Next morning I awoke early, roused by the twittering of grass sparrows
and the weakened croak of a frog, hoarse from its vocal efforts of the
night.
It was New Year’s day, and the sun was streaming through the open
windows. Mousmé had already crept from her white mattress beneath the
smoke-blue mosquito curtains, and was doubtless sunning herself, after a
hasty toilet, in the wonderful garden which we had fashioned out of the
rocks and red-brown soil.
I stretched sleepily, and wondered vaguely what they were doing in
England, and whether my estimable, though trying, sister Lou (fashionable
to her finger-tips) had cajoled my unfortunate brother-in-law into
changing her last year’s set of furs for “something a little more the
thing, don’t you know, Stanmere.”
Mousmé requires no furs. Her wants are few. A piece of silk with
wonderful patterns over it—birds which seem to fly, irises whose vivid
tints almost make unaccustomed eyes ache, and chrysanthemums which one
could swear nod upon their slender, almost leafless stalks—which she
fashions into a robe of delight. A few jade and lacquer pins for her
wonderful jet-black hair. Some new _tabi_. Long white digitated stockings
reaching above her dimpled knees. A sash to make her girl acquaintances
and married brother’s wife jealous. And so you have the costume in which
she is prepared to receive her visitors and to glide with a soothing
shish-shish over the white matting of the floor and through the comically
narrow passages.
The mail arrived yesterday week, and down at Kotmasu’s office I found
Lou’s usual parcel of New Year’s gifts. For me there were several new
novels—the pictures in which will cause Mousmé to wonder and open her
almond eyes wide, with the little trick of quivering the lids which
she has—some papers, tobacco—five pounds of it in a sealed tin (a good
soul is Stanmere)—a shaving tidy worked by Irene in some mysterious
stitch which seems to have come into fashion since I scorned crewel-work
anti-macassars with lace frills that hung on the back buttons of one’s
coat, turning one at afternoon tea into an object of interest and
amusement.
For Mousmé there was a Paris hat (Lou will never, I fear, realise that
Paris fashions have as yet little interest for Nagasaki belles), in which
Mousmé’s piquant face would be smothered and turned to no account, a silk
tea-gown which she will wear with the dignity becoming five feet one inch
and a half of really married Japanese womanhood.
There was also something more.
My present, which I have had sent out from the Compagnie des Fondants
Parisiens—a huge box of the best confectionery that money could buy. I
knew that Mousmé would like this better than anything else, and that for
the time the native _teriyaki_ and such-like sugar-coated joys would be
nowhere.
All the presents are in the little room I use as a study—a room into
which Mousmé creeps with awe. It is (to her untutored mind) so full of
books and mysterious writings.
I had risen and was gazing out over the harbour, which lay below me
veiled in a gauze-like, opalescent haze, when the farther paper-panelled
door was slid softly back in its groove, and Mousmé entered.
A quaint little figure with the flush of dawn transferred to her
porcelain cheeks and eyes bright with the early morning air of the
scented garden; her elaborate coiffure, with its many pins, a striking
contrast to the _négligée_ of her plum-coloured _kimono_ with its sprays
of bamboo in gold thread. Against her bare little throat and dimpled
shoulders she pressed a wealth of iris and lotus blooms and tender green
shoots of the slenderest bamboo, her face peeping out elfish and smiling
from the midst.
“These are for you, Cy-reel,” she said, laughing and casting the
brilliant blossoms on to the floor in a patch of sunlight at my feet.
“Now den what have you for me?”
It is difficult to resist Mousmé when she pulls one’s face down to her
own smiling one, and throws slender but wonderfully tenacious little arms
round one’s neck.
Mousmé, since she married, has lost some of the shyness for the “velly
much rich Englishman” who had so strange a fancy as to marry her right
away, and in its place has come the knowledge of certain privileges of
her sex (for she knows little as yet of the “advanced” woman), and she
exacts them with a pretty persistence which I find charming.
We went along the passage to the room in which are all the presents. They
have been taken out of their case, and piled with masculine breadth of
effect upon two low lacquer-and-bamboo settees in a corner near one of
the windows.
“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed Mousmé, and then she fell down before this wonderful
collection of gifts, her tiny hands fluttering over them like those of a
child uncertain which thing to touch first.
Irene’s shaving tidy, the tin of tobacco sent by Stanmere, Lou’s gift of
books—all these things are brushed aside, and the wonderful pale blue
tea-gown is at last taken up. It is absurdly long for her, of course,
and as she slipped into it she laughed softly at the comical figure she
presented.
“It is velly nice, I like it. But it must be cut off. You cannot come
near me with all this on the floor.”
She glided once or twice across the room, like a big-winged moth, with
the soft sound of silk frou-frou on the matting, and then the gown was
laid aside, so that she might more easily find the other presents.
Then the box of fondants was discovered. What rapture! Smiles stole over
her face. Her little fingers trembled when she at last made up her mind
to undo the satin ribbon, which, crossing from corner to corner, is tied
in a great bow in the centre of the lid. There are wonderful sweets of
all sorts, things which Mousmé almost fears to taste, and which when once
tasted encourage her to further depredations and experiments.
“Mousmé, you’ll be ill.”
“No, Cy-reel, not nearly so sweet and ill-producing as _teriyaki_.”
I laughed at the gentle sophistry and suggested that we should go to
breakfast.
After the meal a huge bullock-cart came along the road which runs at the
foot of our sloping garden. It is laden with New Year’s gifts to tempt
those who have put off the inevitable spending of sen and yen till the
last possible moment.
Mousmé drew me along the garden path, past the iris pond, in the shade of
which gold-fish are keeping New Year’s day on a fly-and-mosquito diet,
to the side of the cart. The proprietors in new suits are explaining
the merits of their wares, which are cheapened enormously as at Western
“sale” times. A light air stirred the paper lanterns with which the cart
was decked.
One represented a huge gold-fish with a gold and vermilion body and fins
boldly sketched in black. It took Mousmé’s fancy. We purchased it, and
earned the absurdly exaggerated thanks of the smiling vendors, knowing
the while that we did not require it, and that it would be placed with a
score of others, hung on their slight bamboo rods, in the cupboard at the
end of the passage.
Some night, perhaps, unless another lantern comes more easily to hand, we
might take it out to guide us on our way down to the _chaya_ at which the
best _geishas_ dance.
During the whole of the morning we were expectant. Before sunset many of
Mousmé’s numerous relations will have called to wish us New Year joys:
and my respected, if too effusive, mother-in-law will have once more
asked me if I am satisfied with her daughter.
She even yet seems to think that her daughter is on approval, and liable
at any time to be returned with liquidated damages in the form of an
extra handsome _kimono_ from Nara-Ya’s famous store on the Bund. Everyone
calls on everyone, and after mid-day we are not long left without
visitors.
Kotmasu turned up in good time. He brought Mousmé the tiny dog she has
been longing for. A charming present, which she will almost want to wear
round her neck with a chain, lest it be lost.
It was only when our little home almost trembled and our garden seemed
to swarm with the incursion of Mousmé’s relatives that I realised how
throughly I was married. By the time the sun had commenced its downward
flight into the sea behind the hills, many had arrived, and little
moon-faced Aki had taken the usual and seemingly inevitable plunge into
the water-lily pond in search of the sprites who are supposed to dwell
therein.
These obsequious relatives by marriage amuse me immensely. They all
take so much _au sérieux_. But how truly polite they all are. Even the
sampanman (a cousin of whom Mousmé is not quite sure) is a polished
gentleman, and the new suit with which he has managed to start the year,
with the manners thrown in, gave him quite a distinguished air. I noticed
that the box of sweets was reserved by Mousmé for those who were drinking
tea, surrounded by many plates and cups—the favoured few, mostly girl
friends.
If only I might have believed the charming prevarications of my
relatives, how beautiful everything belonging to me must have been.
At length the last of them disappeared down the road. And the paper
lanterns, whose dull white surfaces challenge the moon swinging in the
sky above the amethyst hills, swung round the corner. Mousmé waved her
hand sympathetically, and then we sat down together on the veranda to
watch the last hours of a New Year’s Day glide into the æons of the past.
* * * * *
One day is so very much like another to me in this strange land, where I
have the lightest of business duties to perform, few friends other than
Kotmasu, and no great desire to gain any more, though I find the natives
I know vastly more interesting than the few English who are settled more
or less permanently in Nagasaki for business or other purposes.
Everything has a certain charm—Mousmé always—but four long years have
robbed my surroundings of that subtlest of all interests, novelty. I am
eager to test my experiment, which is answering here so admirably, with a
new environment.
“Mousmé in Bond Street.” Kotmasu’s phrase haunts me with a sinister
purpose, but I am not to be daunted easily, for I have my own opinions.
Have I not? I ask myself.
I remember the Frenchman who, with some delicacy, sums up the question
of marriage in every clime where any ceremony is attached to the rite:
“Given a woman and one possesses the possibility of great happiness—or
its exact antithesis,” and I am thankful that my experiment so far has
resulted well.
Mousmé is neither the serpent nor the eel of another French writer’s
experience, but is always fresh, always charming. She is a graduate in
the art of pleasing. She knows nothing further of astronomy than to
suspect that the stars are really big diamonds, nor of mathematics than
what generally enables her to make a good bargain for an _obi_, dress or
hairpin. Hers are entirely applied mathematics, and of the simplest kind.
All this ignorance is very stupid, no doubt, to you. I can well imagine
the smile of the Girton girl or “superior person” which will reward my
confession of Mousmé’s ignorance, but then you are at a disadvantage—in
short, you do not know Mousmé as I do. She has lately taken to writing
me love-letters whilst I am away down in the town, and when she is tired
of trying to read what is printed underneath the pictures in the papers
and magazines—queer narrow little strips of letters, folded ever so many
times, which she places in her prettiest envelopes, and lays upon my
writing-desk; then hides behind a paper screen, or in the next room, to
watch me unobserved whilst I read them.
Of course, she could tell me all that they contain, and often does; but
Mousmé is quite a child in some things—the blending of childishness with
womanhood, which is one of her most delightful traits.
There are such quaint turns of expression in these rice-paper
billets-doux, which by turns bring smiles and tears into my eyes, such
naïve confessions, such strange lapses into her limited vocabulary of
English words.
To-day there is one of those notes on my writing-table, in a shrimp-pink
envelope, on which is depicted a dainty little _geisha_ dancing in one
corner. There is a rather strong air—I cannot call it a wind, or even
breeze—stirring; and Mousmé, fearful lest the treasury of her love should
be blown away, has weighed it down with the bronze frog I use for a
paper-weight, which she made me buy as an ornament (!) for my table the
other day.
I take the little letter up, of course, with the knowledge that Mousmé’s
eye is upon me from some near retreat, from which she can steal forth
silently to kiss me, English fashion; or startle me with some sudden
noise, in imitation of the mice which scamper about in the basement at
night, or with a mimicry of the strange _han! han!_ of the vultures which
whirl, screaming hoarsely and as if in complaint, over the water of the
harbour below.
Mousmé comes out softly from her hiding-place behind the turquoise-blue
paper screen in the corner, unaware that two tell-tale glasses, her
big one (which she soon made me purchase for her) and my little one,
have from their juxtaposition long ago betrayed to me the secret of her
whereabouts.
Two soft white arms, bare to the elbows, encircle my neck suddenly from
behind; a pretty, piquant face appears over my left shoulder, and—well,
after a time, when we stand up and look at each other, there is a peal
of gay, spontaneous laughter. And, behold! there is a tell-tale patch of
white upon my cheek and coat where her face has rested.
It is several days since we have been anywhere—that is, further afield
than a flying visit to my mother-in-law down the hill—and to-night we are
going to the _fête_ at the great temple away up the hillside. I have been
to such before, but Mousmé is crazy to go with her real husband; and as
there is certainly no valid objection to urge against her desire, we are
going.
Mousmé puts the little shrimp-coloured love-letter in a box on top of the
numerous others she has written me during our three months of married
life, and then we sit down to a dinner of the usual perplexing dishes.
We talk gaily enough in Japanese, Mousmé describing to me all the
delights she is anticipating from the proposed excursion, and telling me
all that has occurred during my two hours’ absence.
What a charming little vis-a-vis she proves as we, seated on our squares
of spotless matting, pretend to make a good meal off impossible
dishes, as to the constituents of which, even now, after some years of
experience, I am frequently in mysterious doubt! Oka, our cook, is of
an inventive turn of mind, and to-day he serves on the tiny blue plates
wee potatoes _à la marrons glacés_, and cherries in vinegar! But Mousmé
pronounces them a success, and insists on leaning across the elaborate
square of magenta silk worked with white cranes fishing, which she has
instituted as a tribute to European ideas of a table-cloth, to put the
larger of the cherries in my mouth on the end of a chop-stick. All this
is very frivolous, doubtless; but very charming. To be anything but gay
with such make-believe surroundings, and Mousmé sitting opposite playful
and smiling, would be out of place. I assert this to myself whenever
the thought of Lou crosses my mind. I am compelled to do so to lay the
ghost of Lou’s outraged sense of propriety, for, truth to tell, she is
very proper over some things, a somewhat hide-bound devotee of society
etiquette with the responsibilities of a rapidly upgrowing daughter.
What a child Mousmé is! And yet there is an indefinable charm inseparable
from womanhood about her. She was pouting just now because the camellia
she had stuck in the front of her gown had fallen in a shower of scarlet
petals into a tiny cup of tea on her knees. Now she is smiling again, and
giving herself a lesson in English.
“Cy-reel! Cy-reel!” She always seems to practise this first; and then, “I
luv yew. I luv yew velly much.” This over and over again, till we both
burst out laughing, and the scene ends in the usual way.
At present our life is a dainty _comédie à deux_, and is nothing
approaching the farce with its underlying tragic note which timorous
Kotmasu feared and predicted.
Soon after sunset we start out—Mousmé and I—to make our way to the
temple. The moon swims up rapidly into the cloud-clear vault of heaven,
and floods our scented garden with a pure silver radiance. We have our
paper lanterns all the same, although in competition with the strong
white moonbeams they look almost trumpery.
Our garden, with its narrow paths and tangled vegetation, is full of
exquisite perfumes released by the blossoming flowers, scents wafted
under one’s nostrils by the faintest breath of air, which causes the
full-blown tea-roses to shiver and then shatter in a hail of falling
petals.
As we turn the corner of the path near the largest of our several
fountains, we look back (as we always do) at our home. The door-panels
of the rooms leading on to the verandah are open, and I can see right
into our bed-chamber. On its bracket a little lamp is burning, and near
it Mousmé has placed a tiny image of Buddha—an ivory god with a fixed
smile. She does not pray to it now, however. I am vaguely conscious that
I have ousted the ivory Buddha from its temple. Why Mousmé keeps it there
I have been as yet unable to discover. How strange it seems to leave the
whole side of one’s house open after dark! Ere we step out on to the road
through the bamboo wicket with its quaintly chased brass hinges, I take
one more look back, and see Oka’s wife with her funny little squat figure
pass along the verandah on her way to tidy the rooms.
Mousmé is charmingly dressed to-night in a peach-coloured silk gown,
so stiff and rich, and an amber-yellow sash. Her hair is done into a
marvellous butterfly, and her head is full of half a score of the most
handsome of her many pins. The moonlight gives a silver sheen to her ebon
locks; and did I not know how black they are, I might have a chill come
to my heart because of Mousmé’s getting grey.
We make our way as rapidly as we can down into the town.
Long before we arrive at the commencement of the town proper we are
made aware that the _fête_ is in full swing by the sounds of gaiety,
the blaze of lanterns which is reflected above the town as if there
were a conflagration, and the softened, confused roar of the thronging
multitudes in the streets.
We reach the end of the street at last, and Mousmé is almost torn from my
arm by the crowd by which we are immediately absorbed.
Every one is gay and good-humoured. I tread upon some one’s heels, but
he only smiles, and assures me that my “honourable feet” have not hurt
his humble heel. My toes are trodden on in turn, Mousmé laughs, and even
I, the injured party, do not remonstrate. Indeed, I almost say, “_Gomen
navai_,” as though I were the offender and do murmur politely—“It is no
matter”—that is all I reply to the polite speech with which the offender
asks pardon.
Mousmé is used to this, and she pilots me amid this bewildering blaze of
ambulatory lanterns, swaying recklessly on the ends of their quivering
sticks.
The moving crowds of women and girls diffuse a subtle perfume from
the flowers they wear in their dresses and hair. Mousmés in the
brilliant colours of their gayest holiday attire jostle one another
good-humouredly—laughing, thoughtless little souls. The men are seemingly
suffering from a bad attack of “European fever,” as is indicated by the
frequent presence of the top-hat or “bowler” above their amiable though
unbeautiful faces, and the occasional presence of trousers beneath their
skirt-like robes.
Alas! just as we near the temple, the pressure of the throng drives us
into the proximity of my mother-in-law, and little Aki, who is carrying
high above his queer shaven head, with its one tuft of hair or rather
fringe—which is like nothing so much as the traditional chimney-sweep’s
circular broom—a lantern, like the banner in “Excelsior,” “with a strange
device”—a most quaintly hideous imp.
Mother-in-law is too busy protecting one of my “handsome presents,” a
ruby-coloured silken _obi_, from contamination with the crowd, to notice
us. But I quickly perceive that Aki’s narrow slots of eyes have spied us
out, for the imp-like lantern sways violently upon its stick as he pushes
his way through the dense crowd towards us.
We are so hedged in that escape is impossible even if we wished;
but Mousmé has a _penchant_ for this queer little brother with his
intelligent monkey-face and ever-present smile.
She, too, has caught sight of the struggling Aki, who at times seems
swallowed up in the crowd, as though never to reappear. But he does. And
we can see him working an eel-like course towards the fluttering banner
under which he doubtless noticed we were standing.
He reaches us at last, and advertises the fact by unconsciously swinging
his imp lantern into my face.
Mousmé bursts out laughing, and so do I—merriment is so infectious; and
in a moment the people near us are laughing too.
Aki is delighted, and seizes hold of a hand of mine and one of Mousmé’s,
and we advance along the street a little further.
The shops we pass are simply blazing with lights. They have stall-like
extensions, encroaching upon the roadway, all of them piled up with
astonishing sweetmeats of brilliant hues, toys, flowers, and hideously
grotesque masks.
Aki is so attracted by the latter that we make scarcely any progress.
Mousmé, who is getting impatient, makes a brilliant suggestion.
“Cy-reel, buy Aki a mask. He will never cease gazing at them or come
along if you don’t. And we shall never reach the temple. No one can see
my _obi_ and dress here.”
I laugh quietly to myself at this last remark. The woman had popped out
unwittingly.
I buy my little brother-in-law a most monstrous head. He is in raptures,
and Mousmé and I are in convulsions of laughter at the hideous god into
which little Aki is at once transformed. We get on famously now, till
his acquisitive eyes light upon a pile of crystal trumpets.
“Ah!” exclaims Mousmé, as she sees him pause, “he must have one.”
It is obvious that queer little Aki’s heart is set upon possessing one
of these weirdly articulate instruments, so another quarter of a _yen_
changes hands, and Aki adds his quota to the unearthly, gobbling sounds
which dozens of these strange instruments produce, blown by other equally
lusty-lunged boys.
The houses we pass by are all thrown open, and decorated exquisitely with
flowers and foliage. It is a scene of fairy-like beauty, and Mousmé at my
side, upon whom I have to look down to admire, is a fairy.
She is getting tired; Aki is dragging on her arm, and I am glad when the
climb up is done, and we are at last at the bottom of the first flight of
the temple steps.
Below us once more, as from our verandah (only from a different and
almost opposite point) we see the town and the land-locked bay flooded in
a silver haze of moonlight, which fails, however, to make the crimson and
golden reflection from the thousands of lanterns less apparent.
The scene is like nothing that can be imagined in beauty, and all around
us appears to be enveloped in a veil of impalpable light.
We are close to the portico of the temple, and we pass underneath it and
enter the courtyard, carried onward by the pressure of the multitude from
behind.
We pass two enormous white-and-blue porcelain lanterns with encircling
serpents of mythological type, and then we are in fairyland again.
Mousmé heaves a little sigh of delight; her colour is deepened by the
crimson of excitement, and her eyes are dancing like fire-flies. Aki
is lost, and we forget all about him. He will be all right. There are
scores of other children straying about, and no one seems to take any
notice. Besides, they mostly wear masks, and blow intermittently upon
crystal horns, the noise of which reminds me of the irate gobble-gobble
of turkeys engaged in a farmyard fracas.
“Cy-reel, is England like this?” Mousmé asks in an excited whisper.
“No,” I am forced to admit, though foreseeing the inevitable rejoinder.
“Then I don’t think I shall like England,” says Mousmé the child.
“We shall see.”
We make our way to the terrace, bordered by tea-houses, now thronged by
the beauties and golden youths of Nagasaki and the country round. At
every turn we seem to meet some acquaintance of Mousmé’s, who keeps up a
continuous series of bows and nods and smiles.
The grove of giant camellias, camphor-wood trees, and cryptomerias
stretch out like a vast roof, the camellias covered with a wealth of
blood-red blossoms which, falling in continuous showers in the vibrating
air, form a crimson carpet under the feet. Even the dark recesses are
luminous with the flood of light which streams from the lanterns and
brilliantly illuminated interiors of the tea-houses. We find seats at
last.
In an instant a mousmé with huge pins in her hair, a humble smile, and
gaily rouged and whitened cheeks, brings us tiny cups of tea.
Beyond and below us we can hear noises which tell of the presence of
side-shows, wrestlers, mountebanks; and the roar of approving audiences
makes Mousmé hasten to drink her tea and eat her beans in sugar with the
greatest possible speed.
When she has finished, we make our way along a terrace and take up our
position to form a part of the audience outside a miniature theatre.
There is not much to see. What there is would scarcely amuse any one less
unsophisticated in the Thespian art than the Japanese. It is something
like a shadow-show. Only the horrible puppets which appear and go through
almost incomprehensible antics are realities, which, in truly terrifying
masks, cause Mousmé what are known as delightful “creeps,” and send
her hand clutching at my arm. The noises from an orchestra of four or
five which accompany the doings of the characters, some of which are a
mixture of man and beast, ghoul-like and given to sudden and unlooked-for
appearances and disappearances, are weird and disquieting; of harmony the
musicians know nothing. Their colour tones are all blues, greens, grays,
and bilious yellows; their merits, that they are in accord with the
impressions of the puppets.
We remain watching these human puppets for some time, surrounded by
a dense crowd craning their necks, and on tip-toe as each new shadow
appears upon the scene. Some of the antics of these shadow-like forms
are so monstrous that I begin to think that Mousmé is getting really
frightened, and so I propose moving on to where some clever tumblers,
contortionists and conjurers are to be seen.
“No,” says Mousmé, “let us go home.”
Then, seeing I do not quite understand her desire, she explains with
charming _naïveté_ that she is afraid of bad dreams.
How queer, little Mousmé! and how childlike, to be sure!
Mousmé’s words have made me notice that the crowd is lessening in
density, and the lanterns are going out. Or is it they are paling before
the coming dawn?
I look into the face of Mousmé, and then into the faces of the people
near us. Yes, that is it. The moon is gone down into the sea, and the
sun will be climbing up the first steps of another day’s journey ere we
arrive home.
We leave the terrace, with its lingering crowds of tired-faced
holiday-makers, and fading light of lanterns and tea-houses, and by a
short cut gain a mountain-path leading close home.
The sound of the trumpets is less and less distinct, and that of the
ever-chirping cicalas more so, as we wend our way—Mousmé and I—along the
narrow, rough, unpaved path in the rapidly growing dawn of a Japanese
morning.
Below us to the left lies the town as yet indistinct in the slowly
increasing light, a mysterious mass of shadows and projections which
mark the places of streets and roofs of houses. Here and there twinkle
yellowish red points of light which grow dimmer each moment in the
quickening dawn. The harbour stretches a mist-obscured expanse, with gaps
here and there like chrysoprases laid in cotton wool. Soon the shipping
will become visible, and the mist roll off the face of the tranquil
water, like a gauze curtain lifted by unseen hands.
The path runs between fields of flowers, and is edged with dewy grass.
The perfume of the blossoms and the keen freshness of the morning air
arouse Mousmé’s almost slumbering senses. Through the indescribable
fragrance and glamour of an Eastern dawn we wend our way homewards slowly
and with tired feet.
The women, in blue cotton garments, are already coming up to work in the
fields. Good-looking children accompanying them chase each other across
the dew-spangled grass, trampling under foot flowers which would have
graced a palace.
At last we have walked up the little garden path, slippery now with the
morning exhalations. Indoors all are asleep. Everywhere is quiet.
But no matter. When Mousmé has drowsily mounted the verandah steps we
have only to enter our little house, which looks so lonely and mysterious
at this early hour, by pushing aside one of those sliding paper panels;
to cross the creaking floor covered with spotlessly clean matting; and
then fall asleep in two minutes on the soft, mosquito-guarded mattress,
lulled, if we need a lullaby, by Oka’s muffled snores down below.
[Illustration: CHAPTER EIGHT]