A CURIOUS COSTUME
The day after that we arrived in China.
Far out at sea we spied the land—all green hills with pagodas
everywhere.
In the morning, not feeling Fiam move, I looked for him in his box, but
it was empty, and he had disappeared. I was very anxious. There was no
trace anywhere of my little friend except an odor of saki. I was afraid
he had fallen on the ground and that some one had picked him up. Every
time I saw a lighted pipe or cigarette my heart beat and I ran to see
if the burning match could be Fiam. I couldn’t bear to leave the ship
until I had found him. I actually ransacked my pockets ten times in
succession. I looked in every corner of my valise, all over the floor
and in every crack of the deck and in my slippers—nothing. I was afraid
he had run away and I could have cried from grief.
“What have you lost?” asked one of the stewards, seeing me bending over
searching on the floor and stairs.
“I am looking for a match,” I answered.
“Here is one.”
Startled, I turned quickly, but he handed me an entirely fresh box of
matches.
“No, thank you,” I said. “Mine is double.”
He gazed at me in amazement and left me. If he had been the doctor he
might, perhaps, have ordered ice on the head; but as he was only the
steward he returned soon and gave me the bill for my meals.
I drew out my purse to pay him, and on opening it I saw a lot of
papers. I looked between them feverishly. Just guess! Fiam was among
the postage stamps, but in what a state!
While still wet with saki he had left his box and, without knowing what
he was doing, had crept among the stamps, because that way was familiar
to him. Of course, the glue on the stamps had stuck to him, and the
more he struggled to free himself the stickier he became. Then the saki
had dried, leaving him all covered by a collection of stamps. Think how
he looked! On his legs he had two blue five-cent stamps and three red
one-cent each; on his chest there were two red and one yellow. On his
arm was another of one cent.
He was dreadfully humiliated, and asked me to help him get rid of them.
I carefully stripped off those on his back, but he begged me to leave
some pieces on rather than scrape them off with my penknife. So from
this time Fiam wore a garment as gay as a clown’s. All over him you
could recognize little pieces of the face of the Emperor whose likeness
is on all Japanese stamps.
Fiam was very proud of this costume on account of those fragments of
the Imperial face.
“With this protection,” he said, “I can accomplish wonders.”
“Look out,” I told him. “Your suit has cost me more than twenty cents.
What if I should wipe your coat off and put on a Chinese stamp to
punish you?”
At this he was very angry. And when he was angry he had a queer way of
getting even with me. He would say:
“All that I told you to write is false, absurd and stupid; it is
exactly opposite to the pure and simple truth.” After that he wouldn’t
speak for two hours. You can see that he was really dreadfully
provoked.
[Illustration: Fiam as a Mountain Climber]