Books: Madame Chrysantheme, v3

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This etext was produced by David Widger

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MADAME CHRYSANTHEME

By PIERRE LOTI

BOOK 3.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FEAST OF THE TEMPLE

Sunday, August 25th.

About six o'clock, while I was on duty, the 'Triomphante' abandoned her
prison walls between the mountains and came out of dock. After much
manoeuvring we took up our old moorings in the harbor, at the foot of the
Diou-djen-dji hills. The weather was again calm and cloudless, the sky
presenting a peculiar clarity, as if it had been swept by a cyclone, an
exceeding transparency bringing out the minutest details in the distance
till then unseen; as if the terrible blast had blown away every vestige
of the floating mists and left behind it nothing but void and boundless
space. The coloring of woods and mountains stood out again in the
resplendent verdancy of spring after the torrents of rain, like the wet
colors of some freshly washed painting. The sampans and junks, which for
the last three days had been lying under shelter, had now put out to sea,
and the bay was covered with their white sails, which looked like a
flight of enormous seabirds.

At eight o'clock, at nightfall, our manoeuvres having ended, I embarked
with Yves on board a sampan; this time it is he who is carrying me off
and taking me back to my home.

On land, a delicious perfume of new-mown hay greets us, and the road
across the mountains is bathed in glorious moonlight. We go straight up
to Diou-djen-dji to join Chrysantheme; I feel almost remorseful, although
I hardly show it, for my neglect of her.

Looking up, I recognize from afar my little house, perched on high. It
is wide open and lighted; I even hear the sound of a guitar. Then I
perceive the gilt head of my Buddha between the little bright flames of
its two hanging night-lamps. Now Chrysantheme appears on the veranda,
looking out as if she expected us; and with her wonderful bows of hair
and long, falling sleeves, her silhouette is thoroughly Nipponese.

As I enter, she comes forward to kiss me, in a graceful, though rather
hesitating manner, while Oyouki, more demonstrative, throws her arms
around me.

Not without a certain pleasure do I see once more this Japanese home,
which I wonder to find still mine when I had almost forgotten its
existence. Chrysantheme has put fresh flowers in our vases, spread out
her hair, donned her best clothes, and lighted our lamps to honor my
return. From the balcony she had watched the 'Triomphante' leave the
dock, and, in the expectation of our prompt return, she had made her
preparations; then, to wile away the time, she was studying a duet on the
guitar with Oyouki. Not a question did she ask, nor a reproach did she
make. Quite the contrary.

"We understood," she said, "how impossible it was, in such dreadful
weather, to undertake so lengthy a crossing in a sampan."

She smiled like a pleased child, and I should be fastidious indeed if I
did not admit that to-night she is charming.

I announce my intention of taking a long stroll through Nagasaki; we will
take Oyouki-San and two little cousins who happen to be here, as well as
some other neighbors, if they wish it; we will buy the most amusing toys,
eat all sorts of cakes, and entertain ourselves to our hearts' content.

"How lucky we are to be here, just at the right moment," they exclaim,
jumping with joy. "How fortunate we are! This very evening there is to
be a pilgrimage to the great temple of the jumping Tortoise! "The whole
town will be there; all our married friends have already started, the
whole set, X----, Y----, Z----, Touki-San, Campanule, and Jonquille, with
"the friend of amazing height." And these two, poor Chrysantheme and
poor Oyouki, would have been obliged to stay at home with heavy hearts,
had we not arrived, because Madame Prune had been seized with faintness
and hysterics after her dinner.

Quickly the mousmes must deck themselves out. Chrysantheme is ready;
Oyouki hurries, changes her dress, and, putting on a mouse-colored gray
robe, begs me to arrange the bows of her fine sash-black satin lined with
yellow-sticking at the same time in her hair a silver topknot. We light
our lanterns, swinging at the end of little sticks; M. Sucre,
overwhelming us with thanks for his daughter, accompanies us on all
fours to the door, and we go off gayly through the clear and balmy night.

Below, we find the town in all the animation of a great holiday. The
streets are thronged; the crowd passes by--a laughing, capricious, slow,
unequal tide, flowing onward, however, steadily in the same direction,
toward the same goal. From it rises a penetrating but light murmur, in
which dominate the sounds of laughter, and the low-toned interchange of
polite speeches. Then follow lanterns upon lanterns. Never in my life
have I seen so many, so variegated, so complicated, and so extraordinary.

We follow, drifting with the surging crowd, borne along by it. There
are groups of women of every age, decked out in their smartest clothes,
crowds of mousmes with aigrettes of flowers in their hair, or little
silver topknots like Oyouki--pretty little physiognomies, little, narrow
eyes peeping between their slits like those of new-born kittens, fat,
pale, little cheeks, round, puffed-out, half-opened lips. They are
pretty, nevertheless, these little Nipponese, in their smiles and
childishness.

The men, on the other hand, wear many a pot-hat, pompously added to the
long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their
cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys. They
carry boughs in their hands, whole shrubs even, amid the foliage of which
dangle all sorts of curious lanterns in the shapes of imps and birds.

As we advance in the direction of the temple, the streets become more
noisy and crowded. All along the houses are endless stalls raised on
trestles, displaying sweetmeats of every color, toys, branches of
flowers, nosegays and masks. There are masks everywhere, boxes full of
them, carts full of them; the most popular being the one that represents
the livid and cunning muzzle, contracted as by a deathlike grimace, the
long straight ears and sharp-pointed teeth of the white fox, sacred to
the God of Rice. There are also others symbolic of gods or monsters,
livid, grimacing, convulsed, with wigs and beards of natural hair. All
manner of folk, even children, purchase these horrors, and fasten them
over their faces. Every sort of instrument is for sale, among them many
of those crystal trumpets which sound so strangely--this evening they are
enormous, six feet long at least--and the noise they make is unlike
anything ever heard before: one would say gigantic turkeys were gobbling
amid the crowd, striving to inspire fear.

In the religious amusements of this people it is not possible for us to
penetrate the mysteriously hidden meaning of things; we can not divine
the boundary at which jesting stops and mystic fear steps in. These
customs, these symbols, these masks, all that tradition and atavism have
jumbled together in the Japanese brain, proceed from sources utterly dark
and unknown to us; even the oldest records fail to explain them to us in
anything but a superficial and cursory manner, simply because we have
absolutely nothing in common with this people. We pass through the midst
of their mirth and their laughter without understanding the wherefore, so
totally do they differ from our own.

Chrysantheme with Yves, Oyouki with me, Fraise and Zinnia, our cousins,
walking before us under our watchful eyes, move slowly through the crowd,
holding hands lest we should lose one another.

Along the streets leading to the temple, the wealthy inhabitants have
decorated the fronts of their houses with vases and nosegays. The
peculiar shed-like buildings common in this country, with their open
platform frontage, are particularly well suited for the display of choice
objects; all the houses have been thrown open, and the interiors are hung
with draperies that hide the back of the apartments. In front of these
hangings, and standing slightly back from the movement of the passing
crowd, the various exhibited articles are placed methodically in a row,
under the full glare of hanging lamps. Hardly any flowers compose the
nosegays, nothing but foliage--some rare and priceless, others chosen, as
if purposely, from the commonest plants, arranged, however, with such
taste as to make them appear new and choice; ordinary lettuce-leaves,
tall cabbage-stalks are placed with exquisite artificial taste in vessels
of marvellous workmanship. All the vases are of bronze, but the designs
are varied according to each changing fancy: some complicated and
twisted, others, and by far the larger number, graceful and simple, but
of a simplicity so studied and exquisite that to our eyes they seem the
revelation of an unknown art, the subversion of all acquired notions of
form.

On turning a corner of a street, by good luck we meet our married
comrades of the Triomphante and Jonquille, Toukisan and Campanule! Bows
and curtseys are exchanged by the mousmes, reciprocal manifestations of
joy at meeting; then, forming a compact band, we are carried off by the
ever-increasing crowd and continue our progress in the direction of the
temple.

The streets gradually ascend (the temples are always built on a height);
and by degrees, as we mount, there is added to the brilliant fairyland of
lanterns and costumes yet another, ethereally blue in the haze of
distance; all Nagasaki, its pagodas, its mountains, its still waters full
of the rays of moonlight, seem to rise with us into the air. Slowly,
step by step, one may say it springs up around, enveloping in one great
shimmering veil all the foreground, with its dazzling red lights and
many-colored streamers.

No doubt we are drawing near, for here are steps, porticoes and monsters
hewn out of enormous blocks of granite. We now have to climb a series of
steps, almost carried by the surging crowd ascending with us.

We have arrived at the temple courtyard.

This is the last and most astonishing scene in the evening's fairy-tale
--a luminous and weird scene, with fantastic distances lighted up by the
moon, with the gigantic trees, the sacred cryptomerias, elevating their
sombre boughs into a vast dome.

Here we are all seated with our mousmes, beneath the light awning,
wreathed in flowers, of one of the many little teahouses improvised in
this courtyard. We are on a terrace at the top of the great steps, up
which the crowd continues to flock, and at the foot of a portico which
stands erect with the rigid massiveness of a colossus against the dark
night sky; at the foot also of a monster, who stares down upon us, with
his big stony eyes, his cruel grimace and smile.

This portico and the monster are the two great overwhelming masses in the
foreground of the incredible scene before us; they stand out with
dazzling boldness against the vague and ashy blue of the distant sphere
beyond; behind them, Nagasaki is spread out in a bird's-eye view, faintly
outlined in the transparent darkness with myriads of little colored
lights, and the extravagantly dented profile of the mountains is
delineated on the starlit sky, blue upon blue, transparency upon
transparency. A corner of the harbor also is visible, far up, undefined,
like a lake lost in clouds the water, faintly illumined by a ray of
moonlight, making it shine like a sheet of silver.

Around us the long crystal trumpets keep up their gobble. Groups of
polite and frivolous persons pass and repass like fantastic shadows:
childish bands of small-eyed mousmes with smile so candidly meaningless
and coiffures shining through their bright silver flowers; ugly men
waving at the end of long branches their eternal lanterns shaped like
birds, gods, or insects.

Behind us, in the illuminated and wide-open temple, the bonzes sit,
immovable embodiments of doctrine, in the glittering sanctuary inhabited
by divinities, chimeras, and symbols. The crowd, monotonously droning
its mingled prayers and laughter, presses around them, sowing its alms
broadcast; with a continuous jingle, the money rolls on the ground into
the precincts reserved to the priests, where the white mats entirely f
disappear under the mass of many-sized coins accumulated there as if
after a deluge of silver and bronze.

We, however, feel thoroughly at sea in the midst of this festivity; we
look on, we laugh like the rest, we make foolish and senseless remarks in
a language insufficiently learned, which this evening, I know not why, we
can hardly understand. Notwithstanding the night breeze, we find it very
hot under our awning, and we absorb quantities of odd-looking water-ices,
served in cups, which taste like scented frost, or rather like flowers
steeped in snow. Our mousmes order for themselves great bowls of candied
beans mixed with hail--real hailstones, such as we might pick up after a
hailstorm in March.

Glou! glou! glou! the crystal trumpets slowly repeat their notes, the
powerful sonority of which has a labored and smothered sound, as if they
came from under water; they mingle with the jingling of rattles and the
noise of castanets. We have also the impression of being carried away in
the irresistible swing of this incomprehensible gayety, composed, in
proportions we can hardly measure, of elements mystic, puerile, and even
ghastly. A sort of religious terror is diffused by the hidden idols
divined in the temple behind us; by the mumbled prayers, confusedly
heard; above all, by the horrible heads in lacquered wood, representing
foxes, which, as they pass, hide human faces--hideous livid masks.

In the gardens and outbuildings of the temple the most inconceivable
mountebanks have taken up their quarters, their black streamers, painted
with white letters, looking like funeral trappings as they float in the
wind from the tops of their tall flagstaffs. Thither we turn our steps,
as soon as our mousmes have ended their orisons and bestowed their alms.

In one of the booths a man, stretched on a table, flat on his back, is
alone on the stage; puppets of almost human size, with horribly grinning
masks, spring out of his body; they speak, gesticulate, then fall back
like empty rags; with a sudden spring they start up again, change their
costumes, change their faces, tearing about in one continual frenzy.
Suddenly three, even four, appear at the same time; they are nothing more
than the four limbs of the outstretched man, whose legs and arms, raised
on high, are each dressed up and capped with a wig under which peers a
mask; between these phantoms tremendous fighting and battling take place,
and many a sword-thrust is exchanged. The most fearful of all is a
certain puppet representing an old hag; every time she appears, with her
weird head and ghastly grin, the lights burn low, the music of the
accompanying orchestra moans forth a sinister strain given by the flutes,
mingled with a rattling tremolo which sounds like the clatter of bones.
This creature evidently plays an ugly part in the piece--that of a
horrible old ghoul, spiteful and famished. Still more appalling than her
person is her shadow, which, projected upon a white screen, is abnormally
and vividly distinct; by means of some unknown process this shadow, which
nevertheless follows all her movements, assumes the aspect of a wolf. At
a given moment the hag turns round and presents the profile of her
distorted snub nose as she accepts the bowl of rice which is offered to
her; on the screen at the very same instant appears the elongated outline
of the wolf, with its pointed ears, its muzzle and chops, its great teeth
and hanging tongue. The orchestra grinds, wails, quivers; then suddenly
bursts out into funereal shrieks, like a concert of owls; the hag is now
eating, and her wolfish shadow is eating also, greedily moving its jaws
and nibbling at another shadow easy to recognize--the arm of a little
child.

We now go on to see the great salamander of Japan, an animal rare in this
country, and quite unknown elsewhere, a great, cold mass, sluggish and
benumbed, looking like some antediluvian experiment, forgotten in the
inner seas of this archipelago.

Next comes the trained elephant, the terror of our mousmes, the
equilibrists, the menagerie.

It is one o'clock in the morning before we are back at Diou-djen-dji.

We first get Yves to bed in the little paper room he has already once
occupied. Then we go to bed ourselves, after the inevitable
preparations, the smoking of the little pipe, and the tap! tap! tap!
tap! on the edge of the box.

Suddenly Yves begins to move restlessly in his sleep, to toss about,
giving great kicks on the wall, and making a frightful noise.

What can be the matter? I imagine at once that he must be dreaming of
the old hag and her wolfish shadow. Chrysantheme raises herself on her
elbow and listens, with astonishment depicted on her face.

Ah, happy thought! she has guessed what is tormenting him:

"Ka!" ("mosquitoes") she says.

And, to impress the more forcibly her meaning on my mind, she pinches my
arm so hard with her little pointed nails, at the same time imitating,
with such an amusing play of her features, the grimace of a person who is
stung, that I exclaim:

"Oh! stop, Chrysantheme, this pantomime is too expressive, and indeed
useless! I know the word 'Ka', and had quite understood, I assure you."

It is done so drolly and so quickly, with such a pretty pout, that in
truth I can not think of being angry, although I shall certainly have
tomorrow a blue mark on my arm; about that there is no doubt.

"Come, we must get up and go to Yves's rescue; he must not be allowed to
go on thumping in that manner. Let us take a lantern, and see what has
happened."

It was indeed the mosquitoes. They are hovering in a thick cloud about
him; those of the house and those of the garden all seem collected
together, swarming and buzzing. Chrysantheme indignantly burns several
at the flame of her lantern, and shows me others (Hou!) covering the
white paper walls.

He, tired out with his day's amusement, sleeps on; but his slumbers are
restless, as may be easily imagined. Chrysantheme gives him a shake,
wishing him to get up and share our blue mosquito-net.

After a little pressing he does as he is bid and follows us, looking like
an overgrown boy only half awake. I make no objection to this singular
hospitality; after all, it looks so little like a bed, the matting we are
to share, and we sleep in our clothes, as we always do, according to the
Nipponese fashion. After all, on a journey in a railway, do not the most
estimable ladies stretch themselves without demur by the side of
gentlemen unknown to them?

I have, however, placed Chrysantheme's little wooden block in the centre
of the gauze tent, between our two pillows.

Without saying a word, in a dignified manner, as if she were rectifying
an error of etiquette that I had inadvertently committed, Chrysantheme
takes up her piece of wood, putting in its place my snake-skin drum; I
shall therefore be in the middle between the two. It is really more
correct, decidedly more proper; Chrysantheme is evidently a very decorous
young person.

Returning on board next morning, in the clear morning sun, we walk
through pathways full of dew, accompanied by a band of funny little
mousmes of six or eight years of age, who are going to school.

Needless to say, the cicalas around us keep up their perpetual sonorous
chirping. The mountain smells delicious. The atmosphere, the dawning
day, the infantine grace of these little girls in their long frocks and
shiny coiffures-all is redundant with freshness and youth. The flowers
and grasses on which we tread sparkle with dewdrops, exhaling a perfume
of freshness. What undying beauty there is, even in Japan, in the fresh
morning hours in the country, and the dawning hours of life!

Besides, I am quite ready to admit the attractiveness of the little
Japanese children; some of them are most fascinating. But how is it that
their charm vanishes so rapidly and is so quickly replaced by the elderly
grimace, the smiling ugliness, the monkeyish face?

CHAPTER XXXV

THROUGH A MICROSCOPE

The small garden of my mother-in-law, Madame Renoncule, is, without
exception, one of the most melancholy spots I have seen in all my travels
through the world.

Oh, the slow, enervating, dull hours spent in idle and diffuse
conversation on the dimly lighted veranda! Oh, the detestable peppered
jam in the tiny pots! In the middle of the town, enclosed by four walls,
is this park of five yards square, with little lakes, little mountains,
and little rocks, where all wears an antiquated appearance, and
everything is covered with a greenish mold from want of sunlight.

Nevertheless, a true feeling for nature has inspired this tiny
representation of a wild spot. The rocks are well placed, the dwarf
cedars, no taller than cabbages, stretch their gnarled boughs over the
valleys in the attitude of giants wearied by the weight of centuries; and
their look of full-grown trees perplexes one and falsifies the
perspective. When from the dark recesses of the apartment one perceives
at a certain distance this diminutive landscape dimly lighted, the wonder
is whether it is all artificial, or whether one is not one's self the
victim of some morbid illusion; and whether it is not indeed a real
country view seen through a distorted vision out of focus, or through the
wrong end of a telescope.

To any one familiar with Japanese life, my mother-in-law's house in
itself reveals a refined nature--complete bareness, two or three screens
placed here and there, a teapot, a vase full of lotus-flowers, and
nothing more. Woodwork devoid of paint or varnish, but carved in most
elaborate and capricious openwork, the whiteness of the pinewood being
preserved by constant scrubbing with soap and water. The posts and beams
of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are cut in
precise geometrical forms; others are artificially twisted, imitating
trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers. Everywhere are
little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets concealed in the most
ingenious and unexpected manner under the immaculate uniformity of the
white paper panels.

I can not help smiling when I think of some of the so-called "Japanese"
drawing-rooms of our Parisian fine ladies, overcrowded with knickknacks
and curios and hung with coarse gold embroideries on exported satins.
I would advise those persons to come and look at the houses of people
of taste out here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces at Yeddo.
In France we have works of art in order to enjoy them; here they possess
them merely to ticket them and lock them up carefully in a kind of
mysterious underground room called a 'godoun', shut in by iron gratings.
On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of distinction, do they
open this impenetrable depositary. The true Japanese manner of
understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost excessive
cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of extreme
simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the most infinitesimal details.

My mother-in-law seems to be really a very good woman, and were it not
for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden produces
on me, I should often go to see her. She has nothing in common with the
mammas of Jonquille, Campanule, or Touki she is vastly their superior;
and then I can see that she has been very good-looking and fashionable.
Her past life puzzles me; but, in my position as a son-in-law, good
manners prevent my making further inquiries.

Some assert that she was formerly a celebrated geisha in Yeddo, who lost
public favor by her folly in becoming a mother. This would account for
her daughter's talent on the guitar; she had probably herself taught her
the touch and style of the Conservatory.

Since the birth of Chrysantheme (her eldest child and first cause of this
loss of favor), my mother-in-law, an expansive although distinguished
nature, has fallen seven times into the same fatal error, and I have two
little sisters-in-law: Mademoiselle La Neige,--[Oyouki-San]--and
Mademoiselle La Lune,--[Tsouki-San.]--as well as five little brothers-
in-law: Cerisier, Pigeon, Liseron, Or, and Bambou.

Little Bambou is four years old--a yellow baby, fat and round all over,
with fine bright eyes; coaxing and jolly, sleeping whenever he is not
laughing. Of all my Nipponese family, Bambou is the one I love the most.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MY NAUGHTY DOLL

Tuesday, August 27th.

During this whole day we--Yves, Chrysantheme, Oyouki and myself--have
spent the time wandering through dark and dusty nooks, dragged hither and
thither by four quick-footed djins, in search of antiquities in the bric-
a-brac shops.

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