Books: Madame Chrysantheme, v1
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Pierre Loti >> Madame Chrysantheme, v1
How large this Nagasaki is! Here had we been running hard for the last
hour, and still it seemed never-ending. It is a flat plain, and one
never would suppose from the view in the offing that so vast a plain lies
in the depth of this valley.
It would, however, have been impossible for me to say where I was, or in
what direction we had run; I abandoned my fate to my djin and to my good
luck.
What a steam-engine of a man my djin was! I had been accustomed to the
Chinese runners, but they were nothing beside this fellow. When I part
my oilcloth to peep at anything, he is naturally always the first object
in my foreground; his two naked, brown, muscular legs, scampering along,
splashing all around, and his bristling hedgehog back bending low in the
rain. Do the passers-by, gazing at this little dripping cart, guess that
it contains a suitor in quest of a bride?
At last my vehicle stops, and my djin, with many smiles and precautions
lest any fresh rivers should stream down my back, lowers the hood of the
cart; there is a break in the storm, and the rain has ceased. I had not
yet seen his face; as an exception to the general rule, he is good-
looking; a young man of about thirty years of age, of intelligent and
strong appearance, and a frank countenance. Who could have foreseen that
a few days later this very djin? But no, I will not anticipate, and run
the risk of throwing beforehand any discredit on Chrysantheme.
We had therefore reached our destination, and found ourselves at the foot
of a high, overhanging mountain; probably beyond the limits of the town,
in some suburban district. It apparently became necessary to continue
our journey on foot, and to climb up an almost perpendicular narrow path.
Around us, a number of small country-houses, garden-walls, and high
bamboo palisades shut off the view. The green hill crushed us with its
towering height; the heavy, dark clouds lowering over our heads seemed
like a leaden canopy confining us in this unknown spot; it really seemed
as if the complete absence of perspective inclined one all the better to
notice the details of this tiny corner, muddy and wet, of homely Japan,
now lying before our eyes. The earth was very red. The grasses and wild
flowers bordering the pathway were strange to me; nevertheless, the
palings were covered with convolvuli like our own, and I recognized china
asters, zinnias, and other familiar flowers in the gardens. The
atmosphere seemed laden with a curiously complicated odor, something
besides the perfume of the plants and soil, arising no doubt from the
human dwelling-places--a mingled odor, I fancied, of dried fish and
incense. Not a creature was to be seen; of the inhabitants, of their
homes and life, there was not a vestige, and I might have imagined myself
anywhere in the world.
My djin had fastened his little cart under a tree, and together we
climbed the steep path on the slippery red soil.
"We are going to the Garden of Flowers, are we not?" I inquired,
desirous to ascertain whether I had been understood.
"Yes, yes," replied the djin, "it is up there, and quite near."
The road turned, steep banks hemming it in and darkening it. On one side
it skirted the mountain, all covered with a tangle of wet ferns; on the
other appeared a large wooden house almost devoid of openings and of evil
aspect; it was there that my djin halted.
What, was that sinister-looking house the Garden of Flowers? He assured
me that it was, and seemed very sure of the fact. We knocked at a large
door which opened immediately, slipping back in its groove. Then two
funny little women appeared, oldish-looking, but with evident pretensions
to youth: exact types of the figures painted on vases, with their tiny
hands and feet.
On catching sight of me they threw themselves on all fours, their faces
touching the floor. Good gracious! What can be the matter? I asked
myself. Nothing at all, it was only the ceremonious salute, to which I
am as yet unaccustomed. They arose, and proceeded to take off my boots
(one never keeps on one's shoes in a Japanese house), wiping the bottoms
of my trousers, and feeling my shoulders to see whether I am wet.
What always strikes one on first entering a Japanese dwelling is the
extreme cleanliness, the white and chilling bareness of the rooms.
Over the most irreproachable mattings, without a crease, a line, or a
stain, I was led upstairs to the first story and ushered into a large,
empty room--absolutely empty! The paper walls were mounted on sliding
panels, which, fitting into each other, can be made to disappear--and all
one side of the apartment opened like a veranda, giving a view of the
green country and the gray sky beyond. By way of a chair, they gave me a
square cushion of black velvet; and behold me seated low, in the middle
of this large, empty room, which by its very vastness is almost chilly.
The two little women (who are the servants of the house and my very
humble servants, too), awaited my orders, in attitudes expressive of the
profoundest humility.
It seemed extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had
learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands--by sheer dint of
dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them--should
mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I was at once understood.
I wished in the first place to speak to one M. Kangourou, who is
interpreter, laundryman, and matrimonial agent. Nothing could be easier:
they knew him and were willing to go at once in search of him; and the
elder of the waiting-maids made ready for the purpose her wooden clogs
and her paper umbrella.
Next I demanded a well-served repast, composed of the greatest delicacies
of Japan. Better and better! they rushed to the kitchen to order it.
Finally, I beg they will give tea and rice to my djin, who is waiting for
me below; I wish,--in short, I wish many things, my dear little dolls,
which I will mention by degrees and with due deliberation, when I shall
have had time to assemble the necessary words. But the more I look at
you the more uneasy I feel as to what my fiancee of to-morrow may be
like. Almost pretty, I grant you, you are--in virtue of quaintness,
delicate hands, miniature feet, but ugly, after all, and absurdly small.
You look like little monkeys, like little china ornaments, like I don't
know what. I begin to understand that I have arrived at this house at an
ill-chosen moment. Something is going on which does not concern me, and
I feel that I am in the way.
From the beginning I might have guessed as much, notwithstanding the
excessive politeness of my welcome; for I remember now, that while they
were taking off my boots downstairs, I heard a murmuring chatter
overhead, then a noise of panels moved quickly along their grooves,
evidently to hide from me something not intended for me to see; they were
improvising for me the apartment in which I now am just as in menageries
they make a separate compartment for some beasts when the public is
admitted.
Now I am left alone while my orders are being executed, and I listen
attentively, squatted like a Buddha on my black velvet cushion, in the
midst of the whiteness of the walls and mats.
Behind the paper partitions, feeble voices, seemingly numerous, are
talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song of
a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare house,
in the melancholy of the rainy weather.
What one can see through the wide-open veranda is very pretty; I will
admit that it resembles the landscape of a fairytale. There are
admirably wooded mountains, climbing high into the dark and gloomy sky,
and hiding in it the peaks of their summits, and, perched up among the
clouds, is a temple. The atmosphere has that absolute transparency, that
distance and clearness which follows a great fall of rain; but a thick
pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the
foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray fluff,
which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and below
this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two
beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by pursuing
each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth, shaking the wet
sand from their paws. The garden is as conventional as possible: not a
flower, but little rocks, little lakes, dwarf trees cut in grotesque
fashion; all this is not natural, but it is most ingeniously arranged, so
green, so full of fresh mosses!
In the rain-soaked country below me, to the very farthest end of the vast
scene, reigns a great silence, an absolute calm. But the woman's voice,
behind the paper wall, continues to sing in a key of gentle sadness, and
the accompanying guitar has sombre and even gloomy notes.
Stay, though! Now the music is somewhat quicker--one might even suppose
they were dancing!
So much the worse! I shall try to look between the fragile divisions,
through a crack which has revealed itself to my notice.
What a singular spectacle it is; evidently the gilded youth of Nagasaki
holding a great clandestine orgy! In an apartment as bare as my own,
there are a dozen of them, seated in a circle on the ground, attired in
long blue cotton dresses with pagoda sleeves, long, sleek, and greasy
hair surmounted by European pot-hats; and beneath these, yellow, worn-
out, bloodless, foolish faces. On the floor are a number of little
spirit-lamps, little pipes, little lacquer trays, little teapots, little
cups-all the accessories and all the remains of a Japanese feast,
resembling nothing so much as a doll's tea-party. In the midst of this
circle of dandies are three overdressed women, one might say three weird
visions, robed in garments of pale and indefinable colors, embroidered
with golden monsters; their great coiffures are arranged with fantastic
art, stuck full of pins and flowers. Two are seated with their backs
turned to me: one is holding the guitar, the other singing with that
soft, pretty voice; thus seen furtively, from behind, their pose, their
hair, the nape of their necks, all is exquisite, and I tremble lest a
movement should reveal to me faces which might destroy the enchantment.
The third girl is on her feet, dancing before this areopagus of idiots,
with their lanky locks and pot-hats. What a shock when she turns round!
She wears over her face the horribly grinning, death-like mask of a
spectre or a vampire. The mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a
darling little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and
already a coquette, already a woman--dressed in a long robe of shaded
dark-blue china crape, covered with embroidery representing bats-gray
bats, black bats, golden bats.
Suddenly there are steps on the stairs, the light foot steps of
barefooted women pattering over the white mats. No doubt the first
course of my luncheon is just about to be served. I fall back quickly,
fixed and motionless, upon my black velvet cushion. There are three of
them now, three waiting-maids who arrive in single file, with smiles and
curtseys. One offers me the spirit-lamp and the teapot; another,
preserved fruits in delightful little plates; the third, absolutely
indefinable objects upon gems of little trays. And they grovel before me
on the floor, placing all this plaything of a meal at my feet.
At this moment, my impressions of Japan are charming enough; I feel
myself fairly launched upon this tiny, artificial, fictitious world,
which I felt I knew already from the paintings on lacquer and porcelains.
It is so exact a representation! The three little squatting women,
graceful and dainty, with their narrow slits of eyes, their magnificent
coiffures in huge bows, smooth and shining as shoe-polish, and the little
tea-service on the floor, the landscape seen through the veranda, the
pagoda perched among the clouds; and over all the same affectation
everywhere, in every detail. Even the woman's melancholy voice, still to
be heard behind the paper partition, was evidently the proper way for
them to sing--these musicians I had so often seen painted in amazing
colors on rice-paper, half closing their dreamy eyes among impossibly
large flowers. Long before I arrived there, I had perfectly pictured
Japan to myself. Nevertheless, in the reality it almost seems to be
smaller, more finicking than I had imagined it, and also much more
mournful, no doubt by reason of that great pall of black clouds hanging
over us, and this incessant rain.
While awaiting M. Kangourou (who is dressing himself, it appears, and
will be here shortly), it may be as well to begin luncheon.
In the daintiest bowl imaginable, adorned with flights of storks, is the
most wildly impossible soup made of seaweed. After which there are
little fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and fruits in
vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all unexpected and
unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing much, with that
perpetual, irritating laugh which is peculiar to Japan--they make me eat,
according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with
affected grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole
effect is refined--a refinement so entirely different from our own that
at first sight I understand nothing of it, although in the long run it
may end by pleasing me.
Suddenly enters, like a night butterfly awakened in broad daylight, like
a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the other compartment,
the child who wore the horrible mask. No doubt she wishes to have a look
at me. She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten, and then all at once
tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of childishness, which is a
delightfully transparent assumption. She is slim, elegant, delicate, and
smells sweet; she is drolly painted, white as plaster, with a little
circle of rouge marked very precisely in the middle of each cheek, the
mouth reddened, and a touch of gilding outlining the under lip. As they
could not whiten the back of her neck on account of all the delicate
little curls of hair growing there, they had, in their love of
exactitude, stopped the white plaster in a straight line, which might
have been cut with a knife, and in consequence at the nape appears a
square of natural skin of a deep yellow.
An imperious note sounds on the guitar, evidently a summons! Crac! Away
she goes, the little fairy, to entertain the drivelling fools on the
other side of the screens.
Suppose I marry this one, without seeking any further. I should respect
her as a child committed to my care; I should take her for what she is:
a fantastic and charming plaything. What an amusing little household I
should set up! Really, short of marrying a china ornament, I should find
it difficult to choose better.
At this moment enters M. Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which
might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot-hat
and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once foolish and cunning;
he has hardly any nose or eyes. He makes a real Japanese salutation: an
abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the knees, the body making a right
angle to the legs, as if the fellow were breaking in two; a little snake-
like hissing (produced by sucking the saliva between the teeth, which is
the highest expression of obsequious politeness in this country).
"You speak French, Monsieur Kangourou?"
"Yes, Monsieur" (renewed bows).
He makes one for each word I utter, as if he were a mechanical toy pulled
by a string; when he is seated before me on the ground, he limits himself
to a duck of the head--always accompanied by the same hissing noise of
the saliva.
"A cup of tea, Monsieur Kangourou?"
Fresh salute and an extra affected gesticulation with the hands, as if to
say, "I should hardly dare. It is too great a condescension on your
part. However, anything to oblige you."
He guesses at the first words what I require from him.
"Of course," he replies, "we shall see about it at once. In a week's
time, as it happens, a family from Simonoseki, in which there are two
charming daughters, will be here!"
"What! in a week! You don't know me, Monsieur Kangourou! No, no,
either now, to-morrow, or not at all."
Again a hissing bow, and Kangourou-San, understanding my agitation,
begins to pass in feverish review all the young persons at his disposal
in Nagasaki.
"Let us see--there was Mademoiselle Oeillet. What a pity that you did
not speak a few days sooner! So pretty! So clever at playing the
guitar! It is an irreparable misfortune; she was engaged only yesterday
by a Russian officer.
"Ah! Mademoiselle Abricot!--Would she suit you, Mademoiselle Abricot?
She is the daughter of a wealthy China merchant in the Decima Bazaar, a
person of the highest merit; but she would be very dear: her parents, who
think a great deal of her, will not let her go under a hundred yen--
[A yen is equal to four shillings.]--a month. She is very accomplished,
thoroughly understands commercial writing, and has at her fingers'-ends
more than two thousand characters of learned writing. In a poetical
competition she gained the first prize with a sonnet composed in praise
of 'the blossoms of the blackthorn hedges seen in the dew of early
morning.' Only, she is not very pretty: one of her eyes is smaller than
the other, and she has a hole in her cheek, resulting from an illness of
her childhood."
"Oh, no! on no account that one! Let us seek among a less distinguished
class of young persons, but without scars. And how about those on the
other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered dresses? For
instance, the dancer with the spectre mask, Monsieur Kangourou? or again
she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming nape to her
neck?"
He does not, at first, understand my drift; then when he gathers my
meaning, he shakes his head almost in a joking way, and says:
"No, Monsieur, no! Those are only geishas,--[Geishas are professional
dancers and singers trained at the Yeddo Conservatory.]--Monsieur--
geishas!"
"Well, but why not a geisha? What difference can it make to me whether
they are geishas or not?" Later, no doubt, when I understand Japanese
affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal:
one would really suppose I had talked of marrying the devil.
At this point M. Kangourou suddenly calls to mind one Mademoiselle
Jasmin. Heavens! how was it he had not thought of her at once? She is
absolutely and exactly what I want; he will go to-morrow, or this very
evening, to make the necessary overtures to the parents of this young
person, who live a long way off, on the opposite hill, in the suburb of
Diou-djen-dji. She is a very pretty girl of about fifteen. She can
probably be engaged for about eighteen or twenty dollars a month, on
condition of presenting her with a few costumes of the best fashion, and
of lodging her in a pleasant and well-situated house--all of which a man
of gallantry like myself could not fail to do.
Well, let us fix upon Mademoiselle Jasmin, then--and now we must part;
time presses. M. Kangourou will come on board to-morrow to communicate
to me the result of his first proceedings and to arrange with me for the
interview. For the present he refuses to accept any remuneration; but I
am to give him my washing, and to procure him the custom of my brother
officers of the 'Triomphante.' It is all settled. Profound bows--they
put on my boots again at the door. My djin, profiting by the interpreter
kind fortune has placed in his way, begs to be recommended to me for
future custom; his stand is on the quay; his number is 415, inscribed in
French characters on the lantern of his vehicle (we have a number 415 on
board, one Le Goelec, gunner, who serves the left of one of my guns;
happy thought! I shall remember this); his price is sixpence the
journey, or five-pence an hour, for his customers. Capital! he shall
have my custom, that is promised. And now, let us be off. The waiting-
maids, who have escorted me to the door, fall on all fours as a final
salute, and remain prostrate on the threshold as long as I am still in
sight down the dark pathway, where the rain trickles off the great
overarching bracken upon my head.
CHAPTER IV
CHOOSING A BRIDE
Three days have passed. Night is closing, in an apartment which has been
mine since yesterday. Yves and I, on the first floor, move restlessly
over the white mats, striding to and fro in the great bare room, of which
the thin, dry flooring cracks beneath our footsteps; we are both rather
irritated by prolonged expectation. Yves, whose impatience shows itself
more freely, from time to time looks out of the window. As for myself, a
chill suddenly seizes me, at the idea that I have chosen to inhabit this
lonely house, lost in the midst of the suburb of a totally strange town,
perched high on the mountain and almost opening upon the woods.
What wild notion could have taken possession of me, to settle myself in
surroundings so foreign and unknown, breathing of isolation and sadness?
The waiting unnerves me, and I beguile the time by examining all the
little details of the building. The woodwork of the ceiling is
complicated and ingenious. On the partitions of white paper which form
the walls, are scattered tiny, microscopic, blue-feathered tortoises.
"They are late," said Yves, who is still looking out into the street.
As to being late, that they certainly are, by a good hour already, and
night is falling, and the boat which should take us back to dine on board
will be gone. Probably we shall have to sup Japanese fashion tonight,
heaven only knows where. The people of this country have no sense of
punctuality, or of the value of time.
Therefore I continue to inspect the minute and comical details of my
dwelling. Here, instead of handles such as we should have made to pull
these movable partitions, they have made little oval-holes, just the
shape of a finger-end, into which one is evidently to put one's thumb.
These little holes have a bronze ornamentation, and, on looking closely,
one sees that the bronze is curiously chased: here is a lady fanning
herself; there, in the next hole, is represented a branch of cherry in
full blossom. What eccentricity there is in the taste of this people!
To bestow assiduous labor on such miniature work, and then to hide it at
the bottom of a hole to put one's finger in, looking like a mere spot in
the middle of a great white panel; to accumulate so much patient and
delicate workmanship on almost imperceptible accessories, and all to
produce an effect which is absolutely nil, an effect of the most complete
bareness and nudity.
Yves still continues to gaze forth, like Sister Anne. From the side on
which he leans, my veranda overlooks a street, or rather a road bordered
with houses, which climbs higher and higher, and loses itself almost
immediately in the verdure of the mountain, in the fields of tea, the
underwood and the cemeteries. As for myself, this delay finally
irritates me thoroughly, and I turn my glances to the opposite side.
The other end of my house, also a veranda, opens first of all upon a
garden; then upon a marvellous panorama of woods and mountains, with all
the venerable Japanese quarters of Nagasaki lying confusedly like a black
ant-heap, six hundred feet below us. This evening, in a dull twilight,
notwithstanding that it is a twilight of July, these things are
melancholy. Great clouds heavy with rain and showers, ready to fall, are
travelling across the sky. No, I can not feel at home in this strange
dwelling I have chosen; I feel sensations of extreme solitude and
strangeness; the mere prospect of passing the night in it gives me a
shudder of horror.
"Ah! at last, brother," said Yves, "I believe--yes, I really believe she
is coming at last."
I look over his shoulder, and I see a back view of a little doll, the
finishing touches to whose toilette are being put in the solitary street;
a last maternal glance is given the enormous bows of the sash, the folds
at the waist. Her dress is of pearl-gray silk, her obi (sash) of mauve
satin; a sprig of silver flowers trembles in her black hair; a parting
ray of sunlight touches the little figure; five or six persons accompany
her. Yes! it is undoubtedly Mademoiselle Jasmin; they are bringing me my
fiancee!
I rush to the ground floor, inhabited by old Madame Prune, my landlady,
and her aged husband; they are absorbed in prayer before the altar of
their ancestors.
"Here they are, Madame Prune," I cry in Japanese; "here they are! Bring
at once the tea, the lamp, the embers, the little pipes for the ladies,
the little bamboo pots! Bring up, as quickly as possible, all the
accessories for my reception!"
I hear the front door open, and hasten upstairs again. Wooden clogs are
deposited on the floor, the staircase creaks gently under little bare
feet. Yves and I look at each other, with a longing to laugh.