_September 15th_.
There is a rumor of departure in the air. Since yesterday there has
been vague talk of our being sent to China, to the gulf of Pekin; one
of those rumors which spread, no one knows how, from one end of the
ship to the other, two or three days before the official orders
arrive, and which generally turn out tolerably correct. What will the
last act of my little Japanese comedy be like? the dénouement, the
separation? Will there be any touch of sadness on the part of my
mousmé, or on my own, just a tightening of the heart-strings at the
moment of our final farewell? At this moment I can imagine nothing of
the sort. And then the adieux of Yves and Chrysanthème, what will they
be? This question preoccupies me more than all.
There is nothing very precise as yet, but it is certain that one way
or another, our stay in Japan is coming to an end. It is this perhaps
which disposes me this evening, to throw a more friendly glance on my
surroundings. It is about six o'clock, after a day spent on duty, when
I reach Diou-djen-dji. The evening sun, low in the sky, on the point
of setting, pours into my room, and floods it with rays of red gold,
lighting up the Buddhas and the great sheaves of quaintly arranged
flowers in the antique vases. Here are assembled five or six little
dolls, my neighbors, amusing themselves by dancing to the sound of
Chrysanthème's guitar. And this evening I experience a real charm in
feeling that this dwelling and the woman who leads the dance, are
mine. On the whole I have perhaps been unjust to this country; it
seems to me that my eyes are at last opened to see it in its true
light, that all my senses are undergoing a strange and abrupt
transition; I suddenly have a better perception and appreciation of
all the infinity of dainty trifles amongst which I live; of the
fragile and studied grace of their forms, the oddity of their
drawings, the refined choice of their colors.
I stretch myself upon the white mats; Chrysanthème, always eagerly
attentive, brings me my pillow of serpent's skin; and the smiling
mousmés, with the interrupted rhythm of a while ago still running in
their heads, move round me with measured steps.
Their irreproachable socks with the separate great toes, make no
noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a froufrou of silken
stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air has
the gift of pleasing me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is
that gives it to them: it is not only their round inexpressive faces
with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive
amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be
supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures
are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little
marionnettes without bodies at all, and which would slip to the ground
of themselves were they not kept together midway, about where a waist
should be, by the wide silken sashes,--a very different comprehension
of the art of dressing to ours, which endeavors as much as possible to
bring into relief the curves, real or false, of the figure.
And then, how much I admire the flowers arranged by Chrysanthème in
our vases, with her Japanese taste: lotus flowers, great sacred
flowers of a tender, veined rose-color, the milky rose-color seen on
porcelain; they resemble, when in full bloom, great water-lilies, and
when only in bud, might be taken for long pale tulips. Their soft but
rather cloying scent is added to that other indefinable odor of
mousmés, of yellow race, of Japan, which is always and everywhere in
the air. The late flowers of September, at this season very rare and
expensive, grow on longer stems than the summer blooms; Chrysanthème
has left them their immense aquatic leaves of a melancholy
seaweed-green, and mingled with them tall slight rushes. I look at
them, and recall with some irony those great round bunches in the
shape of cauliflowers, which our florists sell in France, wrapt in
their white lace-paper.
Still no letters from Europe, from any one. How things change, become
effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical
Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my
thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller
things,--things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am
becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to
miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate
monotony of the mats, to the finely finished simplicity of the white
woodwork. I am even losing my Western prejudices; all my preconceived
ideas are this evening evaporating and vanishing; crossing the garden
I have courteously saluted M. Sucre, who was watering his dwarf shrubs
and his deformed flowers; and Madame Prune appears to me a highly
respectable old lady, in whose past there is nothing to criticise.
We shall take no walk to-night; my only wish is to remain stretched
out where I am, listening to the music of my mousmé's _chamécen_.
Till now, I have always used the word _guitar_, to avoid exotic terms,
for the abuse of which I have been so reproached. But neither the word
_guitar_ nor _mandolin_ suffices to designate this slender instrument
with its long neck, the high notes of which are shriller than the
voice of the grasshopper; henceforth, I will write _chamécen_.
I will also call my mousmé _Kikou, Kikou-San_; this name suits her
better than Chrysanthème, which though translating the sense exactly,
does not preserve the strange-sounding euphony of the original.