Chapter 9

And then the congregation is not conducive to thoughtful contemplation, for among it we generally discover some acquaintance: my mother-in-law, or a cousin, or the woman from the china-shop who sold us a vase only yesterday. Charming little mousmés, monkeyish-looking old ladies enter with their smoking-boxes, their gayly-daubed parasols, their curtsies, their little cries and exclamations; prattling, complimenting each other, full of restless movement, and having the greatest difficulty in maintaining a serious demeanor.

XLI.

_September 3rd_.

Chrysanthème, for the first time, paid me a visit on board ship to-day, chaperoned by Madame Prune, and followed by my youngest sister-in-law, Mdlle. La Neige. These ladies had the tranquil manners of the highest gentility.

In my cabin is a great Buddha on his throne, and before him a lacquer tray, on which my faithful sailor servant places any small change he may find lying loose in the pockets of my clothes. Madame Prune, whose mind is much swayed by mysticism, at once supposed herself before a regular altar; in the gravest manner possible she addressed a brief prayer to the god; then, drawing out her purse (which, according to custom, was attached to her sash behind her back, along with her little pipe and tobacco-pouch), placed a pious offering in the tray, while executing a low curtsey.

They remained on their best behavior all through the visit. But when the moment of departure came, Chrysanthème, who would not go away without seeing Yves, asked for him with a thinly-veiled persistency which was remarkable. Yves, for whom I then sent, made himself particularly charming to her, so much so, that this time I felt a shade of more serious annoyance; I even asked myself whether the laughably pitiable ending, which I had hitherto vaguely foreseen, might not, after all, soon break upon us.

XLII.

_September 4th_.

I met yesterday, in an old and ruined quarter of the town, a perfectly exquisite mousmé, charmingly dressed; a fresh note of color against the dark background of decayed buildings.

It was quite at the farthest end of Nagasaki, in the most ancient part of the town. In this region are trees centuries old, ancient temples of Buddha, of Amiddah, of Benten, or Kwanon, with steep and pompous roofs; monsters carved in granite sit there in courtyards silent as the grave, where the grass grows between the paving-stones. This deserted quarter is traversed by a narrow torrent running in a deep channel, across which are thrown little curved bridges with granite balustrades eaten away by lichen. All the objects there wear the strange grimace, the quaint arrangement familiar to us in the most antique Japanese drawings.

I walked through it all at the burning hour of midday, and saw not a soul, unless indeed, through the open windows of the bonze-houses, I caught sight of some priests, guardians of tombs or sanctuaries, taking their siesta under their dark-blue gauze nets.

All at once this little mousmé appeared, a little above me, just at the point of the arch of one of these bridges carpeted with gray moss; she was in full light, in full sunshine, and stood out in brilliant clearness, like a fairy vision, against the background of old black temples and deep shadows. She was holding her dress together with one hand, gathering it close round her ankles to give herself an air of greater slimness. Over her quaint little head, her round umbrella with its thousand ribs threw a great halo of blue and red, edged with black, and an oleander full of flowers growing among the stones of the bridge spread its glory beside her, bathed, like herself, in the sunshine. Behind this youthful figure and this flowering shrub all was blackness. Upon the pretty red and blue parasol great white letters formed this inscription, much used among the mousmés, and which I have learned to recognize: _Stop! clouds, to see her pass by_. And it was really worth the trouble to stop and look at this exquisite little person, of a type so ideally Japanese.

However, it will not do to stop too long and be ensnared,--it would only be another take-in. A doll like the rest, evidently, an ornament for a china shelf, and nothing more. While I gaze at her, I say to myself that Chrysanthème, appearing in this same place, with this dress, this play of light, and this aureole of sunshine, would produce just as delightful an effect.

For Chrysanthème is pretty, there can be no doubt about it. Yesterday evening, in fact, I positively admired her. It was quite night; we were returning with the usual escort of little married couples like our own, from the inevitable tour of the tea-houses and bazaars. While the other mousmés walked along hand in hand, adorned with new silver top-knots which they had succeeded in having presented to them, and amusing themselves with playthings, she, pleading fatigue, followed, half reclining, in a djin carriage. We had placed beside her great bunches of flowers destined to fill our vases, late iris and long-stemmed lotus, the last of the season, already smelling of autumn. And it was really very pretty to see this Japanese girl in her little car, lying carelessly among all these water-flowers, lighted by gleams of ever-changing colors, as they chanced from the lanterns we met or passed. If, on the evening of my arrival in Japan, any one had pointed her out to me, and said: "That shall be your mousmé," there cannot be a doubt I should have been charmed. In reality, however, no, I am not charmed; it is only Chrysanthème, always Chrysanthème, nothing but Chrysanthème: a mere plaything to laugh at, a little creature of finical forms and thoughts, that the agency of M. Kangourou has supplied me with.

XLIII.

In our house, the water used for drinking, making tea, and lesser washing purposes, is kept in large white china tubs, decorated with paintings representing blue fish borne along by a swift current through distorted rushes. In order to keep them cool, the tubs are placed out of doors on Madame Prune's roof, at a place where we can, from the top of our projecting balcony, easily reach them by stretching out the arm. A real godsend for all the thirsty cats in the neighborhood on the fine summer nights is this corner of the roof with our bedaubed tubs, and it proves a delightful trysting-place for them, after all their caterwauling and long solitary rambles on the top of the walls.

I had thought it my duty to warn Yves the first time he wished to drink this water.

"Oh!" he replied, rather surprised, "cats do you say? they are not dirty!"

On this point Chrysanthème and I agree with him: we do not consider cats as unclean animals, and we do not object to drink after them.

Yves considers Chrysanthème much in the same light. "She is not dirty, either," he says; and he willingly drinks after her, out of the same cup, putting her in the same category with the cats.

Well, these china tubs are one of the daily preoccupations of our household: in the evening, when we return from our walk, after the clamber up which makes us thirsty, and Madame L'Heure's waffles, which we have been eating to beguile the way, we always find them empty. It seems impossible for Madame Prune, or Mdlle. Oyouki, or their young servant Mdlle. Dédé,[J] to have forethought enough to fill them while it is still daylight. And when we are late in returning home, these three ladies are asleep, so we are obliged to attend to the business ourselves.

[Footnote J: _Dédé-San_ means "Miss Young Girl," a very common name.]

We must therefore open all the closed doors, put on our boots, and go down into the garden to draw water.

As Chrysanthème would die of fright all alone in the dark, in the midst of the trees and buzzing of the insects, I am obliged to accompany her to the well. For this expedition we require a light, and must seek among the quantity of lanterns purchased at Madame Très-Propre's booth, which have been thrown night after night into the bottom of one of our little paper closets; but alas, all the candles are burnt down; I thought as much! Well, we must resolutely take the first lantern to hand, and stick a fresh candle on the iron point at the bottom; Chrysanthème puts forth all her strength, the candle splits, breaks; the mousmé pricks her fingers, pouts and whimpers. Such is the inevitable scene that takes place every evening, and delays our retiring to rest under the dark blue gauze net for a good quarter of an hour; while the cicalas on the roof seem to mock us with their ceaseless song.

All this, which I should find amusing in any one else,--any one I loved--provokes me in her.

XLIV.

_September 11th_.

A week has passed by peacefully enough, during which I have written down nothing.

Little by little I am becoming accustomed to my Japanese household, to the strangeness of the language, costumes, and faces. For the last three weeks, no letters have arrived from Europe; they have no doubt miscarried, and their absence contributes, as is usually the case, to throw a veil of oblivion over the past.

Every day, therefore, I faithfully climb up to my villa, sometimes by beautiful star-lit nights, sometimes through stormy downpours of rain. Every morning as the sound of Madame Prune's chanted prayer rises through the reverberating air, I awake and go down towards the sea, by the grassy pathways full of dew.

The chief occupation of this Japanese country, seems to be a perpetual hunt after curios. We sit down on the mattings, in the antique-sellers' little booths, take a cup of tea with the salesmen, and rummage with our own hands in the cupboards and chests, where many a fantastic piece of old rubbish is huddled away. The bargaining, much discussed, is laughingly carried on for several days, as though we were trying to play off some excellent little practical joke upon each other.

I really make a sad abuse of the adjective _little_, I am quite aware of it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little, finical, affected,--all Japan is contained, both physically and morally, in these three words.

My purchases are accumulating up there, in my little wood and paper house; but how much more Japanese it really was, in its bare emptiness, such as M. Sucre and Madame Prune had conceived it. There are now many lamps of a religious shape hanging from the ceiling; many stools and many vases, as many gods and goddesses as in a pagoda.

There is even a little Shintoist altar, before which Madame Prune has not been able to restrain her feelings, and before which she has fallen down and chanted her prayers in her bleating old nanny-goat voice:

"Wash me clean from all my impurity, oh Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami, as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo."

Alas for poor Ama-Térace-Omi-Kami to have to wash away the impurities of Madame Prune! What a tedious and ungrateful task!!

Chrysanthème, who is a Buddhist, prays sometimes in the evening before lying down; although overcome with sleep, she prays clapping her hands before the largest of our gilded idols. But she smiles with a childish disrespect for her Buddha, directly her prayer is ended. I know that she has also a certain veneration for her _Ottokés_ (the Spirits of her ancestors), whose rather sumptuous altar is set up at her mother's, Madame Renoncule's. She asks for their blessings, for fortune and wisdom.

Who can make out her ideas about the gods, or about death? Does she possess a soul? Does she think she has one? Her religion is an obscure chaos of theogonies as old as the world, treasured up out of respect for ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final annihilation, imported from India at the epoch of our middle ages by saintly Chinese missionaries. The bonzes themselves are puzzled; what a muddle, therefore, must not all this become, when jumbled together in the childish brain of a sleepy mousmé?

Two very insignificant episodes have somewhat attached me to her--(bonds of this kind seldom fail to draw closer in the end). The first occasion was as follows:--

Madame Prune one day brought forth a relic of her gay youth, a tortoiseshell comb of rare transparency, one of those combs that it is good style to place on the summit of the head, lightly poised, scarcely stuck at all in the air, with all the teeth showing. Taking it out of a pretty little lacquered box, she held it up in the air and blinked her eyes, looking through it at the sky--a bright summer sky--as one does to examine the quality of a precious stone.

"Here is," she said, "an object of great value that you should offer to your little wife."

My mousmé, very much taken by it, admired the clearness of the comb and its graceful shape.

The lacquered box, however, pleased me most. On the cover was a wonderful painting in gold on gold, representing a field of rice, seen very close, on a windy day: a tangle of ears and grass beaten down and twisted by a terrible squall; here and there, between the distorted stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a thick liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be well seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the whole picture was no larger than a woman's hand.

As for Madame Prune's comb, I confess it left me indifferent, and I turned a deaf ear, thinking it very insignificant and expensive. Then Chrysanthème answered mournfully:

"No, thank you, I don't want it; take it away, dear Madame Prune."

And at the same time she heaved a deep sigh, full of meaning, which plainly said:

"He is not so fond of me as all that.--Useless to bother him."

I immediately made the wished-for purchase.

Later on, when Chrysanthème will have become an old monkey like Madame Prune, with her black teeth and long orisons, she, in her turn, will retail that comb to some fine lady of a fresh generation.

On another occasion the sun had given me a headache; I lay on the floor resting my head on my snake-skin pillow. My eyes were dim, and everything appeared to turn round: the open verandah, the big expanse of luminous evening sky, and a variety of kites hovering against its background; I felt myself vibrating painfully to the rhythmical sound of the cicalas which filled the atmosphere.

She, crouching down by my side, strove to relieve me by a Japanese process, pressing with all her might on my temples with her little thumbs and turning them rapidly round, as though she were boring a hole with a gimlet. She had become quite hot and red over this hard work, which procured me real comfort, something similar to the dreamy intoxication of opium.

Then, anxious and fearful lest I should have an attack of fever, she rolled into a pellet and thrust into my mouth a very efficacious prayer written on rice-paper, which she carefully kept in the lining of one of her sleeves.

Well, I swallowed that prayer without a smile, anxious not to hurt her feelings or shake her funny little faith.

XLV.

To-day, Yves, my mousmé and myself went to the best photographer in Nagasaki, to be taken in a group together.

We shall send the photograph to France. Yves already smiles as he thinks of his wife's astonishment when she sees Chrysanthème's little face between us two, and he wonders what explanation he will give her.

"Well, I will just say it is one of your friends, that's all!"

There are, in Japan, photographers in the style of our own, with this one difference, that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses. The one we design to honor to-day carries on his profession in the suburbs, in that ancient quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas where, the other day, I met the pretty little mousmé. His signboard, written in several languages, is stuck up against a wall on the edge of the little torrent which, rushing down from the green mountain above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of old granite and lined on either side by light bamboos or oleanders in full bloom.

It is astonishing and puzzling to find a photographer perched there, in the very heart of old Japan.

We have come at the wrong moment; there is a file of people at the door. Long rows of djins' cars are stationed there, awaiting the customers they have brought, who will all have their turn before us. The runners, naked and tatooed, carefully combed in sleek bands and shiny chignons, are chatting together, smoking little pipes, or bathing their muscular legs in the fresh water of the torrent.

The courtyard is irreproachably Japanese, with its lanterns and dwarf trees. But the studio where one sits might be in Paris or Pontoise; the self-same chair in "old oak," the same faded "poufs," plaster columns and pasteboard rocks.

The people who are being _taken_ at this moment are two ladies of quality, evidently mother and daughter, who are sitting together for a cabinet-sized portrait, with accessories of Louis XV. time. A strange group this, the first great ladies of this country I have seen so near, with their long aristocratic faces, dull, lifeless, almost gray by dint of rice-powder, and their mouths painted heart-shape in vivid carmine. Withal an undeniable look of good breeding that strongly impresses us, notwithstanding the intrinsic differences of races and acquired notions.

They scanned Chrysanthème with an obvious look of scorn, although her costume was as ladylike as their own. For my part, I could not take my eyes off these two creatures; they captivated me like incomprehensible things that one had never seen before. Their fragile bodies, outlandishly graceful in posture, are lost in stiff materials and redundant sashes, of which the ends droop like tired wings. They make me think, I know not why, of great rare insects; the extraordinary patterns on their garments have something of the dark motley of night-moths. Above all, the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how utterly dissimilar are our races!"

Then we have to let several English sailors pass before us, decked out in their white drill clothes, fresh, fat and pink like little sugar figures, who attitudinize in a sheepish manner round the shafts of the columns.

At last it is our turn; Chrysanthème slowly settles herself in a very affected style, turning in the points of her toes as much as possible, according to the fashion.

And on the negative we are shown we look like a supremely ridiculous little family drawn up in a line by a common photographer at a fair.

XLVI.

_September 13th_.

This evening Yves is off duty three hours earlier than myself; from time to time this is the case, according to the arrangement of the watches. On those occasions he lands the first, and goes up to wait for me at Diou-djen-dji.

From the deck I can see him through the glasses, climbing up the green mountain path; he walks with a brisk, rapid step, almost running; what a hurry he seems in to rejoin little Chrysanthème.

When I arrive, at about nine o'clock, I find him seated on the floor, in the middle of my rooms, with naked torso (this is here a sufficiently proper costume for private life, I admit). Around him are grouped Chrysanthème, Oyouki, and Mdlle. Dédé the maid, all eagerly rubbing his back with little blue towels decorated with storks and humorous subjects.

Good heavens, what can he have been doing to be so hot, and have put himself in such a state?

He tells me that near our house, a little higher up the mountain, he has discovered a fencing gallery: that till nightfall he had been engaged in a fencing bout against Japanese, who fought with two-handed swords, springing like cats, as is the custom of their country. With his French method of fencing he had given them a thorough good drubbing. Upon which, with many a low bow, they had shown him their admiration by bringing him a quantity of nice little iced things to drink. All this combined had thrown him into a fearful perspiration.

Ah, very well. Nevertheless this did not quite explain to me.

He is delighted with his evening; intends to go and amuse himself every day by beating them; he even thinks of taking pupils.

Once his back dried, they all together, the three mousmés and himself, play at Japanese "_pigeon vole_." Really I could not wish for anything more innocent, or more correct in every respect.

Charles N---- and Madame Jonquille his wife, arrived unexpectedly at about ten o'clock. (They were wandering about in the dark shrubberies in our neighborhood, and, seeing our lights, came up to us.)

They intend to finish the evening at the tea-house "of the Toads," and they try to induce us to go and drink some iced sherbets with them. It is at least an hour's walk from here, on the other side of the town, half way up the hill, in the gardens of the large pagoda dedicated to Osueva; but they stick to their idea, pretending that in this clear night and bright moonlight, we shall have a lovely view from the terrace of the temple.

Lovely, I have no doubt, but we had intended going to bed. However, be it so, let us go with them.

We hire five djins and five cars down below, in the principal street, in front of Madame Très-Propre's shop, who, for this late expedition, chooses for us her largest round lanterns,--big, red balloons, decorated with star-fish, seaweed, and green sharks.

It is nearly eleven o'clock when we make our start. In the central quarters the virtuous Niponese are already closing their little booths, putting out their lamps, shutting the wooden framework, drawing their paper panels.

Further on, in the old-fashioned suburban streets, all is shut up long ago, and our carts roll on through the black night. We cry out to our djins: "Ayakou! ayakou!" ("Quick! quick!") and they run as hard as they can, uttering little shrieks, like some merry animal full of wild gayety. We rush like a whirlwind through the darkness, all five in Indian file, dashing and jolting over the old uneven flagstones, dimly lighted up by our red balloons fluttering at the end of their bamboo stems. From time to time some Niponese, night-capped in his blue kerchief, opens a window to see who these noisy madcaps can be, dashing by so rapidly and so late. Or else some faint glimmer, thrown by us on our passage, discovers the hideous smile of a large stone animal seated at the gate of a pagoda.

At last we arrive at the foot of Osueva's temple, and, leaving our djins with our little gigs, we clamber up the gigantic steps, completely deserted at this hour of the night.

Chrysanthème, who always likes to play the part of a tired little girl, of a spoilt and pouting child, ascends slowly between Yves and myself, clinging to our arms.

Jonquille, on the contrary, skips up like a bird, amusing herself by counting the endless steps:

"Hitôts'! F'tâts'! Mits'! Yôts'!" ("One! two! three! four!") she exclaims, springing up by a series of little light bounds.

"Itsôôts! Moûts'! Nanâts! Yâts! Kokonôts!" ("Five! six! seven! eight! nine!")

She lays a great stress on the accentuations, as though to make the numbers sound even more droll.

A little silver aigrette glitters in her beautiful black chignon; her delicate and graceful figure seems strangely fantastic, and the darkness that envelops us conceals the fact that her face is almost ugly, and almost without eyes.

This evening Chrysanthème and Jonquille really look like little fairies; at certain moments the most insignificant Japanese have this appearance, by dint of whimsical elegance and ingenious arrangement.