Madame Chrysantheme Part 2

While awaiting M. Kangourou (who is dressing himself it appears, and will be here shortly), it may be as well to begin lunch.

In the daintiest bowl imaginable, adorned with flights of storks, is the most wildly impossible soup made of sea-weed. 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 the laugh peculiar to j.a.pan,--they make me eat, according to their fashion, with dainty chop-sticks, fingered with mannered grace. I am becoming accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined,--a refinement so utterly 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 there enters, like a night b.u.t.terfly 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 a.s.sumption. She is slim, elegant, delicate, and smells sweet; 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 the neck on account of all the delicate little curls of hair growing there, they had, in their love of exact.i.tude, 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 rejoice the drivelling fools on the other side of the screens.

Supposing 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 a nose, hardly any eyes. He makes a real j.a.panese 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, and which is the expression _nec plus ultra_ of obsequious politeness in this country). "You speak French, M. Kangourou?"

"_ sir" (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, M. 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 will see about it at once; in a week's time, as it happens, a family from Simonosaki, in which there are two charming daughters, will be here."

"What! in a week! You don't know me, M. Kangourou! No, no, either now, to-morrow, or not at all."

Again a hissing bow, and Kangourou-San catching my agitation, begins to pa.s.s in feverish review, all the young persons at his disposal in Nagasaki.

"Let us see--there was Mdlle. illet. What a pity that I had not spoken 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! Mdlle. Abricot!--Would she suit me, Mdlle. 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] a month. She is very accomplished, thoroughly understands commercial writings, and has at her finger ends more than two thousand characters of learned writing. In a poetical compet.i.tion she gained the first prize with a sonnet composed in praise of _'the blossoms of the black-thorn 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."

[Footnote A: A yen is equal to four shillings.]

"Oh no! on no account that one! Let us seek amongst a less distinguished cla.s.s 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 specter mask, M. 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, sir, no! Those are only _Guechas_,[B] sir--_Guechas!_"

[Footnote B: _Guechas_ are professional dancers and singers trained at the Yeddo Conservatory.]

"Well, but why not a _Guecha_? What odds can it be to me, whether they are _Guechas_ or not?" Later on, no doubt, when I understand j.a.panese 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 Mdlle. Jasmin.

Heavens! how was it he did not think 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 dresses 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 Mdlle. 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 over-arching bracken upon my head.

IV.

Three days have pa.s.sed. 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 up and down the great bare room, of which the thin, dry flooring cracks beneath our footsteps; we are both of us rather irritated by prolonged expectation. Yves, whose impatience shows itself the most freely, from time to time takes a look out of the window. As for myself, a chill suddenly seizes me, at the idea that I have chosen, and purpose 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 can have taken possession of me, to settle myself in surroundings so utterly 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 part.i.tions 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, j.a.panese fashion to-night, 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 put to pull these movable part.i.tions, they have made little oval holes, just the shape of a finger-end, and 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 a.s.siduous 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 acc.u.mulate 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 utter bareness and nudity.

Yves still continues to gaze forth, like Sister Anne. From the side on which he leans, my verandah 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 finishes by irritating me for good and all, and I turn my glances to the opposite side: the other front of my house, also a verandah, opens first of all upon a garden; then upon a marvelous panorama of woods and mountains, with all the venerable j.a.panese 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. There are great clouds heavy with rain and showers, ready to fall, traveling across the sky.

No, I cannot feel at home, in this strange dwelling I have chosen; I feel sensations of extreme solitude and strangeness; the mere prospect of pa.s.sing 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 given to 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 Mdlle. 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 j.a.panese; "here they are!

Bring at once the tea, the lamp, the embers, the little pipes for the ladies, the little bamboo pots for spittoons! Bring us 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 the little bare feet. Yves and I look at each other, with a longing to laugh.

An old lady enters,--two old ladies,--three old ladies, emerging from the doorway one after another with jerking and mechanical salutations, which we return as best we can, fully conscious of our inferiority in this particular style. Then come persons of intermediate age,--then quite young ones, a dozen at least, friends, neighbors, the whole quarter in fact. And the whole company, on arriving, becomes confusedly engaged in reciprocal salutations: I salute you,--- you salute me,--I salute you again, and you return it,--and I re-salute you again, and I express that I shall never, never be able to return it according to your high merit,--and I bang my forehead against the ground, and you stick your nose between the planks of the flooring, and there they are, on all fours one before the other; it is a polite dispute, all anxious to yield precedence as to sitting down, or pa.s.sing first, and compliments without end are murmured in low tones, with faces against the floor.

They seat themselves at last, smiling, in a ceremonious circle; we two remaining standing, our eyes fixed on the staircase. And at length emerges, in due turn, the little aigrette of silver flowers, the ebony chignon, the gray silk robe and mauve sash of Mdlle. Jasmin, my fiancee!

Heavens! why, I know her already! Long before setting foot in j.a.pan, I had met with her, on every fan, on every tea-cup--with her silly air, her puffy little visage, her tiny eyes, mere gimlet-holes above those expanses of impossible pink and white which are her cheeks.

She is young, that is all I can say in her favor; she is even so young that I should almost scruple to accept her. The wish to laugh quits me suddenly, and instead, a profound chill fastens on my heart. What!

share even an hour of my life with that little doll? Never!

The next question is, how to get out of it?

She advances smiling, with an air of repressed triumph, and behind her looms M. Kangourou, in his suit of gray tweed. Fresh salutes, and behold her on all fours, she too, before my landlady and before my neighbors. Yves, the big Yves, who is not going to be married, stands behind me, with a comical grimace, hardly repressing his laughter,--while to give myself time to collect my ideas, I offer tea in little cups, little spittoons and embers to the company.

Nevertheless, my discomfited air does not escape my visitors. M.

Kangourou anxiously inquires: