Madame Chrysantheme Part 8

XXIV.

_August 4th_.

The _Triomphante_, which has been lying in the roadsteads almost at the foot of the hill on which stands my house, enters the dock to-day to undergo repairs rendered necessary by the long blockade of Formosa.

I am now a long way from my home, and obliged to cross by boat the whole breadth of the bay when I wish to see Chrysantheme; for the dock is situated on the sh.o.r.e opposite to Diou-djen-dji. It is sunk in a little valley, narrow and deep, midst all kinds of foliage,--bamboos, camellias, trees of all sorts; our masts and spars, seen from the deck, look as if they were tangled among the branches.

The situation of the vessel--no longer afloat--gives the crew a greater facility for clandestine escapes from the ship at no matter what hour of the night, and our sailors have made friends with all the girls of the villages perched on the mountains above us.

These quarters and his excessive liberty, give me some uneasiness about my poor Yves; for this country of frivolous pleasure has a little turned his head. Moreover, I am more and more convinced that he is in love with Chrysantheme.

It is really a pity that the sentiment has not occurred to me instead, since it is I who have gone the length of marrying her.

XXV.

Notwithstanding the increased distance, I continue my daily visits to Diou-djen-dji. When night has fallen, and the four couples who compose our society have joined us, as well as Yves and the _amazingly tall friend_,--we descend again into the town, stumbling by lantern light down the steep stairways and slopes of the old suburb.

This nocturnal stroll is always the same, and accompanied always by the same amus.e.m.e.nts: we pause before the same queer stalls, we drink the same sugared drinks served to us in the same little gardens. But our troop is often more numerous: to begin with, we chaperon Oyouki who is confided to our care by her parents; then we have two cousins of my wife's--pretty little creatures; and lastly friends--guests of sometimes only ten or twelve years old, little girls of the neighborhood to whom our mousmes wish to show some politeness.

Oh! what a singular company of tiny beings forms our suite and follows us into the tea-gardens in the evenings! The most absurd faces, with sprigs of flowers stuck in the oddest fashion in their comical and childish heads! One might suppose it was a whole school of mousmes out for an evening's frolic under our care.

Yves returns with us, when time comes to remount our hill,--Chrysantheme heaves great sighs like a tired child, and stops on every step, leaning on our arms.

When we have reached our destination he says good-night, just touches Chrysantheme's hand, and descending once more, by the slope which leads to the quays and the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan, to get on board the _Triomphante_.

Meantime, we, with the aid of a sort of secret key, open the door of our garden, where Madame Prune's pots of flowers, ranged in the darkness, send forth delicious odors in the night air. We cross the garden by moonlight or starlight, and mount to our own rooms.

If it is very late,--a frequent occurrence,--we find all our wooden panels drawn and tightly shut by the careful M. Sucre (as a precaution against thieves), and our apartment is as close and as private as if it were a real European one.

In this house, when every c.h.i.n.k is thus closed, a strange odor mingles with the musk and the lotus,--an odor essential to j.a.pan, to the yellow race, belonging to the soil or emanating from the venerable woodwork; almost an odor of wild beast. The mosquito curtain of dark blue gauze ready hung for the night, falls from the ceiling with the air of a mysterious velum. The gilded Buddha smiles eternally at the night-lamps burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging to our ceiling, flutters at this hour under the very nose of the G.o.d, turning and flitting round the thin quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall, its feelers spread out starwise, sleeps some great garden spider, which one must not kill because it is night. "Hou!" says Chrysantheme indignantly, pointing it out to me with leveled finger. "Quick! where is the fan kept for the purpose, wherewith to hunt it out of doors?"

Around us reigns a silence which is almost painful after all the joyous noises of the town, and all the laughter, now hushed, of our band of mousmes,--a silence of the country, of some sleeping village.

XXVI.

The noise of the innumerable wooden panels which at the fall of night are pulled and shut in every j.a.panese house, is one of the peculiarities of the country which will remain longest imprinted on my memory. From our neighbors' houses, floating to us over the green gardens, these noises reach us one after the other, in series, more or less deadened, more or less distant.

Just below us, those of Madame Prune move very badly, creak and make a hideous noise in their worn-out grooves.

Ours are somewhat noisy too, for the old house is full of echoes, and there are at least twenty to run over long slides in order to close in completely the kind of open hall in which we live. Generally it is Chrysantheme who undertakes this piece of household work, and a great deal of trouble it gives her, for she often pinches her fingers in the singular awkwardness of her too tiny hands, which have never been accustomed to do any work.

Then comes her toilette for the night. With a certain grace she lets fall the day-dress, and slips on a more simple one of blue cotton, which has the same paG.o.da sleeves, the same shape all but the train, and which she fastens round her waist by a sash of muslin of the same color.

The high head-dress remains untouched, it is needless to say; all but the pins which are taken out and laid beside her in a lacquer box.

Then there is the little silver pipe that must absolutely be smoked before going to sleep; this is one of the customs which most provokes me, but has to be borne.

Chrysantheme, like a gypsy, squats before a particular square box, made of red wood, which contains a little tobacco jar, a little porcelain stove full of hot embers, and finally a little bamboo pot serving at the same time as ash-tray and spittoon. (Madame Prune's smoking-box downstairs, and every smoking-box in j.a.pan, both of men and women, is exactly the same, and contains precisely the same objects, arranged in precisely the same manner; and wherever it may be, whether in the house of the rich or the poor, it always lies about somewhere on the floor.)

The word "pipe" is at once too trivial and too big to be applied to this delicate silver tube, which is perfectly straight and at the end of which, in a microscopic receptacle, is placed one pinch of golden tobacco, chopped finer than silken thread.

Two puffs, or at most three; it lasts scarcely a few seconds, and the pipe is finished. Then _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ the little tube is struck smartly against the edge of the smoking-box to knock out the ashes, which never will fall; and this tapping, heard everywhere, in every house, at every hour of the day or night, quick and droll as the scratching of a monkey, is in j.a.pan one of the noises most characteristic of human life.

"Anata nominase!" ("You must smoke too!") says Chrysantheme.

Having again filled the vexatious little pipe, she puts the silver tube to my lips with a bow. Courtesy forbids my refusal; but I find it detestably bitter.

Now, before laying myself down under the blue mosquito-net, I open two of the panels in the room, one on the side of the silent and deserted footpath, the other one on the garden side, overlooking the terraces, so that the night air may breathe upon us, even at the risk of bringing us the company of some belated c.o.c.kchafer, or more giddy moth.

Our wooden house, with its thin old walls, vibrates at night like a great dry fiddle; the slightest noises grow great in it, become disfigured and positively disquieting.

Beneath the verandah are hung two little aeolian harps, which at the least ruffle of the breeze running through their blades of gra.s.s, emit a gentle tinkling sound, like the harmonious murmur of a brook; outside, to the very furthest limits of the distance, the cicalas continue their great and everlasting concert; over our heads, on the black roof, is heard pa.s.sing like a witch's sabbath, the raging battle to the death of cats, rats and owls.

Presently, when in the early dawn, a fresher breeze, mounting upwards from the sea and the deep harbor, reaches us, Chrysantheme will slyly get up and shut the panels I have opened.

Before that, however, she will have risen at least three times to smoke: having yawned like a cat, stretched herself, twisted in every direction her little amber arms, and her graceful little hands, she sits up resolutely, with all the waking groans and half words of a child, pretty and fascinating enough: then she emerges from the gauze tent, fills her little pipe, and breathes a few puffs of the bitter and unpleasant mixture.

Then comes _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ against the box to shake out the ashes. In the resounding sonority of the night it makes quite a terrible noise, which wakes Madame Prune. This is fatal. Madame Prune is at once seized also with a longing to smoke which may not be denied; then, to the noise from above, comes an answering _pan, pan, pan, pan,_ from below, exactly like it, exasperating and inevitable as an echo.

XXVII.

More cheerful are the noises of the morning: the c.o.c.ks crowing, the wooden panels all round the neighborhood sliding back upon their rollers; or the strange cry of some little fruit-hawker, patrolling our lofty suburb in the early dawn. And the gra.s.shoppers absolutely seem to chirp more loudly, to celebrate the return of the sunlight.

Above all, rises to our ears from below the sound of Madame Prune's long prayers, ascending through the floor, monotonous as the song of a somnambulist, regular and soothing as the splash of a fountain. It lasts three-quarters of an hour at least; it drones along, a rapid flow of words in a high nasal key; from time to time, when the inattentive Spirits are not listening, it is accompanied by a clapping of dry palms, or by harsh sounds from a kind of wooden clapper made of two discs of mandragora root; it is an uninterrupted stream of prayer; its flow never ceases, and the quavering continues without stopping, like the bleating of an old nanny-goat in delirium.

_"After having washed the hands and feet"_ say the sacred books, _"the great G.o.d Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, who is the royal power of j.a.pan, must be invoked; the manes of all the defunct Emperors descended from him must also be invoked; next, the manes of all his personal ancestors, to the furthest generation; the Spirits of the Air and Sea; the Spirits of all secret and impure places; the Spirits of the tombs of the district whence you spring, etc., etc."_

"I worship and implore you," sings Madame Prune, "Oh Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, royal power. Cease not to protect your faithful people, who are ready to sacrifice themselves for their country. Grant that I may become as holy as yourself, and drive from my mind all dark thoughts. I am a coward and a sinner; purge me from my cowardice and sinfulness, even as the north wind drives the dust into the sea. Wash me clean from all my iniquities, as one washes away uncleanness in the river of Kamo. Make me the richest woman in the world. I believe in your glory, which shall be spread over the whole earth, and illuminate it forever for my happiness. Grant me the continued good health of my family, and above all, my own, who, oh Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, do worship and adore you, and only you, etc., etc."

Here follow all the Emperors, all the Spirits, and the interminable list of the ancestors.

In her trembling old woman's falsetto, Madame Prune sings out all this, without omitting anything, at a pace which almost takes away her breath.

And very strange it is to hear: at length it seems hardly a human voice; it sounds like a series of magic formulas, unwinding themselves from an inexhaustible roller, and escaping to take flight through the air. By its very weirdness, and by the persistency of its incantation, it ends by producing in my scarcely awakened brain, an almost religious impression.

Every day I wake to the sound of this Shintoist litany chanted beneath me, vibrating through the exquisite clearness of the summer mornings,--while our night-lamps burn low before the smiling Buddha, while the eternal sun, scarcely risen, already sends through the cracks of our wooden panels its bright rays, which dart like golden arrows through our darkened dwelling and our blue gauze tent.