Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti

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The shower is soon over, and the mousmes come out of their holes like
so many mice; they look for each other, call each other, and their
little voices take the singular melancholy, dragging inflections they
assume whenever they have to call from afar.

"Hi! Mdlle. Lu-u-u-u une!!"

"Hi! Madame Jonqui-i-i-i ille!!"

They shout from one to the other their outlandish names, prolonging
them indefinitely in the now silent night, in the reverberations of
the damp air after the great summer rain.

At length they are all collected and united again, these tiny
personages with narrow eyes and no brains, and we return to
Diou-djen-dji all wet through.

For the third time, we have Yves sleeping beside us under our blue
tent.

There is a great row soon after midnight in the apartment beneath us:
our landlord's family returning from a pilgrimage to a far-distant
temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist,
she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A
moment after, Mdlle. Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket,
bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been
blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for
us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is
gone out of them. Scarcely rousing ourselves, we absorb these little
edibles flavored with sugar and pepper, and return a great many sleepy
thanks.

Yves sleeps quietly on this occasion, without dealing any blows to the
floor or the panels either with fists or feet. He has hung his watch
on one of the hands of our gilded idol in order to be more sure of
seeing the hour at any time of the night, by the light of the sacred
lamps. He gets up betimes in the morning, asking: "Well, did I behave
properly?" and dresses in haste, preoccupied about duty and the
roll-call.

Outside, no doubt, it is daylight already: through the tiny holes
which time has pierced in our wooden panels, threads of morning light
penetrate our chamber, and in the atmosphere of our room where night
still lingers, they trace vague white rays. Soon, when the sun shall
have risen, these rays will lengthen and become beautifully golden.
The cocks and the cicalas make themselves heard, and now Madame Prune
will begin her mystic drone.

Nevertheless, out of politeness for Yves-San, Chrysantheme lights a
lantern and escorts him to the foot of the dark staircase. I even
fancy that, on parting, I hear a kiss exchanged. In Japan this is of
no consequence, that I know; it is very usual, and quite admissible;
no matter where one goes, in houses one enters for the first time, one
is quite at liberty to kiss any mousme who may be present, without any
notice being taken of it. But with regard to Chrysantheme, Yves is in
a delicate position, and he ought to understand it better. I begin to
feel uneasy about the hours they have so often spent together alone;
and I make up my mind, that this very day I will not play the spy
upon them, but speak frankly to Yves, and make a clear breast of it.

All at once from below, _clac! clac!_ two dry hands clapped together;
it is Madame Prune's warning to the Great Spirit. And immediately
after her prayer breaks forth, soars upwards in a shrill nasal
falsetto, like a morning alarm when the hour for waking has come, the
mechanical noise of a spring let go and running down.

_"The richest woman in the world. Cleansed from all my sins, O
Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, in the river of Kamo."_

And this extraordinary bleating, scarcely human, scatters and changes
my ideas, which were very nearly clear at the moment I awoke.

XLIX.

_September 15th_.

There is a rumor of departure in the air. Since yesterday there has
been vague talk of our being sent to China, to the gulf of Pekin; one
of those rumors which spread, no one knows how, from one end of the
ship to the other, two or three days before the official orders
arrive, and which generally turn out tolerably correct. What will the
last act of my little Japanese comedy be like? the denouement, the
separation? Will there be any touch of sadness on the part of my
mousme, or on my own, just a tightening of the heart-strings at the
moment of our final farewell? At this moment I can imagine nothing of
the sort. And then the adieux of Yves and Chrysantheme, what will they
be? This question preoccupies me more than all.

There is nothing very precise as yet, but it is certain that one way
or another, our stay in Japan is coming to an end. It is this perhaps
which disposes me this evening, to throw a more friendly glance on my
surroundings. It is about six o'clock, after a day spent on duty, when
I reach Diou-djen-dji. The evening sun, low in the sky, on the point
of setting, pours into my room, and floods it with rays of red gold,
lighting up the Buddhas and the great sheaves of quaintly arranged
flowers in the antique vases. Here are assembled five or six little
dolls, my neighbors, amusing themselves by dancing to the sound of
Chrysantheme's guitar. And this evening I experience a real charm in
feeling that this dwelling and the woman who leads the dance, are
mine. On the whole I have perhaps been unjust to this country; it
seems to me that my eyes are at last opened to see it in its true
light, that all my senses are undergoing a strange and abrupt
transition; I suddenly have a better perception and appreciation of
all the infinity of dainty trifles amongst which I live; of the
fragile and studied grace of their forms, the oddity of their
drawings, the refined choice of their colors.

I stretch myself upon the white mats; Chrysantheme, always eagerly
attentive, brings me my pillow of serpent's skin; and the smiling
mousmes, with the interrupted rhythm of a while ago still running in
their heads, move round me with measured steps.

Their irreproachable socks with the separate great toes, make no
noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a froufrou of silken
stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air has
the gift of pleasing me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is
that gives it to them: it is not only their round inexpressive faces
with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive
amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be
supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures
are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little
marionnettes without bodies at all, and which would slip to the ground
of themselves were they not kept together midway, about where a waist
should be, by the wide silken sashes,--a very different comprehension
of the art of dressing to ours, which endeavors as much as possible to
bring into relief the curves, real or false, of the figure.

And then, how much I admire the flowers arranged by Chrysantheme in
our vases, with her Japanese taste: lotus flowers, great sacred
flowers of a tender, veined rose-color, the milky rose-color seen on
porcelain; they resemble, when in full bloom, great water-lilies, and
when only in bud, might be taken for long pale tulips. Their soft but
rather cloying scent is added to that other indefinable odor of
mousmes, of yellow race, of Japan, which is always and everywhere in
the air. The late flowers of September, at this season very rare and
expensive, grow on longer stems than the summer blooms; Chrysantheme
has left them their immense aquatic leaves of a melancholy
seaweed-green, and mingled with them tall slight rushes. I look at
them, and recall with some irony those great round bunches in the
shape of cauliflowers, which our florists sell in France, wrapt in
their white lace-paper.

Still no letters from Europe, from any one. How things change, become
effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical
Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my
thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller
things,--things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am
becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to
miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate
monotony of the mats, to the finely finished simplicity of the white
woodwork. I am even losing my Western prejudices; all my preconceived
ideas are this evening evaporating and vanishing; crossing the garden
I have courteously saluted M. Sucre, who was watering his dwarf shrubs
and his deformed flowers; and Madame Prune appears to me a highly
respectable old lady, in whose past there is nothing to criticise.

We shall take no walk to-night; my only wish is to remain stretched
out where I am, listening to the music of my mousme's _chamecen_.

Till now, I have always used the word _guitar_, to avoid exotic terms,
for the abuse of which I have been so reproached. But neither the word
_guitar_ nor _mandolin_ suffices to designate this slender instrument
with its long neck, the high notes of which are shriller than the
voice of the grasshopper; henceforth, I will write _chamecen_.

I will also call my mousme _Kikou, Kikou-San_; this name suits her
better than Chrysantheme, which though translating the sense exactly,
does not preserve the strange-sounding euphony of the original.

I therefore say to Kikou, my wife:

"Play, play on for me; I shall remain here all the evening and listen
to you."

Astonished to find me in so amiable a mood, she requires pressing a
little, and with almost a bitter curve of triumph and disdain about
her lips, she seats herself in the attitude of an idol, raises her
long, dark-colored sleeves, and begins. The first hesitating notes are
murmured faintly and mingle with the music of the insects humming
outside, in the quiet air of the warm and golden twilight. First she
plays slowly, a confused medley of fragments which she does not seem
to remember perfectly, of which one waits for the finish and waits in
vain; while the other girls giggle, inattentive, and regretful of
their interrupted dance. She herself is absent, sulky, as though she
were performing a duty only.

Then by degrees, little by little, it becomes more animated, and the
mousmes begin to listen. Now, tremblingly it grows into a feverish
rapidity, and her gaze has no longer the vacant stare of a doll. Then
the music changes again; in it there is the sighing of the wind, the
hideous laughter of ghouls; tears, heartrending plaints, and her
dilated pupils seem to be directed inwardly in settled gaze on some
indescribable _Japanesery_ within her own soul.

I listen, lying there with eyes half shut, looking out between my
drooping eyelids which are gradually lowering, in involuntary
heaviness, upon the enormous red sun dying away over Nagasaki. I have
a somewhat melancholy feeling that my past life and all other places
in the world are receding from my view and fading away. At this moment
of nightfall I feel almost at home in this corner of Japan, amidst the
gardens of this suburb; I have never had such an impression before.

L.

_September 16th_.

Seven o'clock in the evening. We shall not go down into the town
to-day; but, like good Japanese citizens, remain in our loftly suburb.

In undress uniform we shall go, Yves and I, in a neighborly way, as
far as the fencing gallery, which is only two steps off, just above
our villa, and almost abutting on our fresh and scented garden.

The gallery is closed already and a little mousko seated at the door,
explains with many low bows that we come too late, all the amateurs
are gone; we must come again to-morrow.

The evening is so mild and so fine, that we remain out of doors,
following without any definite purpose the pathway which rises ever
higher and higher, and loses itself at length in the solitary regions
of the mountain among the upper peaks.

For an hour at least we wander on,--an unintended walk,--and finally
find ourselves at a great height commanding an endless perspective
lighted by the last gleams of daylight; we are in a desolate and
mournful spot, in the midst of the little Buddhist cemeteries, which
are scattered over the country in every direction.

We meet a few belated laborers, who are returning from the fields with
bundles of tea upon their shoulders. These peasants have a half savage
air, half naked too, or clothed only in long robes of blue cotton; as
they pass, they salute us with humble bows.

No trees in this elevated region. Fields of tea alternate with tombs:
old granite statues which represent Buddha in his lotus, or else old
monumental stones on which gleam remains of inscriptions in golden
letters. Rocks, brushwood, uncultivated spaces, surround us on all
sides.

There are no more passers-by, and the light is failing. We will halt
for a moment, and then it will be time to turn our steps downwards.

But, close to the spot where we stand, a box in white wood provided
with handles, a sort of sedan-chair, rests on the freshly disturbed
earth, with its lotus of silvered paper, and the little incense-sticks
burning yet, by its side; clearly someone has been buried here this
very evening.

I cannot picture this personage to myself; the Japanese are so
grotesque in life, that it is almost impossible to imagine them in the
calm majesty of death. Nevertheless, let us move further on, we might
disturb him; he is too recently dead, his presence unnerves us. We
will go and seat ourselves on one of these other tombs, so unutterably
ancient that there can no longer be anything within it but dust. And
there, seated yet in the dying sunlight, while the valleys and plains
of the earth below are already lost in shadow, we will talk together.

I wish to speak to Yves about Chrysantheme; it is indeed somewhat in
view of this that I have persuaded him to sit down; but how to set
about it without hurting his feelings, and without making myself
ridiculous, I hardly know. However, the pure air playing round me up
here, and the magnificent landscape spread beneath my feet, impart a
certain serenity to my thoughts which makes me feel a contemptuous
pity, both for my suspicions and the cause of them.

We speak, first of all, of the order for departure which may arrive at
any moment, for China or for France. Soon we shall have to leave this
easy and almost amusing life, this Japanese suburb where chance has
installed us, and our little house buried among flowers. Yves perhaps
will regret all this more than I shall, I know that well enough; for
it is the first time that any such interlude has broken the rude
monotony of his hard-worked career. Formerly, when in an inferior
rank, he was scarcely more often on shore, in foreign countries, than
the sea-gulls themselves; whilst I have, from the very beginning, been
spoilt by residence in all sorts of charming spots, infinitely
superior to this, in all sorts of countries, and the remembrance
pleasurably haunts me still.

In order to discover how the land lies, I risk the remark:

"You will perhaps be more sorry to leave this little Chrysantheme than
I am?"

Silence reigns between us.

After which I pursue, and, burning my ships, I add:

"You know, after all, if you have such a fancy for her, I haven't
really married her; one can't really consider her my wife."

In great surprise he looks in my face:

"Not your wife, you say? But, by Jove, though, that's just it; she is
your wife."

There is no need of many words at any time between us two; I know
exactly now, by his tone, by his great good-humored smile, how the
case stands; I understand all that lies in the little phrase: "That's
just it, she is your wife." If she were not, well then he could not
answer for what might happen,--notwithstanding any remorse he might
have in the depths of his heart, since he is no longer a bachelor and
free as air, as in former days. But he considers her my wife, and she
is sacred. I have the fullest faith in his word, and I experience a
positive relief, a real joy, at finding my staunch Yves of bygone
days. How could I have so succumbed to the demeaning influence of my
surroundings as to suspect him even, and invent for myself such a
mean, petty anxiety?

We will never even mention that doll again.

We remain up there very late, talking of other things, gazing the
while at the immense depths below our feet, at the valleys and
mountains as they become one by one indistinct and lost in the
deepening darkness. Placed as we are at an enormous height, in the
wide free atmosphere, we seem already to have quitted this miniature
country, already to be freed from the impression of littleness which
it has given us, and from the little links by which it was beginning
to bind us to itself.

Seen from such heights as these, all the countries of the globe bear a
strong resemblance to each other; they lose the imprint made upon them
by man, and by races; by all the atoms swarming on the surface.

As of old, in the Breton marshes, in the woods of Toulven, or at sea
in the night-watches, we talk of all those things to which thoughts
naturally revert in darkness; of ghosts, of spirits, of eternity, of
the great hereafter, of chaos--and we entirely forget little
Chrysantheme!

When we arrive at Diou-djen-dji in the starry night, it is the music
of her _chamecen_, heard from afar, which recalls to us her existence;
she is studying some vocal duet with Mdlle. Oyouki, her pupil.

I feel myself in very good humor this evening, and, relieved from any
absurd suspicions about my poor Yves, am quite disposed to enjoy
without reserve my last days in Japan, and derive therefrom all the
amusement possible.

Let us then stretch ourselves out on the dazzling white mats, and
listen to the singular duet sung by these two mousmes: a strange
musical medley, slow and mournful, beginning with two or three high
notes, and descending at each couplet, in almost an imperceptible
manner, into actual solemnity. The song keeps its dragging slowness;
but the accompaniment becoming more and more accentuated, is like the
impetuous sound of a far-off hurricane. At the end, when these girlish
voices, generally so soft, give out their hoarse and guttural notes,
Chrysantheme's hands fly wildly and convulsively over the quivering
strings. Both of them lower their heads, pout their under-lips in the
effort of bringing out these astonishingly deep notes. And at these
moments, their little narrow eyes open and seem to reveal an
unexpected something, almost a soul, under these trappings of
marionnettes.

But it is a soul which more than ever appears to me of a different
species to my own; I feel my thoughts to be far removed from theirs,
as from the flitting conceptions of a bird, or the dreams of a monkey;
I feel there is betwixt them and myself a great gulf, mysterious and
awful.

Other sounds of music, wafted to us from the distance outside,
interrupt for a moment that of our mousmes. From the depths below,
down in Nagasaki, arises a sudden noise of gongs and guitars; we rush
to the balcony of the verandah to hear it better.

It is a _matsouri_, a fete, a procession passing through the quarter
which is not so virtuous as our own, so our mousmes tell us, with a
disdainful toss of the head. Nevertheless, from the heights on which
we dwell, seen thus in a bird's-eye view, by the uncertain light of
the stars, this district has a singularly chaste air, and the concert
going on therein, purified in its ascent from the depths of the abyss
to our lofty altitudes, reaches us confusedly, a smothered, enchanted,
enchanting sound.

Then it diminishes, and dies away into silence.

The two little friends return to their seats on the mats, and once
more take up their melancholy duet. An orchestra, discreetly subdued
but innumerable, of crickets and cicalas, accompanies them in an
unceasing tremolo,--the immense far-reaching tremolo, which, gentle
and eternal, never ceases on Japanese land.

LI.

_September 17th_.

During the hour of siesta, the abrupt order arrives to start to-morrow
for China, for Tchefou (a horrid place in the gulf of Pekin). It is
Yves who comes to wake me in my cabin to bring me the news.

"I must positively get leave to go on shore this evening," he says,
while I endeavor to shake myself awake, "if it is only to help you to
dismantle and pack up there."

He gazes through my port-hole, raising his glance towards the green
summits, in the direction of Diou-djen-dji and our echoing old
cottage, hidden from us by a turn of the mountain.

It is very nice of him to wish to help me in my packing; but I think
he also counts upon saying farewell to his little Japanese friends up
there, and I really cannot find fault with that.

He gets through his work, and does in fact get leave without help from
me, to go on shore at five o'clock, after drill and manoeuvres.

As for myself, I start off at once, in a hired sampan. In the vast
flood of midday sunshine, to the quivering noise of the cicalas, I
mount up to Diou-djen-dji.

The paths are solitary, the plants drooping in the heat. Here,
however, is Madame Jonquille, taking the air, in the bright sunshine
of the grasshoppers, sheltering her dainty figure and her charming
face under an immense paper parasol, a huge circle, closely ribbed and
fantastically striped.

She recognizes me from afar, and laughing as usual, runs to meet me.

I announce our departure, and a tearful pout suddenly contracts her
childish face. After all, does this news grieve her? Is she going to
shed tears over it? No! it turns to a fit of laughter, a little
nervous perhaps, but unexpected and disconcerting,--dry and clear,
pealing through the silence and warmth of the narrow paths, like a
cascade of little mock pearls.

Ah, there indeed is a marriage tie which will be broken without much
pain! But she fills me with impatience, poor empty-headed linnet, with
her laughter, and I turn my back upon her to continue my journey.

Up above, Chrysantheme sleeps, stretched out on the floor; the house
is wide open, and the soft mountain breeze rustles gently through it.

That same evening we had intended to give a tea-party, and by my
orders flowers had already been placed in every nook and corner of the
house. There were lotus in our vases, beautiful rose-colored lotus,
the last of the season, I verily believe. They must have been ordered
from a special gardener, out yonder near the Great Temple, and they
will cost me dear.

With a few gentle taps of a fan I awake my surprised mousme; and,
curious to catch her first impressions, I announce my departure. She
starts up, rubs her eyelids with the back of her little hands, looks
at me, and hangs her head: something like an expression of sadness
passes in her eyes.

This little sinking at the heart is for Yves, no doubt.

The news spreads through the house.

Mdlle. Oyouki dashes upstairs, with half a tear in each of her babyish
eyes; kisses me with her full red lips, which always leave a wet ring
on my cheek; then quickly draws from her wide sleeve a square of
tissue-paper, wipes away her stealthy tears, blows her little nose,
rolls the bit of paper in a ball, and throws it into the street on the
parasol of a passer-by.

Then Madame Prune makes her appearance; in an agitated and discomposed
manner she successively adopts every attitude expressive of utter
dismay. What on earth is the matter with the old lady, and why will
she keep getting closer and closer to me, till she is almost in my
way?

It is wonderful all I still have to do this last day, and the endless
drives I have to make to the old curiosity shops, to my tradespeople,
and to the packers.

Nevertheless before my rooms are dismantled, I intend making a sketch
of them, as I did formerly at Stamboul. It really seems to me as if
all I do here is a bitter parody of all I did over there.

This time, however, it is not that I care for this dwelling; it is
only because it is pretty and uncommon, and the sketch will be an
interesting souvenir.

I fetch, therefore, a leaf out of my album, and begin at once, seated
on the floor and leaning on my desk, ornamented with grasshoppers in
relief, while behind me, very, very close to me, the three women
follow the movements of my pencil with an astonished attention.
Japanese art being entirely conventional, they have never before seen
anyone draw from nature, and my style delights them. I may not perhaps
possess the steady and nimble touch of M. Sucre, as he groups his
charming storks, but I am master of a few notions of perspective which
are wanting in him; and I have been taught to draw things as I see
them, without giving them ingeniously distorted and grimacing
attitudes; and the three Japanese are amazed at the air of _reality_
thrown in my sketch.

With little shrieks of admiration, they point out to each other the
different things, as little by little their shape and form are
outlined in black on my paper. Chrysantheme gazes at me with a new
kind of interest: "_Anata itchi-ban_!" she says (literally "Thou
first!" meaning: "You are really quite a swell!") Mdlle. Oyouki is
carried away by her admiration and exclaims in a burst of enthusiasm:

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