Chapter 10
The granite stairs, immense, deserted, uniformly gray under the nocturnal sky, seem to vanish into the empty space above us, and when we turn round, to disappear in the depths beneath, to fall with the dizzy rapidity of a dream into the abyss below. On the sloping steps the black shadows of the gateways through which we must pass stretch out inordinately; and the shadows, which seem to be broken at each projecting step, bear on all their extent the regular creases of a fan. The porticos stand up separately, rising one above the other; their wonderful shapes are at once remarkably simple and studiously affected; their outlines stand out sharp and distinct, having nevertheless the vague appearance of all very large objects in the pale moonlight. The curved architraves rise up at each extremity like two menacing horns, pointing upwards towards the far-off blue canopy of sky bespangled with stars, as thought they would communicate to the gods the knowledge they have acquired in the depths of their foundations from the earth, full of sepulchers and death, which surrounds them.
We are, indeed, a very small group, lost now in the immensity of the colossal acclivity as we move onwards, lighted partly by the wan moon on high, partly by the red lanterns we hold in our hands, ever floating at the end of their long sticks.
A deep silence reigns in the precincts of the temple, the sound of the insects even is hushed as we ascend higher. A sort of reverence, a kind of religious fear steals over us, and, at the same moment, a delicious coolness suddenly pervades the air, and passes over us.
On entering the courtyard above, we feel a little daunted. Here we find the horse in jade, and the china turrets. The enclosing walls make it the more gloomy, and our arrival seems to disturb I know not what mysterious council held between the spirits of the air and the visible symbols that are there, chimeras and monsters lit up by the blue rays of the moon.
We turn to the left, and go through the terraced gardens, to reach the tea-house "of the Toads," which this evening is our goal; we find it shut up--expected as much--closed and dark, at this hour! We drum all together on the door; in the most coaxing tones we call by name the waiting-maids we know so well: Mdlle. Transparente, Mdlle. Etoile, Mdlle. Roséematinale, and Mdlle. Marguerite-reine. Not an answer. Goodbye perfumed sherbets and frosted beans!
In front of the little archery-house, our mousmés suddenly start on one side, terrified, and declaring that there is a dead body on the ground. Yes, indeed, someone is lying there. We cautiously examine the place by the light of our red balloons, carefully held out at arm's length for fear of this dead man; it is only the marksman, he who on the 14th of July chose such magnificent arrows for Chrysanthème; and he sleeps, good man, with his chignon somewhat dishevelled, a sound sleep, which it would be cruel to disturb.
Let us go to the end of the terrace, contemplate the roadstead at our feet, and then return home. To-night the harbor looks only like a dark and sinister rent, which the moonbeams cannot fathom,--a yawning crevasse opening into the very bowels of the earth, at the bottom of which lie faint and small glimmers, an assembly of glow-worms in a ditch--the lights of the different vessels lying at anchor.
XLVII.
It is the middle of the night, somewhere about two in the morning. Our night-lamps are burning still, a little dimly, in front of our peaceful idols. Chrysanthème wakes me suddenly, and I turn to look at her: she has raised herself on one arm, and her face expresses the most intense terror; she makes me a sign, without daring to speak, that someone is near, or something, creeping up to us. What ill-timed visit is this? A feeling of fear gains possession of me also. I have a rapid impression of some immense unknown danger, in this isolated spot, in this strange country of which I do not even yet comprehend the inhabitants and the mysteries. It must be something very frightful, to hold her there, rooted to the spot, half dead with fright, she who _does_ comprehend all these things.
It would seem to be outside: it is coming from the garden; with trembling hand she indicates to me that it will come through the verandah, over Madame Prune's roof. Certainly, I can hear faint noises, and they do approach nearer.
I suggest to her:
"_Neko-San?_" ("It is Messrs. the cats?")
"No!" she replies, still terrified and in an alarming tone.
"_Bakémono-Sama?_" ("Is it my lords the ghosts?") I have already the Japanese habit of expressing myself with excessive politeness.
'No!!" _"Dorobo!!"_("Thieves!!") Thieves! Ah this is better; I much prefer this to a visit such as I have just been, dreading in the sudden awakening from sleep: from ghosts or spirits of the dead; thieves, that is to say, worthy fellows very much alive, and having undoubtedly, in as much as they are Japanese thieves, faces of the most meritorious oddity. I am not in the least frightened, now that I know precisely what to expect, and we will immediately set to work to ascertain the truth, for something is decidedly moving on Madame Prune's roof; some one is walking upon it.
I open one of our wooden panels and look out.
I can see only a vast expanse, calm, peaceful, and exquisite under the full brilliancy of the moonlight; sleeping Japan lulled by the sonorous song of the grasshoppers is charming indeed to-night, and the free pure air is delicious to breathe.
Chrysanthème, half hidden behind my shoulder, listens tremblingly, peering forward to examine the gardens and the roofs with dilated eyes like a frightened cat. No, nothing! not a thing moves. Here and there are a few strangely substantial shadows, which at the first glance were not easy to explain, but which turn out to be real shadows, thrown by bits of wall, by boughs of trees, and which preserve an extremely reassuring stillness. Everything seems absolutely tranquil, and profound silence reigns in the dreamy vagueness which moonlight sheds over all.
Nothing; nothing to be seen anywhere. It was Messrs, the cats after all, or perhaps my ladies the owls; sounds increase in volume in the most amazing manner at night, in this house of ours.
Let us close the panel again carefully, as a measure of prudence, and then light a lantern and go downstairs to see if there may be any one hidden in corners, and if the doors are tightly shut: in short, to reassure Chrysanthème we will go the round of the house.
Behold us then, on tip-toe, searching together every hole and corner of the house, which, to judge by its foundations, must be very ancient, notwithstanding the fragile appearance of its panels of white paper. It contains the blackest of cavities, little vaulted cellars with worm-eaten beams; cupboards for rice which smell of mould and decay; mysterious hollows where lies accumulated the dust of centuries. In the middle of the night, and during a hunt for thieves, this part of the house, as yet unknown to me, has an ugly look.
Noiselessly we step across the apartment of our landlord and landlady. Chrysanthème drags me by the hand, and I allow myself to be led. There they are, sleeping in a row under their blue gauze tent, lighted by the night-lamps burning before the altars of their ancestors. Ha! I observe that they are arranged in an order which might give rise to gossip. First comes Mdlle. Oyouki, very taking in her attitude of rest. Then Madame Prune, who sleeps with her mouth wide open, showing her rows of blackened teeth; from her throat arises an intermittent sound like the grunting of a sow. Oh! poor Madame Prune! how hideous she is!! Next, M. Sucre, a mere mummy for the time being. And finally, at his side, last of the row, is their servant, Mdlle. Dédé!!!
The gauze hanging over them throws reflections as of the sea upon them; one might suppose them victims drowned in an aquarium. And withal the sacred lamps, the altar crowded with strange Shintoist symbols, give a mock religious air to this family picture.
_Honi soit qui mal y pense_, but why is not that servant-girl rather laid by the side of her mistresses? Now, when we on the floor above offer our hospitality to Yves, we are careful to place ourselves under our mosquito-net in a more correct style.
One corner, which as a last resort we inspect, inspires me with a certain amount of apprehension. It is a low, mysterious loft, against the door of which is stuck, as a thing no longer wanted, a very old pious image: _Kwanon with the thousand arms, and Kwanon with the horses' head_, seated among clouds and flames, and horrible both of them to behold, with their spectral grin.
We open the door, and Chrysanthème starts back uttering a fearful cry. I should have thought the robbers were there, had I not seen a little grey creature, rapid and noiseless, rush by her and disappear; a young rat that had been eating rice on the top of a shelf, and, in its alarm, had dashed in her face.
XLVIII
_September 14th_.
Yves has dropped his silver whistle in the sea, the whistle so absolutely indispensable for the maneuvers; and we search the town through all day long, followed by Chrysanthème and Mdlles. La Neige and La Lune, her sisters, in the endeavor to procure another.
It is, however, very difficult to find such a thing in Nagasaki; above all, very difficult to explain in Japanese what is a sailor's whistle of the traditional shape, curved and with a little ball at the end to modulate the trills and the various sounds of official orders. For three hours we are sent from shop to shop; at each one they pretend to understand perfectly what is wanted and trace on tissue-paper, with a paint-brush, the addresses of the shops where we shall without fail meet with what we require,--away we go, full of hope, only to encounter some fresh mystification, till our breathless djins get quite bewildered.
They understand admirably that we want a thing that will make a noise, music in short; thereupon they offer us instruments of every and the most unexpected shape,--squeakers for Punch-and-Judy voices, dog-whistles, trumpets. Each time it is something more and more absurd, so that at last we are overcome with uncontrollable fits of laughter. Last of all, an aged Japanese optician, who assumes a most knowing air, a look of sublime wisdom, goes off to forage in his back shop, and brings to light a steam fog-horn, a relic from some wrecked steamer.
After dinner, the chief event of the evening is a deluge of rain which takes us by surprise as we leave the tea-houses, on our return from our fashionable stroll. It so happened that we were a large party, having with us several mousmé guests, and from the moment that the rain began to fall from the skies, as if out of a watering-pot turned upside down, the band became disorganized. The mousmés run off, with birdlike cries, and take refuge under door-ways, in the shops, under the hoods of the djins.
Then, before long,--when the shops shut up in haste, when the emptied streets are flooded, and almost black, and the paper lanterns, piteous objects, wet through and extinguished,--I find myself, I know not how it happens, flattened against a wall, under the projecting eaves, alone in the company of Mdlle. Fraise, my cousin, who is crying bitterly because her fine dress is wet through. And in the noise of the rain, which is still falling and splashing everything; with the spouts and gutters, which in the darkness plaintively murmur like running streams, the town appears to me suddenly an abode of the gloomiest sadness.
The shower is soon over, and the mousmés come out of their holes like so many mice; they look for each other, call each other, and their little voices take the singular melancholy, dragging inflections they assume whenever they have to call from afar.
"Hi! Mdlle. Lu-u-u-u une!!"
"Hi! Madame Jonqui-i-i-i ille!!"
They shout from one to the other their outlandish names, prolonging them indefinitely in the now silent night, in the reverberations of the damp air after the great summer rain.
At length they are all collected and united again, these tiny personages with narrow eyes and no brains, and we return to Diou-djen-dji all wet through.
For the third time, we have Yves sleeping beside us under our blue tent.
There is a great row soon after midnight in the apartment beneath us: our landlord's family returning from a pilgrimage to a far-distant temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist, she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A moment after, Mdlle. Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket, bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is gone out of them. Scarcely rousing ourselves, we absorb these little edibles flavored with sugar and pepper, and return a great many sleepy thanks.
Yves sleeps quietly on this occasion, without dealing any blows to the floor or the panels either with fists or feet. He has hung his watch on one of the hands of our gilded idol in order to be more sure of seeing the hour at any time of the night, by the light of the sacred lamps. He gets up betimes in the morning, asking: "Well, did I behave properly?" and dresses in haste, preoccupied about duty and the roll-call.
Outside, no doubt, it is daylight already: through the tiny holes which time has pierced in our wooden panels, threads of morning light penetrate our chamber, and in the atmosphere of our room where night still lingers, they trace vague white rays. Soon, when the sun shall have risen, these rays will lengthen and become beautifully golden. The cocks and the cicalas make themselves heard, and now Madame Prune will begin her mystic drone.
Nevertheless, out of politeness for Yves-San, Chrysanthème lights a lantern and escorts him to the foot of the dark staircase. I even fancy that, on parting, I hear a kiss exchanged. In Japan this is of no consequence, that I know; it is very usual, and quite admissible; no matter where one goes, in houses one enters for the first time, one is quite at liberty to kiss any mousmé who may be present, without any notice being taken of it. But with regard to Chrysanthème, Yves is in a delicate position, and he ought to understand it better. I begin to feel uneasy about the hours they have so often spent together alone; and I make up my mind, that this very day I will not play the spy upon them, but speak frankly to Yves, and make a clear breast of it.
All at once from below, _clac! clac!_ two dry hands clapped together; it is Madame Prune's warning to the Great Spirit. And immediately after her prayer breaks forth, soars upwards in a shrill nasal falsetto, like a morning alarm when the hour for waking has come, the mechanical noise of a spring let go and running down.
_"The richest woman in the world. Cleansed from all my sins, O Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, in the river of Kamo."_
And this extraordinary bleating, scarcely human, scatters and changes my ideas, which were very nearly clear at the moment I awoke.
XLIX.
_September 15th_.
There is a rumor of departure in the air. Since yesterday there has been vague talk of our being sent to China, to the gulf of Pekin; one of those rumors which spread, no one knows how, from one end of the ship to the other, two or three days before the official orders arrive, and which generally turn out tolerably correct. What will the last act of my little Japanese comedy be like? the dénouement, the separation? Will there be any touch of sadness on the part of my mousmé, or on my own, just a tightening of the heart-strings at the moment of our final farewell? At this moment I can imagine nothing of the sort. And then the adieux of Yves and Chrysanthème, what will they be? This question preoccupies me more than all.
There is nothing very precise as yet, but it is certain that one way or another, our stay in Japan is coming to an end. It is this perhaps which disposes me this evening, to throw a more friendly glance on my surroundings. It is about six o'clock, after a day spent on duty, when I reach Diou-djen-dji. The evening sun, low in the sky, on the point of setting, pours into my room, and floods it with rays of red gold, lighting up the Buddhas and the great sheaves of quaintly arranged flowers in the antique vases. Here are assembled five or six little dolls, my neighbors, amusing themselves by dancing to the sound of Chrysanthème's guitar. And this evening I experience a real charm in feeling that this dwelling and the woman who leads the dance, are mine. On the whole I have perhaps been unjust to this country; it seems to me that my eyes are at last opened to see it in its true light, that all my senses are undergoing a strange and abrupt transition; I suddenly have a better perception and appreciation of all the infinity of dainty trifles amongst which I live; of the fragile and studied grace of their forms, the oddity of their drawings, the refined choice of their colors.
I stretch myself upon the white mats; Chrysanthème, always eagerly attentive, brings me my pillow of serpent's skin; and the smiling mousmés, with the interrupted rhythm of a while ago still running in their heads, move round me with measured steps.
Their irreproachable socks with the separate great toes, make no noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a froufrou of silken stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air has the gift of pleasing me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is that gives it to them: it is not only their round inexpressive faces with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little marionnettes without bodies at all, and which would slip to the ground of themselves were they not kept together midway, about where a waist should be, by the wide silken sashes,--a very different comprehension of the art of dressing to ours, which endeavors as much as possible to bring into relief the curves, real or false, of the figure.
And then, how much I admire the flowers arranged by Chrysanthème in our vases, with her Japanese taste: lotus flowers, great sacred flowers of a tender, veined rose-color, the milky rose-color seen on porcelain; they resemble, when in full bloom, great water-lilies, and when only in bud, might be taken for long pale tulips. Their soft but rather cloying scent is added to that other indefinable odor of mousmés, of yellow race, of Japan, which is always and everywhere in the air. The late flowers of September, at this season very rare and expensive, grow on longer stems than the summer blooms; Chrysanthème has left them their immense aquatic leaves of a melancholy seaweed-green, and mingled with them tall slight rushes. I look at them, and recall with some irony those great round bunches in the shape of cauliflowers, which our florists sell in France, wrapt in their white lace-paper.
Still no letters from Europe, from any one. How things change, become effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller things,--things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate monotony of the mats, to the finely finished simplicity of the white woodwork. I am even losing my Western prejudices; all my preconceived ideas are this evening evaporating and vanishing; crossing the garden I have courteously saluted M. Sucre, who was watering his dwarf shrubs and his deformed flowers; and Madame Prune appears to me a highly respectable old lady, in whose past there is nothing to criticise.
We shall take no walk to-night; my only wish is to remain stretched out where I am, listening to the music of my mousmé's _chamécen_.
Till now, I have always used the word _guitar_, to avoid exotic terms, for the abuse of which I have been so reproached. But neither the word _guitar_ nor _mandolin_ suffices to designate this slender instrument with its long neck, the high notes of which are shriller than the voice of the grasshopper; henceforth, I will write _chamécen_.
I will also call my mousmé _Kikou, Kikou-San_; this name suits her better than Chrysanthème, which though translating the sense exactly, does not preserve the strange-sounding euphony of the original.
I therefore say to Kikou, my wife:
"Play, play on for me; I shall remain here all the evening and listen to you."
Astonished to find me in so amiable a mood, she requires pressing a little, and with almost a bitter curve of triumph and disdain about her lips, she seats herself in the attitude of an idol, raises her long, dark-colored sleeves, and begins. The first hesitating notes are murmured faintly and mingle with the music of the insects humming outside, in the quiet air of the warm and golden twilight. First she plays slowly, a confused medley of fragments which she does not seem to remember perfectly, of which one waits for the finish and waits in vain; while the other girls giggle, inattentive, and regretful of their interrupted dance. She herself is absent, sulky, as though she were performing a duty only.
Then by degrees, little by little, it becomes more animated, and the mousmés begin to listen. Now, tremblingly it grows into a feverish rapidity, and her gaze has no longer the vacant stare of a doll. Then the music changes again; in it there is the sighing of the wind, the hideous laughter of ghouls; tears, heartrending plaints, and her dilated pupils seem to be directed inwardly in settled gaze on some indescribable _Japanesery_ within her own soul.
I listen, lying there with eyes half shut, looking out between my drooping eyelids which are gradually lowering, in involuntary heaviness, upon the enormous red sun dying away over Nagasaki. I have a somewhat melancholy feeling that my past life and all other places in the world are receding from my view and fading away. At this moment of nightfall I feel almost at home in this corner of Japan, amidst the gardens of this suburb; I have never had such an impression before.
L.
_September 16th_.
Seven o'clock in the evening. We shall not go down into the town to-day; but, like good Japanese citizens, remain in our loftly suburb.
In undress uniform we shall go, Yves and I, in a neighborly way, as far as the fencing gallery, which is only two steps off, just above our villa, and almost abutting on our fresh and scented garden.
The gallery is closed already and a little mousko seated at the door, explains with many low bows that we come too late, all the amateurs are gone; we must come again to-morrow.
The evening is so mild and so fine, that we remain out of doors, following without any definite purpose the pathway which rises ever higher and higher, and loses itself at length in the solitary regions of the mountain among the upper peaks.
For an hour at least we wander on,--an unintended walk,--and finally find ourselves at a great height commanding an endless perspective lighted by the last gleams of daylight; we are in a desolate and mournful spot, in the midst of the little Buddhist cemeteries, which are scattered over the country in every direction.
We meet a few belated laborers, who are returning from the fields with bundles of tea upon their shoulders. These peasants have a half savage air, half naked too, or clothed only in long robes of blue cotton; as they pass, they salute us with humble bows.