Madame Chrysantheme Part 10

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.

Day before yesterday, M. Sucre quite upset, Madame Prune almost swooning, and Mdlle. Oyouki bathed in tears, stormed my rooms. The Niponese 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 j.a.panese; and the terror of being prosecuted brought them to me, with a thousand apologies, but the humble request that I should leave.

The next day I therefore went off, accompanied by _the wonderfully tall friend_, who expresses himself better than I do in j.a.panese, to the register 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_, mark of _inferiority_ and the _familiar conjugation_, habitual towards those of low birth. Seating myself on the table used for weddings, in the midst of all the flurried little policemen, I open the conversation in the following terms:

"In order that _thou shouldest_ leave me in peace in the suburb I am inhabiting, what bribe must I offer _thee_, set of little beings more contemptible than any mere street porter?"

Great and mute scandal, silent consternation, and low bows greet my words.

"Certainly," they at last reply, 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 on 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, set of idiots, look at that!"

Arrival of a very high functionary,--a ridiculous little old fellow in a black coat, who from his office has been listening to the row:

"What is the matter? What is it? What is this annoyance put upon the French officers?"

I politely state my case to this personage, who cannot 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 can now make their minds easy, they will not be disturbed again.

x.x.xI.

_August 23rd_.

The prolonged stay of the _Triomphante_ in the dock, and the distance of our home from town, have been my pretext these last two or three days for not going up to Diou-djen-dji to see Chrysantheme.

It is dreary work though in these docks. With the early dawn a legion of little j.a.panese workmen invade us, bringing their dinners in baskets and gourds like the working-men in our a.r.s.enals, but with a needy, 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 ma.s.ses of foliage.

At two o'clock, in the broad sunlight, we have a new and far prettier kind of invasion: that of the beetles and b.u.t.terflies.

b.u.t.terflies 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 pa.s.sing by, taking his small roast to the oven in a mess-bowl, looks at him funnily and says:

"You had much better give it to me. I'd cook it!"

x.x.xII.

_August 24th_.

It is nearly five days since I have abandoned my home and Chrysantheme.

Since yesterday we have had a storm of rain and wind--(a typhoon that has pa.s.sed or is pa.s.sing over us). We beat to quarters in the middle of the night to _lower the top-masts, strike the lower yards_, and take every precaution against bad weather. The b.u.t.terflies no longer hover around us, but everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes of the mountain, the trees shiver, the long gra.s.ses bend low as though in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth are showered down like rain upon us.

In this land of pretty little trifles, this violent tempest is out of all harmony; it seems as if its efforts were exaggerated and its music too loud.

Towards evening the big dark clouds roll by so rapidly, that the showers are of short duration and soon pa.s.s 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 bamboos.

Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an old temple half-way up the hill, buried in a wood of centennial trees of 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 rain that pours down in torrents, 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 j.a.panese 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 chanced upon a clump of trees somewhat similar to oaks in appearance; they, too, have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts of undulating gra.s.s at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every direction. There, I suddenly have brought back to my mind, my first impression of a strong wind in the woods of Limoise, in the province of Saintonge, some twenty-eight years ago, in a month of March of my childhood.

That, the first storm of wind my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world,--and many years have rapidly pa.s.sed over that memory,--since then 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 then saw or heard were full of deep and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of oblivion, and reawakening memories of prior existence; 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 later, no doubt, when I should be grown up. Well, I have grown up, and have found nothing that answered to my undefinable 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 a gray darkness. Soon will my time come to return to eternal rest, and I shall leave this world without having understood the mysterious wherefore of these mirages of my childhood; I shall bear away with me a lingering regret, of I know not what lost home that I have failed to find, of the unknown beings ardently longed for, whom, alas, I have never embraced.

x.x.xIII.

With many affectations, M. Sucre has dipped the tip of his delicate paint-brush in Indian ink and traced a couple of charming storks on a pretty sheet of rice-paper, offering them to me in the most gracious manner, as a souvenir of himself. They are here, in my cabin on board, and whenever I look at them, I can fancy I see M. Sucre tracing them in an airy manner, with elegant facility.

The saucer in which M. Sucre mixes his ink, is in itself a little gem.

Chiselled out of a piece of jade, it represents a tiny lake with a carved border imitating rockwork. On this border is a little mama toad, also in jade, advancing as though to bathe in the little lake in which M. Sucre carefully keeps a few drops of very dark liquid. The mama toad has four little baby toads, equally 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 kind of bird. Few j.a.panese 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, and it led to some gossip. Therefore, when Madame Prune was engaged with one visitor, if a new arrival made his appearance, the ingenious husband, to make him wait patiently, and to while away the time in the ante-room, immediately offered to paint him some storks in a variety of att.i.tudes.

And this is how, in Nagasaki, all the j.a.panese 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.