Books: Madame Chrysantheme, v3
P >>
Pierre Loti >> Madame Chrysantheme, v3
They were on their best behavior throughout the visit. But when the
moment of departure came, Chrysantheme, who would not go away without
seeing Yves, asked for him with a thinly veiled persistency which was
remarkable. Yves, for whom I then sent, made himself particularly
charming to her, so much so that this time I felt a shade of more serious
annoyance; I even asked myself whether the laughably pitiable ending,
which I had hitherto vaguely foreseen, might not, after all, soon break
upon us.
CHAPTER XLII
AN ORIENTAL VISION
September 4th.
Yesterday I encountered, in an ancient and ruined quarter of the town, a
perfectly exquisite mousme, charmingly dressed; a fresh touch of color
against the sombre background of decayed buildings.
I met her at the farthest end of Nagasaki, in the most ancient part of
the town. In this region are trees centuries old, antique temples of
Buddha, of Amiddah, of Benten, or Kwanon, with steep and pompous roofs;
monsters carved in granite sit there in courtyards silent as the grave,
where the grass grows between the stones. This deserted quarter is
traversed by a narrow torrent running in a deep channel, across which are
thrown little curved bridges with granite balustrades eaten away by
lichen. All the objects there wear the strange grimace, the quaint
arrangement familiar to us in the most antique Japanese drawings.
I walked through it all at the burning hour of midday, and saw not a
soul, unless, indeed, through the open windows of the bonze-houses,
I caught sight of some few priests, guardians of tombs or sanctuaries,
taking their siesta under dark-blue gauze nets.
Suddenly this little mousme appeared, a little above me, just at the
point of the arch of one of these bridges carpeted with gray moss; she
was in full sunshine, and stood out in brilliant clearness, like a fairy
vision, against the background of old black temples and deep shadows.
She was holding her robe together with one hand, gathering it close round
her ankles to give herself an air of greater slimness. Over her quaint
little head, her round umbrella with its thousand ribs threw a great halo
of blue and red, edged with black, and an oleander-tree full of flowers,
growing among the stones of the bridge, spread its glory beside her,
bathed, like herself, in the sunshine. Behind this youthful figure and
this flowering shrub all was blackness. Upon the pretty red and blue
parasol great white letters formed this inscription, much used among the
mousmes, and which I have learned to recognize: 'Stop! clouds, to see her
pass!' And it was really worth the trouble to stop and look at this
exquisite little person, of a type so ideally Japanese.
However, it will not do to stop too long and be ensnared--it would only
be another delusion. A doll like the rest, evidently, an ornament for a
china shelf, and nothing more. While I gaze at her, I say to myself that
Chrysantheme, appearing in this same place, with this dress, this play of
light, and this aureole of sunshine, would produce just as delightful an
effect.
For Chrysantheme is pretty, there can be no doubt about it. Yesterday
evening, in fact, I positively admired her. It was quite night; we were
returning with the usual escort of little married couples like ourselves,
from the inevitable tour of the tea-houses and bazaars. While the other
mousmes walked along hand in hand, adorned with new silver topknots which
they had succeeded in having presented to them, and amusing themselves
with playthings, she, pleading fatigue, followed, half reclining, in a
djin carriage. We had placed beside her great bunches of flowers
destined to fill our vases, late iris and long-stemmed lotus, the last of
the season, already smelling of autumn. And it was really very pretty to
see this Japanese girl in her little car, lying carelessly among all
these water-flowers, lighted by gleams of ever-changing colors, as they
chanced from the lanterns we met or passed. If, on the evening of my
arrival in Japan, any one had pointed her out to me, and said: "That
shall be your mousme," there can not be a doubt I should have been
charmed. In reality, however, I am not charmed; it is only Chrysantheme,
always Chrysantheme, nothing but Chrysantheme: a mere plaything to laugh
at, a little creature of finical forms and thoughts, with whom the agency
of M. Kangourou has supplied me.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE CATS AND THE DOLLS
The water used for drinking in our house, for making tea, and for lesser
washing purposes, is kept in large white china tubs, decorated with
paintings representing blue fish borne along by a swift current through
distorted rushes. In order to keep them cool, the tubs are kept out of
doors on Madame Prune's roof, at a place where we can, from the top of
our projecting balcony, easily reach them by stretching out an arm. A
real godsend for all the thirsty cats in the neighborhood, on warm summer
nights, is this corner of the roof with our gayly painted tubs, and it
proves a delightful trysting-place for them, after all their caterwauling
and long solitary rambles on the tops of the walls.
I had thought it my duty to warn Yves the first time he wished to drink
this water.
"Oh!" he replied, rather surprised, "cats, do you say? But they are not
dirty!"
On this point Chrysantheme and I agree with him: we do not consider cats
unclean animals, and we do not object to drink after them.
Yves considers Chrysantheme much in the same light. "She is not dirty,
either," he says; and he willingly drinks after her, out of the same cup,
putting her in the same category with the cats.
These china tubs are one of the daily preoccupations of our household: in
the evening, when we return from our walk, after the clamber up, which
makes us thirsty, and Madame L'Heure's waffles, which we have been eating
to beguile the way, we always find them empty. It seems impossible for
Madame Prune, or Mademoiselle Oyouki, or their young servant,
Mademoiselle Dede,--[Dede-San means "Miss Young Girl," a very common
name.]--to have forethought enough to fill them while it is still
daylight. And when we are late in returning home, these three ladies are
asleep, so we are obliged to attend to the business ourselves.
We must therefore open all the closed doors, put on our boots, and go
down into the garden to draw water.
As Chrysantheme would die of fright all alone in the dark, in the midst
of the trees and buzzing of insects, I am obliged to accompany her to the
well. For this expedition we require a light, and must seek among the
quantity of lanterns purchased at Madame Tres-Propre's booth, which have
been thrown night after night into the bottom of one of our little paper
closets; but alas, all the candles are burned down! I thought as much!
Well, we must resolutely take the first lantern to hand, and stick a
fresh candle on the iron point at the bottom; Chrysantheme puts forth all
her strength, the candle splits, breaks; the mousme pricks her fingers,
pouts and whimpers. Such is the inevitable scene that takes place every
evening, and delays our retiring to rest under the dark-blue gauze net
for a good quarter of an hour; while the cicalas on the roof seem to mock
us with their ceaseless song.
All this, which I should find amusing in any one else,--any one I loved
--irritates me in her.
CHAPTER XLIV
TENDER MINISTRATIONS
September 11th.
A week has passed very quietly, during which I have written nothing.
By degrees I am becoming accustomed to my Japanese household, to the
strangeness of the language, costumes, and faces. For the last three
weeks no letters have arrived from Europe; they have no doubt miscarried,
and their absence contributes, as is usually the case, to throw a veil of
oblivion over the past.
Every day, therefore, I climb up to my villa, sometimes by beautiful
starlit nights, sometimes through downpours of rain. Every morning as
the sound of Madame Prune's chanted prayer rises through the
reverberating air, I awake and go down toward the sea, by grassy pathways
full of dew.
The chief occupation in Japan seems to be a perpetual hunt after curios.
We sit down on the mattings, in the antique-sellers' little booths,
taking a cup of tea with the salesmen, and rummage with our own hands in
the cupboards and chests, where many a fantastic piece of old rubbish is
huddled away. The bargaining, much discussed, is laughingly carried on
for several days, as if we were trying to play off some excellent little
practical joke upon each other.
I really make a sad abuse of the adjective little; I am quite aware of
it, but how can I do otherwise? In describing this country, the
temptation is great to use it ten times in every written line. Little,
finical; affected,--all Japan is contained, both physically and morally,
in these three words.
My purchases are accumulating in my little wood and paper house; but how
much more Japanese it really was, in its bare emptiness, such as M. Sucre
and Madame Prune had conceived it. There are now many lamps of sacred
symbolism hanging from the ceiling; many stools and many vases, as many
gods and goddesses as in a pagoda.
There is even a little Shintoist altar, before which Madame Prune has not
been able to restrain her feelings, and before which she has fallen down
and chanted her prayers in her bleating, goat-like voice:
"Wash me clean from all my impurity, O Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami! as one
washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo."
Alas for poor Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami to have to wash away the impurities of
Madame Prune! What a tedious and ungrateful task!!
Chrysantheme, who is a Buddhist, prays sometimes in the evening before
lying down; although overcome with sleep, she prays clapping her hands
before the largest of our gilded idols. But she smiles with a childish
disrespect for her Buddha, as soon as her prayer is ended. I know that
she has also a certain veneration for her Ottokes (the spirits of her
ancestors), whose rather sumptuous altar is set up at the house of her
mother, Madame Renoncule. She asks for their blessings, for fortune and
wisdom.
Who can fathom her ideas about the gods, or about death? Does she
possess a soul? Does she think she has one? Her religion is an obscure
chaos of theogonies as old as the world, treasured up out of respect for
ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final
annihilation, imported from India by saintly Chinese missionaries at the
epoch of our Middle Ages. The bonzes themselves are puzzled; what a
muddle, therefore, must not all this become, when jumbled together in the
childish brain of a sleepy mousme!
Two very insignificant episodes have somewhat attached me to her--(bonds
of this kind seldom fail to draw closer in the end). The first occasion
was as follows:
Madame Prune one day brought forth a relic of her gay youth, a tortoise-
shell comb of rare transparency, one of those combs that it is good style
to place on the summit of the head, lightly poised, hardly stuck at all
in the hair, with all the teeth showing. Taking it out of a pretty
little lacquered box, she held it up in the air and blinked her eyes,
looking through it at the sky--a bright summer sky--as one does to
examine the quality of a precious stone.
"Here is," she said, "an object of great value that you should offer to
your little wife."
My mousme, very much taken by it, admired the clearness of the comb and
its graceful shape.
The lacquered box, however, pleased me more. On the cover was a
wonderful painting in gold on gold, representing a field of rice, seen
very close, on a windy day; a tangle of ears and grass beaten down and
twisted by a terrible squall; here and there, between the distorted
stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even
little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on
which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a thick
liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be well
seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the whole
picture was no larger than a woman's hand.
As for Madame Prune's comb, I confess it left me indifferent, and I
turned a deaf ear, thinking it very insignificant and expensive. Then
Chrysantheme answered, mournfully:
"No, thank you, I don't want it; take it away, dear Madame Prune."
And at the same time she heaved a deep sigh, full of meaning, which
plainly said:
"He is not so fond of me as all that.--Useless to bother him."
I immediately made the wished-for purchase.
Later when Chrysantheme will have become an old monkey like Madame Prune,
with her black teeth and long orisons, she, in her turn, will retail that
comb to some fine lady of a fresh generation.
On another occasion the sun had given me a headache; I lay on the floor
resting my head on my snake-skin pillow. My eyes were dim; and
everything appeared to turn around: the open veranda, the big expanse of
luminous evening sky, and a variety of kites hovering against its
background. I felt myself vibrating painfully to the rhythmical sound of
the cicalas which filled the atmosphere.
She, crouching by my side, strove to relieve me by a Japanese process,
pressing with all her might on my temples with her little thumbs and
turning them rapidly around, as if she were boring a hole with a gimlet.
She had become quite hot and red over this hard work, which procured me
real comfort, something similar to the dreamy intoxication of opium.
Then, anxious and fearful lest I should have an attack of fever, she
rolled into a pellet and thrust into my mouth a very efficacious prayer
written on rice-paper, which she had kept carefully in the lining of one
of her sleeves.
Well, I swallowed that prayer without a smile, not wishing to hurt her
feelings or shake her funny little faith.
CHAPTER XLV
TWO FAIR ARISTOCRATS
Today, Yves, my mousme and I went to the best photographer in Nagasaki,
to be taken in a group. We shall send the picture to France. Yves
laughs as he thinks of his wife's astonishment when she sees
Chrysantheme's little face between us, and he wonders how he shall
explain it to her.
"I shall just say it is one of your friends, that's all!" he says to me.
In Japan there are many photographers like our own, with this difference,
that they are Japanese, and inhabit Japanese houses. The one we intend
to honor to-day carries on his business in the suburbs, in that ancient
quarter of big trees and gloomy pagodas where, the other day, I met the
pretty little mousme. His signboard, written in several languages, is
posted against a wall on the edge of the little torrent which, rushing
down from the green mountain above, is crossed by many a curved bridge of
old granite and lined on either side with light bamboos or oleanders in
full bloom.
It is astonishing and puzzling to find a photographer perched there, in
the very heart of old Japan.
We have come at the wrong moment; there is a file of people at the door.
Long rows of djins' cars are stationed there, awaiting the customers they
have brought, who will all have their turn before us. The runners, naked
and tattooed, their hair carefully combed in sleek bands and shiny
chignons, are chatting, smoking little pipes, or bathing their muscular
legs in the fresh water of the torrent.
The courtyard is irreproachably Japanese, with its lanterns and dwarf
trees. But the studio where one poses might be in Paris or Pontoise; the
self-same chair in "old oak," the same faded "poufs," plaster columns,
and pasteboard rocks.
The people who are being photographed at this moment are two ladies of
quality, evidently mother and daughter, who are sitting together for a
cabinet-size portrait, with accessories of the time of Louis XV. A
strange group this, the first great ladies of this country I have seen so
near, with their long, aristocratic faces, dull, lifeless, almost gray by
dint of rice-powder, and their mouths painted heart-shape in vivid
carmine. Withal they have an undeniable look of good breeding that
strongly impresses us, notwithstanding the intrinsic differences of race
and acquired notions.
They scanned Chrysantheme with a look of obvious scorn, although her
costume was as ladylike as their own. For my part, I could not take my
eyes off these two creatures; they captivated me like incomprehensible
things that one never had seen before. Their fragile bodies,
outlandishly graceful in posture, are lost in stiff materials and
redundant sashes, of which the ends droop like tired wings. They make me
think, I know not why, of great rare insects; the extraordinary patterns
on their garments have something of the dark motley of night-moths.
Above all, I ponder over the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn
back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can hardly open; the mystery
of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly,
vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to
ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this
Japanese people! how totally dissimilar are our races!"
We are compelled to let several English sailors pass before us, decked
out in their white drill clothes, fresh, fat, and pink, like little sugar
figures, who attitudinize in a sheepish manner around the shafts of the
columns.
At last it is our turn; Chrysantheme settles herself slowly in a very
affected style, turning in the points of her toes as much as possible,
according to the fashion.
And on the negative shown to us we look like a supremely ridiculous
little family drawn up in a line by a common photographer at a fair.
CHAPTER XLVI
GRAVE SUSPICIONS
September 13th.
Tonight Yves is off duty three hours earlier than I; occasionally this
happens, according to the arrangement of the watches. At those times he
lands first, and goes up to wait for me at Diou-djen-dji.
From the deck I can see him through my glass, climbing up the green
mountain-path; he walks with a brisk, rapid step, almost running; what a
hurry he seems in to rejoin little Chrysantheme!
When I arrive, about nine o'clock, I find him seated on the floor, in the
middle of my rooms, with naked torso (this is a sufficiently proper
costume for private life here, I admit). Around him are grouped
Chrysantheme, Oyouki, and Mademoiselle Dede the maid, all eagerly rubbing
his back with little blue towels decorated with storks and humorous
subjects.
Good heavens! what can he have been doing to be so hot, and to have put
himself in such a state?
He tells me that near our house, a little farther up the mountain, he has
discovered a fencing-gallery: that till nightfall he had been engaged in
a fencing-bout against Japanese, who fought with two-handed swords,
springing like cats, as is the custom of their country. With his French
method of fencing, he had given them a good drubbing. Upon which, with
many a low bow, they had shown him their admiration by bringing him a
quantity of nice little iced things to drink. All this combined had
thrown him into a fearful perspiration.
Ah, very well! Nevertheless, this did not quite explain to me!
He is delighted with his evening; intends to go and amuse himself every
day by beating them; he even thinks of taking pupils.
Once his back is dried, all together, the three mousmes and himself, play
at Japanese pigeon-vole. Really I could not wish for anything more
innocent, or more correct in every respect.
Charles N---- and Madame Jonquille, his wife, arrived unexpectedly about
ten o'clock. (They were wandering about in the dark shrubberies in our
neighborhood, and, seeing our lights, came up to us.)
They intend to finish the evening at the tea-house of the toads, and they
try to induce us to go and drink some iced sherbets with them. It is at
least an hour's walk from here, on the other side of the town, halfway up
the hill, in the gardens of the large pagoda dedicated to Osueva; but
they stick to their idea, pretending that in this clear night and bright
moonlight we shall have a lovely view from the terrace of the temple.
Lovely, I have no doubt, but we had intended going to bed. However, be
it so, let us go with them.
We hire five djins and five cars down below, in the principal street, in
front of Madame Tres-Propre's shop, who, for this late expedition,
chooses for us her largest round lanterns-big, red balloons, decorated
with starfish, seaweed, and green sharks.
It is nearly eleven o'clock when we make our start. In the central
quarters the virtuous Nipponese are already closing their little booths,
putting out their lamps, shutting the wooden framework, drawing their
paper panels.
Farther on, in the old-fashioned suburban streets, all is shut up long
ago, and our carts roll on through the black night. We cry out to our
djins: "Ayakou! ayakou!" ("Quick! quick!")and they run as hard as they
can, uttering little shrieks, like merry animals full of wild gayety.
We rush like a whirlwind through the darkness, all five in Indian file,
dashing and jolting over the old, uneven flagstones, dimly lighted up by
our red balloons fluttering at the end of their bamboo stems. From time
to time some Japanese, night-capped in his blue kerchief, opens a window
to see who these noisy madcaps can be, dashing by so rapidly and so late.
Or else some faint glimmer, thrown by us on our passage, discovers the
hideous smile of a large stone animal seated at the gate of a pagoda.
At last we arrive at the foot of Osueva's temple, and, leaving our djins
with our little gigs, we clamber up the gigantic steps, completely
deserted at this hour of the night.
Chrysantheme, who always likes to play the part of a tired little girl,
of a spoiled and pouting child, ascends slowly between Yves and myself,
clinging to our arms.
Jonquille, on the contrary, skips up like a bird, amusing herself by
counting the endless steps.
She lays a great stress on the accentuations, as if to make the numbers
sound even more droll.
A little silver aigrette glitters in her beautiful black coiffure; her
delicate and graceful figure seems strangely fantastic, and the darkness
that envelops us conceals the fact that her face is quite ugly, and
almost without eyes.
This evening Chrysantheme and Jonquille really look like little fairies;
at certain moments the most insignificant Japanese have this appearance,
by dint of whimsical elegance and ingenious arrangement.
The granite stairs, imposing, deserted, uniformly gray under the
nocturnal sky, appear to vanish into the empty space above us, and, when
we turn round, to disappear in the depths beneath, to fall into the abyss
with the dizzy rapidity of a dream. On the sloping steps the black
shadows of the gateways through which we must pass stretch out
indefinitely; and the shadows, which seem to be broken at each projecting
step, look like the regular creases of a fan. The porticoes stand up
separately, rising one above another; their wonderful shapes are at once
remarkably simple and studiously affected; their outlines stand out sharp
and distinct, having nevertheless the vague appearance of all very large
objects in the pale moonlight. The curved architraves rise at each
extremity like two menacing horns, pointing upward toward the far-off
blue canopy of the star-spangled sky, as if they would communicate to the
gods the knowledge they have acquired in the depths of their foundations
from the earth, full of sepulchres and death, which surrounds them.
We are, indeed, a very small group, lost now in the immensity of the
colossal acclivity as we move onward, lighted partly by the wan moon,
partly by the red lanterns we hold in our hands, floating at the ends of
their long sticks.
A deep silence reigns in the precincts of the temple, even the sound of
insects is hushed as we ascend. A sort of reverence, a kind of religious
fear steals over us, and, at the same moment, a delicious coolness
suddenly pervades the air, and passes over us.
On entering the courtyard above, we feel a little daunted. Here we find
the horse in jade, and the china turrets. The enclosing walls make it
the more gloomy, and our arrival seems to disturb I know not what
mysterious council held between the spirits of the air and the visible
symbols that are there, chimeras and monsters illuminated by the blue
rays of the moon.
We turn to the left, and go through the terraced gardens, to reach the
tea-house of the toads, which this evening is our goal; we find it shut
up--I expected as much--closed and dark, at this hour! We drum all
together on the door; in the most coaxing tones we call by name the
waiting-maids we know so well: Mademoiselle Transparente, Mademoiselle
Etoile, Mademoiselle Rosee-matinale, and Mademoiselle Margueritereine.
Not an answer. Good-by, perfumed sherbets and frosted beans!
In front of the little archery-house our mousmes suddenly jump aside,
terrified, declaring that there is a dead body on the ground. Yes,
indeed, some one is lying there. We cautiously examine the place by the
light of our red balloons, carefully held out at arm's length for fear of
this dead man. It is only the marksman, he who on the 4th of July chose
such magnificent arrows for Chrysantheme; and he sleeps, good man! with
his chignon somewhat dishevelled, a sound sleep, which it would be cruel
to disturb.