Madame Chrysantheme Part 7

I arrived unexpectedly to-day at Diou-djen-dji, in the midst of a burning noonday heat. At the foot of the stairs lay Chrysantheme's wooden clogs and her sandals of varnished leather.

In our rooms, up above, all was open to the air; bamboo blinds lowered on the sunny side, and through their transparency came warm air and golden threads of light. To-day, the flowers Chrysantheme had placed in our bronze vases were lotus, and my eyes fell, as I entered, upon their great rosy cups.

According to her usual custom, she was lying flat on the floor enjoying her daily siesta.

What a singular originality these bouquets of Chrysantheme always have: a something difficult to define, a j.a.panese slimness, a mannered grace which we should never succeed in imparting to them.

She was sleeping flat on her face upon the mats, her high headdress and tortoisesh.e.l.l pins standing out boldly from the rest of the horizontal figure. The train of her tunic prolonged her delicate little body, like the tail of a bird; her arms were stretched crosswise, the sleeves spread out like wings,--and her long guitar lay beside her.

She looked like a dead fairy; or still more did she resemble some great blue dragon-fly, which, having alighted on that spot, some unkind hand had pinned to the floor.

Madame Prune, who had come upstairs after me, always officious and eager, manifested by her gestures her sentiments of indignation on beholding the careless reception accorded by Chrysantheme to her lord and master, and advanced to wake her.

"Pray do nothing of the kind, my good Madame Prune, you don't know how much I prefer her like that!" I had left my shoes below, according to custom, by the side of the little clogs and sandals; and I entered on the tips of my toes, very, very softly, to go and sit awhile under the verandah.

What a pity this little Chrysantheme cannot always be asleep; she is really extremely decorative seen in this manner,--and like this, at least, she does not bore me. Who knows what may perchance be going on in that little head and heart! If I only had the means of finding out!

But strange to say, since we have kept house together, instead of pus.h.i.+ng my studies in the j.a.panese language further, I have neglected them, so much have I felt the utter impossibility of ever interesting myself in the subject.

Seated under my verandah, my eyes wandered over the temples and cemeteries spread at my feet, over the woods and green mountains, over Nagasaki lying bathed in the sunlight. The cicalas were chirping their loudest, the strident noise trembling feverishly in the hot air. All was calm, full of light and full of heat.

Nevertheless, to my taste, it is not yet enough so! What then can have changed upon the earth? The burning noon-days of summer, such as I can recall in days gone by, were more brilliant, more full of suns.h.i.+ne; Nature seemed to me in those days more powerful, more terrible. One would say this was only a pale copy of all that I knew in early years,--a copy in which something is wanting. Sadly do I ask myself,--Is the splendor of the summer only this? _was it_ only this?

or is it the fault of my eyes, and as time goes on shall I behold everything around me paling still more?

Behind me a faint and melancholy strain of music,--melancholy enough to make one s.h.i.+ver,--and shrill, shrill as the song of the gra.s.shoppers, began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor j.a.panese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her guitar awaking together.

It pleased me that the idea should have occurred to her to greet me with music, instead of eagerly hastening to wish me "Good morning."

(At no time have I ever given myself the trouble to pretend the slightest affection for her, and a certain coldness even has grown up between us, especially when we are alone.) But to-day I turn to her with a smile, and wave my hand for her to continue. "Go on, it amuses me to listen to your quaint little impromptu." It is singular that the music of this essentially merry people should be so plaintive. But undoubtedly that which Chrysantheme is playing at this moment is worth listening to. Whence can it have come to her? What unutterable dreams, forever hidden from me, fly through her yellow head, when she plays or sings in this manner?

Suddenly: Pan, pan, pan! Some one knocks three times, with a harsh and bony finger against one of the steps of our stairs, and in the aperture of our doorway appears an idiot, clad in a suit of gray tweed, who bows low. "Come in, come in, M. Kangourou. How well you come, just in the nick of time! I was actually becoming enthusiastic over your country!"

It was a little was.h.i.+ng bill, which M. Kangourou respectfully wished to hand to me, with a profound bend of the whole body, the correct pose of the hands on the knees, and a long snake-like hiss.

XXI.

Following the road which climbs past the front of our dwelling, one pa.s.ses a dozen or more old villas, a few garden walls, and then there is nothing but the lonely mountain side, with little paths winding upwards towards the summit through plantations of tea, bushes of camellias, underwood and rocks. The mountains round Nagasaki are covered with cemeteries; for centuries and centuries past it is up here they have brought their dead.

But there is neither sadness nor horror in these j.a.panese sepulchers; it would seem as if among this frivolous and childish people, death itself could not be taken seriously. The monuments are either Buddhas, in granite, seated on lotus, or upright funereal stones with an inscription in gold; they are grouped together in little enclosures in the midst of the woods, or on natural terraces delightfully situated, and are generally reached by long stairways of stone carpeted with moss; from time to time, these pa.s.s under one of the sacred gateways, of which the shape, always the same, rude and simple, is a smaller reproduction of those in the temples.

Up above us, the tombs of our mountain are of so h.o.a.ry an antiquity that they no longer alarm any one, even by night. It is a region of forsaken cemeteries. The dead hidden away there have long since become one with the earth around them; and these thousands of little gray stones, these mult.i.tudes of ancient little Buddhas, eaten away by lichens, seem to be now no more than a proof of a series of existences, long anterior to our own, and lost forever and altogether in the mysterious depths of ages.

XXII.

Chrysantheme's meals are something indescribable.

She begins in the morning, when she wakes, by two little green wild plums pickled in vinegar and rolled in powdered sugar. A cup of tea completes this almost traditional breakfast of j.a.pan, the very same Madame Prune is eating downstairs, the same served up to travelers in the inns.

During the course of the day the feeding is continued by two little dinners of the drollest composition. They are brought up on a tray of red lacquer, in microscopic cups with covers, from Madame Prune's apartment, where they are cooked: a hashed sparrow, a stuffed prawn, seaweed with a sauce, a salt sweetmeat, a sugared chili. Chrysantheme tastes a little of all, with dainty pecks and the aid of her little chopsticks, raising the tips of her fingers with affected grace. At every dish she makes a face, leaves three parts of it, and dries her finger-tips after it in apparent disgust.

These menus vary according to the inspiration which may have seized Madame Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or in any other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and that is the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these little dishes, which are a mere make-believe, is brought in a wooden bowl, bound with copper,--an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water.

Chrysantheme fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice, sometimes three times), darkens its snowy whiteness with a black sauce flavored with fish which is contained in a delicately shaped blue cruet, mixes it all together, carries the bowl to her lips, and crams down all the rice, shoveling it with her two chopsticks into her very throat. Next the little cups and covers are picked up, as well as the tiniest crumb that may have fallen upon the white mats, the irreproachable purity of which nothing is allowed to tarnish. And so ends the dinner.

XXIII.

_August 2nd_.

Down below in the town, a street singer had established herself in a little thoroughfare; people had collected around her to listen to her singing, and we three--that is, Yves, Chrysantheme and I--who chanced to be pa.s.sing, stopped like others.

Quite young, rather fat, fairly pretty, she strummed her guitar and sang, rolling her eyes fiercely, like a virtuoso executing feats of difficulty. She lowered her head, stuck her chin into her neck, in order to draw deeper notes from the furthermost recesses of her body; and succeeded in bringing forth a great hoa.r.s.e voice,--a voice that might have belonged to an aged frog, a ventriloquist's voice, coming from whence it would be impossible to say (this is the best stage manner, the final word of art, for the interpretation of tragic pieces).

Yves cast an indignant glance upon her:

"Good gracious," said he, "it's the voice of a--" (words failed him, in his astonishment) "it's the voice of a--a monster!"

And he looked at me, almost frightened by this little being, and anxious to know what I thought of it.

My poor Yves was out of temper on this occasion, because I had induced him to come out in a straw hat with a turned-up brim, which did not please him.

"It suits you remarkably well, Yves, I a.s.sure you."

"Oh, indeed! You say so, you. For my part, I think it looks like a magpie's nest!"

As a fortunate diversion from the singer and the hat, here comes a cortege, advancing towards us from the end of the street, something remarkably like a funeral. Bonzes march in front dressed in robes of black gauze, having much the appearance of Catholic priests; the princ.i.p.al personage of the procession, the corpse, comes last, laid in a sort of little closed palanquin which is daintily pretty. This is followed by a band of mousmes, hiding their laughing faces beneath a kind of veil, and carrying in vases of the sacred shape the artificial lotus with silver petals indispensable at a funeral; then come fine ladies, on foot, smirking and stifling a wish to laugh, beneath parasols on which are painted in the gayest colors, b.u.t.terflies and storks.

Now they are quite close to us, we must stand back to give them room.

Chrysantheme all at once a.s.sumes a suitable air of gravity, and Yves bares his head, taking off the magpie's nest.

Yes, it is true, it is death that is pa.s.sing by!

I had almost lost sight of the fact, so little does this recall it.

The procession will climb high up, far away above Nagasaki, into the heart of the green mountain all peopled with tombs. There the poor fellow will be laid at rest, with his palanquin above him, and his vases and his flowers of silvered paper. Well, at least the poor defunct will lie in a charming spot commanding a lovely view.

They will now return half laughing, half sniveling, and to-morrow no one will think of it again.