Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti

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* * * * *

On turning a corner of a street, by good luck we meet our married
comrades of the _Triomphante_ and Jonquille, Touki-San and Campanule!
Bows and curtsies are exchanged by the mousmes, reciprocal
manifestations of joy at meeting; then, forming a compact band, we are
carried off by the ever-increasing crowd and continue our progress in
the direction of the temple.

The streets gradually ascend (the temples are always built on a
height); and by degrees as we mount up, there is added to the
brilliant fairyland of lanterns and costumes, yet another, ethereally
blue in the haze of distance; all Nagasaki, its pagodas, its
mountains, its still waters full of the rays of moonlight, seem to
rise up with us into the air. Slowly, step by step, one may say it
springs up around, enveloping in one great shimmering veil all the
foreground, with its dazzling red lights and many-colored streamers.

No doubt we are getting near, for here are the religious steps,
porticos and monsters hewn out of enormous blocks of granite. We now
have to climb a series of steps, almost earned by the surging crowd
ascending with us.

The temple court-yard; we have arrived.

This is the last and most astonishing scene in the evening's
fairy-tale,--a luminous and weird scene with fantastic distances
lighted up by the moon and the gigantic trees, the sacred
cryptomerias, stretching forth their dark somber boughs like a vast
dome.

Here we are all seated with our mousmes, beneath the light awning
wreathed in flowers, of one of the many little tea-houses improvised
in this courtyard. We are on a terrace at the top of the great steps,
up which the crowd continues to flock; we are at the foot of a portico
which stands up erect with the rigid massiveness of a colossus against
the dark night sky; at the foot also of a monster, who stares down
upon us, with his big stony eyes, his cruel grimace and smile.

This portico and the monster are the two great overwhelming masses in
the foreground of the incredible scene before us; they stand out with
dazzling boldness against the vague and ashy blue of the distant
sphere beyond; behind them, Nagasaki is spread out in a bird's-eye
view, faintly outlined in the transparent darkness with myriads of
little colored lights, and the extravagantly dented profile of the
mountains is delineated on the starlit sky, blue upon blue,
transparency upon transparency. A corner of the harbor is also
visible, high up, undefined like a lake lost in the clouds; the water
faintly illumined by a ray of moonlight shining forth like a sheet of
silver.

Around us the long crystal trumpets keep up their gobble. Groups of
polite and frivolous persons pass and repass like fantastic shadows:
childish bands of small-eyed mousmes with smile so candidly
meaningless and chignons shining through their bright silver flowers;
ugly men waving at the end of long branches their eternal lanterns
shaped like birds, gods or insects.

Behind us, in the lit-up and wide-open temple, the bonzes sit,
immovable embodiments of doctrine, in the glittering sanctuary
inhabited by divinities, chimeras and symbols. The crowd, monotonously
droning its mingled prayers and laughter, presses around them, sowing
its alms broadcast; with a continuous jingle, the money rolls on the
ground into the precincts reserved to the priests, where the white
mats entirely disappear under the mass of many-sized coins accumulated
there as after a deluge of silver and bronze.

We, however, feel thoroughly at sea in the midst of this festivity; we
look on, we laugh like the rest, we make foolish and senseless remarks
in a language insufficiently learned, and which this evening, I know
not why, we can hardly understand. Notwithstanding the night breeze,
we find it very hot under our awning, and we absorb quantities of
funny-looking water-ices, served in cups, which taste like scented
frost, or rather like flowers steeped in snow. Our mousmes order for
themselves great bowls of candied beans mixed with hail,--real
hail-stones such as we would pick up after a hail-storm in March.

Glou! glou! glou! the crystal trumpets slowly repeat their notes, the
powerful sonority of which has a labored and smothered sound, as
though they came from under water; they mingle with the jingling of
rattles and the noise of castanets. We also have the impression of
being carried away in the irresistible swing of this incomprehensible
gayety, composed in proportions we can scarcely measure, of elements
mystic, puerile and even ghastly. A sort of religious terror is
diffused by the hidden idols divined in the temple behind us; by the
mumbled prayers, confusedly heard; above all, by the horrible heads in
lacquered wood, representing foxes, which, as they pass, hide human
faces,--hideous livid masks.

In the gardens and outbuildings of the temple the most inconceivable
mountebanks have taken up their quarters, their black streamers,
painted with white letters, looking like funereal trappings as they
float in the wind from the top of their tall flagstaffs. Hither we
turn out steps, as soon as our mousmes have ended their orisons and
bestowed their alms.

In one of the booths a man stretched on a table, flat on his back, is
alone on the stage; puppets of almost human size, with horribly
grinning masks, spring out of his body; they speak, gesticulate, then
fall back like empty rags; with a sudden spring, they start up again,
change their costumes, change their faces, tearing about in one
continual frenzy. Suddenly three, even four appear at the same time;
they are nothing more than the four limbs of the outstretched man,
whose legs and arms, raised on high, are each one dressed up, and
capped with a wig under which peers a mask; between these phantoms
tremendous fighting and battling take place, and many a sword-thrust
is exchanged. The most fearful of all is a certain puppet representing
an hag; every time she appears, with her weird head and ghastly grin,
the lights burn low, the music of the accompanying orchestra moans
forth a sinister strain given by the flutes, mingled with a rattling
tremolo which sounds like the clatter of bones. This creature
evidently plays an ugly part in the piece,--that of a horrible old
ghoul, spiteful and famished. Still more appalling than her person is
her shadow, which, projected upon a white screen, is abnormally and
vividly distinct; by means of some unknown process this shadow, which
nevertheless follows all her movements, assumes the aspect of a wolf.
At a given moment the hag turns round and presents the profile of her
distorted snub nose as she accepts the bowl of rice which is offered
to her; on the screen at the very same instant appears the elongated
outline of the wolf, with its pointed ears, its muzzle and chops, its
great teeth and hanging tongue. The orchestra grinds, wails, quivers;
then suddenly bursts out into funereal shrieks, like a concert of
owls; the hag is now eating, and her wolfish shadow is eating also,
greedily moving its jaws and nibbling at another shadow easy to
recognize,--the arm of a little child.

We now go on to see the _great salamander_ of Japan, an animal rare
in this country, and quite unknown elsewhere, a great cold mass;
sluggish and benumbed, looking like some antediluvian _experiment_,
forgotten in the inner seas of this archipelago.

Next comes the trained elephant, the terror of our mousmes, the
equilibrists, the menagerie.

It is one o'clock in the morning before we are back at Diou-djen-dji.

We first get Yves to bed in the little paper room he has already once
occupied. Then we go to bed ourselves, after the inevitable
preparations, the smoking of the little pipe, and the _pan! pan! pan!
pan!_ on the edge of the box.

Suddenly Yves begins to move restlessly in his sleep, to toss about,
giving great kicks on the wall, and making a frightful noise.

What can be the matter? I at once imagine that he must be dreaming of
the old hag and her wolfish shadow. Chrysantheme raises herself on her
elbow and listens, with astonishment depicted on her face.

Ah! happy thought! she has discovered what is tormenting him:

"Ka!" (mosquitoes) she says.

And, to impress the more forcibly her meaning on my mind, she pinches
my arm so hard with her little pointed nails, at the same time
imitating, with such an amusing play of her features, the grimace of a
person who is stung, that I exclaim--

"Oh! stop, Chrysantheme, this pantomime is too expressive, and indeed
useless! I know the word _Ka_, and had quite understood, I assure
you."

It is done so drolly and so quickly, with such a pretty pout, that in
truth I cannot think of being angry, although I shall certainly have
to-morrow a blue mark on my arm; about that there is no doubt.

"Come, we must get up and go to Yves' rescue; he cannot be allowed to
go on thumping in that manner. Let us take a lantern, and see what has
happened."

It was indeed the mosquitoes. They are hovering in a thick cloud about
him; those of the house and those of the garden all seem collected
together, swarming and buzzing. Chrysantheme indignantly burns several
at the flame of her lantern, and shows me others: "Hou!" covering the
white paper walls.

He, tired out with his day's amusement, sleeps on; but his slumbers
are restless, as can be easily imagined. Chrysantheme gives him a
shake, wishing him to get up and share our blue mosquito net.

After a little pressing he does as he is bid and follows us, looking
like an overgrown boy only half awake. I make no objection to this
singular hospitality; after all, it looks so little like a bed, the
matting we are to share, and we sleep in our clothes, as we always do
according to the Niponese fashion. After all, on a journey in a
railway, do not the most estimable ladies stretch themselves without
demur by the side of gentlemen unknown to them?

I have however placed Chrysantheme's little wooden block in the center
of the gauze tent, between our two pillows.

Then, without saying a word, in a dignified manner as though she were
rectifying an error of etiquette that I had inadvertently committed,
Chrysantheme takes up her piece of wood, putting in its place my
snake-skin drum; I shall therefore be in the middle between the two.
It is really more correct, decidedly much more proper; Chrysantheme is
evidently a very decorous young person.

Returning on board next morning, in the clear morning sun, we walk
through pathways full of dew; accompanied by a band of funny little
mousmes of six or eight years of age, who are going off to school.

Needless to say that the cicalas around us keep up their perpetual
sonorous chirping. The mountain smells delicious. The atmosphere, the
dawning day, the infantine grace of these little girls in their long
frocks and shiny chignons, all is redundant with freshness and youth.
The flowers and grasses on which we tread sparkle with dewdrops,
exhaling a perfume of freshness. What undying beauty there is, even in
Japan, in the first fresh morning hours in the country, and the
dawning hours of life!

Besides, I am quite ready to admit the attractiveness of the little
Japanese children; some of them are most fascinating. But how is it
that their charm vanishes so rapidly and is so quickly replaced by the
elderly grimace, the smiling ugliness, the monkeyish face?

XXXV.

My mother-in-law Madame Renoncule's small garden is, without
exception, one of the most melancholy spots I have seen during all my
peregrinations through the world.

Oh, the slow, enervating, dull hours spent in idle and diffuse
conversation in the dimly lighted verandah! Oh, the horrid peppered
jam in the microscopic pots! In the middle of the town, enclosed by
four walls, is this park of five yards square, with little lakes,
little mountains, and little rocks, where all wears an antiquated
appearance, and everything is covered with a greenish moldiness from
want of sun.

Nevertheless a true feeling for nature has inspired this tiny
representation of a wild spot. The rocks are well placed, the dwarf
cedars, no taller than cabbages, stretch their gnarled boughs over the
valleys in the attitude of giants wearied by the weight of centuries;
and their look of _big trees_ perplexes one and falsifies the
perspective. When from the dark recesses of the apartment one
perceives at a certain distance this diminutive landscape dimly
lighted up, the wonder is whether it is all artificial, or whether one
is not oneself the victim of some morbid illusion; and if it is not
indeed a real country view seen through a distorted vision out of
focus, or through the wrong end of a telescope.

To any one familiar with Japanese life my mother-in-law's house in
itself reveals a refined nature,--complete nudity, two or three
screens placed here and there, a teapot, a vase full of lotus-flowers,
and nothing more. Woodwork devoid of paint or varnish, but carved in
most elaborate and capricious openwork, the whiteness of the pinewood
being kept up by constant scrubbings of soap and water. The posts and
beams of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are
cut in precise geometrical forms; others artificially twisted,
imitating trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers.
Everywhere little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets
concealed in the most ingenious and unexpected manner under the
immaculate uniformity of the white paper panels.

I cannot help smiling when I think of some of the so-called _Japanese_
drawing-rooms, overcrowded with knick-knacks and curios and hung with
coarse gold embroideries on exported satins, of our Parisian fine
ladies. I would advise those persons to come and look at the houses of
people of taste out here; to visit the white solitudes of the palaces
at Yeddo. In France we have works of art in order to enjoy them; here
they possess them merely to ticket them and lock them up carefully in
a kind of mysterious underground room shut in by iron gratings called
a _godoun_. On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of
distinction, do they open this impenetrable depositary. The true
Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and
indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork;
an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the
most infinitesimal details.

My mother-in-law seems to be really a very nice woman, and were it not
for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden
produces on me, I would often go and see her. She has nothing in
common with the mammas of Jonquille, Campanule or Touki: she is vastly
their superior; and then I can see that she has been very good-looking
and stylish. Her past life puzzles me; but in my position as a
son-in-law, good manners prevent my making further inquiries.

Some assert that she was formerly a celebrated guecha in Yeddo, who
lost public favor by her folly in becoming a mother. This would
account for her daughter's talent on the guitar; she had probably
herself taught her the touch and style of the Conservatory.

Since the birth of Chrysantheme (her eldest child and first cause of
this loss of favor), my mother-in-law, an expansive although
distinguished nature, has fallen seven times into the same fatal
error, and I have two little sisters-in-law: Mdlle. La Neige,[G] and
Mdlle. La Lune,[H] as well as five little brothers-in-law: Cerisier,
Pigeon, Liseron, Or, and Bambou.

[Footnote G: In Japanese: _Oyouki-San_ (like Madame Prune's
daughter).]

[Footnote H: In Japanese: _Tsouki-San_.]

Little Bambou is four years old,--a yellow baby, fat and round all
over, with fine bright eyes; coaxing and jolly, sleeping whenever he
is not laughing. Of all my Niponese family, Bambou is the one I love
the most.

XXXVI.

_Tuesday, August 27th_.

We have spent the day,--Yves, Chrysantheme, Oyouki and
myself,--wandering through dark and dusty nooks, dragged hither and
thither by four quick-footed djins, in search of antiquities in the
bric-a-brac shops.

Towards sunset, Chrysantheme, who has wearied me more than ever since
the morning, and who doubtless has perceived it, pulls a very long
face, declares herself ill, and begs leave to spend the night at her
mother's, Madame Renoncule.

I agree to this with the best grace in the world; let her go, tiresome
little mousme! Oyouki will carry a message to her parents, who will
shut up our rooms; we shall spend the evening, Yves and I, in roaming
about as fancy takes us, without any mousme dragging at our heels, and
shall afterwards regain our own quarters on board the _Triomphante_,
without having the trouble of climbing up that hill.

First of all, we make an attempt to dine together in some fashionable
tea-house. Impossible, there is not a place to be had; all the absurd
paper rooms, all the compartments contrived by so many ingenious
dodges of slipping and sliding panels, all the nooks and corners in
the little gardens are filled with Japanese men and women eating
impossible and incredible little dishes! numberless young dandies are
dining _tete-a-tete_ with the lady of their choice, and sounds of
dancing girls and music issue from the private rooms.

The fact is, that to-day is the third and last day of the great
pilgrimage to the temple of the _Jumping Tortoise_, of which we saw
the commencement yesterday, and all Nagasaki is at this time given
over to amusement.

At the tea-house of the _Indescribable Butterflies_, which is also
full to overflowing, but where we are well-known, they have had the
bright idea of throwing a temporary flooring over the little
lake,--the pond where the gold-fish live, and it is here that our meal
is served, in the pleasant freshness of the fountain which continues
its murmur under our feet.

After dinner, we follow the faithful and ascend again to the temple.

Up there we find the same elfin revelry, the same masks, the same
music. We seat ourselves, as before, under a gauze tent and sip odd
little drinks tasting of flowers. But this evening we are alone, and
the absence of the band of mousmes, whose familiar little faces formed
a bond of union between this holiday-making people and ourselves,
separates and isolates us more than usual from the profusion of
oddities in the midst of which we seem to be lost. Beneath us, lies
always the immense blue background: Nagasaki illumined by moonlight,
and the expanse of silvered, glittering water, which seems like a
vaporous vision suspended in mid-air. Behind us is the great open
temple, where the bonzes officiate to the accompaniment of sacred
bells and wooden clappers,--looking, from where we sit, more like
puppets than anything else, some squatting in rows like peaceful
mummies, others executing rhythmical marches before the golden
background where stand the gods. We do not laugh to-night, and speak
but little, more forcibly struck by the scene than we were on the
first night; we only look on, trying to understand. Suddenly, Yves
turning round, says:

"Hullo! brother, your mousme!!"

Actually there she is, behind him; Chrysantheme almost on all fours,
hidden between the paws of a great granite beast, half tiger, half
dog, against which our fragile tent is leaning.

"She pulled my trousers with her nails, for all the world like a
little cat," said Yves, still full of surprise, "positively like a
cat!"

She remains bent double in the most humble form of salutation; she
smiles timidly, afraid of being ill received, and the head of my
little brother-in-law, Bambou, appears smiling too, just above her
own. She has brought this little _mousko_[I] with her, perched astride
on her back; he looks as absurd as ever, with his shaven head, his
long frock and the great bows of his silken sash. There they both
stand gazing at us, anxious to know how their joke will be taken.

[Footnote I: _Mousko_ is the masculine of _mousme_, and signifies
little boy. Excessive politeness makes it _mousko-san_ (Mr. little
boy).]

For my part, I have not the least idea of giving them a cold
reception; on the contrary, the meeting amuses me. It even strikes me
that it is rather pretty of Chrysantheme to come round in this way,
and to bring Bambou-San to the festival; though it savors somewhat of
her low breeding, to tell the truth, to have tacked him on to her
back, as the poorer Japanese women do with their little ones.

However, let her sit down between Yves and myself: and let them bring
her those iced beans she loves so much; and we will take the jolly
little _mousko_ on our knees and cram him with sugar and sweetness to
his heart's content.

* * * * *

The evening over, when we begin to think of leaving, and of going down
again, Chrysantheme replaces her little Bambou astride upon her back,
and sets forth, bending forward under his weight and painfully
dragging her Cinderella slippers over the granite steps and
flagstones. Yes, decidedly low this conduct! but low in the best sense
of the word: nothing in it displeases me; I even consider
Chrysantheme's affection for Bambou-San engaging and attractive in its
simplicity.

One cannot deny this merit to the Japanese,--a great love for little
children, and a talent for amusing them, for making them laugh,
inventing comical toys for them, making the morning of their life
happy; for a specialty in dressing them, arranging their heads, and
giving to the whole little personage the most diverting appearance
possible. It is the only thing I really like about this country: the
babies and the manner in which they are understood.

* * * * *

On our way we meet our married friends of the _Triomphante_, who, much
surprised at seeing me with this _mousko_, chaffingly exclaim:

"What! a son already?"

Down in the town, we make a point of bidding good-by to Chrysantheme
at the turning of the street where her mother lives. She smiles
undecided, declares herself well again, and begs to return to our
house on the heights. This did not precisely enter into my plans, I
confess. However, it would look very ungracious to refuse.

So be it! But we must carry the _mousko_ home to his mamma, and then
begin, by the flickering light of a new lantern bought afresh from
Madame Tres-Propre, our weary homeward ascent.

Here, however, we find ourselves in another predicament: this
ridiculous little Bambou insists upon coming with us! No, he will take
no denial, we must take him with us. This is out of all reason, quite
impossible!

However, it will not do to make him cry, on the night of a great
festival too, poor little _mousko_. So we must send a message to
Madame Renoncule, that she may not be uneasy about him, and as there
will soon not be a living creature on the footpaths of Diou-djen-dji
to laugh at us, we will take it in turn, Yves and I, to carry him on
our back, all the way up that climb in the darkness.

* * * * *

And here am I, who did not wish to return this way to-night, dragging
a mousme by the hand, actually carrying an extra burden in the shape
of a _mousko_ on my back. What an irony of fate!

As I had expected, all our shutters and doors are closed, bolted and
barred; no one expects us, and we have to make a prodigious noise at
the door. Chrysantheme sets to work and calls with all her might:

"Ho! Oume-San-an-an-an!" (In English: "Hi! Madame Pru-u-u-u-une!")

These intonations in her little voice are unknown to me; her longdrawn
call in the echoing darkness of midnight has so strange an accent,
something so unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal
feeling of far-off exile.

At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us, only half awake
and much astonished; by way of a night-cap she wears a monstrous
cotton turban, on the blue ground of which a few white storks are
playfully disporting themselves. Holding in the tips of her fingers
with an affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk of her
beflowered lantern, she gazes intently into our faces, one after
another, to assure herself of our identity; but the poor old lady
cannot get over the _mousko_ I am carrying.

XXXVII

At first it was only to Chrysantheme's guitar that I listened with
pleasure: now I am beginning to like her singing also.

She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep assumed voice of the
virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes, always very high, are soft,
thin, and plaintive.

She will often teach Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy, which she
has composed, or which comes back to her mind. Then they both astonish
me, for on their well-tuned guitars they will search out
accompaniments in parts, and try again each time that the chords are
not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the
confusion of these dissonant harmonies, always weird and always
melancholy.

Generally, while their music is going on, I am writing in the
verandah, with the superb stretched out in front of me. I write,
seated on a mat on the floor and leaning upon a little Japanese desk,
ornamented with swallows in relief; my ink is Chinese, my ink-stand,
just like that of my landlord, is in jade, with dear little frogs and
toads carved on the rim. In short, I am writing my memoirs,--exactly
as M. Sucre does downstairs! Occasionally I fancy I resemble him--a
very disagreeable fancy.

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