Chapter 29 THE CATASTROPHE was not an earthquake

Chapter 29
THE CATASTROPHE was not an earthquake, nor a forest fire, nor an avalanche, nor a cave-in. It was not an external catastrophe at all, but an internal one, and as such particularly distressing, because it blocked Grenouille’s favorite means of escape. It happened in his sleep. Or better, in his dreams. Or better still, in a dream while he slept in the heart of his fantasies.
He lay on his sofa in the purple salon and slept, the empty bottles all about him. He had drunk an enormous amount, with two whole bottles of the scent of the red-haired girl for a nightcap. Apparently it had been too much; for his sleep,moncler jackets men, though deep as death itself, was not dreamless this time, but threaded with ghostly wisps of dreams. These wisps were clearly recognizable as scraps of odors. At first they merely floated in thin threads past Grenouille’s nose, but then they grew thicker,shox torch 2, more cloudlike. And now it seemed as if he were standing in the middle of a moor from which fog was rising. The fog slowly climbed higher,fake montblanc pens. Soon Grenouille was completely wrapped in fog, saturated with fog, and it seemed he could not get his breath for the foggy vapor. If he did not want to suffocate, he would have to breathe the fog in. And the fog was, as noted, an odor. And Grenouille knew what kind of odor. The fog was his own odor. His, Gre-nouille’s, own body odor was the fog.
And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that this odor was his odor, could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!
As this became clear to him, he gave a scream as dreadful and loud as if he were being burned alive. The scream smashed through the walls of the purple salon, through the walls of the castle, and sped away from his heart across the ditches and swamps and deserts, hurtled across the nocturnal landscape of his soul like a fire storm, howled its way out of his mouth, down the winding tunnel,Moncler outlet online store, out into the world, and far across the high plains of Saint-Flour-as if the mountain itself were screaming. And Grenouille awoke at his own scream. In waking, he thrashed about as if he had to drive off the odorless fog trying to suffocate him. He was deathly afraid, his whole body shook with the raw fear of death. Had his scream not ripped open the fog, he would have drowned in himself-a gruesome death. He shuddered as he recalled it. And as he sat there shivering and trying to gather his confused, terrified thoughts, he knew one thing for sure: he would change his life, if only because he did not want to dream such a frightening dream a second time. He would not survive it a second time.
He threw his horse blanket over his shoulders and crept out into the open. It was already morning outside, a late February morning. The sun was shining. The earth smelled of moist stones, moss, and water. On the wind there already lay a light bouquet of anemones. He squatted on the ground before his cave. The sunlight warmed him. He breathed in the fresh air. Whenever he thought of the fog that he had escaped, a shudder would pass over him. And he shuddered, too, from the pleasure of the warmth he feit on his back. It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge. Nor could he bear the awful thought of how it would have been not to find a world at the entrance to the tunnel! No light, no odor, no nothing-only that ghastly fog inside, outside, everywhere...