Books: Madame Chrysantheme, v2
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Pierre Loti >> Madame Chrysantheme, v2
Yves is now in bed and sleeping under our roof.
Sleep has come to him sooner than to me to-night; for somehow I fancy I
had seen long glances exchanged between him and Chrysantheme.
I have left this little creature in his hands like a toy, and I begin to
fear lest I should have caused some perturbation in his mind. I do not
trouble my head about this little Japanese girl. But Yves--it would be
decidedly wrong on his part, and would greatly diminish my faith in him.
We hear the rain falling on our old roof; the cicalas are mute; odors of
wet earth reach us from the gardens and the mountain. I feel terribly
dreary in this room to-night; the noise of the little pipe irritates me
more than usual, and as Chrysantheme crouches in front of her smoking-
box, I suddenly discover in her an air of low breeding, in the very worst
sense of the word.
I should hate her, my mousme, if she were to entice Yves into committing
a fault--a fault which I should perhaps never be able to forgive.
CHAPTER XXX
A LITTLE DOMESTIC DIFFICULTY
August 12th.
The Y---- and Sikou-San couple were divorced yesterday. The Charles N---
and Campanule household is getting on very badly. They have had some
trouble with those prying, grinding, insupportable little men, dressed up
in gray suits, who are called police agents, and who, by threatening
their landlord, have had them turned out of their house (under the
obsequious amiability of this people lurks a secret hatred toward
Europeans)--they are therefore obliged to accept their mother-in-law's
hospitality, a very disagreeable situation. And then Charles N---
fancies his mousme is faithless. It is hardly possible, however, for us
to deceive ourselves: these would-be maidens, to whom M. Kangourou has
introduced us, have already had in their lives one adventure, at least,
and perhaps more; it is therefore only natural that we should have our
suspicions.
The Z----- and Touki-San couple jog on, quarrelling all the time.
My household maintains a more dignified air, though it is none the less
dreary. I had indeed thought of a divorce, but have really no good
reason for offering Chrysantheme such a gratuitous affront; moreover,
there is another more imperative reason why I should remain quiet: I,
too, have had difficulties with the civilian authorities.
The day before yesterday, M. Sucre, quite upset, Madame Prune, almost
swooning, and Mademoiselle Oyouki, bathed in tears, stormed my rooms.
The Nipponese police agents had called and threatened them with the law
for letting rooms outside of the European concession to a Frenchman
morganatically married to a Japanese; and the terror of being prosecuted
brought them to me, with a thousand apologies, but with the humble
request that I should leave.
The next day I therefore went off, accompanied by "the wonderfully tall
friend"--who expresses himself in Japanese better than I--to the registry
office, with the full intention of making a terrible row.
In the language of this exquisitely polite people, terms of abuse are
totally wanting; when very angry, one is obliged to be satisfied with
using the 'thou', a mark of inferiority, and the familiar conjugation,
habitually used toward those of low birth. Sitting upon the table used
for weddings, among the flurried little policemen, I opened the
conversation in the following terms:
"In order that thou shouldst leave me in peace in the suburb I am
inhabiting, what bribe must I offer thee, oh, little beings more
contemptible than any mere street porter?"
Great and general dismay, silent consternation, and low bows greet my
words.
They at last reply that my honorable person shall not be molested,
indeed, they ask for nothing better. Only, in order to subscribe to the
laws of the country, I ought to have come here and given my name and that
of the young person that--with whom--
"Oh! that is going too far! I came here for that purpose, contemptible
creatures, not three weeks ago!"
Then, taking up myself the civil register, and turning over the pages
rapidly, I found my signature and beside it the little hieroglyphics
drawn by Chrysantheme:
"There, idiots, look at that!"
Arrival of a very high functionary--a ridiculous little old fellow in a
black coat, who from his office had been listening to the row:
"What is the matter? What is it? What is this annoyance put upon the
French officers?"
I state my case politely to this personage, who can not make apologies
and promises enough. The little agents prostrate themselves on all
fours, sink into the earth; and we leave them, cold and dignified,
without returning their bows.
M. Sucre and Madame Prune may now make their minds easy; they will not be
disturbed again.
CHAPTER XXXI
BUTTERFLIES AND BEETLES
August 23d.
The prolonged sojourn of the Triomphante in the dock, and the distance of
our dwelling from the town, have been my excuse these last two or three
days for not going up to Diou-djen-dji to see Chrysantheme.
It is dreary work in these docks. At early dawn a legion of little
Japanese workmen invade us, bringing their dinners in baskets and gourds
like the workingmen in our arsenals, but with a poor, shabby appearance,
and a ferreting, hurried manner which reminds one of rats. Silently they
slip under the keel, at the bottom of the hold, in all the holes, sawing,
nailing, repairing.
The heat is intense in this spot, overshadowed by the rocks and tangled
masses of foliage.
At two o'clock, in the broad sunlight, we have a new and far prettier
invasion: that of the beetles and butterflies.
There are butterflies as wonderful as those on the fans. Some, all
black, giddily dash up against us, so light and airy that they seem
merely a pair of quivering wings fastened together without any body.
Yves, astonished, gazes at them, saying, in his boyish manner: "Oh, I saw
such a big one just now, such a big one, it quite frightened me; I
thought it was a bat attacking me."
A steersman who has captured a very curious specimen carries it off
carefully to press between the leaves of his signal-book, like a flower.
Another sailor, passing by, taking his small roast to the oven in a mess-
bowl, looks at him quizzically and says:
"You had much better give it to me. I'd cook it!"
CHAPTER XXXII
STRANGE YEARNINGS
August 24th.
Nearly five days have passed since I abandoned my little house and
Chrysantheme.
Since yesterday we have had a tremendous storm of rain and wind (a
typhoon that has passed or is passing over us). We beat to quarters in
the middle of the night to lower the topmasts, strike the lower yards,
and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer
hover around us; everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep
slopes of the mountain the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as if
in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo
leaves, and earth fall like rain upon us.
In this land of pretty little trifles, this violent tempest is out of
harmony; it seems as if its efforts were exaggerated and its music too
loud.
Toward evening the dark clouds roll by so rapidly that the showers are of
short duration and soon pass over. Then I attempt a walk on the mountain
above us, in the wet verdure: little pathways lead up it, between
thickets of camellias and bamboo.
Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an old
temple halfway up the hill, buried in a wood of century plants with
gigantic branches; it is reached by granite steps, through strange
gateways, as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens. The trees have
also invaded this yard; the daylight is overcast with a greenish tint,
and the drenching torrent of rain is full of torn-up leaves and moss.
Old granite monsters, of unknown shapes, are seated in the corners, and
grimace with smiling ferocity: their faces are full of indefinable
mystery that makes me shudder amid the moaning music of the wind, in the
gloomy shadows of the clouds and branches.
They could not have resembled the Japanese of our day, the men who had
thus conceived these ancient temples, who built them everywhere, and
filled the country with them, even in its most solitary nooks.
An hour later, in the twilight of that stormy day, on the same mountain,
I encountered a clump of trees somewhat similar to oaks in appearance;
they, too, have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts of undulating
grass at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every direction. There
was suddenly brought back to my mind my first impression of a strong wind
in the woods of Limoise, in the province of Saintonge, twenty-eight years
ago, in a month of March of my childhood.
That, the first wind-storm my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the
landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world (and many years
have rapidly passed over that memory), the spot where the best part of my
life has been spent.
I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am foolishly fond of it.
But it seems to me that then only did I truly experience sensations or
impressions; the smallest trifles I saw or heard then were full of deep
and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of oblivion, and
reawakening memories of prior existences; or else they were presentiments
of existences to come, future incarnations in the land of dreams,
expectations of wondrous marvels that life and the world held in store
for me-for a later period, no doubt, when I should be grown up. Well, I
have grown up, and have found nothing that answered to my indefinable
expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and darkened around me,
my vague recollections of the past have become blurred, the horizons
before me have slowly closed in and become full of gray darkness. Soon
will my time come to return to eternal rest, and I shall leave this world
without ever having understood the mysterious cause of these mirages of
my childhood; I shall bear away with me a lingering regret for I know not
what lost home that I have failed to find, of the unknown beings ardently
longed for, whom, alas, I never have embraced.
CHAPTER XXXIII
A GENEROUS HUSBAND
Displaying many affectations, M. Sucre dips the tip of his delicate
paint-brush in India-ink and traces a pair of charming storks on a pretty
sheet of rice-paper, offering them to me in the most courteous manner, as
a souvenir of himself. I have put them in my cabin on board, and when I
look at them, I fancy I can see M. Sucre tracing them with an airy touch
and with elegant facility.
The saucer in which he mixes his ink is in itself a little gem. It is
chiselled out of a piece of jade, and represents a tiny lake with a
carved border imitating rockwork. On this border is a little mamma toad,
also in jade, advancing as if to bathe in the little lake in which M.
Sucre carefully keeps a few drops of very dark liquid. The mamma toad
has four little baby toads, in jade, one perched on her head, the other
three playing about under her.
M. Sucre has painted many a stork in the course of his lifetime, and he
really excels in reproducing groups and duets, if one may so express it,
of this bird. Few Japanese possess the art of interpreting this subject
in a manner at once so rapid and so tasteful; first he draws the two
beaks, then the four claws, then the backs, the feathers, dash, dash,
dash--with a dozen strokes of his clever brush, held in his daintily
posed hand, it is done, and always perfectly well done!
M. Kangourou relates, without seeing anything wrong in it whatever, that
formerly this talent was of great service to M. Sucre. It appears that
Madame Prune--how shall I say such a thing, and, who could guess it now,
on beholding so devout and sedate an old lady, with eyebrows so
scrupulously shaven?--however, it appears that Madame Prune used to
receive a great many visits from gentlemen--gentlemen who always came
alone--which led to some gossip. Therefore, when Madame Prune was
engaged with one visitor, if a new arrival made his appearance, the
ingenious husband, to induce him to wait patiently, and to wile away the
time in the anteroom, immediately offered to paint him some storks in a
variety of attitudes.
And this is why, in Nagasaki, all the Japanese gentlemen of a certain age
have in their collections two or three of these little pictures, for
which they are indebted to the delicate and original talent of M. Sucre!
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Ah! the natural perversity of inanimate things
Found nothing that answered to my indefinable expectations
Habit turns into a makeshift of attachment
I know not what lost home that I have failed to find
When the inattentive spirits are not listening