At first it was only to Chrysanthème's guitar that I listened with
pleasure: now I am beginning to like her singing also.
She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep assumed voice of the
virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes, always very high, are soft,
thin, and plaintive.
She will often teach Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy, which she
has composed, or which comes back to her mind. Then they both astonish
me, for on their well-tuned guitars they will search out
accompaniments in parts, and try again each time that the chords are
not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing themselves in the
confusion of these dissonant harmonies, always weird and always
melancholy.
Generally, while their music is going on, I am writing in the
verandah, with the superb stretched out in front of me. I write,
seated on a mat on the floor and leaning upon a little Japanese desk,
ornamented with swallows in relief; my ink is Chinese, my ink-stand,
just like that of my landlord, is in jade, with dear little frogs and
toads carved on the rim. In short, I am writing my memoirs,--exactly
as M. Sucre does downstairs! Occasionally I fancy I resemble him--a
very disagreeable fancy.
My memoirs,--composed of incongruous details, minute observations of
colors, shapes, scents, and sounds.
It is true that a complete imbroglio, worthy of a romance, seems ever
threatening to appear upon my monotonous horizon; a regular intrigue
seems ever ready to explode in the midst of this little world of
mousmés and grasshoppers: Chrysanthème in love with Yves; Yves with
Chrysanthème; Oyouki with me; I with no one. We might even find here,
ready to hand, the elements of a fratricidal drama, were we in any
other country than Japan; but we are in Japan, and under the narrowing
and dwarfing influence of the surroundings, which turn everything into
ridicule, nothing will come of it all.