THE NIGHTLESS CITY
Straight before her lay a wide pavement, humming with voices, lined with
three-story houses that glowed with iron-hooped lanterns of red, yellow
and green, and tinkled with the music of _samisen_. From their gaily
lighted _shoji_ swathes of warm, yellow light fell on the _kimono'd_
figures of men strolling slowly up and down. A little way off rose a
square tower, with a white clock-face, illumined by a circle of electric
bulbs. Narrower streets, also innocent of roadway, crossed at right
angles and at mathematical intervals. They were starry with lamps that
hung in long projecting balconies ornamented with grill and carved work.
From these came the shrieking sounds of music and an indescribable
atmosphere of frivolity, of obvious dedication to some flippant cult.
In and out of these side streets flowed a multitude of boys and men, in
unbelted summer robes of light colors, lazily vivacious, moving on
naked, clogged feet, making the air a bluish haze of cigarette smoke. In
the blazing dusk they suggested the populace of some crowded Spa
strolling to the pools in flowing bath-robes and straw hats. On some of
the far balconies Barbara could see women leaning, in ornate costumes,
smoking tiny pipes. Here and there girls strolled past her, for the most
part in couples, gaudily clad, their cheeks white with rice-powder,
their lips carmined, their blue-black hair wonderfully coaxed and
pomaded into shining wings and whorls, thrust through with many jeweled
hair-pins, like slim daggers. They jested freely with the men they
passed, laughing continually with low voices. In a doorway a slim girl,
dressed in deep red, gleefully tickled with one bare foot the hide of a
shaggy poodle vainly essaying slumber. As she went on, the crowd became
more numerous; men's _kimono_ brushed Barbara's skirts and eyes stared
at her with contemplative boldness.
"Madame!"
She felt a hand pluck her sleeve. It was a young Japanese, in foreign
dress, with a shining brown derby, shining aureated teeth, and shining
silver-handled cane. "Madame wishes a guide?" he inquired. She
recollected him instantly as the youth who had slipped into her hand the
printed card when she had landed from the ship at Yokohama. She did not
know the name of the theater she had left, however, so shook her head
and hurried on.
Without warning she emerged into the nun-like quiet of a park with an
acre of growing trees and an irregular little lake that lay dark and
still under the moon. Beside it was a stretch of hard, beaten earth,
seemingly a playground. Benches were set under the trees, and among them
moved or sat other girls in costumes like those she had seen on the
pavement. At sight of Barbara's foreign dress some of them giggled with
amusement and called to one another in repressed, laughing voices. A
bell struck somewhere, and, as though this had been a signal, they all
rose and departed, passing out by the way Barbara had come.
She traversed the park--to come face to face with a high palisade. She
took a new direction, only to come again on the same barrier. The park
seemed only a part of a vast inclosure into which she had penetrated.
Had this no outlet save the gate at which she had entered? Wondering,
she retraced her steps to the lighted pavement. She was puzzled now, and
turned into one of the cross streets. Its blaze of light, its movement
and murmur of humanity bewildered her for a moment; then what she saw
instantly arrested her.
The lower stories of most of the abutting buildings had for fronts only
lattices of vertical wooden bars, set a few inches apart. Inside these
bars, which made strange, human bird-cages, seated on mats of brocade,
or flitting here and there, were galaxies of Japanese girls, marvelously
habited in chameleon colors--even more brilliant than the _geisha_ she
had seen at Mukojima--like branches of iridescent humming-birds or banks
of pulsing butterflies. Here and there, a foil to the fluttering cages,
stretched a silent arcade brilliantly lighted and hung with women's
photographs. Above each was fixed a placard with a name in Japanese
characters.
What was this place into which she had strayed? She had heard of the
famous "Street-of-the-_Geisha_," where the dancers live. Had she
stumbled on this in the throes of some festival? Why were there no women
on the pavements? She had seen none save those in the gaudy robes whom
the bell had called away. What was the meaning of the high
palisades?--the narrow gate with its stolid policemen?--the barred house
fronts?
Projecting on to the pavement, at the side of each building, was a
small, windowed kiosk like the box-office of a theater. In the one
nearest Barbara a man was sitting. His arm was thrust through the
window, and his hand, holding a half-opened fan, tapped carelessly on
its side while he chanted in a coaxing voice. Inside a man with
close-cropped gray hair strode along the seated rows, striking sharply
together flint and steel, till a shower of gleaming sparks fell on each
head-dress. This done, he emerged and paced three times up and down the
pavement, making squeaking noises with his lips, and describing with his
hands strange passes in the air. These reminded Barbara irresistibly of
a child's cryptic gestures for luck. He then struck the flat of his hand
six times smartly against the door-post and retired. She noticed that he
paused at the entrance to snuff the row of candles that burned in a
shrine beside it.
The whole street, with its rows of gilded cages was a gleaming vista of
_tableaux-vivants_, drenched in prismatic hues. Each, Barbara noted, had
its uniform scheme of costume: one showed the sweeping lines and deep,
flowing sleeves of the pre-_Meiji_ era; another the high, garnet skirt
of the modern school-girl; in one the _kimono_ were of rich mauve,
shading at the bottom to pale pink set with languorous red peonies; in
another, of gray crepe figured with craggy pine-trees; in a third, of
scarlet and blue, woven with gold thread and embroidered in peacock
feathers. Before each inmate's cushion sat a tiny brass _hibachi_, or
fire-bowl, in whose ashes glowed a live coal for the lighting of pipes
and cigarettes, and a miniature toilet-table, like a doll's-cabinet,
topped by a small, round mirror. From tiny compartments now and then one
would draw a little box of rouge, a powder-puff of down, or an ivory
spicula, with which, in complete indifference to observation, she would
heighten the vivid red of a lip, or smooth a refractory hair. The
background against which they posed was of heavy and exquisitely
intricate gold-lacquer carvings of stork, dragon and phoenix, of
cunningly disposed mirrors, or of draped crimson and silver weaves.
Before the bars men paused to chat a moment and pass on: behind them the
gorgeous robes and tinted faces flitted hither and thither with a magpie
chatter, with glimpses of ringed fingers clutching the lattice, and of
naked feet, slim and brown against the flooring.
Barbara watched curiously. She was no longer conscious that passing men
studied her furtively--that here and there, through the slender bars, a
delicate hand waved daringly to her. In all the fairy-like gorgeousness
she felt a subtle sense of repugnance that kept her feet in the middle
of the pavement. She noted now that, however the costumes varied, they
agreed in one particular: the _obi_ of each inmate was tied, not at the
back, but in front. It seemed a kind of badge. Somewhere she had read
what it stood for. What was it?
A group of men passed her at the moment--foreigners, speaking an
unfamiliar tongue. They talked loudly and pointed with their sticks. One
of them observed her, and turning, said something to his companions.
They looked back. One of them laughed coarsely.
At the sound, which echoed a patent vulgarity in the allusion, the blood
flew to her cheeks. The tone had told her in a flash what the palisades,
the barred inclosures, the gaudy finery and reversed _obi_ had failed to
suggest. A veil was wound about her hat and with nervous haste she drew
down its folds over her face, feeling suddenly sick and hot. Driven now
by an overpowering desire to find her way out, she doubled desperately
back to the wider street.
"Madame!"
She turned, with relief this time, to see "Mr. Y. Nakajima," the guide,
of the gold fillings and silver-topped cane.
"You are lost," he said. "Come with me, and I will find you."
She bade him take her to the gate as quickly as possible and followed
him rapidly, stung with an acute longing for the noisy roadway with its
careening _rick'sha_. He was a thin, humorous-looking youth with a
chocolate skin and long almond eyes, from which he shot at Barbara
glances half obsequious, half impertinent and preternaturally sly, from
time to time making some remark which she answered as shortly as she
might.
By the arch with its lofty female figure, under the weeping willow,
Barbara turned for an instant and looked back. The street seemed to
her a maze of reeling lights--a blur of painted lips and drowsing
eyes and ghostly sobbing of the _samisen_. Just outside the gate a
pilgrim-priest, his coffin-like shrine strapped on his back, was
mumbling a prayer.
The guide spoke complacently: "Japan Yoshiwara are very famed," he said.
"I think other countries is very seldom to have got."
"Where do they all come from?" Barbara asked suddenly. "How do they come
to be here?"
"From many village," he answered. He had raised his voice, for several
passers-by had paused to listen inquisitively to the strange sounds, so
uncouthly unlike their own liquid syllabary; and he loved to display his
English. "A man have a shop. Business become bad; he owe so plenty
money. He can not pay, but he have pretty daughter. Here they offer
maybe two, three hundred _yen_, for one year. So she dutifully pay
honorable father debt."
Barbara turned away. Again she felt the edge of mystery, bred of the
unguessable divergence between the moral Shibboleths of West and East.
It caught at her like the cool touch of dread that chills the strayer in
haunted places. In a hundred ways this land drew her with an
extraordinary attraction; now a feeling of baffled perplexity and pain
mingled with the fascination. It was almost a sort of terror. If in two
days Japan offered such passionate variety, such undreamed contrasts and
subtleties, what would it eventually show to her? Could she ever really
know it, understand it?
"There is a theater near here where Sada Gozen is playing," she said.
"Can you take me there?"
He nodded. "The _Raimon-za_--the Play-House-of-the-Gate-of-Thunder. It
is more five minutes of distant."
He conducted her through a maze of narrow streets and pointed to the
building, which she saw with a breath of relief. Taking out her purse
she put a bill into his hand. "Thank you," she said, "and good night."
"I shall go with Madame at her hotel."
She shook her head. "I can find my way now."
"But Madame--"
"No," she said decidedly.
He stood a moment swinging his cane, looking after her with impudent
almond eyes. Then he lighted a cigarette, settled his derby at a jaunty
angle and sauntered back toward the Yoshiwara.
* * * * *
Barbara came on Daunt in the middle of the block. He had stationed
himself in the roadway, towering head and shoulders above the lesser
stature of the native crowds. With him was a Japanese boy who, she noted
with surprise, was Ito, one of the house-servants. Her heart jumped as
she saw the relief spring to Daunt's anxious face.
"_Mea culpa!_" she cried, and with an impulsive gesture reached out her
hand to him. "What a trouble I have been to you! I was actually lost.
Isn't it absurd?"
Her slim, white fingers lay a moment in his. All his heart had leaped to
meet them. In the moment of her anger he had not read its meaning, but
since then it had been given him partly to understand. His thoughtless
words--blunderer that he was!--had seemed to carp at her like a whining
school-boy, with cheap, left-handed satire! Yet to his memory even her
hot, indignant voice had been ringingly sweet, for the stars again were
golden, and Tokyo once more fairy-land.
"What _will_ the others say!" she said. "They will have missed us long
ago."
"We will take extra push-men," he said, "and easily overtake them. We
can get _rick'sha_ at the next stand."
"What did you think," she asked, as they rounded the corner, "when you
found I had vanished into thin air?"
"I imagined for a while you were punishing me. Then I guessed you had
somehow turned into the side street. But I felt that you would find your
way back, so--I waited."
"Thank you," she said softly. "I have not acted so badly since I was a
child. Are you going to shrive me?"
"I am the one to ask that of you," he replied.
"No--no! It is I. I must do penance. What is it to be?"
He looked at her steadily; his eyes shone with dark fire. In the pause
she felt her heart throb quickly, and she laughed with a sweet
unsteadiness. "I am glad you are going to give me none," she said.
"But I do," he answered, "I shall. I--"
The boy Ito, behind them, spoke his name. Daunt started with a stab of
recollection and drew from his pocket a folded pink paper, fastened with
a blue seal.
"How stupid of me! My wits have gone wool-gathering to-night. Here is a
telegram for you. It came soon after we left the Embassy, and Mrs.
Dandridge, thinking it might be urgent, sent Ito after us to the
tea-house. He missed us, but saw me here on his way back."
Barbara broke the seal and held the message to the candle-light that
shone from a low temple entrance. She did not notice at the moment that
it was the temple of the Fox-God whose alms she had that evening denied.
She had guessed who was the sender and the knowledge fell like a cool,
fateful hand on her mood.
And alas, on Daunt's also. For, as she turned the leaf, his gaze,
wandering through the temple doorway, to the candle-starred mirror above
the tithe-box, had unwittingly seen reflected there, in the painfully
exact chirography of a Japanese telegraph-clerk, the signature
[Illustration: Austen Ware (in reverse)]