Maroussia Slava Zaïtsev 1992 Eau de Toilette

I have always been a little drama queen. Even when I was born, a storm hung over the land. As a young girl, I was defiant, as a teenager stubborn and unruly. In those early years, I had already turned heads, from stable boys to the son of a count. My passions soon pulled me into some dark corners, and I often woke up disheveled and far from home. How my parents scolded me! And warned me - in vain… One night it happened: the young man, my latest crush, was different from all the others. He seemed to draw me in, seemed to know where to find me. In a moment, everything happened so quickly: a jolt, a bite, and since then I have been spending my days in the darkness of my precious hideaways.
I only see the sun rise on television now. When I want to go shopping, I depend on the winter months. Quite silly when you want to have summer dresses too!

Since I breathed my last life, I have relied on external warmth: my open fireplaces, warm blankets, hot blood, a warm, living body by my side… I wrap myself in decadence and wealth that I have come to through dark paths, on my deadly, wounded, dark paths.

Other things warm me too: music by Orlando di Lasso, especially Vinum bonum or Alma redemptoris mater or the summer (presto) by Antonio Vivaldi, I enjoy listening to during the lost nights that are my life. Lush arrangements of flower bouquets, in the colors of my beloved summer, whose hue I miss like the desert misses water. The colorful, vibrant images of Renoir or the visual intoxication of the works of Gustav Klimt. On some love nights, I felt like a protagonist of "Water Serpents I," as if the air, the atmosphere, everything around me were infused with sparkling gems and jewels.

And I fend off the cold with scents. With warm, rounded fragrances. Among them, for about twenty years, Maroussia. All the colorful, vibrant flowers, as I can only have them brought to me by the florist. Blood red, snow white, purple, and sunny yellow. I will never again be able to pick them myself in the spring sun. Spicy and warm amber, as dark and wicked as my whole life, and civet, enchanting and intoxicating like I am in the face of a victim. Vanilla, what a delicious note for a creature with no passion for consuming anything other than blood! Along with resinous, warm benzoin…

Without Maroussia, I would not survive some nights; I would have to put an end to some summer days of my eternal loneliness and run out into the mercilessly good sun. In those nights, only the thought of it is warmer than my enveloping Maroussia.

What have I celebrated! How far I have traveled! What have I lived! But I have never lived and felt alive again like before that cursed night. Thus, I am indestructible life on one hand and incomplete and dependent on foreign life on the other. Envied by many, yet so lonely and broken.

This scent suits me so well: it wants to be in the sun, wants life, but at the same time wants it in a dark way. It is complicated, drawing you in one moment, only to become so heavy the next that you stagger back, almost intoxicated. It is opulent like a blood-red velvet robe, which at first appears dazzlingly elegant, but immediately proves to be stiff and obstructive to any grace. So are we, my scent and I: attractive but dangerous and irritating, alive but sometimes suffocating and without lightness, infinitely alive and yet so heavy. My dark, heavy, invisible companion in the dark, dark night.

Good night out there, whatever you may be!