Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti

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The old ladies (the mamma no doubt and aunts), prick up their ears,
and M. Kangourou translates to them, softening as much as possible, my
heartrending decision. I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact
is, that for women who, not to put too fine a point upon it, have come
to sell a child, they have an air I was not prepared for: I can hardly
say an air of _respectability_ (a word in use with us, which is
absolutely without meaning in Japan), but an air of unconscious and
good-natured simplicity; they are only accomplishing an act perfectly
admissible in their world, and really it all resembles, more than I
could have thought possible, a _bona fide_ marriage.

"But what fault do I find with the little girl?" asks M. Kangourou, in
consternation.

I endeavor to present the matter in the most flattering light:

"She is very young," I say; "and then she is too white, too much like
our own women. I wished for a yellow one just as a change."

"But that is only the paint they have put on her, sir! Beneath it, I
assure you, she is yellow."

Yves leans towards me and whispers:

"Look over there, brother, in that corner by the last panel; have you
noticed the one who is sitting down?"

Not I. In my annoyance I had not observed her; she had her back to the
light, was dressed in dark colors, and sat in the careless attitude of
one who keeps in the background. The fact is this one pleased me much
better. Eyes with long lashes, rather narrow, but which would have
been called good in any country in the world; almost an expression,
almost a thought. A coppery tint on her rounded cheeks; a straight
nose; slightly thick lips, but well modeled and with pretty corners.
Less young than Mdlle. Jasmin, about eighteen years of age perhaps,
already more of a woman. She wore an expression of ennui, also of a
little contempt, as if she regretted her attendance at a spectacle
which dragged so much, and was so little amusing.

"M. Kangourou, who is that young lady over there, in dark blue?"

"Over there, sir? A young lady called Mdlle. Chrysantheme. She came
with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator. She
pleases you?" said he with eager suddenness, espying a way out of his
difficulty. Then, forgetting all his politeness, all his
ceremoniousness, all his Japanesery, he takes her by the hand, forces
her to rise, to stand in the dying daylight, to let herself be seen.
And she, who has followed our eyes and begins to guess what is on
foot, lowers her head in confusion, with a more decided but more
charming pout, and tries to step back, half sulky, half smiling.

"It makes no difference," continues M. Kangourou, "it can be arranged
just as well with this one; she is not married either, sir!"

She is not married! Then why didn't the idiot propose her to me at
once instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest
pity, poor little soul, with her pearly gray dress, her sprig of
flowers, her expression which grows sadder, and her eyes which twinkle
like those of a child about to cry.

"It can be arranged, sir!" repeats Kangourou again, who at this moment
appears to me a go-between of the lowest type, a rascal of the meanest
kind.

Only, he adds, we, Yves and I, are in the way during the negotiations.
And, while Mdlle. Chrysantheme remains with her eyelids lowered, as
befits the occasion, while the various families, on whose countenances
may be read every degree of astonishment, every phase of expectation,
remain seated in a circle on my white mats, he sends us two into the
verandah, and we gaze down into the depths below us, upon a misty and
vague Nagasaki, a Nagasaki melting into a blue haze of darkness.

Then ensue long discourses in Japanese, arguments without end. M.
Kangourou, who is washerman and low scamp in French only, has returned
for these discussions to the long formulas of his country. From time
to time I express impatience, I ask this worthy creature whom I am
less and less able to consider in a serious light:

"Come now, tell us frankly, Kangourou, are we any nearer coming to
some arrangement? is all this ever going to end?"

"In a moment, sir, in a moment;" and he resumes his air of political
economist seriously debating social problems.

Well, one must submit to the slowness of this people. And, while the
darkness falls like a veil over the Japanese town, I have leisure to
reflect, with as much melancholy as I please, upon the bargain that is
being concluded behind me.

* * * * *

Night has closed in, deep night; it has been necessary to light the
lamps.

It is ten o'clock when all is finally settled, and M. Kangourou comes
to tell me:

"All is arranged, sir: her parents will give her up for twenty
dollars a month,--the same price as Mdlle. Jasmin."

On hearing this, I am possessed suddenly with extreme vexation that I
should have made up my mind so quickly to link myself in ever so
fleeting and transient a manner with this little creature, and dwell
with her in this isolated house.

We come back into the room; she is the center of the circle and
seated; and they have placed the aigrette of flowers in her hair.
There is actually some expression in her glance, and I am almost
persuaded that she--this one--- thinks.

Yves is astonished at her modest attitude, at her little timid airs of
a young girl on the verge of matrimony; he had imagined nothing like
it in such a marriage as this, nor I either, I must confess.

"She is really very pretty, brother," said he; "very pretty, take my
word for it!"

These good folks, their customs, this scene, strike him dumb with
astonishment; he cannot get over it, and remains in a maze. "Oh! this
is too much," and the idea of writing a long letter to his wife at
Toulven, describing it all, diverts him greatly.

Chrysantheme and I join hands. Yves too advances and touches the
dainty little paw;--after all, if I wed her, it is chiefly his fault;
I should never have remarked her without his observation that she was
pretty. Who can tell how this strange arrangement will turn out? Is it
a woman or a doll? Well, time will show.

The families having lighted their many-colored lanterns swinging at
the ends of slight sticks, prepare to beat a retreat with many
compliments, bows and curtsies. When it is a question of descending
the stairs, no one is willing to go first, and at a given moment, the
whole party are again on all fours, motionless and murmuring polite
phrases in undertones.

_"Haul back there!"_ said Yves, laughing and employing a nautical term
used when there is a stoppage of any kind.

At length they all melt away, descend the stairs with a last buzzing
accompaniment of civilities and polite phrases finished from one step
to another in voices which gradually die away. He and I remain alone
in the unfriendly empty apartment, where the mats are still littered
with the little cups of tea, the absurd little pipes, and the
miniature trays.

"Let us watch them go away!" said Yves, leaning out. At the door of
the garden is a renewal of the same salutations and curtsies, and
then the two groups of women separate, their bedaubed paper lanterns
fade away trembling in the distance, balanced at the extremity of
flexible canes which they hold in their finger-tips, as one would hold
a fishing-rod in the dark to catch night-birds. The procession of the
unfortunate Mdlle. Jasmin mounts upwards, towards the mountain, while
that of Mdlle. Chrysantheme winds downwards by a narrow old street,
half stairway, half goat-path, which leads to the town.

Then we also depart. The night is fresh, silent, exquisite, the
eternal song of the cicalas fills the air. We can still see the red
lanterns of my new family, dwindling away in the distance, as they
descend and gradually become lost in that yawning abyss, at the bottom
of which lies Nagasaki.

Our way, too, lies downwards, but on an opposite slope by steep paths
leading to the sea.

And when I find myself once more on board, when the scene enacted on
the hill up above recurs to my mind, it seems to me that my betrothal
is a joke, and my new family a set of puppets.

V.

_July 10th, 1885_.

It is three days now since my marriage was an accomplished fact.

In the lower part of the town, in the middle of one of the new
cosmopolitan districts, in the ugly pretentious building which is a
kind of register office, the deed has been signed and countersigned,
with marvelous hieroglyphics, in a large book, in the presence of
those ridiculous little creatures, formerly silken-robed _Samourai_,
but now called policemen, and dressed up in tight jackets and Russian
caps.

The ceremony took place in the full heat of mid-day; Chrysantheme and
her mother arrived there together, and I went alone. We seemed to have
met for the purpose of ratifying some discreditable contract, and the
two women trembled in the presence of these ugly little individuals,
who, in their eyes, were the personification of the law.

In the middle of their official scrawl, they made me write in French
my name, Christian name, and profession. Then they gave me an
extraordinary document on a sheet of rice-paper, which set forth the
permission granted me by the civilian Authorities of the Island of
Kiu-Siu, to inhabit a house situated in the suburb of Diou-djen-dji,
with a person called Chrysantheme, the said permission being available
under protection of the police, during the whole of my stay in Japan.

In the evening, however, up there in our own quarter, our little
marriage became a very pretty affair,--a procession carrying lanterns,
a festive tea and some music. It was indeed high time.

Now we are almost an old married couple, and we are gently settling
down into every-day habits.

Chrysantheme tends the flowers in our bronze vases, dresses herself
with studied care, proud of her socks with the divided big toe, and
strums all day on a kind of long-necked guitar, producing therefrom
plaintive and sad sounds.

VI.

In our home, all has the appearance of a Japanese picture: we have
nothing but little folding-screens, little curiously shaped stools
bearing vases full of nosegays, and at the further end of the
apartment, in a nook forming an altar, a large gilded Buddha sits
enthroned in a lotus.

The house is just as I had fancied it should be in the many dreams of
Japan I had made before my arrival, during my long night watches:
perched on high, in a peaceful suburb, in the midst of green
gardens;--made up of paper panels, and taken to pieces according to
one's fancy, like a child's toy. Whole families of cicalas chirp day
and night under our old resounding roof. From our verandah, we have a
bewildering bird's-eye view of Nagasaki, of its streets, its junks and
its great pagodas, which, at certain hours, is lit up at our feet like
some fairylike scene.

VII.

As a mere outline, little Chrysantheme has been seen everywhere and by
everybody. Whoever has looked at one of those paintings on china or on
silk that now fill our bazaars, knows by heart the pretty stiff
head-dress, the leaning figure, ever ready to try some new gracious
salutation, the scarf fastened behind in an enormous bow, the large
falling sleeves, the dress slightly clinging about the ankles with a
little crooked train like a lizard's tail.

But her face, no, every one has not seen it; there is something
special about it.

Moreover, the type of women the Japanese paint mostly on their vases
is an exceptional one in their country. It is almost exclusively among
the nobility that these personages are found with their long pale
faces, painted in tender rose-tints, and silly long necks which give
them the appearance of storks. This distinguished type (which I am
obliged to admit was also Mdlle. Jasmin's) is rare, particularly at
Nagasaki.

In the middle class and the people, the ugliness is more pleasant and
sometimes becomes a kind of prettiness. The eyes are still too small
and hardly able to open, but the faces are rounder, browner, more
vivacious; and in the women there remains a certain vagueness in the
features, something childlike which prevails to the very end of their
lives.

They are so laughing, so merry, all these little Niponese dolls!
Rather a forced mirth, it is true, studied and at times with a false
ring in it; nevertheless one is attracted by it.

Chrysantheme is an exception, for she is melancholy. What thoughts can
be running through that little brain? My knowledge of her language is
still too restricted to enable me to find out. Moreover, it is a
hundred to one that she has no thoughts whatever. And even if she
had, what do I care?

I have chosen her to amuse me, and I would really rather she should
have one of those insignificant little thoughtless faces like all the
others.

VIII.

When night closes in, we light two hanging lamps of a religious
character, which burn till morn, before our gilded idol.

We sleep on the floor, on a thin cotton mattress, which is unfolded
and laid out over our white mats. Chrysantheme's pillow is a little
wooden block, scooped out to fit exactly the nape of the neck, without
disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down;
the pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a
Chinese model, is a kind of little square drum covered over with
serpent skin.

We sleep under a gauze mosquito net of somber greenish blue, dark as
the shades of night, stretched out on an orange-colored ribbon. (These
are the traditional colors, and all the respectable families of
Nagaski possess a similar gauze.) It envelops us like a tent; the
mosquitoes and the night-moths dance around it.

* * * * *

This sounds very pretty, and written down looks very well. In reality,
however, it is not so; something, I know not what, is wanting, and it
is all very paltry. In other lands, in the delightful isles of
Oceania, in the old lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if
mere words could never express all I felt, and I vainly struggled
against my own incompetence to render, in human language, the
penetrating charm surrounding me.

Here, on the contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem
always too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it
unduly. I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some
wretchedly trivial and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to
consider my home in a serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M.
Kangourou rises up before me, the matrimonial agent, to whom I am
indebted for my happiness.

IX.

_July 12th_.

Yves comes up to us whenever he is free, in the evening at five
o'clock, after his work on board.

He is our only European visitor, and with the exception of a few
civilities and cups of tea, exchanged with our neighbors, we lead a
very retired life. Only in the evenings, winding our way through the
precipitous little streets and carrying our lanterns at the end of
short sticks, we go down to Nagasaki in search of amusement at the
theaters, at the "tea-houses," or in the bazaars.

Yves treats this wife of mine as if she were a plaything, and
continually assures me that she is charming.

Myself, I find her as exasperating as the cicalas on my roof; and when
I am alone at home, side by side with this little creature twanging
the strings of her long-necked guitar, in front of this marvelous
panorama of pagodas and mountains,--I am overcome by a sadness full of
tears.

X.

_July 13th_.

Last night, as we lay under the Japanese roof of Diou-djen-dji,--under
the thin and ancient wooden roof scorched by a hundred years of
sunshine, vibrating at the least sound, like the stretched-out
parchment of a tamtam,--in the silence which prevails at two o'clock
in the morning, we heard overhead a regular wild huntsman's chase
passing at full gallop:

"Nidzoumi!" ("the mice!"), said Chrysantheme.

Suddenly, the word brings back to my mind yet another, spoken in a
very different language, in a country far away from here: "Setchan!" a
word heard elsewhere, a word that has likewise been whispered in my
ear by a woman's voice, under similar circumstances, in a moment of
nocturnal terror--"Setchan!" It was during one of our first nights at
Stamboul spent under the mysterious roof of Eyoub, when danger
surrounded us on all sides; a noise on the steps of the black
staircase had made us tremble, and she also, my dear little Turkish
companion, had said to me in her beloved language, "Setchan!" ("the
mice!").

At that fond recollection, a thrill of sweet memories coursed through
my veins; it was as though I had been startled out of a long ten
years' sleep; I looked down upon the doll beside me with a sort of
hatred, wondering why I was there, and I arose, with almost a feeling
of remorse, to escape from that blue gauze net.

I stepped out upon the verandah, and there I paused, gazing into the
depths of the starlit night. Beneath me Nagasaki lay asleep, wrapt in
a soft light slumber, hushed by the murmuring sound of a thousand
insects in the moonlight, and fairylike with its roseate hues. Then,
turning my head, I saw behind me the gilded idol with our lamps
burning in front of it; the idol smiling its impassive Buddha smile;
and its presence seemed to cast around it something, I know not what,
strange and incomprehensible. Never until now had I slept under the
eye of such a god.

In the midst of the calm and silence of the night, I strove to recall
my poignant impressions of Stamboul; but alas, I strove in vain, they
would not return to me in this strange, far-off world. Through the
transparent blue gauze appeared my little Japanese, as she lay in her
somber night-dress with all the fantastic grace of her country, the
nape of her neck resting on its wooden block, and her hair arranged in
large shiny bows. Her amber-colored arms, pretty and delicate,
emerged, bare up to the shoulders, from her wide sleeves.

"What can those mice on the roof have done to him?" thought
Chrysantheme. Of course she could not understand. In a coaxing manner,
like a playful kitten, she glanced at me with her half-closed eyes,
inquiring why I did not come back to sleep,--and I returned to my
place by her side.

XI.

_July 14th_.

It is the National Fete day of France. In Nagasaki roadstead, all the
ships are dressed out with flags, and salutes are firing in our honor.

Alas! All day long, I cannot help thinking of that last fourteenth of
July, spent in the deep calm and stillness of my old home, the door
closed to all intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there I
had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded by a trellis
covered with honeysuckle, where in the bye-gone days of my childhood's
summers, I used to settle myself with my copybooks and pretend to
learn my lessons. Oh! those days when I was supposed to learn my
lessons: how my thoughts used to rove,--what voyages, what distant
lands, what tropical forests did I not behold in my dreams! At that
time, near the garden bench, in some of the crevices in the stone
wall, there dwelt many a big ugly black spider ever on the watch,
peeping out of his nook ready to pounce upon any giddy fly or
wandering centipede. One of my amusements consisted in tickling the
spiders gently, very gently, with a blade of grass or a cherry stalk
in their holes. Mystified, they would rush out, fancying they had to
deal with some sort of prey, whilst I would rapidly draw back my hand
in disgust. Well, last year, on that fourteenth of July, as I recalled
my days of Latin themes and translations, now forever flown, and this
game of boyish days, I actually recognized the very same spiders (or
at least their daughters), lying in wait in the very same holes.
Gazing at them and at the tufts of grass and moss around me, a
thousand memories of those summers of my early life welled up within
me, memories which for years past had lain slumbering under this old
wall, sheltered by the ivy boughs. While all that is ourselves
perpetually changes and passes away, the constancy with which Nature
repeats, always in the same manner, her most infinitesimal details,
seems a wonderful mystery; the same peculiar species of moss grow
afresh for centuries on precisely the same spot, and the same little
insects each summer do the same thing in the same place.

* * * * *

I must admit that this episode of my childhood and the spiders, have
little to do with the story of Chrysantheme. But an incongruous
interruption is quite in keeping with the taste of this country;
everywhere it is practiced, in conversation, in music, even in
painting; a landscape painter, for instance, when he has finished a
picture of mountains and crags, will not hesitate to draw in the very
middle of the sky a circle, or a lozenge, or some kind of framework,
within which he will represent anything incoherent and inappropriate:
a bonze fanning himself, or a lady taking a cup of tea. Nothing is
more thoroughly Japanese than such digressions made without the
slightest apropos.

Moreover, if I roused my past memories, it was the better to force
myself to notice the difference between that 14th of July last year,
so peacefully spent amidst surroundings familiar to me from my
earliest infancy, and the present animated one, passed in the midst of
such a novel world.

To-day, therefore, under the scorching mid-day sun, at two o'clock,
three quick-footed djins dragged us at full speed,--Yves, Chrysantheme
and myself,--in Indian file, each in a little jolting cart, to the
further end of Nagasaki, and there deposited us at the foot of some
gigantic steps that run straight up into the mountain.

These are the granite steps leading to the great temple of Osueva;
wide enough to give access to a whole regiment; they are as grand and
imposing as any work of Babylon or Nineveh, and in complete contrast
with all the finical surroundings.

We climb up and up,--Chrysantheme listlessly, affecting fatigue, under
her paper parasol painted with pink butterflies on a black ground. As
we ascended, we passed under enormous monastic porticos, also in
granite of rude and primitive style. In truth, these steps and these
temple porticos are the only imposing works that this people has
created, and they astonish, for they scarcely seem Japanese.

We climb up still higher. At this sultry hour of the day, from top to
bottom of the immense gray steps, only we three are to be seen; on all
that granite there are but the pink butterflies on Chrysantheme's
parasol, to throw a cheerful and brilliant note.

We passed through the first temple yard, in which are a couple of
white china turrets, bronze lanterns, and the statue of a large horse
in jade. Then without pausing at the sanctuary, we turned to the left,
and entered a shady garden, which formed a terrace halfway up the
hill, and at the extremity of which was situated the
_Donko-Tchaya_,--in English: _the tea-house of the Toads_.

It was here that Chrysantheme was taking us. We sat down at a table,
under a black linen tent, decorated with large white letters (of
funereal aspect), and two laughing _mousmes_ hurried up to wait upon
us.

The word _mousme_ means a young girl, or very young woman. It is one
of the prettiest words in the Niponese language; it seems almost as if
there were a little _moue_[C] in the very sound, and as if a pretty
taking little pout such as they put on, and also a little pert
physiognomy, were described by it. I shall often make use of it,
knowing none other in our own language that conveys the same meaning.

[Footnote C: _Moue_ means "pout" in French.]

Some Japanese Watteau must have mapped out this _Donko-Tchaya_, for it
has rather an affected air of rurality, though very pretty. Well
shaded, under a thick vault of large trees densely foliaged, a
miniature lake hard by, the chosen residence of a few toads, has given
it its attractive denomination. Lucky toads, who crawl and croak on
the finest of moss, in the midst of tiny artificial islets decked with
gardenias in full bloom. From time to time, one of them informs us of
his thoughts by a "Couac," uttered in a deep bass croak infinitely
more hollow than that of our own toads.

* * * * *

Under the tent of this tea-house, we are as it were on a balcony
jutting out from the mountain side, overhanging from on high the
grayish town and its suburbs buried in greenery. Around, above and
beneath us cling and hang on every possible point, clumps of trees and
fresh green woods, with the delicate and varying foliage of the
temperate zone. Then we can see, at our feet, the deep roadstead,
fore-shortened and slanting, diminished in appearance till it looks
like a terrible somber tear in the mass of large green mountains; and
further still, quite low down, on the waters which seem black and
stagnant, are to be seen, very tiny and overwhelmed, the men-of-war,
the steamboats and the junks, flags flying from every mast. On the
dark green, which is the dominant shade around, stand out these
thousand scraps of bunting, emblems of the different nationalities,
all displayed, all flying in honor of far-distant France. The colors
most prevailing in this motley assemblage are the white flag with a
red ball, emblem of the _Empire of the Rising Sun_, where we now are.

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