CHAPTER XXII

THE DANCE OF THE CAPITAL

The Ginza--the "Street-of-the-Silversmiths"--is the Broadway, the Piccadilly, the _Boulevard des Italiens_ of modern Tokyo. Here old and new war daily in a combat in which the new is daily victor. Modern shop-fronts of stone and brick stand cheek by jowl with graceful, flimsy frame structures that are pure Japanese. Trolley-cars, built in the United States, fill the street with clangor and its pavements (for it has them) roar with trade.

In its flowing current one may see many types: Americans from the near-by Imperial Hotel, bristling with enthusiasm; earnest tourists with Murrays tucked in their armpits, doggedly "doing" the country; members of foreign Legations whirling in victorias; Chinamen, queued and decorously clad in flowered silk brocade; an occasional Korean with queerly shaped hat of woven horse-hair; over-dandified _O-sharé-Sama_--"high-collar" men, as the Tokyo phrase goes--in tweeds and yellow puttees; comfortable merchants and men of affairs in dull-colored _kimono_ and clogs; blue-clad workmen with the marks of their trades stamped in great red or white characters on their backs; sallow, bare-footed students with caps of _Waseda_ or the Imperial University; stolid and placid-faced Buddhist priests in _rick'sha_, en route to some temple funeral; soldiers in khaki with red- and yellow-striped trousers; coolies dragging carts; country people on excursions from thatched inland villages, clothed in common cloth and viewing the capital for the first time with indrawn breath and chattering exclamations; rich noblemen, beggars, idlers, guides--all are tributary to this river.

When evening falls women and children predominate: bent old women with brightly blackened teeth; patient-faced mothers with babies on their backs toddling on clacking wooden _géta_; white-faced vermilion-lipped _geisha_ glimpsing by in _rick'sha_ to some tea-house entertainment; coolie women dressed like men, trudging in the roadway; girl-students peering into jewelers' windows; children clad like gaudy moths and butterflies, clattering hand in hand, or pursuing one another with shrill cries.

Before the sun has well set lanterns begin to twinkle and glow above doorways--yellow electric bulbs in clusters, white acetylene globes, smoky oil lamps, and great red and white paper-lanterns lit by candles. As the violet of the dusk deepens to purple, these multiply till the vista is ablaze. Lines of colored lights in pink and lemon break out like air-flowers along upper stories of tea-houses, from whose interiors come the strumming of _biwa_ and the twang of _samisen_. On frail balconies, pricked out with yellow lanterns, dwarf pines or jars of growing azalea hang their masses of soft green or pink down over the passers-by. From open _shoji_ women lean, their _kimono_ parted, their rounded breasts bared to the cool night.

On the curb peripatetic dealers squat in little stalls formed of movable screens with their wares spread before them; curio-merchants with a _mélange_ of brass, crystal and bronze; dealers in _suzumushi_--musical insects in the tiniest cages of plaited straw; sellers of Buddhist texts and worm-eaten, painted scrolls; of ink-horns, shoe-sticks, eye-glasses and children's toys. At intervals grills of savory _waka-fuji_ (salted fry-cakes) sizzle over charcoal braziers which throw a red glow on an intent row of children's faces. Here and there a shop-front emits the blatant bark of a foreign phonograph. On the corners men with arms full of vernacular evening newspapers call the names of the sheets in musical cadences, with a quaint, upward inflection. The air is filled with a heavy, rich odor, suggesting the pomade of women's head-dresses, _saké_, and sandalwood. In the roadway every vehicle contributes its bobbing lantern, till the traffic seems a celestial Saturnalia, staggering with drunken stars.

So it looked to Barbara as her two _goriki_--"strong-pull men"--whirled her rubber-tired _rick'sha_ across the interminable city in her first bewildering view of Tokyo by night. Daunt, for her benefit, had arranged a trip to the Cherry-Viewing-Festival on the Sumida River, and a Japanese dinner at the Ogets'--the Cherry-Moon Tea-House--in the famous district of Asak'sa, where the great temple of Kwan-on the Merciful shines with its ever-burning candles. They had started from the Embassy: Baroness Stroloff, the wife of the Bulgarian Minister and Patricia's especial favorite, the twin sisters of the Danish Secretary, the Swiss Minister's daughter and two young army officers studying the language--all of whom Barbara had met at the Review--and the long procession (since police regulations in Tokyo forbid _rick'sha_ to travel abreast) trailed "goose-fashion," threading in and out, a writhing, yellow-linked chain.

Daunt had traced their route with Barbara on a map of the city, and had translated for her the names of the streets through which they were now passing. By the Street-of-Big-Horses they skirted the District-of-Honorable-Tea-Water, threaded the Lane-where-Good-Luck-Dwells, and so, by Middle-Monkey-Music-Street, they came to the Sumida, a broader, slothful Thames, gleaming with ten thousand lanterns on _sampan_, houseboats and barges. The bridge of Ah-My-Wife brought them to the farther side. At the entrance of a long avenue of blooming cherry-trees a policeman halted them. _Rick'sha_ were not permitted beyond this point and the sweating human horses were abandoned.

The road ran high along the river on a green embankment like a wide wall, between double rows of cherry-trees, whose branches interlocked overhead. It was densely crowded with people, each one of whom seemed to be carrying a colored paper-lantern or a cherry-branch drooped over the shoulder. In the hues of the loose, warm-weather _kimono_ bloomed all the flowers of all the springs--golds and mauves and scarlets and magentas--and everywhere in the lantern-light fluttered radiant-winged children, like vivid little birds in a tropical forest. From tiny one-storied tea-houses along the way, with elevated mats covered with red flannel blankets, _biwa_ and _koto_ and _samisen_ gurgled and fluted and tinkled. On the right the embankment descended steeply, giving a view of sunken roadways and tiled roofs; on the left lay the long reaches of the dreamy river murmuring with oars and voices and vibrating like a vast flood of gold and vermilion fireflies.

Barbara had never imagined such a welter of movement and color. The soft flute-like voices, the slow shuffling of sandals on the dry earth, the pensive smiling faces, the pink flowers on every hand, made this different from any holiday crowd she had ever seen. It suggested a carnival of Venice orientalized, painted over and set blazing with Japanese necromancy.

Here and there jugglers and top-spinners displayed their skill to staring spectators. A cluster of shaven-headed babies swarmed silently about a sweetmeat seller, and beside his push-cart a man clad like a gray-feathered hawk whistled discordantly on a bamboo reed and gyrated with a vacant grin on his pock-marked face. Where the crowd was less close men tricked out in girls' attire, with whitened, clown-like faces, turned somersaults, and through the thickest of the press a dejected, blaze-faced ox, whose nose and forehead were painted with spots of scarlet, slowly drew a two-storied scaffold on which was perched the god of spring--a plaster figure wreathed with flowers. The animal's ears were tickled by long tassels of bright green and red, and his look was one of patient boredom. The man who led him wore a short jerkin, and his bare legs, from thigh to knee, were tattooed in big, blue, graceful leaves.

The greatest numbers surged about a large tent, outside of which waddled here and there mountains of men, their faces round as full moons, naked save for gaily colored aprons. The fat hung on their breasts in great creased folds like an overfed baby's, and in the lantern-light their flesh looked an unhealthy, mottled pink. Each wore his hair wound in a short queue, bent forward and tied in a stiff loop on the crown. As one of the vast hulks lumbered by, cooling his moon-face with a tiny fan, Daunt pointed him out to Barbara.

"That is the famous Hitachiyama," he told her, "the champion wrestler of Japan."

"How big he is!"

"It runs in families," he said. "They diet and train, too, from babyhood. He weighs three hundred and forty-seven pounds."

A roar came from the lighted canvas and a man emerged and wrote something on a sign-board like a tally-sheet. Daunt stopped and perused it. "You may be interested, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "to learn that Mr. Terrible-Horse has knocked out Mr. Small-Willow-Tree, but that Mr. Tiger-Elephant has been allowed a foul over Mr. Frozen-Stork. I wish we could see a bout, but we must hurry or we'll miss the _geisha_ dancing."

They came presently where the roadway overlooked a sunken temple yard encircled by moats of oozy slime dotted with pink and white lotos buds. The inclosure was set with giant cryptomeria centuries old, and was crowded with people. Stone steps led down between twisted pine-trees and _Shinto_ lanterns, to a gate on whose either side was a great stone cow, rampant, like the figures in coats-of-arms. There was a droll contrast between the posture and the placid bovine countenances. In the center of the inclosure rose a wide platform with a tasseled curtain like the stage of a theater. Opposite was a pavilion in which sat rows of women in dark-colored dress, moveless as images and holding musical instruments. The whole flagged space between jostled with the iridescent, lantern-carrying throng. A priest led the party to seats at one side on mats reserved for foreign visitors.

"Look, Barbara," said Patricia. "There goes our friend the expert--across there. He looks bigger and pastier than ever."

Bersonin was dressed in white flannel which accentuated his enormous size. A younger man was with him, smoking a cigarette, and in their wake followed a Japanese servant.

The rest of the party had turned and were looking in that direction. "Why," said Baroness Stroloff, "that's Doctor Bersonin."

One of the young army men looked at her curiously. "Do you know him?" he asked.

"Why, of course. One meets him everywhere. I saw him at a dinner last week. Have you met him?"

"Oh, yes, we're supposed to know everybody," he said carelessly. His tone, however, held something which made her say:

"Most men don't like him, I find. I wonder why."

"Why don't people like lizards?" said Patsy. "Because they're cold and clammy and wicked-looking."

"They like them enough to eat them in Senagambia," said the young officer smiling. "Bersonin is a great man, no doubt, but there's something about him--I met a man once who had run across him in South America and--he was prejudiced. Who's the young fellow with him, Daunt?"

"His name is Ware--Philip Ware," was the answer. "I knew him at college."

Barbara felt the blood staining her cheeks. So that was "Phil," the brother of whom Austen Ware had told her! The name called up thoughts that had obtruded themselves in the moment she saw the white yacht lying at anchor, and which since then she had wilfully thrust from her mind. Her gaze studied the handsome, youthful form, noting the bold, restless glance, the dissipated lines of the comely face, with a sudden distaste. A twang from the orchestra recalled her, as the curtain was looped back for the _Miyako Odori_, the "Dance of the Capital."

It was Barbara's introduction to a native orchestra and at first its strummings and squealings, its lack of modes and of harmony, its odd barbaric phrasing, infected her with a mad desire to laugh. But gradually there came to her the hint of under-rhythm--as when she had listened to Haru's _samisen_ in the garden--and with it an overpowering sense of suggestion. It was the remote cry of occult passions, a twittering of ghostly shadows, the wailing of an oriental Sphynx whom Time had abandoned to the eternal desert. It had in it melancholy and the enigma of the ages. It wiped away the ugly modern European buildings, the western costumes, the gloze of borrowed method, and left Barbara looking into the naked heart of the East, old, intent, and full of mystical meaning.

The ivory plectrons chirruped, the flutes squeaked and wailed, the little hour-glass drums thudded, and down the stage swept sixty _geisha_, in blue, cherry-painted _kimono_. A sly, thin thread of scarlet peeped from their woven sleeves. Their small _tabi'd_ feet, cleft like the foot of a faun, moved in slow, hovering steps. When they wheeled, swaying like young bamboo, they stamped softly, and the white foot, raised from the boards, under the puffed _kimono_ edge writhed and bent from the ankle like a pliant hand. Their faces, heavily powdered, and held without expression, looked like white, waxen masks in which lived sparkling black eyes. In the slow, languorous movement their _obi_ of gold and fans of silver caught the cherry-shaded lights and tossed them back in gleams of mother-of-pearl.

Barbara fell to watching the Japanese spectators. All around her they stood and sat at ease, drinking in the play of color and motion of which they never tire. The dance had no passion, no sensuality, none of the savagery and abandon of the dances of Southern Asia, with whose reproductions the western stage is familiar. Beside a ballet of the West, it would have seemed almost ascetic. She knew that it was symbolic--that every posture was a sentence of a story they knew, as old and as sacred, perhaps, as the birth of the gods.

The parted curtain swung together and Daunt seated himself at Barbara's side. "Do you like it, ever so little?" he asked.

"Ever so _much_!"

"I wonder if you are going to like me, too," he said, so softly that no one else heard.

She felt her color coming as she answered: "Why, of course. How could I help it, when you plan things like this for me?"

"I have at last found my _métier_; give me more things to do."

"Very well. When will you take me to see your Japanese house?"

For a second Daunt hesitated. The little native house in the Street-of-the-Misty-Valley was a sentimental place to him. There he had worked out the models of his first Glider; there he had talked with his Princess of Dreams, his "Lady of the Many-Colored Fires." The glimpse of Phil had reminded him that it now had a tenant. When he showed it to Barbara, it should not be with Phil in possession.

She noted the hesitation, and, somewhat puzzled, and wondering if to oriental ethics the suggestion was a _gaucherie_, waved the matter lightly aside. "You are just going to say 'one of these days.' Please don't. When I was little, that always meant never. I withdraw the motion--but what is this coming?"

A boy was ascending the platform. He bowed and laid a box of thin unpainted wood at Daunt's feet. It contained a _kakemono_, or wall-painting, rolled and tied with a red-and-white cord of twisted rice-paper. Daunt read the accompanying card.

"'Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years,'" he said, "'presents her compliments to the illustrious strangers.' She is the star. The gift is a pretty custom, isn't it, even if it is advertisement. Here comes the lady herself to present her thanks for our distinguished patronage."

She bowed low before them, smiling, her small piquant face powdered white as mistletoe-berries above her carmine-painted lips. Daunt unrolled the _kakemono_, revealing a delicately-painted cluster of butterflies. He chatted with her in the vernacular, and she replied with much drawing-in of breath and flute-like laughter.

"She says," he translated, "that this is a picture of her honorable ancestors." A little smile, a genuflection, a breath of perfume and the powdered face and gorgeous _kimono_ were gone. The orchestra chirruped, the curtain parted and another figure began.

Miss Happy-for-a-Thousand-Years! As the party walked back to the waiting _rick'sha_, Barbara wondered what lay beneath that smiling surface. She had heard of the strenuous training that at five years began to teach the gauzy, fragile, child-butterfly to paint its wings, to flirt and sing and dance its dazzling moth-flame way. For the _geisha_ nothing was too gorgeous, too transcendent. Her lovers might be statesmen and princes. But in return she must be always gay, always laughing, always young--all things to all men--to the end of the butterfly chapter! Butterfly hair, butterfly gown--and butterfly heart?

Barbara wondered.