RUMORS OF DEPARTURE
September 15th.
Rumor of departure is 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
usually turn out tolerably correct. What will the last act of my little
Japanese comedy be? the denouement, the separation? Will there be any
touch of sadness on the part of my mousme, or on my own, just a
tightening of the heartstrings at the moment of our final farewell?
At this moment I can imagine nothing of the sort. And then the adieus
of Yves and Chrysantheme, what will they be? This question preoccupies
me more than all.
Nothing very definite has been learned as yet, but it is certain that,
one way or another, our stay in Japan is drawing to a close. It is this,
perhaps, which disposes me this evening to look more kindly 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
Chrysantheme's guitar. And this evening I experienced 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
among 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; Chrysantheme, always eagerly
attentive, brings me my pillow of serpent's-skin; and the smiling
mousmes, with the interrupted rhythm of a while ago still running in
their heads, move around me with measured steps.
Their immaculate 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 pleases 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 marionettes 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 in our vases, arranged by
Chrysantheme, with her Japanese taste, lotus-flowers, great, sacred
flowers of a tender, veined rose color, the milky rose-tint 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 mousmes,
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; Chrysantheme has left them
in their large 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, wrapped in white lace-paper!
Still no letters from Europe, from any one. How things change, become
effaced and forgotten! Here am I, 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 mousme's 'chamecen'.
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; and henceforth, I will write 'chamecen'.
I will also call my mousme Kikou, Kikou-San; this name suits her better
than Chrysantheme, which, though translating the sense exactly, does not
preserve the strange-sounding euphony of the original.
I therefore say to Kikou, my wife:
"Play, play on for me; I shall remain here all the evening and listen to
you."
Astonished to find me in so amiable a mood, she requires pressing a
little, and with almost a bitter curve of triumph and disdain upon her
lips, she seats herself in the attitude of an idol, raises her long,
dark-colored sleeves, and begins. The first hesitating notes are
murmured faintly and mingle with the music of the insects humming
outside, in the quiet air of the warm and golden twilight. First she
plays slowly, a confused medley of fragments which she does not seem to
remember perfectly, of which one waits for the finish and waits in vain;
while the other girls giggle, inattentive, and regretful of their
interrupted dance. She herself is absent, sulky, as if she were only
performing a duty.
Then by degrees, little by little, the music becomes more animated, and
the mousmes begin to listen. Now, tremblingly, it grows into a feverish
rapidity, and her gaze has no longer the vacant stare of a doll. Then
the music changes again; in it there is the sighing of the wind, the
hideous laughter of ghouls; tears, heartrending plaints, and her dilated
pupils seem to be directed inwardly in settled gaze on some indescribable
Japanesery within her own soul.
I listen, lying there with eyes half shut, looking out between my
drooping eyelids, which are gradually lowering, in involuntary heaviness,
upon the enormous red sun dying away over Nagasaki. I have a somewhat
melancholy feeling that my past life and all other places in the world
are receding from my view and fading away. At this moment of nightfall
I feel almost at home in this corner of Japan, amidst the gardens of this
suburb. I never have had such an impression before.