Chapter 3
An old lady enters,--two old ladies,--three old ladies, emerging from the doorway one after another with jerking and mechanical salutations, which we return as best we can, fully conscious of our inferiority in this particular style. Then come persons of intermediate age,--then quite young ones, a dozen at least, friends, neighbors, the whole quarter in fact. And the whole company, on arriving, becomes confusedly engaged in reciprocal salutations: I salute you,--- you salute me,--I salute you again, and you return it,--and I re-salute you again, and I express that I shall never, never be able to return it according to your high merit,--and I bang my forehead against the ground, and you stick your nose between the planks of the flooring, and there they are, on all fours one before the other; it is a polite dispute, all anxious to yield precedence as to sitting down, or passing first, and compliments without end are murmured in low tones, with faces against the floor.
They seat themselves at last, smiling, in a ceremonious circle; we two remaining standing, our eyes fixed on the staircase. And at length emerges, in due turn, the little aigrette of silver flowers, the ebony chignon, the gray silk robe and mauve sash of Mdlle. Jasmin, my fiancée!
Heavens! why, I know her already! Long before setting foot in Japan, I had met with her, on every fan, on every tea-cup--with her silly air, her puffy little visage, her tiny eyes, mere gimlet-holes above those expanses of impossible pink and white which are her cheeks.
She is young, that is all I can say in her favor; she is even so young that I should almost scruple to accept her. The wish to laugh quits me suddenly, and instead, a profound chill fastens on my heart. What! share even an hour of my life with that little doll? Never!
The next question is, how to get out of it?
She advances smiling, with an air of repressed triumph, and behind her looms M. Kangourou, in his suit of gray tweed. Fresh salutes, and behold her on all fours, she too, before my landlady and before my neighbors. Yves, the big Yves, who is not going to be married, stands behind me, with a comical grimace, hardly repressing his laughter,--while to give myself time to collect my ideas, I offer tea in little cups, little spittoons and embers to the company.
Nevertheless, my discomfited air does not escape my visitors. M. Kangourou anxiously inquires:
"How do I like her?" And I reply in a low voice, but with great resolution:
"Not at all! I won't have that one. Never!"
I believe that this remark was almost understood in the circle around me. Consternation was depicted on every face, the jaws dropped, the pipes went out. And now I address my reproaches to Kangourou: "Why had he brought her to me in such pomp, before friends and neighbors of both sexes, instead of showing her to me discreetly as if by chance, as I had wished? What an affront he will compel me now to put upon all these polite persons!"
The old ladies (the mamma no doubt and aunts), prick up their ears, and M. Kangourou translates to them, softening as much as possible, my heartrending decision. I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact is, that for women who, not to put too fine a point upon it, have come to sell a child, they have an air I was not prepared for: I can hardly say an air of _respectability_ (a word in use with us, which is absolutely without meaning in Japan), but an air of unconscious and good-natured simplicity; they are only accomplishing an act perfectly admissible in their world, and really it all resembles, more than I could have thought possible, a _bonâ fide_ marriage.
"But what fault do I find with the little girl?" asks M. Kangourou, in consternation.
I endeavor to present the matter in the most flattering light:
"She is very young," I say; "and then she is too white, too much like our own women. I wished for a yellow one just as a change."
"But that is only the paint they have put on her, sir! Beneath it, I assure you, she is yellow."
Yves leans towards me and whispers:
"Look over there, brother, in that corner by the last panel; have you noticed the one who is sitting down?"
Not I. In my annoyance I had not observed her; she had her back to the light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of one who keeps in the background. The fact is this one pleased me much better. Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have been called good in any country in the world; almost an expression, almost a thought. A coppery tint on her rounded cheeks; a straight nose; slightly thick lips, but well modeled and with pretty corners. Less young than Mdlle. Jasmin, about eighteen years of age perhaps, already more of a woman. She wore an expression of ennui, also of a little contempt, as if she regretted her attendance at a spectacle which dragged so much, and was so little amusing.
"M. Kangourou, who is that young lady over there, in dark blue?"
"Over there, sir? A young lady called Mdlle. Chrysanthème. She came with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator. She pleases you?" said he with eager suddenness, espying a way out of his difficulty. Then, forgetting all his politeness, all his ceremoniousness, all his Japanesery, he takes her by the hand, forces her to rise, to stand in the dying daylight, to let herself be seen. And she, who has followed our eyes and begins to guess what is on foot, lowers her head in confusion, with a more decided but more charming pout, and tries to step back, half sulky, half smiling.
"It makes no difference," continues M. Kangourou, "it can be arranged just as well with this one; she is not married either, sir!"
She is not married! Then why didn't the idiot propose her to me at once instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest pity, poor little soul, with her pearly gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her expression which grows sadder, and her eyes which twinkle like those of a child about to cry.
"It can be arranged, sir!" repeats Kangourou again, who at this moment appears to me a go-between of the lowest type, a rascal of the meanest kind.
Only, he adds, we, Yves and I, are in the way during the negotiations. And, while Mdlle. Chrysanthème remains with her eyelids lowered, as befits the occasion, while the various families, on whose countenances may be read every degree of astonishment, every phase of expectation, remain seated in a circle on my white mats, he sends us two into the verandah, and we gaze down into the depths below us, upon a misty and vague Nagasaki, a Nagasaki melting into a blue haze of darkness.
Then ensue long discourses in Japanese, arguments without end. M. Kangourou, who is washerman and low scamp in French only, has returned for these discussions to the long formulas of his country. From time to time I express impatience, I ask this worthy creature whom I am less and less able to consider in a serious light:
"Come now, tell us frankly, Kangourou, are we any nearer coming to some arrangement? is all this ever going to end?"
"In a moment, sir, in a moment;" and he resumes his air of political economist seriously debating social problems.
Well, one must submit to the slowness of this people. And, while the darkness falls like a veil over the Japanese town, I have leisure to reflect, with as much melancholy as I please, upon the bargain that is being concluded behind me.
* * * * *
Night has closed in, deep night; it has been necessary to light the lamps.
It is ten o'clock when all is finally settled, and M. Kangourou comes to tell me:
"All is arranged, sir: her parents will give her up for twenty dollars a month,--the same price as Mdlle. Jasmin."
On hearing this, I am possessed suddenly with extreme vexation that I should have made up my mind so quickly to link myself in ever so fleeting and transient a manner with this little creature, and dwell with her in this isolated house.
We come back into the room; she is the center of the circle and seated; and they have placed the aigrette of flowers in her hair. There is actually some expression in her glance, and I am almost persuaded that she--this one--- thinks.
Yves is astonished at her modest attitude, at her little timid airs of a young girl on the verge of matrimony; he had imagined nothing like it in such a marriage as this, nor I either, I must confess.
"She is really very pretty, brother," said he; "very pretty, take my word for it!"
These good folks, their customs, this scene, strike him dumb with astonishment; he cannot get over it, and remains in a maze. "Oh! this is too much," and the idea of writing a long letter to his wife at Toulven, describing it all, diverts him greatly.
Chrysanthème and I join hands. Yves too advances and touches the dainty little paw;--after all, if I wed her, it is chiefly his fault; I should never have remarked her without his observation that she was pretty. Who can tell how this strange arrangement will turn out? Is it a woman or a doll? Well, time will show.
The families having lighted their many-colored lanterns swinging at the ends of slight sticks, prepare to beat a retreat with many compliments, bows and curtsies. When it is a question of descending the stairs, no one is willing to go first, and at a given moment, the whole party are again on all fours, motionless and murmuring polite phrases in undertones.
_"Haul back there!"_ said Yves, laughing and employing a nautical term used when there is a stoppage of any kind.
At length they all melt away, descend the stairs with a last buzzing accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and the miniature trays.
"Let us watch them go away!" said Yves, leaning out. At the door of the garden is a renewal of the same salutations and curtsies, and then the two groups of women separate, their bedaubed paper lanterns fade away trembling in the distance, balanced at the extremity of flexible canes which they hold in their finger-tips, as one would hold a fishing-rod in the dark to catch night-birds. The procession of the unfortunate Mdlle. Jasmin mounts upwards, towards the mountain, while that of Mdlle. Chrysanthème winds downwards by a narrow old street, half stairway, half goat-path, which leads to the town.
Then we also depart. The night is fresh, silent, exquisite, the eternal song of the cicalas fills the air. We can still see the red lanterns of my new family, dwindling away in the distance, as they descend and gradually become lost in that yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lies Nagasaki.
Our way, too, lies downwards, but on an opposite slope by steep paths leading to the sea.
And when I find myself once more on board, when the scene enacted on the hill up above recurs to my mind, it seems to me that my betrothal is a joke, and my new family a set of puppets.
V.
_July 10th, 1885_.
It is three days now since my marriage was an accomplished fact.
In the lower part of the town, in the middle of one of the new cosmopolitan districts, in the ugly pretentious building which is a kind of register office, the deed has been signed and countersigned, with marvelous hieroglyphics, in a large book, in the presence of those ridiculous little creatures, formerly silken-robed _Samouraï_, but now called policemen, and dressed up in tight jackets and Russian caps.
The ceremony took place in the full heat of mid-day; Chrysanthème and her mother arrived there together, and I went alone. We seemed to have met for the purpose of ratifying some discreditable contract, and the two women trembled in the presence of these ugly little individuals, who, in their eyes, were the personification of the law.
In the middle of their official scrawl, they made me write in French my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of Kiu-Siu, to inhabit a house situated in the suburb of Diou-djen-dji, with a person called Chrysanthème, the said permission being available under protection of the police, during the whole of my stay in Japan.
In the evening, however, up there in our own quarter, our little marriage became a very pretty affair,--a procession carrying lanterns, a festive tea and some music. It was indeed high time.
Now we are almost an old married couple, and we are gently settling down into every-day habits.
Chrysanthème tends the flowers in our bronze vases, dresses herself with studied care, proud of her socks with the divided big toe, and strums all day on a kind of long-necked guitar, producing therefrom plaintive and sad sounds.
VI.
In our home, all has the appearance of a Japanese picture: we have nothing but little folding-screens, little curiously shaped stools bearing vases full of nosegays, and at the further end of the apartment, in a nook forming an altar, a large gilded Buddha sits enthroned in a lotus.
The house is just as I had fancied it should be in the many dreams of Japan I had made before my arrival, during my long night watches: perched on high, in a peaceful suburb, in the midst of green gardens;--made up of paper panels, and taken to pieces according to one's fancy, like a child's toy. Whole families of cicalas chirp day and night under our old resounding roof. From our verandah, we have a bewildering bird's-eye view of Nagasaki, of its streets, its junks and its great pagodas, which, at certain hours, is lit up at our feet like some fairylike scene.
VII.
As a mere outline, little Chrysanthème has been seen everywhere and by everybody. Whoever has looked at one of those paintings on china or on silk that now fill our bazaars, knows by heart the pretty stiff head-dress, the leaning figure, ever ready to try some new gracious salutation, the scarf fastened behind in an enormous bow, the large falling sleeves, the dress slightly clinging about the ankles with a little crooked train like a lizard's tail.
But her face, no, every one has not seen it; there is something special about it.
Moreover, the type of women the Japanese paint mostly on their vases is an exceptional one in their country. It is almost exclusively among the nobility that these personages are found with their long pale faces, painted in tender rose-tints, and silly long necks which give them the appearance of storks. This distinguished type (which I am obliged to admit was also Mdlle. Jasmin's) is rare, particularly at Nagasaki.
In the middle class and the people, the ugliness is more pleasant and sometimes becomes a kind of prettiness. The eyes are still too small and hardly able to open, but the faces are rounder, browner, more vivacious; and in the women there remains a certain vagueness in the features, something childlike which prevails to the very end of their lives.
They are so laughing, so merry, all these little Niponese dolls! Rather a forced mirth, it is true, studied and at times with a false ring in it; nevertheless one is attracted by it.
Chrysanthème is an exception, for she is melancholy. What thoughts can be running through that little brain? My knowledge of her language is still too restricted to enable me to find out. Moreover, it is a hundred to one that she has no thoughts whatever. And even if she had, what do I care?
I have chosen her to amuse me, and I would really rather she should have one of those insignificant little thoughtless faces like all the others.
VIII.
When night closes in, we light two hanging lamps of a religious character, which burn till morn, before our gilded idol.
We sleep on the floor, on a thin cotton mattress, which is unfolded and laid out over our white mats. Chrysanthème's pillow is a little wooden block, scooped out to fit exactly the nape of the neck, without disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down; the pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a Chinese model, is a kind of little square drum covered over with serpent skin.
We sleep under a gauze mosquito net of somber greenish blue, dark as the shades of night, stretched out on an orange-colored ribbon. (These are the traditional colors, and all the respectable families of Nagaski possess a similar gauze.) It envelops us like a tent; the mosquitoes and the night-moths dance around it.
* * * * *
This sounds very pretty, and written down looks very well. In reality, however, it is not so; something, I know not what, is wanting, and it is all very paltry. In other lands, in the delightful isles of Oceania, in the old lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if mere words could never express all I felt, and I vainly struggled against my own incompetence to render, in human language, the penetrating charm surrounding me.
Here, on the contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial agent, to whom I am indebted for my happiness.
IX.
_July 12th_.
Yves comes up to us whenever he is free, in the evening at five o'clock, after his work on board.
He is our only European visitor, and with the exception of a few civilities and cups of tea, exchanged with our neighbors, we lead a very retired life. Only in the evenings, winding our way through the precipitous little streets and carrying our lanterns at the end of short sticks, we go down to Nagasaki in search of amusement at the theaters, at the "tea-houses," or in the bazaars.
Yves treats this wife of mine as if she were a plaything, and continually assures me that she is charming.
Myself, I find her as exasperating as the cicalas on my roof; and when I am alone at home, side by side with this little creature twanging the strings of her long-necked guitar, in front of this marvelous panorama of pagodas and mountains,--I am overcome by a sadness full of tears.
X.
_July 13th_.
Last night, as we lay under the Japanese roof of Diou-djen-dji,--under the thin and ancient wooden roof scorched by a hundred years of sunshine, vibrating at the least sound, like the stretched-out parchment of a tamtam,--in the silence which prevails at two o'clock in the morning, we heard overhead a regular wild huntsman's chase passing at full gallop:
"Nidzoumi!" ("the mice!"), said Chrysanthème.
Suddenly, the word brings back to my mind yet another, spoken in a very different language, in a country far away from here: "Setchan!" a word heard elsewhere, a word that has likewise been whispered in my ear by a woman's voice, under similar circumstances, in a moment of nocturnal terror--"Setchan!" It was during one of our first nights at Stamboul spent under the mysterious roof of Eyoub, when danger surrounded us on all sides; a noise on the steps of the black staircase had made us tremble, and she also, my dear little Turkish companion, had said to me in her beloved language, "Setchan!" ("the mice!").
At that fond recollection, a thrill of sweet memories coursed through my veins; it was as though I had been startled out of a long ten years' sleep; I looked down upon the doll beside me with a sort of hatred, wondering why I was there, and I arose, with almost a feeling of remorse, to escape from that blue gauze net.
I stepped out upon the verandah, and there I paused, gazing into the depths of the starlit night. Beneath me Nagasaki lay asleep, wrapt in a soft light slumber, hushed by the murmuring sound of a thousand insects in the moonlight, and fairylike with its roseate hues. Then, turning my head, I saw behind me the gilded idol with our lamps burning in front of it; the idol smiling its impassive Buddha smile; and its presence seemed to cast around it something, I know not what, strange and incomprehensible. Never until now had I slept under the eye of such a god.
In the midst of the calm and silence of the night, I strove to recall my poignant impressions of Stamboul; but alas, I strove in vain, they would not return to me in this strange, far-off world. Through the transparent blue gauze appeared my little Japanese, as she lay in her somber night-dress with all the fantastic grace of her country, the nape of her neck resting on its wooden block, and her hair arranged in large shiny bows. Her amber-colored arms, pretty and delicate, emerged, bare up to the shoulders, from her wide sleeves.
"What can those mice on the roof have done to him?" thought Chrysanthème. Of course she could not understand. In a coaxing manner, like a playful kitten, she glanced at me with her half-closed eyes, inquiring why I did not come back to sleep,--and I returned to my place by her side.
XI.
_July 14th_.
It is the National Fête day of France. In Nagasaki roadstead, all the ships are dressed out with flags, and salutes are firing in our honor.
Alas! All day long, I cannot help thinking of that last fourteenth of July, spent in the deep calm and stillness of my old home, the door closed to all intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there I had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded by a trellis covered with honeysuckle, where in the bye-gone days of my childhood's summers, I used to settle myself with my copybooks and pretend to learn my lessons. Oh! those days when I was supposed to learn my lessons: how my thoughts used to rove,--what voyages, what distant lands, what tropical forests did I not behold in my dreams! At that time, near the garden bench, in some of the crevices in the stone wall, there dwelt many a big ugly black spider ever on the watch, peeping out of his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or wandering centipede. One of my amusements consisted in tickling the spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass or a cherry stalk in their holes. Mystified, they would rush out, fancying they had to deal with some sort of prey, whilst I would rapidly draw back my hand in disgust. Well, last year, on that fourteenth of July, as I recalled my days of Latin themes and translations, now forever flown, and this game of boyish days, I actually recognized the very same spiders (or at least their daughters), lying in wait in the very same holes. Gazing at them and at the tufts of grass and moss around me, a thousand memories of those summers of my early life welled up within me, memories which for years past had lain slumbering under this old wall, sheltered by the ivy boughs. While all that is ourselves perpetually changes and passes away, the constancy with which Nature repeats, always in the same manner, her most infinitesimal details, seems a wonderful mystery; the same peculiar species of moss grow afresh for centuries on precisely the same spot, and the same little insects each summer do the same thing in the same place.
* * * * *
I must admit that this episode of my childhood and the spiders, have little to do with the story of Chrysanthème. But an incongruous interruption is quite in keeping with the taste of this country; everywhere it is practiced, in conversation, in music, even in painting; a landscape painter, for instance, when he has finished a picture of mountains and crags, will not hesitate to draw in the very middle of the sky a circle, or a lozenge, or some kind of framework, within which he will represent anything incoherent and inappropriate: a bonze fanning himself, or a lady taking a cup of tea. Nothing is more thoroughly Japanese than such digressions made without the slightest àpropos.