HAPPY FAMILIES!
July 18th.
By this time, four officers of my ship are married like myself, and
inhabiting the slopes of the same suburb. This arrangement is quite an
ordinary occurrence, and is brought about without difficulties, mystery,
or danger, through the offices of the same M. Kangourou.
As a matter of course, we are on visiting terms with all these ladies.
First, there is our very merry neighbor Madame Campanule, who is little
Charles N-----'s wife; then Madame Jonquille, who is even merrier than
Campanule, like a young bird, and the daintiest fairy of them all; she
has married X-----, a fair northerner who adores her; they are a
lover-like and inseparable pair, the only one that will probably weep
when the hour of parting comes. Then Sikou-San with Doctor Y-----; and
lastly the midshipman Z------with the tiny Madame Touki-San, no taller
than a boot: thirteen years old at the outside, and already a regular
woman, full of her own importance, a petulant little gossip. In my
childhood I was sometimes taken to the Learned Animals Theatre, and I
remember a certain Madame de Pompadour, a principal role, filled by a
gayly dressed old monkey; Touki-San reminds me of her.
In the evening, all these folk usually come and fetch us for a long
processional walk with lighted lanterns. My wife, more serious, more
melancholy, perhaps even more refined, and belonging, I fancy, to a
higher class, tries when these friends come to us to play the part of the
lady of the house. It is comical to see the entry of these ill-matched
pairs, partners for a day, the ladies, with their disjointed bows,
falling on all fours before Chrysantheme, the queen of the establishment.
When we are all assembled, we set out, arm in arm, one behind another,
and always carrying at the end of our short sticks little white or red
paper lanterns; it is a pretty custom.
We are obliged to scramble down the kind of street, or rather
goat's-path, which leads to the Japanese Nagasaki--with the prospect,
alas! of having to climb up again at night; clamber up all the steps, all
the slippery slopes, stumble over all the stones, before we shall be able
to get home, go to bed, and sleep. We make our descent in the darkness,
under the branches, under the foliage, among dark gardens and venerable
little houses that throw but a faint glimmer on the road; and when the
moon is absent or clouded over, our lanterns are by no means unnecessary.
When at last we reach the bottom, suddenly, without transition, we find
ourselves in the very heart of Nagasaki and its busy throng in a long
illuminated street, where vociferating djins hurry along and thousands of
paper lanterns swing and gleam in the wind. It is life and animation,
after the peace of our silent suburb.
Here, decorum requires that we should separate from our wives. All five
take hold of each others' hands, like a batch of little girls out
walking. We follow them with an air of indifference. Seen from behind,
our dolls are really very dainty, with their back hair so tidily
arranged, their tortoiseshell pins so coquettishly placed. They shuffle
along, their high wooden clogs making an ugly sound, striving to walk
with their toes turned in, according to the height of fashion and
elegance. At every minute they burst out laughing.
Yes, seen from behind, they are very pretty; they have, like all Japanese
women, the most lovely turn of the head. Moreover, they are very funny,
thus drawn up in line. In speaking of them, we say: "Our little trained
dogs," and in truth they are singularly like them.
This great Nagasaki is the same from one end to another, with its
numberless petroleum lamps burning, its many-colored lanterns flickering,
and innumerable panting djins. Always the same narrow streets, lined on
each side with the same low houses, built of paper and wood. Always the
same shops, without glass windows, open to all the winds, equally
rudimentary, whatever may be sold or made in them; whether they display
the finest gold lacquer ware, the most marvellous china jars, or old
worn-out pots and pans, dried fish, and ragged frippery. All the salesmen
are seated on the ground in the midst of their valuable or trumpery
merchandise, their legs bared nearly to the waist.
And all kinds of queer little trades are carried on under the public
gaze, by strangely primitive means, by workmen of the most ingenious
type.
Oh, what wonderful goods are exposed for sale in those streets! What
whimsical extravagance in those bazaars!
No horses, no carriages are ever seen in the town; nothing but people on
foot, or the comical little carts dragged along by the runners. Some few
Europeans straggling hither and thither, wanderers from the ships in
harbor; some Japanese (fortunately as yet but few) dressed up in coats;
other natives who content themselves with adding to their national
costume the pot-hat, from which their long, sleek locks hang down; and
all around, eager haggling, bargaining, and laughter.
In the bazaars every evening our mousmes make endless purchases; like
spoiled children they buy everything they fancy: toys, pins, ribbons,
flowers. And then they prettily offer one another presents, with childish
little smiles. For instance, Campanule buys for Chrysantheme an
ingeniously contrived lantern on which, set in motion by some invisible
machinery, Chinese shadows dance in a ring round the flame. In return,
Chrysantheme gives Campanule a magic fan, with paintings that change at
will from butterflies fluttering around cherry-blossoms to outlandish
monsters pursuing each other across black clouds. Touki offers Sikou a
cardboard mask representing the bloated countenance of Dai-Cok, god of
wealth; and Sikou replies with a present of a long crystal trumpet, by
means of which are produced the most extraordinary sounds, like a turkey
gobbling. Everything is uncouth, fantastical to excess, grotesquely
lugubrious; everywhere we are surprised by incomprehensible conceptions,
which seem the work of distorted imaginations.
In the fashionable tea-houses, where we finish our evenings, the little
serving-maids now bow to us, on our arrival, with an air of respectful
recognition, as belonging to the fast set of Nagasaki. There we carry on
desultory conversations, full of misunderstandings and endless 'quid pro
quo' of uncouth words, in little gardens lighted up with lanterns, near
ponds full of goldfish, with little bridges, little islets, and little
ruined towers. They hand us tea and white and pink-colored sweetmeats
flavored with pepper that taste strange and unfamiliar, and beverages
mixed with snow tasting of flowers or perfumes.
To give a faithful account of those evenings would require a more
affected style than our own; and some kind of graphic sign would have
also to be expressly invented and scattered at haphazard among the words,
indicating the moment when the reader should laugh--rather a forced
laugh, perhaps, but amiable and gracious. The evening at an end, it is
time to return up there.
Oh! that street, that road, that we must clamber up every evening, under
the starlit sky or the heavy thunder-clouds, dragging by the hands our
drowsy mousmes in order to regain our homes perched on high halfway up
the hill, where our bed of matting awaits us.