Madame Chrysanthème | Page 7

bows. Under the mass of these many-colored things, the deck
presented the appearance of an immense bazaar; the sailors, very much
amused and full of fun, walked among the heaped-up piles, taking the
little women by the chin, buying anything and everything; throwing
broadcast their white dollars. But how ugly, mean, and grotesque all
those folk were! I began to feel singularly uneasy and disenchanted
regarding my possible marriage.
Yves and I were on duty till the next morning, and after the first bustle,

which always takes place on board when settling down in harbor--
boats to lower, booms to swing out, running rigging to make taut--we
had nothing more to do but look on. We said to each other: "Where are
we in reality?--In the United States?--In some English colony in
Australia, or in New Zealand?"
Consular residences, custom-house offices, manufactories; a dry dock
in which a Russian frigate was lying; on the heights the large European
concession, sprinkled with villas, and on the quays, American bars for
the sailors. Farther off, it is true, far away behind these commonplace
objects, in the very depths of the vast green valley, peered thousands
upon thousands of tiny black houses, a tangled mass of curious
appearance, from which here and there emerged some higher, dark red,
painted roofs, probably the true old Japanese Nagasaki, which still
exists. And in those quarters--who knows?--there may be, lurking
behind a paper screen, some affected, cat's-eyed little woman, whom
perhaps in two or three days (having no time to lose) I shall marry! But
no, the picture painted by my fancy has faded. I can no longer see this
little creature in my mind's eye; the sellers of the white mice have
blurred her image; I fear now, lest she should be like them.
At nightfall the decks were suddenly cleared as by enchantment; in a
second they had shut up their boxes, folded their sliding screens and
their trick fans, and, humbly bowing to each of us, the little men and
little women disappeared.
Slowly, as the shades of night closed around us, mingling all things in
the bluish darkness, Japan became once more, little by little, a fairy-
like and enchanted country. The great mountains, now black, were
mirrored and doubled in the still water at their feet, reflecting therein
their sharply reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful
precipices, over which we seemed to hang. The stars also were reversed
in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a
sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights.
Then all Nagasaki became profusely illuminated, sparkling with
multitudes of lanterns: the smallest suburb, the smallest village was
lighted up; the tiniest hut perched up among the trees, which in the

daytime was invisible, threw out its little glowworm glimmer. Soon
there were innumerable lights all over the country on all the shores of
the bay, from top to bottom of the mountains; myriads of glowing fires
shone out in the darkness, conveying the impression of a vast capital
rising around us in one bewildering amphitheatre. Beneath, in the silent
waters, another town, also illuminated, seemed to descend into the
depths of the abyss. The night was balmy, pure, delicious; the
atmosphere laden with the perfume of flowers came wafted to us from
the mountains. From the tea-houses and other nocturnal resorts, the
sound of guitars reached our ears, seeming in the distance the sweetest
of music. And the whirr of the cicalas--which, in Japan, is one of the
continuous noises of life, and which in a few days we shall no longer
even be aware of, so completely is it the background and foundation of
all other terrestrial sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly monotonous,
like the murmur of a waterfall.
CHAPTER III
THE GARDEN OF FLOWERS
The next day the rain fell in torrents, merciless and unceasing, blinding
and drenching everything--a rain so dense that it was impossible to see
through it from one end of the vessel to the other. It seemed as if the
clouds of the whole world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki Bay,
and chosen this great green funnel to stream down. And so thickly did
the rain fall that it became almost as dark as night. Through a veil of
restless water, we still perceived the base of the mountains, but the
summits were lost to sight among the great dark masses overshadowing
us. Above us shreds of clouds, seemingly torn from the dark vault,
draggled across the trees, like gray rags-continually melting away in
torrents of water. The wind howled through the ravines with a deep
tone. The whole surface of the bay, bespattered by the rain, flogged by
the gusts of wind that blew from all quarters, splashed, moaned, and
seethed in violent agitation.
What depressing weather for a