earth still guards against the disappearance of its light; and, in the
last recess of the bare sanctuary, they hide, instead of the Eleusinian
fire, a little round mirror of polished metal.
A VISIT
There are long cries before any one opens,--furious batterings upon the
patient portal,--before the servant, grown conscious of this “concert,”
comes to recognize the stranger deposited on a litter in the midst of
his porters, before the door. For here there is no deep-sounding bell,
no button which, by the pulling of a wire attached through the walls
to secret mechanism, sets off a sudden explosion, like the squeal of a
beast that one pinches. The Black Mountain is the quarter where the old
families live, and the silence is profound. The space that Europeans
would reserve for recreation and games, the Chinese consecrate to
retreat. In this animal honeycomb, between these streets seething with
an unclean humanity, they reserve wide unused spaces,--empty enclosures
that are the inheritance of some distinguished person, and that
cloister his household gods. Only a noble roof can possess the enormous
shade of these banyans older than the city, and of these vines which
droop under the weight of their purple globes.
I have entered. I am waiting all alone in the little parlor. It is
four o’clock, and the rain has ceased,--or is it still raining? The
earth has received its fill of water; the soaked leaves breathe freely.
As for me, under this somber and friendly sky I know the compunction
and peace which one feels after having wept. Facing me is a wall
with an uneven coping, where three square windows open, each crossed
with porcelain bars imitating bamboo. As they adjust a “grille” over
diplomatic papers, which isolates the important words, so they have
applied this screen of triple openings to the wide countryside of
trees and water, and have reduced it to a single theme repeated as
in a triptych. The frame defines the picture; the bars, which let my
sight pass, exclude me, and, better than a closed and bolted door, make
certain that I remain inside.
My host does not arrive. I am alone.
THE RICE
It is our very teeth that we sink in the earth, in this plow that we
plant there; and even now our bread eats there as we shall eat. At
home, in the cold north, it is the sun who kneads our bread; he ripens
the field as the open fire cooks our pancakes and roasts our meat. With
a strong plowshare we open a furrow in the solid earth where that crust
of bread is formed which we cut with our knife and grind between our
teeth.
But here the sun does not serve only to heat the domestic sky like a
furnace full of coals. One must take precautions with it. When the
year commences, the waters overflow. These vast fields without slopes,
scarcely separated from the sea that they continue, that the rain soaks
without ever draining away, take refuge under the sheet of water in
which the peasants fix a thousand rice-frames. The work of the village
is to enrich the mud by means of many buckets; on all fours the farmer
strokes the mud and dilutes it with his hands. The Mongol does not
nibble bread, he snatches it with his lips, he gulps it down, without
fashioning a semi-liquid aliment of it in his mouth. So the rice grows,
as it is cooked, in steam; and the intention of its people is to
furnish all the water it will need to sustain the heat of the celestial
furnace. Also, when the waters rise, the chain-pumps sing like crickets
everywhere; and they do not have recourse to the buffalo. Side by side,
clinging to the same bar and pressing the red handle with knees in
unison, men and women watch the kitchen of their field as a housewife
watches a smoking dinner. And the Annamite carries the water in a
sort of spoon; in his black soutane, with his little tortoise head,
as yellow as mustard, he is the weary sacristan of the mire. How many
reverences and genuflections there are when, with a bucket fastened
to two cords, the pair of _nhaques_ go seeking in all the hollows for
juicy mud with which to anoint the earth and make it good to eat.
THE PERIOD
I stop. There is a period to my walk as to a phrase that is finished.
It is the title of a tomb at my feet, at this turning where the road
descends. From there I take my last view of the earth. I survey the
country of the dead. With its groups of pines and olive trees, it
spreads out between the deep fields that enclose it. Everywhere there
is consummate plenty: Ceres has embraced Persephone. Inescapably this
marks the ultimate. I recognize at the foot of these unchangeable
mountains the wide line of the river. I define our frontier, I accept
it. My exile is symbolized by this island crowded with the dead,
devoured by its harvests. Standing alone amid a buried people, my
feet among the names spoken by the grass, I watch this cleft in the
mountains, through which the soft wind, like a growling dog, has tried
for two days to force the enormous cloud it has drawn from the waters
behind me.
It is done; the day is completely gone. There is nothing left but to
return, traversing again the road that leads me to the house. At this
halt, where rest the carriers of coffins and buckets, I look behind me
for a long time at the yellow road where the living fare with the dead,
which ends like a red period upon the crowded sky.
THE TOAST TO A FUTURE DAY
I have climbed to the highest point of the mountain to drink a toast to
a future day,--to a new day, to one that will come,--perhaps it will
succeed this very night. _To the highest point of the mountain, in this
cup of ice that it lifts to the very lips of Aurora!_ I have stripped
and rushed into it. It is so full that, when I enter, the water
overflows like a cataract. I dance in the ebullition of the source like
a grape-seed in a glass of champagne. I cannot distinguish this gushing
basin in which I splash from the whirlpool of air separated from me by
a narrow brink. Far below me circles the clamorous eagle. Beautiful
Aurora, like a shaft thou art sped here from the sea below among the
islands! Drink! that I may feel the quivering of thy insatiate lip as
deep as the submerged plants to which I sink. Let the sun rise! that I
may see the light shadow of my suspended body painted beneath me on the
sand of this basin ringed with the seven-colored rainbow.
THE DAY OF THE FEAST OF ALL THE RIVERS
On this day of the feast of all the rivers we are going to salute
our own, which is wide and rapid. It is the outlet of the country,
it is the force enclosed in her sides, it is the liquefaction of the
substance of the earth, it is the outpouring of the water hidden in
the most secret of her folds, of milk under the impulsion of the ocean
which suckles her. Here, under the good old granite bridge; between
the boats from the mountain which bring us minerals and sugar, and, on
the other side, the many-colored junks of the sea, which from their
anchorage direct toward the impassive piles their great patient eyes,
like those of beasts of burden; the river pours out through sixty
arches. What an uproar, what a white foam it makes, when Aurora sounds
her trumpet,--when the Evening recedes, to the beating of drums. Here
are no piers like those dreary egresses of the Occident. On a level
with the river, in a domestic familiarity, each one comes to wash
linen, to draw the water for supper. And, in the Springtime, in the
turbulence of his joy, this dragon with undulant coils invades our
streets and our houses. He effaces with one lick of his tongue the
accumulated filth of the village.
But today is the feast of the river. We celebrate carnival with it,
in the rolling tumult of yellow waters. If you cannot pass the day
in a backwater, sunk to the eyes like a buffalo in the shade of your
boat, at least do not neglect to offer to the sun of noon pure water
in a bowl of white porcelain. For the coming year it will be a certain
remedy against colic. And this is not the time to be avaricious. One
may unseal the heaviest jug, drink from a golden bowl or earthenware
vessel, one may drink from the very neck of the bottle the tea of
the Fourth Month! Let every one, on this afternoon of flood-tide and
full sunlight, come to feel, to stroke, to clasp, to ride this great
municipal water-beast, which flees with endless coils toward the sea.
Moving throughout its length, trembling from bank to bank with sampans
and with boats; where the guests, clothed in silk like vivid bouquets,
drink and enjoy themselves; all is light and the sound of drums. From
here, from there, from everywhere, pirogues with dragons’ heads appear
and defile, propelled by the arms of an hundred naked paddlers, who
move to the delirious rhythm of this large yellow man in the midst, as
with both hands he beats out a demoniac march. How close together they
seem,--in one wave, the very spirit of the current! How active this
crowd of bodies, plunged to the waist! On the bank where I embark a
woman is washing her linen. The bowl of vermilion lacquer into which
piles the clothing has a border of gold that shines and glows in the
sun of this festival. Brute glance of reflected brightness; symbolic
eye of this day of the honorable River!
THE GOLDEN HOUR
Of all the year this is the most golden hour! As the farmer at the end
of the season realizes the fruits of his labors and receives their
price, so the season comes in a gold to which all is transmuted, in
the sky and on the earth. I wander through the lanes of the harvest,
up to the neck in gold; I rest my chin on the table of the field which
flashes in the sunlight to its farthest boundary. Going toward the
mountains, I surmount a sea of grain. Between the banks of harvest,
the immense, dry flame of the morning-colored plain, where is the old
dim earth? Water is changed into wine; oranges gleam in the silent
branches. All is ripe; grain and straw, and the fruit with the leaf. It
is indeed golden. All is finished, and I see that all is true. In the
fervent effort of the year all color has evaporated. Suddenly, to my
eyes, the earth is like a sun. Let me not die before the golden hour!
DISSOLUTION
Again I am carried back over the indifferent liquid sea. When I am
dead, nothing can hurt me. When I shall be interred between my father
and mother, nothing will make me suffer more. They cannot jeer any
longer at this too ardent heart. The sacrament of my body will dissolve
in the interior of the earth; but, like a most piercing cry, my soul
will repose in the bosom of Abraham. Now everything is dissolved, and
with a dull and heavy eye I search about me in vain for the familiar
land and the firm road under my feet,--and for that unkind face! The
sky is nothing but fog, and Space is nothing but water! You see it!
Everything is blurred; and all about me I must search in vain for line
or form. For a horizon there is nothing but the cessation of color in
darkness. All matter is resolved into water alone, like the tears I
feel coursing down my cheeks. All sound is like the murmur of sleep
when it breathes to us all that is most crushing to our hopes. I shall
have searched in vain, I shall find nothing more beyond me--neither
that country which might have been my home, nor that well-loved face!