STRANGE YEARNINGS
August 24th.
Nearly five days have passed since I abandoned my little house and
Chrysantheme.
Since yesterday we have had a tremendous storm of rain and wind (a
typhoon that has passed or is passing over us). We beat to quarters in
the middle of the night to lower the topmasts, strike the lower yards,
and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer
hover around us; everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep
slopes of the mountain the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as if
in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo
leaves, and earth fall like rain upon us.
In this land of pretty little trifles, this violent tempest is out of
harmony; it seems as if its efforts were exaggerated and its music too
loud.
Toward evening the dark clouds roll by so rapidly that the showers are of
short duration and soon pass over. Then I attempt a walk on the mountain
above us, in the wet verdure: little pathways lead up it, between
thickets of camellias and bamboo.
Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an old
temple halfway up the hill, buried in a wood of century plants with
gigantic branches; it is reached by granite steps, through strange
gateways, as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens. The trees have
also invaded this yard; the daylight is overcast with a greenish tint,
and the drenching torrent of rain is full of torn-up leaves and moss. Old
granite monsters, of unknown shapes, are seated in the corners, and
grimace with smiling ferocity: their faces are full of indefinable
mystery that makes me shudder amid the moaning music of the wind, in the
gloomy shadows of the clouds and branches.
They could not have resembled the Japanese of our day, the men who had
thus conceived these ancient temples, who built them everywhere, and
filled the country with them, even in its most solitary nooks.
An hour later, in the twilight of that stormy day, on the same mountain,
I encountered a clump of trees somewhat similar to oaks in appearance;
they, too, have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts of undulating
grass at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every direction. There
was suddenly brought back to my mind my first impression of a strong wind
in the woods of Limoise, in the province of Saintonge, twenty-eight years
ago, in a month of March of my childhood.
That, the first wind-storm my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the
landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world (and many years
have rapidly passed over that memory), the spot where the best part of my
life has been spent.
I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am foolishly fond of it.
But it seems to me that then only did I truly experience sensations or
impressions; the smallest trifles I saw or heard then were full of deep
and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of oblivion, and
reawakening memories of prior existences; or else they were presentiments
of existences to come, future incarnations in the land of dreams,
expectations of wondrous marvels that life and the world held in store
for me-for a later period, no doubt, when I should be grown up. Well, I
have grown up, and have found nothing that answered to my indefinable
expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and darkened around me,
my vague recollections of the past have become blurred, the horizons
before me have slowly closed in and become full of gray darkness. Soon
will my time come to return to eternal rest, and I shall leave this world
without ever having understood the mysterious cause of these mirages of
my childhood; I shall bear away with me a lingering regret for I know not
what lost home that I have failed to find, of the unknown beings ardently
longed for, whom, alas, I never have embraced.