The next day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour,
merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,--a thick
rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of
the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole
world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki bay, and had chosen this
great green funnel to stream down to their hearts' content. And it
rained, it rained, it became almost as dark as night, so thickly did
the rain fall. Through a veil of crumbled water, we still perceived
the base of the mountains, but the summits were lost to sight among
the great somber masses weighing down upon us. Above us shreds of
clouds, seemingly torn from the dark vault, draggled across the trees,
like vast gray rags,--continually melting away in water, torrents of
water. There was wind too, and it howled through the ravines with a
deep-sounding tone. The whole surface of the bay, bespattered by the
rain, flogged by the gusts of wind that blew from all quarters,
splashed, moaned and seethed in violent agitation.
What wretched weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a
wife through such a deluge, in an unknown country!
* * * * *
No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my
obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:
"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."
Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain, summoned
a kind of little white wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us
on the waves, sculled by a couple of yellow boys stark naked in the
rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little
trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers throws open
for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in
what is called the "cabin" of a sampan.
There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which is moreover scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new
deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering
on my lid, and thus I started off for the town, lying in this box,
flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at
moments almost over-turned; and through the half-opened door of my
rat-trap I saw, upside down, the two little creatures to whom I had
entrusted my fate, children of eight or ten years of age at the most,
who, with little monkeyish faces, had however fully developed muscles
like miniature men, and were already as skillful as any regular old
salts.
* * * * *
They began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the landing-place.
And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown wide open, I
saw quite near to me the gray flag-stones on the quays. I got out of
my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot for the first time in my life
on Japanese soil.
All was streaming around us, and the irritating, tiresome rain dashed
into my eyes.
No sooner had I landed, than there bounded towards me about a dozen
strange beings, of what description it was almost impossible to make
out through the blinding showers--a species of human hedge-hog, each
dragging some large black thing; they came screaming around me and
stopped my progress. One of them opened and held over my head an
enormous closely-ribbed umbrella, decorated on its transparent surface
with paintings of storks; and they all smiled at me in an engaging
manner with an air of expectation.
I had been forewarned: these were only the _djins_ who were touting
for the honor of my preference; nevertheless I was startled at this
sudden attack, this Japanese welcome on a first visit to land (the
_djins_ or _djin-richisans_, are the runners who drag little carts,
and are paid for conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour
or the distance, as cabs are with us).
Their legs were naked; to-day they were very wet, and their heads were
hidden under large shady conical hats. By way of waterproofs they wore
nothing less than mats of straw, with all the ends of the straws
turned outwards bristling like porcupines; they seemed clothed in a
thatched roof. They went on smiling, awaiting my choice.
Not having the honor of being acquainted with any of them in
particular, I choose at haphazard the djin with the umbrella and get
into his little cart, of which he carefully lowers the hood. He draws
an oil-cloth apron over my knees, pulling it up to my face, and then
advancing near, asks me in Japanese something which must have meant:
"Where to, sir?" To which I reply in the same language, "To the
_Garden of Flowers_, my friend."
I said this in the three words I had parrot-like learnt by heart,
astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished too at
their being understood. We started off, he running at full speed, I
dragged along by him, jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in
oiled cloth, shut up as if in a box;--both of us unceasingly drenched
all the while, and dashing all around us the water and mud of the
sodden ground.
"To the _Garden of Flowers_," I had said, like an habitual frequenter
of the place, and quite surprised at hearing myself speak. But I was
less ignorant about Japan than might have been supposed. Many of my
friends had, on their return home from that country, told me about it,
and I knew a great deal; the _Garden of Flowers_ is a _tea-house_, an
elegant rendezvous. There, I would inquire for a certain
Kangourou-San, who is at the same time interpreter, washerman, and
confidential agent for the intercourse of races. Perhaps this very
evening, if all went well, I should be introduced to the bride
destined to me by mysterious fate. This thought kept my mind on the
alert during the panting journey we have been making, the djin and
myself, one dragging the other, under the merciless downpour.
* * * * *
Oh, what a curious Japan I saw that day, through the gaping of my
oil-cloth coverings! from under the dripping hood of my little cart! A
sullen, muddy, half-drowned Japan. All these houses, men or beasts,
hitherto only known to me by drawings; all these, that I had beheld
painted on blue or pink backgrounds of fans or vases, now appeared to
me in their hard reality, under a dark sky, with umbrellas and wooden
shoes, with tucked-up skirts and pitiful aspect.
At moments the rain fell so heavily that I tightly closed up every
chink and crevice, and the noise and shaking benumbed me, so that I
completely forgot in what country I was. In the hood of the cart were
holes, through which little streams ran down my back. Then,
remembering that I was going for the first time in my life through the
very heart of Nagasaki, I cast an inquiring look outside, at the risk
of receiving a douche: we were trotting along through a mean, narrow
little back street (there are thousands like it, a perfect labyrinth
of them) the rain falling in cascades from the tops of the roofs on
the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and
vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed by a lady,
struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high
wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens,
tucked up under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a
pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed
to make a hideous, ferocious grimace at me.
How immense this Nagasaki is! Here had we been running hard for the
last hour, and still it seemed never-ending. It is a flat plain, and
one could never suppose from the offing that so vast a plain could lie
in the recesses of this valley.
It would, however, have been impossible for me to say where I was, or
in what direction we had run; I abandoned my fate to my djin and to my
good luck.
What a steam-engine of a man my djin was! I had been accustomed to the
Chinese runners, but they were nothing by the side of this fellow.
When I part my oil-cloths to peep at anything, he is naturally always
the first object in my foreground: his two naked, brown, muscular
legs, scampering one after the other, splashing all around, and his
bristling hedgehog back bending low in the rain. Do the passers-by,
gazing at this little dripping cart, guess that it contains a suitor
in quest of a bride?
* * * * *
At last my vehicle stops, and my djin, with many smiles and
precautions lest any fresh rivers should stream down my back, lowers
the hood of the cart; there is a break in the storm, and the rain has
ceased. I had not yet seen his face; by exception to the general rule,
he is good-looking;--a young man of about thirty years of age, of
intelligent and strong appearance, and an open countenance. Who could
have foreseen that a few days later this very djin.--But no, I will
not anticipate, and run the risk of throwing beforehand any discredit
on Chrysanthème.
We had therefore reached our destination, and found ourselves at the
foot of a tall overhanging mountain; probably beyond the limits of the
town, in some suburban district. It apparently became necessary to
continue our journey on foot, and climb up an almost perpendicular
narrow path. Around us, a number of small country houses, garden
walls, and high bamboo palisades closed in the view. The green hill
crushed us with its towering height; the heavy, dark clouds lowering
over our heads seemed like a leaden canopy confining us in this
unknown spot; it really seemed as though the complete absence of
perspective inclined one all the better to notice the details of this
tiny corner, muddy and wet, of homely Japan, now lying before our
eyes. The earth was very red. The grasses and wild flowers bordering
the pathway were strange to me;--nevertheless, the palings were
covered with convolvuli like our own, and I recognized in the gardens,
china asters, zinnias, and other familiar flowers. The atmosphere
seemed laden with a curiously complicated odor, something besides the
perfume of the plants and soil, arising no doubt from the human
dwelling-places,--a mingled smell, I fancied, of dried fish and
incense. Not a creature was to be seen; of the inhabitants, of their
homes and life, there was not a vestige, and I might have imagined
myself anywhere in the world.
My djin had fastened up his little cart under a tree, and together we
clambered the steep path on the slippery red soil.
"We are going to the _Garden of Flowers_, are we not?" I inquired,
anxious to ascertain if I had been understood.
"Yes, yes," replied the djin, "it is up there, and quite near."
The road turned, steep banks hemming it in and darkening it. On one
side, it skirted the mountain all covered with a tangle of wet ferns;
on the other appeared a large wooden house almost devoid of apertures
and of evil aspect; it was there that my djin halted.
What, that sinister-looking house was the _Garden of Flowers_? He
assured me that it was, and seemed very sure of the fact. We knocked
at a big door which opened immediately, slipping back in its groove.
Then two funny little women appeared, oldish-looking, but with evident
pretensions to youth: exact types of the figures painted on vases,
with their baby hands and feet.
On catching sight of me, they threw themselves on all fours, their
faces touching the floor. Good gracious! what can be the matter?
Nothing at all, it is only the ceremonious salute to which I am as yet
unaccustomed. They rise, and proceed to take off my boots (one never
keeps on one's shoes in a Japanese house), wiping the bottom of my
trousers and feeling my shoulders to see if I am wet.
What always strikes one on first entering a Japanese dwelling is the
extreme cleanliness, and white and chilling bareness of the rooms.
Over the most irreproachable mattings, without a crease, a line, or a
stain, I am led upstairs to the first story and ushered into a big
empty room, absolutely empty! The paper walls are mounted on sliding
panels, which fitting into each other, can be made to disappear
entirely,--and all one side of the apartment opens like a verandah on
to the green country and the gray sky beyond. By way of a chair, I am
given a square piece of black velvet, and behold me seated low, in the
middle of this large empty room, which by its very vastness is almost
chilly. The two little women (who are the servants of the house and my
very humble servants too), await my orders, in attitudes expressive of
the profoundest humility.
* * * * *
It seemed extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I
had learnt during our exile at the Pescadores Islands--by sheer dint
of dictionary and grammar book, without attaching the least sense to
them--should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I was at
once understood.
* * * * *
I wish in the first place to speak to one M. Kangourou, who is
interpreter, washerman, and matrimonial agent. Nothing could be
better: they know him and will go at once in search of him; and the
elder of the waiting-maids gets ready for the purpose her wooden clogs
and her paper umbrella.
Next I demand a well-served repast, composed of the greatest
delicacies of Japan. Better and better, they rush to the kitchen to
order it.
Finally, I beg they will give tea and rice to my djin, who is waiting
for me below;--I wish, in short, I wish many things, my dear little
dollies, which I will mention by degrees and with due deliberation,
when I shall have had time to assemble the necessary words. But, the
more I look at you the more uneasy I feel as to what my _fiancée_ of
to-morrow may be like. Almost pretty, I grant you, you are,--in virtue
of quaintness, delicate hands, miniature feet, but ugly after all, and
absurdly small. You look like ouistitis, like little china ornaments,
like I don't know what. I begin to understand that I have arrived at
this house at an ill-chosen moment. Something is going on which does
not concern me, and I feel that I am in the way.
From the beginning I might have guessed as much, notwithstanding the
excessive politeness of my welcome; for I remember now, that while
they were taking off my boots downstairs, I heard a murmuring chatter
overhead, then a noise of panels moved quickly along their grooves,
evidently to hide from me something I was not intended to see; they
were improvising for me the apartment in which I now am--just as in
menageries they make a separate compartment for some beasts when the
public is admitted.
Now I am left alone while my orders are being executed, and I listen
attentively, squatted like a Buddha on my black velvet cushion, in the
midst of the whiteness of the walls and mats.
Behind the paper partitions, worn-out voices, seemingly numerous, are
talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song
of a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare
house, in the melancholy of the rainy weather.
What one can see through the wide-open verandah is very pretty, I will
admit; it resembles the landscape of a fairy tale. There are admirably
wooded mountains, climbing high into the dark and gloomy sky, and
hiding in it the peaks of their summits, and, perched up among the
clouds--a temple. The atmosphere has that absolute transparency, the
distance that clearness which follows a great downpour of rain; but a
thick pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and
on the foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray
fluff, which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of
and below all this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden
where two beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves
by pursuing each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth,
shaking from their paws the sand, which is still wet. The garden is as
conventional as possible: not a flower, but little rocks, little
lakes, dwarf trees cut in a grotesque fashion; all this is not
natural, but it is most ingeniously arranged, so green, so full of
fresh mosses!
In the rain-soaked country below me, to the very furthest end of the
vast scene, reigns a great silence, an absolute calm. But the woman's
voice, behind the paper wall, continues to sing in a key of gentle
sadness, and the accompanying guitar has somber and even gloomy notes.
Stay though! Now the music is somewhat quicker--one might even suppose
they were dancing!
So much the worse! I shall try to look between the fragile divisions,
through a crack which has revealed itself to my notice.
What a singular spectacle it is; evidently the gilded youth of
Nagasaki holding a great clandestine orgy! In an apartment as bare as
my own, there are a dozen of them, seated in a circle on the ground,
attired in long blue cotton dresses with pagoda sleeves, long, sleek
and greasy hair surmounted by European pot hats; and beneath these,
yellow, worn out, bloodless, foolish faces. On the floor are a number
of little spirit-lamps, little pipes, little lacquer trays, little
tea-pots, little cups--all the accessories and all the remains of a
Japanese feast, resembling nothing so much as a doll's tea-party. In
the midst of this circle of dandies are three over-dressed women, one
might say three weird visions, robed in garments of pale and
undefinable colors, embroidered with golden monsters; and their great
chignons arranged with fantastic art, stuck full of pins and flowers.
Two are seated and turn their back to me: one is holding the guitar,
the other singing with that soft and pretty voice;--thus seen
furtively, from behind, their pose, their hair, the nape of the neck,
all is exquisite, and I tremble lest a movement should reveal to me
faces which might destroy the enchantment. The third one is on her
feet, dancing before this areopagus of idiots, with their lanky locks
and pot hats. What a shock when she turns round! She wears over her
face the horribly grinning, deathly mask of a specter or vampire. The
mask unfastened, falls. And behold! a darling little fairy of about
twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a coquette, already
a woman,--dressed in a long robe of shaded dark blue china crape,
covered with embroidery representing bats--gray bats, black bats,
golden bats.
Suddenly there are steps on the stairs, the light footsteps of
barefooted women pattering over the white mats. No doubt the first
course of my lunch just about to be served. I quickly fall back, fixed
and motionless, upon my black velvet cushion. There are three of them
now, three waiting-maids who arrive in single file, with smiles and
curtsies. One offers me the spirit-lamp and the tea-pot, another
preserved fruits in delightful little plates, the third, absolutely
indefinable objects upon gems of little trays. And they grovel before
me on the floor, placing all this plaything of a meal at my feet.
At this moment, my impressions of Japan are charming enough; I feel
myself fairly launched upon this tiny, artificial, fictitious world,
which I felt I knew already from the paintings of lacquer and
porcelains. It is so exact a representation! The three little
squatting women, graceful and dainty, with their narrow slits of eyes,
their magnificent chignons in huge bows, smooth and shining as
boot-polish, and the little tea-service on the floor, the landscape
seen through the verandah, the pagoda perched among the clouds; and
over all the same affectation everywhere, in every detail. Even the
woman's melancholy voice, still to be heard behind the paper
partition, was so evidently the way they should sing, these musicians
I had so often seen painted in amazing colors on rice-paper, half
closing their dreamy eyes in the midst of impossibly large flowers.
Long before I came to it, I had perfectly pictured this Japan to
myself. Nevertheless in the reality it almost seems to be smaller,
more finicking than I had imagined it, and also much more mournful, no
doubt by reason of that great pall of black clouds hanging over us and
this incessant rain.
* * * * *
While awaiting M. Kangourou (who is dressing himself it appears, and
will be here shortly), it may be as well to begin lunch.
In the daintiest bowl imaginable, adorned with flights of storks, is
the most wildly impossible soup made of sea-weed. After which there
are little fish dried in sugar, crabs in sugar, beans in sugar, and
fruits in vinegar and pepper. All this is atrocious, but above all
unexpected and unimaginable. The little women make me eat, laughing
much, with that perpetual irritating laugh, which is the laugh
peculiar to Japan,--they make me eat, according to their fashion, with
dainty chop-sticks, fingered with mannered grace. I am becoming
accustomed to their faces. The whole effect is refined,--a refinement
so utterly different from our own, that at first sight I understand
nothing of it, although in the long run it may end by pleasing me.
Suddenly there enters, like a night butterfly awakened in broad
daylight, like a rare and surprising moth, the dancing-girl from the
other compartment, the child who wore the horrible mask. No doubt she
wishes to have a look at me. She rolls her eyes like a timid kitten,
and then all at once tamed, nestles against me, with a coaxing air of
childishness, which is a delightfully transparent assumption. She is
slim, elegant, delicate, and smells sweet; drolly painted, white as
plaster, with a little circle of rouge marked very precisely in the
middle of each cheek, the mouth reddened, and a touch of gilding
outlining the under lip. As they could not whiten the back of the neck
on account of all the delicate little curls of hair growing there,
they had, in their love of exactitude, stopped the white plaster in a
straight line, which might have been cut with a knife, and in
consequence at the nape appears a square of natural skin of a deep
yellow.
An imperious note sounds on the guitar, evidently a summons! Crac!
Away she goes, the little fairy, to rejoice the drivelling fools on
the other side of the screens.
Supposing I marry this one, without seeking any further. I should
respect her as a child committed to my care; I should take her for
what she is: a fantastic and charming plaything. What an amusing
little household I should set up! Really short of marrying a china
ornament, I should find it difficult to choose better.
At this moment enters M. Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed,
which might have come from _La Belle Jardiniere_ or the _Pont Neuf_,
with a pot hat and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once
foolish and cunning; he has hardly a nose, hardly any eyes. He makes a
real Japanese salutation: an abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the
knees, the body making a right angle to the legs, as if the fellow
were breaking in two; a little snake-like hissing (produced by sucking
the saliva between the teeth, and which is the expression _nec plus
ultra_ of obsequious politeness in this country). "You speak French,
M. Kangourou?"
"_ sir" (renewed bows).
He makes one for each word I utter, as if he were a mechanical toy
pulled by a string; when he is seated before me on the ground, he
limits himself to a duck of the head--always accompanied by the same
hissing noise of the saliva.
"A cup of tea, M. Kangourou?"
Fresh salute and an extra affected gesticulation with the hands, as if
to say, "I should hardly dare. It is too great a condescension on your
part. However, anything to oblige you."
* * * * *
He guesses at the first words what I require from him.
"Of course," he replies, "we will see about it at once; in a week's
time, as it happens, a family from Simonosaki, in which there are two
charming daughters, will be here."
"What! in a week! You don't know me, M. Kangourou! No, no, either now,
to-morrow, or not at all."
Again a hissing bow, and Kangourou-San catching my agitation, begins
to pass in feverish review, all the young persons at his disposal in
Nagasaki.
"Let us see--there was Mdlle. Œillet. What a pity that I had not
spoken a few days sooner! So pretty! So clever at playing the guitar.
It is an irreparable misfortune; she was engaged only yesterday by a
Russian officer."
"Ah! Mdlle. Abricot!--Would she suit me, Mdlle. Abricot? She is the
daughter of a wealthy China merchant in the Decima Bazaar, a person of
the highest merit; but she would be very dear: her parents, who think
a great deal of her, will not let her go under a hundred yen[A] a
month. She is very accomplished, thoroughly understands commercial
writings, and has at her finger ends more than two thousand characters
of learned writing. In a poetical competition she gained the first
prize with a sonnet composed in praise of _'the blossoms of the
black-thorn hedges seen in the dew of early morning.'_ Only, she is
not very pretty: one of her eyes is smaller than the other, and she
has a hole in her cheek, resulting from an illness of her childhood."
[Footnote A: A yen is equal to four shillings.]
"Oh no! on no account that one! Let us seek amongst a less
distinguished class of young persons, but without scars. And how about
those on the other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered
dresses? For instance, the dancer with the specter mask, M. Kangourou?
or again she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming
nape to her neck?"
He does not, at first, understand my drift; then when he gathers my
meaning, he shakes his head almost in a joking way, and says:
"No, sir, no! Those are only _Guéchas_,[B] sir--_Guéchas!_"
[Footnote B: _Guéchas_ are professional dancers and singers trained at
the Yeddo Conservatory.]
"Well, but why not a _Guécha_? What odds can it be to me, whether they
are _Guéchas_ or not?" Later on, no doubt, when I understand Japanese
affairs better, I shall appreciate myself the enormity of my proposal:
one would really suppose I had talked of marrying the devil.
At this point M. Kangourou suddenly calls to mind one Mdlle. Jasmin.
Heavens! how was it he did not think of her at once; she is absolutely
and exactly what I want; he will go to-morrow or this very evening, to
make the necessary overtures to the parents of this young person who
live a long way off, on the opposite hill, in the suburb of
Diou-djen-dji. She is a very pretty girl of about fifteen. She can
probably be engaged for about eighteen or twenty dollars a month, on
condition of presenting her with a few dresses of the best fashion,
and of lodging her in a pleasant and well-situated house,--all of
which a man of gallantry like myself could not fail to do.
Well, let us fix upon Mdlle. Jasmin then,--and now we must part; time
presses. M. Kangourou will come on board to-morrow to communicate to
me the result of his first proceedings and to arrange with me for the
interview. For the present he refuses to accept any remuneration; but
I am to give him my washing, and to procure him the custom of my
brother officers of the _Triomphante_. It is all settled. Profound
bows,--they put on my boots again at the door. My djin, profiting by
the interpreter kind fortune has placed in his way, begs to be
recommended to me for future custom; his stand is on the quay; his
number is 415, inscribed in French characters on the lantern of his
vehicle (we have a number 415 on board, one Le Goëlec, gunner, who
serves the left of one of my guns; happy thought, I shall remember
this); his price is sixpence the journey, or five pence an hour, for
his customers. Capital; he shall have my custom, that is promised. And
now, let us be off. The waiting-maids, who have escorted me to the
door, fall on all fours as a final salute, and remain prostrate on the
threshold--as long as I am still in sight down the dark pathway, where
the rain trickles off the great over-arching bracken upon my head.