Chapter 5

She was sleeping flat on her face upon the mats, her high headdress and tortoiseshell pins standing out boldly from the rest of the horizontal figure. The train of her tunic prolonged her delicate little body, like the tail of a bird; her arms were stretched crosswise, the sleeves spread out like wings,--and her long guitar lay beside her.

She looked like a dead fairy; or still more did she resemble some great blue dragon-fly, which, having alighted on that spot, some unkind hand had pinned to the floor.

Madame Prune, who had come upstairs after me, always officious and eager, manifested by her gestures her sentiments of indignation on beholding the careless reception accorded by Chrysanthème to her lord and master, and advanced to wake her.

"Pray do nothing of the kind, my good Madame Prune, you don't know how much I prefer her like that!" I had left my shoes below, according to custom, by the side of the little clogs and sandals; and I entered on the tips of my toes, very, very softly, to go and sit awhile under the verandah.

What a pity this little Chrysanthème cannot always be asleep; she is really extremely decorative seen in this manner,--and like this, at least, she does not bore me. Who knows what may perchance be going on in that little head and heart! If I only had the means of finding out! But strange to say, since we have kept house together, instead of pushing my studies in the Japanese language further, I have neglected them, so much have I felt the utter impossibility of ever interesting myself in the subject.

Seated under my verandah, my eyes wandered over the temples and cemeteries spread at my feet, over the woods and green mountains, over Nagasaki lying bathed in the sunlight. The cicalas were chirping their loudest, the strident noise trembling feverishly in the hot air. All was calm, full of light and full of heat.

Nevertheless, to my taste, it is not yet enough so! What then can have changed upon the earth? The burning noon-days of summer, such as I can recall in days gone by, were more brilliant, more full of sunshine; Nature seemed to me in those days more powerful, more terrible. One would say this was only a pale copy of all that I knew in early years,--a copy in which something is wanting. Sadly do I ask myself,--Is the splendor of the summer only this? _was it_ only this? or is it the fault of my eyes, and as time goes on shall I behold everything around me paling still more?

Behind me a faint and melancholy strain of music,--melancholy enough to make one shiver,--and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysanthème and her guitar awaking together.

It pleased me that the idea should have occurred to her to greet me with music, instead of eagerly hastening to wish me "Good morning." (At no time have I ever given myself the trouble to pretend the slightest affection for her, and a certain coldness even has grown up between us, especially when we are alone.) But to-day I turn to her with a smile, and wave my hand for her to continue. "Go on, it amuses me to listen to your quaint little impromptu." It is singular that the music of this essentially merry people should be so plaintive. But undoubtedly that which Chrysanthème is playing at this moment is worth listening to. Whence can it have come to her? What unutterable dreams, forever hidden from me, fly through her yellow head, when she plays or sings in this manner?

Suddenly: Pan, pan, pan! Some one knocks three times, with a harsh and bony finger against one of the steps of our stairs, and in the aperture of our doorway appears an idiot, clad in a suit of gray tweed, who bows low. "Come in, come in, M. Kangourou. How well you come, just in the nick of time! I was actually becoming enthusiastic over your country!"

It was a little washing bill, which M. Kangourou respectfully wished to hand to me, with a profound bend of the whole body, the correct pose of the hands on the knees, and a long snake-like hiss.

XXI.

Following the road which climbs past the front of our dwelling, one passes a dozen or more old villas, a few garden walls, and then there is nothing but the lonely mountain side, with little paths winding upwards towards the summit through plantations of tea, bushes of camellias, underwood and rocks. The mountains round Nagasaki are covered with cemeteries; for centuries and centuries past it is up here they have brought their dead.

But there is neither sadness nor horror in these Japanese sepulchers; it would seem as if among this frivolous and childish people, death itself could not be taken seriously. The monuments are either Buddhas, in granite, seated on lotus, or upright funereal stones with an inscription in gold; they are grouped together in little enclosures in the midst of the woods, or on natural terraces delightfully situated, and are generally reached by long stairways of stone carpeted with moss; from time to time, these pass under one of the sacred gateways, of which the shape, always the same, rude and simple, is a smaller reproduction of those in the temples.

Up above us, the tombs of our mountain are of so hoary an antiquity that they no longer alarm any one, even by night. It is a region of forsaken cemeteries. The dead hidden away there have long since become one with the earth around them; and these thousands of little gray stones, these multitudes of ancient little Buddhas, eaten away by lichens, seem to be now no more than a proof of a series of existences, long anterior to our own, and lost forever and altogether in the mysterious depths of ages.

XXII.

Chrysanthème's meals are something indescribable.

She begins in the morning, when she wakes, by two little green wild plums pickled in vinegar and rolled in powdered sugar. A cup of tea completes this almost traditional breakfast of Japan, the very same Madame Prune is eating downstairs, the same served up to travelers in the inns.

During the course of the day the feeding is continued by two little dinners of the drollest composition. They are brought up on a tray of red lacquer, in microscopic cups with covers, from Madame Prune's apartment, where they are cooked: a hashed sparrow, a stuffed prawn, seaweed with a sauce, a salt sweetmeat, a sugared chili. Chrysanthème tastes a little of all, with dainty pecks and the aid of her little chopsticks, raising the tips of her fingers with affected grace. At every dish she makes a face, leaves three parts of it, and dries her finger-tips after it in apparent disgust.

These menus vary according to the inspiration which may have seized Madame Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or in any other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and that is the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these little dishes, which are a mere make-believe, is brought in a wooden bowl, bound with copper,--an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water. Chrysanthème fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice, sometimes three times), darkens its snowy whiteness with a black sauce flavored with fish which is contained in a delicately shaped blue cruet, mixes it all together, carries the bowl to her lips, and crams down all the rice, shoveling it with her two chopsticks into her very throat. Next the little cups and covers are picked up, as well as the tiniest crumb that may have fallen upon the white mats, the irreproachable purity of which nothing is allowed to tarnish. And so ends the dinner.

XXIII.

_August 2nd_.

Down below in the town, a street singer had established herself in a little thoroughfare; people had collected around her to listen to her singing, and we three--that is, Yves, Chrysanthème and I--who chanced to be passing, stopped like others.

Quite young, rather fat, fairly pretty, she strummed her guitar and sang, rolling her eyes fiercely, like a virtuoso executing feats of difficulty. She lowered her head, stuck her chin into her neck, in order to draw deeper notes from the furthermost recesses of her body; and succeeded in bringing forth a great hoarse voice,--a voice that might have belonged to an aged frog, a ventriloquist's voice, coming from whence it would be impossible to say (this is the best stage manner, the final word of art, for the interpretation of tragic pieces).

Yves cast an indignant glance upon her:

"Good gracious," said he, "it's the voice of a--" (words failed him, in his astonishment) "it's the voice of a--a monster!"

And he looked at me, almost frightened by this little being, and anxious to know what I thought of it.

My poor Yves was out of temper on this occasion, because I had induced him to come out in a straw hat with a turned-up brim, which did not please him.

"It suits you remarkably well, Yves, I assure you."

"Oh, indeed! You say so, you. For my part, I think it looks like a magpie's nest!"

As a fortunate diversion from the singer and the hat, here comes a cortège, advancing towards us from the end of the street, something remarkably like a funeral. Bonzes march in front dressed in robes of black gauze, having much the appearance of Catholic priests; the principal personage of the procession, the corpse, comes last, laid in a sort of little closed palanquin which is daintily pretty. This is followed by a band of mousmés, hiding their laughing faces beneath a kind of veil, and carrying in vases of the sacred shape the artificial lotus with silver petals indispensable at a funeral; then come fine ladies, on foot, smirking and stifling a wish to laugh, beneath parasols on which are painted in the gayest colors, butterflies and storks.

Now they are quite close to us, we must stand back to give them room. Chrysanthème all at once assumes a suitable air of gravity, and Yves bares his head, taking off the magpie's nest.

Yes, it is true, it is death that is passing by!

I had almost lost sight of the fact, so little does this recall it.

The procession will climb high up, far away above Nagasaki, into the heart of the green mountain all peopled with tombs. There the poor fellow will be laid at rest, with his palanquin above him, and his vases and his flowers of silvered paper. Well, at least the poor defunct will lie in a charming spot commanding a lovely view.

They will now return half laughing, half sniveling, and to-morrow no one will think of it again.

XXIV.

_August 4th_.

The _Triomphante_, which has been lying in the roadsteads almost at the foot of the hill on which stands my house, enters the dock to-day to undergo repairs rendered necessary by the long blockade of Formosa.

I am now a long way from my home, and obliged to cross by boat the whole breadth of the bay when I wish to see Chrysanthème; for the dock is situated on the shore opposite to Diou-djen-dji. It is sunk in a little valley, narrow and deep, midst all kinds of foliage,--bamboos, camellias, trees of all sorts; our masts and spars, seen from the deck, look as if they were tangled among the branches.

The situation of the vessel--no longer afloat--gives the crew a greater facility for clandestine escapes from the ship at no matter what hour of the night, and our sailors have made friends with all the girls of the villages perched on the mountains above us.

These quarters and his excessive liberty, give me some uneasiness about my poor Yves; for this country of frivolous pleasure has a little turned his head. Moreover, I am more and more convinced that he is in love with Chrysanthème.

It is really a pity that the sentiment has not occurred to me instead, since it is I who have gone the length of marrying her.

XXV.

Notwithstanding the increased distance, I continue my daily visits to Diou-djen-dji. When night has fallen, and the four couples who compose our society have joined us, as well as Yves and the _amazingly tall friend_,--we descend again into the town, stumbling by lantern light down the steep stairways and slopes of the old suburb.

This nocturnal stroll is always the same, and accompanied always by the same amusements: we pause before the same queer stalls, we drink the same sugared drinks served to us in the same little gardens. But our troop is often more numerous: to begin with, we chaperon Oyouki who is confided to our care by her parents; then we have two cousins of my wife's--pretty little creatures; and lastly friends--guests of sometimes only ten or twelve years old, little girls of the neighborhood to whom our mousmés wish to show some politeness.

Oh! what a singular company of tiny beings forms our suite and follows us into the tea-gardens in the evenings! The most absurd faces, with sprigs of flowers stuck in the oddest fashion in their comical and childish heads! One might suppose it was a whole school of mousmés out for an evening's frolic under our care.

Yves returns with us, when time comes to remount our hill,--Chrysanthème heaves great sighs like a tired child, and stops on every step, leaning on our arms.

When we have reached our destination he says good-night, just touches Chrysanthème's hand, and descending once more, by the slope which leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan, to get on board the _Triomphante_.

Meantime, we, with the aid of a sort of secret key, open the door of our garden, where Madame Prune's pots of flowers, ranged in the darkness, send forth delicious odors in the night air. We cross the garden by moonlight or starlight, and mount to our own rooms.

If it is very late,--a frequent occurrence,--we find all our wooden panels drawn and tightly shut by the careful M. Sucre (as a precaution against thieves), and our apartment is as close and as private as if it were a real European one.

In this house, when every chink is thus closed, a strange odor mingles with the musk and the lotus,--an odor essential to Japan, to the yellow race, belonging to the soil or emanating from the venerable woodwork; almost an odor of wild beast. The mosquito curtain of dark blue gauze ready hung for the night, falls from the ceiling with the air of a mysterious velum. The gilded Buddha smiles eternally at the night-lamps burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging to our ceiling, flutters at this hour under the very nose of the god, turning and flitting round the thin quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall, its feelers spread out starwise, sleeps some great garden spider, which one must not kill because it is night. "Hou!" says Chrysanthème indignantly, pointing it out to me with leveled finger. "Quick! where is the fan kept for the purpose, wherewith to hunt it out of doors?"

Around us reigns a silence which is almost painful after all the joyous noises of the town, and all the laughter, now hushed, of our band of mousmés,--a silence of the country, of some sleeping village.

XXVI.

The noise of the innumerable wooden panels which at the fall of night are pulled and shut in every Japanese house, is one of the peculiarities of the country which will remain longest imprinted on my memory. From our neighbors' houses, floating to us over the green gardens, these noises reach us one after the other, in series, more or less deadened, more or less distant.

Just below us, those of Madame Prune move very badly, creak and make a hideous noise in their worn-out grooves.

Ours are somewhat noisy too, for the old house is full of echoes, and there are at least twenty to run over long slides in order to close in completely the kind of open hall in which we live. Generally it is Chrysanthème who undertakes this piece of household work, and a great deal of trouble it gives her, for she often pinches her fingers in the singular awkwardness of her too tiny hands, which have never been accustomed to do any work.

Then comes her toilette for the night. With a certain grace she lets fall the day-dress, and slips on a more simple one of blue cotton, which has the same pagoda sleeves, the same shape all but the train, and which she fastens round her waist by a sash of muslin of the same color.

The high head-dress remains untouched, it is needless to say; all but the pins which are taken out and laid beside her in a lacquer box.

Then there is the little silver pipe that must absolutely be smoked before going to sleep; this is one of the customs which most provokes me, but has to be borne.

Chrysanthème, like a gypsy, squats before a particular square box, made of red wood, which contains a little tobacco jar, a little porcelain stove full of hot embers, and finally a little bamboo pot serving at the same time as ash-tray and spittoon. (Madame Prune's smoking-box downstairs, and every smoking-box in Japan, both of men and women, is exactly the same, and contains precisely the same objects, arranged in precisely the same manner; and wherever it may be, whether in the house of the rich or the poor, it always lies about somewhere on the floor.)

The word "pipe" is at once too trivial and too big to be applied to this delicate silver tube, which is perfectly straight and at the end of which, in a microscopic receptacle, is placed one pinch of golden tobacco, chopped finer than silken thread.

Two puffs, or at most three; it lasts scarcely a few seconds, and the pipe is finished. Then _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ the little tube is struck smartly against the edge of the smoking-box to knock out the ashes, which never will fall; and this tapping, heard everywhere, in every house, at every hour of the day or night, quick and droll as the scratching of a monkey, is in Japan one of the noises most characteristic of human life.

"Anata nominasé!" ("You must smoke too!") says Chrysanthème.

Having again filled the vexatious little pipe, she puts the silver tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find it detestably bitter.

Now, before laying myself down under the blue mosquito-net, I open two of the panels in the room, one on the side of the silent and deserted footpath, the other one on the garden side, overlooking the terraces, so that the night air may breathe upon us, even at the risk of bringing us the company of some belated cockchafer, or more giddy moth.

Our wooden house, with its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a great dry fiddle; the slightest noises grow great in it, become disfigured and positively disquieting.

Beneath the verandah are hung two little Æolian harps, which at the least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of grass, emit a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside, to the very furthest limits of the distance, the cicalas continue their great and everlasting concert; over our heads, on the black roof, is heard passing like a witch's sabbath, the raging battle to the death of cats, rats and owls.

Presently, when in the early dawn, a fresher breeze, mounting upwards from the sea and the deep harbor, reaches us, Chrysanthème will slyly get up and shut the panels I have opened.

Before that, however, she will have risen at least three times to smoke: having yawned like a cat, stretched herself, twisted in every direction her little amber arms, and her graceful little hands, she sits up resolutely, with all the waking groans and half words of a child, pretty and fascinating enough: then she emerges from the gauze tent, fills her little pipe, and breathes a few puffs of the bitter and unpleasant mixture.

Then comes _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ against the box to shake out the ashes. In the resounding sonority of the night it makes quite a terrible noise, which wakes Madame Prune. This is fatal. Madame Prune is at once seized also with a longing to smoke which may not be denied; then, to the noise from above, comes an answering _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ from below, exactly like it, exasperating and inevitable as an echo.

XXVII.

More cheerful are the noises of the morning: the cocks crowing, the wooden panels all round the neighborhood sliding back upon their rollers; or the strange cry of some little fruit-hawker, patrolling our lofty suburb in the early dawn. And the grasshoppers absolutely seem to chirp more loudly, to celebrate the return of the sunlight.

Above all, rises to our ears from below the sound of Madame Prune's long prayers, ascending through the floor, monotonous as the song of a somnambulist, regular and soothing as the splash of a fountain. It lasts three-quarters of an hour at least; it drones along, a rapid flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the inattentive Spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping of dry palms, or by harsh sounds from a kind of wooden clapper made of two discs of mandragora root; it is an uninterrupted stream of prayer; its flow never ceases, and the quavering continues without stopping, like the bleating of an old nanny-goat in delirium.

_"After having washed the hands and feet"_ say the sacred books, _"the great God Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, who is the royal power of Japan, must be invoked; the manes of all the defunct Emperors descended from him must also be invoked; next, the manes of all his personal ancestors, to the furthest generation; the Spirits of the Air and Sea; the Spirits of all secret and impure places; the Spirits of the tombs of the district whence you spring, etc., etc."_

"I worship and implore you," sings Madame Prune, "Oh Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, royal power. Cease not to protect your faithful people, who are ready to sacrifice themselves for their country. Grant that I may become as holy as yourself, and drive from my mind all dark thoughts. I am a coward and a sinner; purge me from my cowardice and sinfulness, even as the north wind drives the dust into the sea. Wash me clean from all my iniquities, as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo. Make me the richest woman in the world. I believe in your glory, which shall be spread over the whole earth, and illuminate it forever for my happiness. Grant me the continued good health of my family, and above all, my own, who, oh Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, do worship and adore you, and only you, etc., etc."

Here follow all the Emperors, all the Spirits, and the interminable list of the ancestors.

In her trembling old woman's falsetto, Madame Prune sings out all this, without omitting anything, at a pace which almost takes away her breath.

And very strange it is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice; it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by producing in my scarcely awakened brain, an almost religious impression.

Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted beneath me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer mornings,--while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha, while the eternal sun, scarcely risen, already sends through the cracks of our wooden panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through our darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.

This is the moment at which I must rise, descend hurriedly to the sea by grassy footpaths all wet with dew, and so regain my ship.

Alas! in the days gone by, it was the cry of the muezzin which used to awaken me in the dark winter mornings, in far-away night-shrouded Stamboul.

XXVIII

Chrysanthème has brought but few things with her, knowing that our married life would be of short duration.