Part 9
No mortal man can, without incongruity, honor the moon by a public devotion. She is the computer and the fabricator of our months, the spinner of a thread avariciously measured. In the clear light of day we rejoice to see everything in harmony, beautiful like an ample, multicolored fabric. But as soon as the night is come, I find the fatal shuttle weaving again across the web of the sky. My friend, may thine eye alone avow it, glamoured by its evil light,--and those five fingernails which shine on the handle of thy lute! But the sun, always pure and young, always the same,--intensely radiant, intensely white,--does it abate each day the flowering of its glory, the generosity of its face? And who can look at it without being forced to laugh also? With a laugh as free, then, as when you gather up a pretty little child, give your heart to the good sun! Why, in the most shallow waters, in the narrowest puddle left at the turning of the public road, it will find something to mirror its ruddy face; and shall the secret soul of Man alone remain so sealed that it refuses such an image, and shows in the depth of its shadows no touch of gold?
Scarcely had the shabby race of sons of the soil commenced to dabble in the mud of the nourishing earth than, pressed by the furious desire to eat, they forgot the splendid sun, the eternal epiphany in which they were permitted to live. As the engraver, applying himself to cut his block according to the grain of the wood, occupies himself but little with the lamp above his head, which lights him; just so the farmer, reducing his whole view to that of his two hands and the black back of his buffalo, caring only to plow his furrows straight, forgot the luminous heart of the universe. Then Amaterasu was indignant in the sun. She is the soul of the sun by which it shines, and she is the breath in its sounding trumpet. “When the beasts,” she said, “have filled their bellies, they love me, they rejoice with simplicity in my caresses; they sleep in the warmth of my glance, lulled by the regular beating of their blood within their bodies, the inner rhythm of their crimson life; but Man, brutal and impious, is never sated with eating. All day long the flowers adore me, and nourish their devout hearts in the splendor of my face. Only Man is badly set on his stem. He deprives me of the sacred mirror in him that was made for my reflection. Let us fly, then, let us hide this beauty that is not honored!” Like a dove which slips into a hole in a wall, she descended into a deep cavern at the mouth of the river Yokigawa and, with an enormous rock, hermetically sealed the enclosure.
It grew dark--not the ordinary blackness of night, but the very darkness there was before the world was made. Crude and atrocious blackness filled the living earth. There was a strange vacancy in the sky; space had lost its center, the person of the sun had vanished like some one who disappears, like a judge who leaves his court. Then these ingrates knew the beauty of Amaterasu. How they searched in the drear air! A great sigh ran through all the islands,--the agony of penitence, the abomination of fear. As in the evening the mosquitoes in myriads fill the stagnant air, the earth was delivered to the brigandage of demons, and of the dead whom one could recognize by this sign: that they had no navels. As a pilot covers his nearest lights, the better to see into the distance; so, by the suppression of this central lamp, space widened around them. And, from a part of the horizon unseen before, they saw a strange whiteness beyond the sky, like the frontier of a neighboring world: the reflection of another sun.
Then all the gods and goddesses, the familiar spirits of the earth, which assist Man and are his companions like horses and oxen,--all were moved by the miserable cries of the hairless creatures, like the barking of little dogs; and they all assembled at the mouth of the river Yokigawa, spirits both of the sea and of the air,--like herds of buffalo, like schools of herring, like flocks of starlings. There the virgin Amaterasu was hidden in a cave in the earth, like a honeycomb in the hollow of a tree, like a treasure in a jug.
“A lamp is not extinguished except by a more brilliant light,” they said. “Amaterasu is there! We do not see her, but we know that she has not left us. Her glory has not suffered diminution. She is hidden in the earth like a cricket, like an ascetic in the retreat of his own thoughts. How shall we make her come out? What appeal can we make to her, and what can we offer her that will be as beautiful as she?”
Then from a stone fallen from heaven they made a mirror, very pure, completely round. They tore down a pine-tree and swathed it in garments of gold and scarlet, like a doll. They adorned it like a woman, and they put the mirror upon it for a face. And they placed this sacred _gohei_ exactly in front of the cavern, which contained the indignant soul of light.
What voice could they choose powerful enough to pierce the earth, to say, “Amaterasu, I am here! I am here, and I know that you are here also! Show yourself to me, oh vision of my eyes! Oh Life, come out of the sepulcher!” The familiar voice, the first voice that she hears when she passes the horizon of human life: the cock calling from the farms on every side at the first crimson streak of dawn,--his is the cry of light itself, the trumpet that no obscurity can stifle! Night or day, indifferent to the visible presence of his goddess or to her withdrawal, indefatigably he carries on his fanfare, with precision he articulates his faith. So before the buried Amaterasu they led the great white bird. And he crowed. And, having crowed, he crowed again.
Then, as if they could not fail to respond to his summons, all the noises of life awoke: the murmur of the day; active, interminable speech; the sound of thousands thronging the hours; the vibrating word whose rhythm is meted out by the bonze with his mallet of wood in the depth of his temple. All these sounded at once,--all the gods, responding to their names. They were very timid, very faint. However Amaterasu in the earth heard them, and was astonished.
And here one must insert the image of Uzumé, just as, in the little popular books, her picture interrupts the black shower of letters. She had invented all this, the dear goddess. She had concocted this wonderful strategy. And now she danced intrepidly on the stretched skin of her drum, frantic with hope; and all that she could find to lure out the sun was a poor little song invented for children: _Hito futa miyo...._
_Hito futa miyo Itsu muyu nana Yokokono tari Momochi yorodzu_,
as one might say: _One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand!_--and as if one said also: _All of you, look at the door! Her Majesty has appeared. Hurrah! Our hearts are filled with happiness._
Then in the fury of the dance she untied her belt, she threw it impatiently aside; and, with draperies flowing, laughing and crying, she stamped and bounded on the elastic and resonant skin which she struck sharply with her feet. And, when they saw her robust and buxom form like that of a little girl, relief came into the hearts of all and they began to laugh. _The sun is no longer in the sky, and still there are not lamentations, but laughter?_ Amaterasu heard them, and her heart was filled with chagrin. Unable to conquer her curiosity, she softly opened the door of the cavern: “_Why are you laughing?_”
A great ray swept across the assembled gods; it leaped the border of the earth; it illumined the moon in the empty sky. Suddenly the Day-Star flamed in the lifeless heavens. As an overripe fruit bursts, behold!--the blind earth could no longer contain the jealous eye, the burning fire of curiosity placed in its center, the woman who is the sun! “Why are you laughing?”--“Oh Amaterasu!” said Uzumé.
And all the gods in unison cried, “Oh Amaterasu!” prostrating themselves.
“Oh Amaterasu, you were not with us; you thought you had withdrawn your face from us; but look, here is some one more beautiful than you are! _Look!_” she said, showing the _gohei_, showing the sacred mirror which, concentrating the flame, produced an insupportable brilliance. “_Look!_”
She saw; and, jealous, raptured, astonished, fascinated, she took one step out of the cavern; and instantly the night was gone!
All the great worlds, that turn about the sun as an eagle circles his prey, were astonished to see the day shining in such an unaccustomed place and the little earth all devoured with glory, like a chandelier which disappears in its own light.
She took one step out of the cavern, and immediately the strongest of the gods leaped forward to close the door behind her. Before her image, surrounded by seven rainbows,--adorable spirit, living fire, from which, with the divine face, emerged only two hands, two pink feet, and the curls of her hair,--so young, so formidable stood this brilliant and essential soul! And, like the swallow which lifts itself in larger and larger circles above the sparkling fields, so Amaterasu, reconquered by her own image, mounted toward her celestial throne. And Time began again with its first day!
At the doorway of the Shinto temples, by means of a cord of straw, the earth still guards against the disappearance of its light; and, in the last recess of the bare sanctuary, they hide, instead of the Eleusinian fire, a little round mirror of polished metal.
A VISIT
There are long cries before any one opens,--furious batterings upon the patient portal,--before the servant, grown conscious of this “concert,” comes to recognize the stranger deposited on a litter in the midst of his porters, before the door. For here there is no deep-sounding bell, no button which, by the pulling of a wire attached through the walls to secret mechanism, sets off a sudden explosion, like the squeal of a beast that one pinches. The Black Mountain is the quarter where the old families live, and the silence is profound. The space that Europeans would reserve for recreation and games, the Chinese consecrate to retreat. In this animal honeycomb, between these streets seething with an unclean humanity, they reserve wide unused spaces,--empty enclosures that are the inheritance of some distinguished person, and that cloister his household gods. Only a noble roof can possess the enormous shade of these banyans older than the city, and of these vines which droop under the weight of their purple globes.
I have entered. I am waiting all alone in the little parlor. It is four o’clock, and the rain has ceased,--or is it still raining? The earth has received its fill of water; the soaked leaves breathe freely. As for me, under this somber and friendly sky I know the compunction and peace which one feels after having wept. Facing me is a wall with an uneven coping, where three square windows open, each crossed with porcelain bars imitating bamboo. As they adjust a “grille” over diplomatic papers, which isolates the important words, so they have applied this screen of triple openings to the wide countryside of trees and water, and have reduced it to a single theme repeated as in a triptych. The frame defines the picture; the bars, which let my sight pass, exclude me, and, better than a closed and bolted door, make certain that I remain inside.
My host does not arrive. I am alone.
THE RICE
It is our very teeth that we sink in the earth, in this plow that we plant there; and even now our bread eats there as we shall eat. At home, in the cold north, it is the sun who kneads our bread; he ripens the field as the open fire cooks our pancakes and roasts our meat. With a strong plowshare we open a furrow in the solid earth where that crust of bread is formed which we cut with our knife and grind between our teeth.
But here the sun does not serve only to heat the domestic sky like a furnace full of coals. One must take precautions with it. When the year commences, the waters overflow. These vast fields without slopes, scarcely separated from the sea that they continue, that the rain soaks without ever draining away, take refuge under the sheet of water in which the peasants fix a thousand rice-frames. The work of the village is to enrich the mud by means of many buckets; on all fours the farmer strokes the mud and dilutes it with his hands. The Mongol does not nibble bread, he snatches it with his lips, he gulps it down, without fashioning a semi-liquid aliment of it in his mouth. So the rice grows, as it is cooked, in steam; and the intention of its people is to furnish all the water it will need to sustain the heat of the celestial furnace. Also, when the waters rise, the chain-pumps sing like crickets everywhere; and they do not have recourse to the buffalo. Side by side, clinging to the same bar and pressing the red handle with knees in unison, men and women watch the kitchen of their field as a housewife watches a smoking dinner. And the Annamite carries the water in a sort of spoon; in his black soutane, with his little tortoise head, as yellow as mustard, he is the weary sacristan of the mire. How many reverences and genuflections there are when, with a bucket fastened to two cords, the pair of _nhaques_ go seeking in all the hollows for juicy mud with which to anoint the earth and make it good to eat.
THE PERIOD
I stop. There is a period to my walk as to a phrase that is finished. It is the title of a tomb at my feet, at this turning where the road descends. From there I take my last view of the earth. I survey the country of the dead. With its groups of pines and olive trees, it spreads out between the deep fields that enclose it. Everywhere there is consummate plenty: Ceres has embraced Persephone. Inescapably this marks the ultimate. I recognize at the foot of these unchangeable mountains the wide line of the river. I define our frontier, I accept it. My exile is symbolized by this island crowded with the dead, devoured by its harvests. Standing alone amid a buried people, my feet among the names spoken by the grass, I watch this cleft in the mountains, through which the soft wind, like a growling dog, has tried for two days to force the enormous cloud it has drawn from the waters behind me.
It is done; the day is completely gone. There is nothing left but to return, traversing again the road that leads me to the house. At this halt, where rest the carriers of coffins and buckets, I look behind me for a long time at the yellow road where the living fare with the dead, which ends like a red period upon the crowded sky.
THE TOAST TO A FUTURE DAY
I have climbed to the highest point of the mountain to drink a toast to a future day,--to a new day, to one that will come,--perhaps it will succeed this very night. _To the highest point of the mountain, in this cup of ice that it lifts to the very lips of Aurora!_ I have stripped and rushed into it. It is so full that, when I enter, the water overflows like a cataract. I dance in the ebullition of the source like a grape-seed in a glass of champagne. I cannot distinguish this gushing basin in which I splash from the whirlpool of air separated from me by a narrow brink. Far below me circles the clamorous eagle. Beautiful Aurora, like a shaft thou art sped here from the sea below among the islands! Drink! that I may feel the quivering of thy insatiate lip as deep as the submerged plants to which I sink. Let the sun rise! that I may see the light shadow of my suspended body painted beneath me on the sand of this basin ringed with the seven-colored rainbow.
THE DAY OF THE FEAST OF ALL THE RIVERS
On this day of the feast of all the rivers we are going to salute our own, which is wide and rapid. It is the outlet of the country, it is the force enclosed in her sides, it is the liquefaction of the substance of the earth, it is the outpouring of the water hidden in the most secret of her folds, of milk under the impulsion of the ocean which suckles her. Here, under the good old granite bridge; between the boats from the mountain which bring us minerals and sugar, and, on the other side, the many-colored junks of the sea, which from their anchorage direct toward the impassive piles their great patient eyes, like those of beasts of burden; the river pours out through sixty arches. What an uproar, what a white foam it makes, when Aurora sounds her trumpet,--when the Evening recedes, to the beating of drums. Here are no piers like those dreary egresses of the Occident. On a level with the river, in a domestic familiarity, each one comes to wash linen, to draw the water for supper. And, in the Springtime, in the turbulence of his joy, this dragon with undulant coils invades our streets and our houses. He effaces with one lick of his tongue the accumulated filth of the village.
But today is the feast of the river. We celebrate carnival with it, in the rolling tumult of yellow waters. If you cannot pass the day in a backwater, sunk to the eyes like a buffalo in the shade of your boat, at least do not neglect to offer to the sun of noon pure water in a bowl of white porcelain. For the coming year it will be a certain remedy against colic. And this is not the time to be avaricious. One may unseal the heaviest jug, drink from a golden bowl or earthenware vessel, one may drink from the very neck of the bottle the tea of the Fourth Month! Let every one, on this afternoon of flood-tide and full sunlight, come to feel, to stroke, to clasp, to ride this great municipal water-beast, which flees with endless coils toward the sea.
Moving throughout its length, trembling from bank to bank with sampans and with boats; where the guests, clothed in silk like vivid bouquets, drink and enjoy themselves; all is light and the sound of drums. From here, from there, from everywhere, pirogues with dragons’ heads appear and defile, propelled by the arms of an hundred naked paddlers, who move to the delirious rhythm of this large yellow man in the midst, as with both hands he beats out a demoniac march. How close together they seem,--in one wave, the very spirit of the current! How active this crowd of bodies, plunged to the waist! On the bank where I embark a woman is washing her linen. The bowl of vermilion lacquer into which piles the clothing has a border of gold that shines and glows in the sun of this festival. Brute glance of reflected brightness; symbolic eye of this day of the honorable River!
THE GOLDEN HOUR
Of all the year this is the most golden hour! As the farmer at the end of the season realizes the fruits of his labors and receives their price, so the season comes in a gold to which all is transmuted, in the sky and on the earth. I wander through the lanes of the harvest, up to the neck in gold; I rest my chin on the table of the field which flashes in the sunlight to its farthest boundary. Going toward the mountains, I surmount a sea of grain. Between the banks of harvest, the immense, dry flame of the morning-colored plain, where is the old dim earth? Water is changed into wine; oranges gleam in the silent branches. All is ripe; grain and straw, and the fruit with the leaf. It is indeed golden. All is finished, and I see that all is true. In the fervent effort of the year all color has evaporated. Suddenly, to my eyes, the earth is like a sun. Let me not die before the golden hour!
DISSOLUTION
Again I am carried back over the indifferent liquid sea. When I am dead, nothing can hurt me. When I shall be interred between my father and mother, nothing will make me suffer more. They cannot jeer any longer at this too ardent heart. The sacrament of my body will dissolve in the interior of the earth; but, like a most piercing cry, my soul will repose in the bosom of Abraham. Now everything is dissolved, and with a dull and heavy eye I search about me in vain for the familiar land and the firm road under my feet,--and for that unkind face! The sky is nothing but fog, and Space is nothing but water! You see it! Everything is blurred; and all about me I must search in vain for line or form. For a horizon there is nothing but the cessation of color in darkness. All matter is resolved into water alone, like the tears I feel coursing down my cheeks. All sound is like the murmur of sleep when it breathes to us all that is most crushing to our hopes. I shall have searched in vain, I shall find nothing more beyond me--neither that country which might have been my home, nor that well-loved face!