_Sunday, August 25th_.
At about six o'clock, while I was on duty, the _Triomphante_ left her
prison walls between the mountains and came out of dock. After a great
uproar of maneuvering we took up our old moorings in the roadstead, at
the foot of the Diou-djen-dji hills. The weather was again calm and
cloudless, the sky presenting a peculiar clearness as though it had
been swept clean by the cyclone, an exceeding transparency bringing
out the minutest details of the far distance till then unseen; as if
the terrible blast had blown away every vestige of the floating mists
and left behind it nothing but void and boundless space. The coloring
of woods and mountains stood out again in the resplendent verdancy of
spring after the torrents of rain, like the wet colors of some freshly
washed painting. The sampans and junks, which for the last three days
had been lying under shelter, had now put out to sea, and the bay was
covered with their white sails, which looked like an immense flight of
seabirds.
At eight o'clock, at nightfall, our maneuver being at an end, I
embarked with Yves on board a sampan; this time it is he who is
carrying me off and taking me back to my home.
On land, a delicious perfume of new-mown hay greets us, and the road
across the mountains lies bathed in glorious moonlight. We go straight
up to Diou-djen-dji to join Chrysanthème; I feel almost remorseful,
although I hardly show it, for my neglect of her.
Looking up, I recognize from afar my little house, perched on high. It
is wide open and lit up; I even hear the sound of guitar. Then I
perceive the gilt head of my Buddha between: the little bright flames
of its two hanging night lamps. Now Chrysanthème appears on the
verandah, looking out as if she expected us; and with her wonderful
bows of hair and long falling sleeves, her silhouette is thoroughly
Niponese.
As I enter, she comes forward to kiss me, in a graceful, though rather
hesitating manner, while Oyouki, more demonstrative, throws her arms
around me.
It is with a certain pleasure that I see once more this Japanese home,
which I wonder to find still mine when I had almost forgotten its
existence. Chrysanthème has put fresh flowers in our vases, spread out
her hair, donned her best clothes, and lighted our lamps to honor my
return. From the balcony she had watched the _Triomphante_ leave the
dock, and, in the expectation of our now prompt return, she had made
her preparations; then, to while away the time, she was studying a
duet on the guitar with Oyouki. Not a question or reproach did she
make. On the contrary:
"We quite understood," she said, "how impossible it was, in such
dreadful weather, to undertake so lengthy a crossing in a sampan."
She smiled like a pleased child, and I should be fastidious indeed if
I did not admit that to-night she is charming.
I announce my intention of starting off for a long stroll through
Nagasaki; we will take Oyouki-San and two little cousins who happen to
be there, as well as some other neighbors, if they wish to; we will
buy the funniest toys, eat all sorts of cakes, and amuse ourselves to
our hearts' content.
"How lucky we are to be here, just at the right moment," they exclaim,
jumping with joy. "How fortunate we are! This very evening there is to
be a pilgrimage to the great temple of the _Jumping Tortoise!_ The
whole town will be there; all our married friends have already
started, the whole set, X----, Y----, Z----, Touki-San, Campanule, and
Jonquille, with _the friend of amazing height_." And those two, poor
Chrysanthème and poor Oyouki, would have been obliged to stay at home
with heavy hearts, because we had not yet arrived, and because Madame
Prune had been seized with faintness and hysterics after her dinner.
Quickly the mousmés must deck themselves out. Chrysanthème is ready;
Oyouki hurries, changes her dress, and, putting on a mouse-colored
gray robe, begs me to arrange the bows of her fine sash--black satin
lined with yellow--sticking at the same time in her hair a silver
top-knot. We light our lanterns, swinging at the end of little sticks;
M. Sucre, overwhelming us with thanks for his daughter, accompanies us
on all fours to the door,--and we go off gayly through the clear and
balmy night.
Below, we find the town in all the animation of a great holiday. The
streets are thronged; the crowd passes by,--a laughing, capricious,
slow, unequal tide, flowing onwards, however, steadily in the same
direction, towards the same goal. There arises therefrom an immense
but light murmur in which dominate the sounds of laughter, and the
low-toned interchange of polite speeches. Then follow lanterns upon
lanterns. Never in my life have I seen so many, so variegated, so
complicated, and so extraordinary.
We follow, drifting with the surging crowd, borne along by it. There
are groups of women of every age, decked out in their smartest
clothes, crowds of mousmés with aigrettes of flowers in their hair, or
little silver top-knots like Oyouki,--pretty little physiognomies,
little narrow eyes peeping between slit lids like those of a new-born
kitten, fat pale little cheeks, round, puffed-out, half-opened lips.
They are pretty, nevertheless, these little Niponese, in their smiles
and childishness.
The men, on the other hand, wear many a pot hat, pompously added to
the long national robe, and giving thereby a finishing touch to their
cheerful ugliness, resembling nothing so much as dancing monkeys. They
carry boughs in their hands, whole shrubs, even, amidst the foliage of
which dangle all sorts of curious lanterns in the shape of imps and
birds.
As we advance in the direction of the temple, the streets become more
noisy and crowded. All along the houses are endless stalls raised on
trestles, displaying sweetmeats of every color, toys, branches of
flowers, nosegays, and masks. There are masks everywhere, boxes full
of them, carts full of them; the most popular being the one that
represents the livid and cunning muzzle, contracted as by a deathlike
grimace, the long straight ears, sharp-pointed teeth of the white fox,
sacred to the God of Rice. There are also others symbolic of gods or
monsters, livid, grimacing, convulsed, with wigs and beards of natural
hair. All manner of folk, even children, purchase these horrors, and
fasten them over their faces. Every sort of instrument is for sale,
amongst them many of those crystal trumpets which sound so
strangely,--this evening they are enormous, six feet long at
least,--and the noise they make is unlike anything ever heard before:
one would say gigantic turkeys gobbling amongst the crowd, and
striving to inspire fear.
In the religious amusements of this people it is not possible for us
to penetrate the mysteriously hidden meaning of things; we cannot
divine the boundary at which jesting stops and mystic fear steps in.
These customs, these symbols, these masks, all that tradition and
atavism have jumbled together in the Japanese brain, proceed from
sources utterly dark and unknown to us; even the oldest records fail
to explain them to us in anything but a superficial and cursory
manner, _simply because we have absolutely nothing in common with this
people_. We pass in the midst of their mirth and their laughter
without understanding the wherefore, so totally does it differ from
our own.
* * * * *
Chrysanthème with Yves, Oyouki with me, Fraise and Zinia, our cousins,
walking before us under our watchful eye, slowly move through the
crowd, holding each others' hands lest we should lose one another.
All along the streets leading to the temple, the wealthy inhabitants
have decorated the fronts of their houses with a quantity of vases and
nosegays. The peculiar shed-like buildings habitual in this country,
with their open platform frontage, are particularly well suited for
the display of choice objects; all the houses have been thrown open,
and the interiors are hung with draperies that hide the back of the
apartments. In front of these hangings and slightly standing back from
the movement of the passing crowd, the various exhibited articles are
methodically placed in a row, under the full glare of hanging lamps.
Hardly any flowers compose the nosegays, nothing but foliage,--some
rare and priceless, others chosen as if purposely from amongst the
commonest plants, arranged however with such taste as to make them
appear new and choice; ordinary lettuce leaves, tall cabbage stalks
are placed with exquisite artificial taste in vessels of marvelous
workmanship. All the vases are of bronze, but the designs are varied
according to each changing fancy: some complicated and twisted;
others, and by far the largest number, graceful and simple, but of a
simplicity so studied and exquisite that to our eyes they seem the
revelation of an unknown art, the subversion of all acquired notions
on form.
* * * * *
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 mousmés, 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 mousmés, 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 mousmés 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 mousmés 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 mousmés 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 mousmés, 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. Chrysanthème 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, Chrysanthème, 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. Chrysanthème 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. Chrysanthème 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 Chrysanthème'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,
Chrysanthème 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; Chrysanthème 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
mousmés 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?