Smoke! Smoke!

Mid-December at the Salzburg Christmas Market.

I am greeted instantly by the sharp, illicit smoke of frankincense, resting, smoldering like stolen jewels in bronze platters. It is a stubborn scent, the scent of festivity and atonement (or was myrrh meant to symbolize sorrow?) that hovers almost toxic in the crisp cool of mountain air. It contrasts with what the sweet musk of dry hay in the plastic manger, the caramelized decay of roasted nuts, the lingering sour of hot wine. I think of easter, of those Episcopal services where I would hold my nose not to breathe in the incense swung throughout the sanctuary like a wrecking ball.  “Some things,” I would tell my self, “are best left uncleaned.” 

Here too, I gaze around the mustard-yellow walls of old money fallen from power, a house left like a gutted palace to remind all of lost opulence, discarded with the same casual approach as an other loss that went unnoticed until it was too late. The shutters are open, lined on the inside with the sheen of synthetic metal paper, dominated by black numbers, marking the day of the month. The sky fades from an almost chemical blue to the dark of early evening and, for a moment, there is the syzygy of primary color, the fire-hot red ornaments tossed on trees and illuminated by melting candles, the lemon-ripe house, and the cold blue of a dying day’s sky. “This is such a thing,” I realize,”that needs no purification. The fumes are a waste of fire.”

I am told, however, that it is truly only the blend of myrrh and frankincense that can cleanse. One on its own yields no reaction. Yet this fact seems lost. The flow of bank notes continues without interruption as the shoppers tuck away their goods and inhale strong, deep breaths of burning frankincense, hoping it will keep them absolved for another year.