Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti

P >> Pierre Loti >> Madame Chrysantheme

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Up above us, the tombs of our mountain are of so hoary 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 multitudes 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 Japan, 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 passing, 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 hoarse 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 assure 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
principal 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, butterflies and
storks.

Now they are quite close to us, we must stand back to give them room.
Chrysantheme all at once assumes 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 passing 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.

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 shore 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 amusements: 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 chink is thus closed, a strange odor mingles
with the musk and the lotus,--an odor essential to Japan, 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 god, 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 Japanese 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 pagoda 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 Japan, 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 Japan 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 cockchafer, 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 grass, 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 passing 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 cocks 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 grasshoppers 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 God Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami, who is the royal power of Japan, 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.

This is the moment at which I must rise, descend hurriedly to the sea
by grassy footpaths all wet with dew, and so regain my ship.

Alas! in the days gone by, it was the cry of the muezzin which used to
awaken me in the dark winter mornings, in far-away night-shrouded
Stamboul.

XXVIII

Chrysantheme has brought but few things with her, knowing that our
married life would be of short duration.

She has placed her dresses and her fine sashes in little closed
recesses, hidden in one of the walls of our apartment (the north wall,
the only one of the four which will not take to pieces.) The doors of
these niches are white paper panels; the standing shelves and inside
partitions, consisting of light woodwork, are put together in too
finical a manner, too ingenious a way, giving rise to suspicions of
secret drawers and conjuring tricks. We only put there things without
any value, having a vague feeling that the cupboards themselves might
spirit them away.

The box in which Chrysantheme stores away her gewgaws and letters, is
one of the things that amuses me the most; it is of English origin, in
tin, and bears on its cover the colored representation of some
manufactory in the neighborhood of London. Of course, it is as an
exotic work of art, as a precious knick-knack, that Chrysantheme
prefers it to any of her other boxes in lacquer or inlaid work. It
contains all that a mousme requires for her correspondence: Indian
ink, a paintbrush, very thin gray tinted paper, cut up in long narrow
strips, and funnily shaped envelopes, into which these strips are
slipped (after having been folded up in some thirty folds); the
envelopes being ornamented with pictures of landscapes, fishes, crabs,
or birds.

On some old letters addressed to her, I can make out the two
characters that represent her name: "Kikou-San" (Chrysantheme,
Madame). And when I question her, she replies in Japanese, with an air
of importance:

"My dear creature, they are letters from my female friends."

Oh! those friends of Chrysantheme, what funny little faces they have!
That same box contains their portraits, their photographs stuck on
visiting cards, which are printed on the back with the name of Uyeno,
the fashionable photographer in Nagasaki,--little creatures fit only
to figure daintily on painted fans, and who have striven to assume a
dignified attitude when once their necks have been placed in the
head-rest and they have been told: "Now don't move!"

It would really amuse me to read her friends' letters,--and above all
my mousme's answers.

XXIX.

_August 10th_.

This evening it rained heavily, and the night was thick and black. At
about ten o'clock, on our return from one of the fashionable
tea-houses we constantly frequent, we arrived,--Yves, Chrysantheme and
myself,--at the certain familiar angle of the principal street, the
certain turn where we must take leave of the lights and noises of the
town, to clamber up the black steps and steep lanes which lead to our
home at Diou-djen-dji.

There, before beginning our ascension, we must first buy lanterns from
an old trades-woman called Madame Tres-Propre,[E] whose faithful
customers we are. It is amazing what a quantity of these paper
lanterns we consume. They are invariably decorated in the same way,
with painted night-moths or bats; fastened to the ceiling at the
further end of the shop, they hang in enormous clusters, and the old
woman, seeing us arrive, gets upon a table to take them down. Gray or
red are our usual choice; Madame Tres-Propre knows our preferences and
leaves the green or blue lanterns aside. But it is always hard work to
unhook one, on account of the little short sticks by which they are
held, and the strings by which they are tied getting entangled
together. In an exaggerated pantomime, Madame Tres-Propre expresses
her despair at wasting so much of our valuable time: oh! if it only
depended on her personal efforts! but ah, for the natural perversity
of inanimate things which have no consideration for human dignity.
With monkeyish antics, she even deems it her duty to threaten the
lanterns and shake her fist at these inextricably tangled strings
which have the presumption to delay us. It is all very well, but we
know this maneuver by heart; and if the old lady loses patience, so do
we. Chrysantheme, who is half asleep, is seized with a fit of
kitten-like yawning which she does not even trouble to hide behind
her hand, and which appears to be endless. She pulls a very long face,
at the thought of the steep hill we must struggle up to-night through
the pelting rain.

[Footnote E: In Japanese: _O Sei-San_.]

I have the same feeling, and am thoroughly annoyed.

To what purpose, good heavens, do I clamber up every evening to that
suburb, when it offers me no attraction whatever?

The rain increases, what are we to do? Outside, djins pass rapidly by,
calling out: "Take care!" splashing the foot-passengers and casting
through the shower streams of light from their many-colored lanterns.
Mousmes and elderly ladies pass by, tucked up, muddy, laughing
nevertheless, under their paper umbrellas, exchanging greetings,
clacking their wooden pattens on the stone pavement; the whole street
is filled with the noise of the pattering feet and pattering rain.

As good luck will have it, at the same moment passes 415, our poor
relative, who, seeing our distress, stops and promises to help us out
of our difficulty; as soon as he has deposited on the quay an
Englishman he is conveying, he will come to our aid and bring all that
is necessary to relieve us from our lamentable situation.

At last our lantern is unhooked, lighted, and paid for. There is
another shop opposite, where we stop every evening; it is Madame
L'Heure's,[F] the woman who sells waffles; we always buy a provision
from her, to refresh us on the way. A very lively young woman is this
pastry-cook, and most anxious to make herself agreeable; she looks
quite like a screen picture, behind her piled-up cakes, ornamented
with little posies. We will take shelter under her roof while we wait;
and, to avoid the drops that fall heavily from the water-spouts, wedge
ourselves tightly against her display of white and pink sweetmeats, so
artistically spread out on fresh and delicate branches of cypress.

[Footnote F: In Japanese: _Toki-San_.]

Poor 415, what a providence he is to us! Already he re-appears, most
excellent cousin, ever smiling, ever running, while the water streams
down his handsome bare legs; he brings us two umbrellas, borrowed from
a China merchant, who is also a distant relative of ours. Like me,
Yves has till now never consented to use such a thing, but he now
accepts one because it is droll: in paper, of course, with innumerable
folds waxed and gummed, and the inevitable flight of storks forming a
wreath all round.

Chrysantheme, yawning more and more in her kitten-like fashion,
becomes coaxing in order to be helped along, and tries to take my arm:

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12