not all supp
liers sell the same quality of a certain oil. As the price of essential oils was fairly high, so were the perfumes and different blends that she made. Litsea Cubeba was making enough money and more from her trade, and I was getting paid not only for sharing my working hands, but also for sharing her bed.
It seemed that every blend she made fit her skin, especially those floral ones. When her skin interacted with the base notes of these, it brought out a comforting odour. Living and working with her for six months had its effect on me as well; she had a new effect upon me, and essential oils surrounded me and engulfed every aspect of my daily life. If I was seen with some insect bites, she would bring me eucalyptus oil. When she saw me privately thinking, she would bring me grapefruit or bergamot or rose absolute, saying that they were solutions for my depression. For my headache she would offer rosemary oil, and the same rosemary would be mixed in massage oil for my muscle stiffness. Some nights she would bring me clary sage, saying that it would help me sleep.
“People with anosmia tend to get depressed more often because of lack of essence in their world,” she told me once.
Daily at home different smells would produce the atmosphere; juniper, eucalyptus, and sandalwood are a few I could mention. I recall once I applied orange oil to a spot on my shoulder just prior to going to the beach on a sunny day. That spot burned like hell, to the amusement of Litsea Cubeba, who advised me later to avoid direct contact with sunlight after applying undiluted essential citrus oils on the skin. It took me almost a month to fully recover from the darkened effect of that burn.
One day when we were in a mall, she complained that the smell there was disturbing for her nerves, although the smell in the air was only of some sort of corn. She took a small dark bottle from her purse and started inhaling from it. Disregarding my advice to avoid doing that in public, she continued to do it from time to time until a police officer approached us, and we were taken to a police station on suspicion of using illegal drugs. It took her two hours to explain to the police the good nature of her deed in order for us to be let out free. She thanked me for my earlier advice once we walked out, but I guess she didn’t learn from that mistake. One day she started ordering large quantities of essential oils online, and again she ignored my suggestion not to do so, only to find out that she was called in by the police after one week and questioned about the intended use of the large quantities ordered. She was suspected this time of some planned terrorist act. Poor girl!
MEMORIES from the EAST Page 14
