Madame Chrysanthème | Page 9

the panting journey we
made, the djin and I, one dragging the other, under the merciless
downpour.
Oh, what a curious Japan I saw that day, through the gaping of my
oilcloth coverings, from under the dripping hood of my little cart! A
sullen, muddy, half-drowned Japan. All these houses, men, and beasts,
hitherto known to me only in drawings; all these, that I had beheld
painted on blue or pink backgrounds of fans or vases, now appeared to
me in their hard reality, under a dark sky, with umbrellas and wooden
shoes, with tucked-up skirts and pitiful aspect.
At times the rain fell so heavily that I closed up tightly every chink and
crevice, and the noise and shaking benumbed me, so that I completely
forgot in what country I was. In the hood of the cart were holes,
through which little streams ran down my back. Then, remembering
that I was going for the first time in my life through the very heart of
Nagasaki, I cast an inquiring look outside, at the risk of receiving a
drenching: we were trotting along through a mean, narrow, little back
street (there are thousands like it, a labyrinth of them), the rain falling
in cascades from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below,
rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty
atmosphere. At times we passed a woman struggling with her skirts,
unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly
like the figures painted on screens, cowering under a gaudily daubed
paper umbrella. Again, we passed a pagoda, where an old granite
monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a hideous, ferocious
grimace at me.
How large this Nagasaki is! Here had we been running hard for the last
hour, and still it seemed never-ending. It is a flat plain, and one never
would suppose from the view in the offing that so vast a plain lies in
the depth of this valley.
It would, however, have been impossible for me to say where I was, or

in what direction we had run; I abandoned my fate to my djin and to
my good luck.
What a steam-engine of a man my djin was! I had been accustomed to
the Chinese runners, but they were nothing beside this fellow. When I
part my oilcloth to peep at anything, he is naturally always the first
object in my foreground; his two naked, brown, muscular legs,
scampering along, splashing all around, and his bristling hedgehog
back bending low in the rain. Do the passers-by, gazing at this little
dripping cart, guess that it contains a suitor in quest of a bride?
At last my vehicle stops, and my djin, with many smiles and
precautions lest any fresh rivers should stream down my back, lowers
the hood of the cart; there is a break in the storm, and the rain has
ceased. I had not yet seen his face; as an exception to the general rule,
he is good- looking; a young man of about thirty years of age, of
intelligent and strong appearance, and a frank countenance. Who could
have foreseen that a few days later this very djin? But no, I will not
anticipate, and run the risk of throwing beforehand any discredit on
Chrysantheme.
We had therefore reached our destination, and found ourselves at the
foot of a high, overhanging mountain; probably beyond the limits of the
town, in some suburban district. It apparently became necessary to
continue our journey on foot, and to climb up an almost perpendicular
narrow path.
Around us, a number of small country-houses, garden-walls, and high
bamboo palisades shut off the view. The green hill crushed us with its
towering height; the heavy, dark clouds lowering over our heads
seemed like a leaden canopy confining us in this unknown spot; it
really seemed as if the complete absence of perspective inclined one all
the better to notice the details of this tiny corner, muddy and wet, of
homely Japan, now lying before our eyes. The earth was very red. The
grasses and wild flowers bordering the pathway were strange to me;
nevertheless, the palings were covered with convolvuli like our own,
and I recognized china asters, zinnias, and other familiar flowers in the
gardens. The atmosphere seemed laden with a curiously complicated

odor, something besides the perfume of the plants and soil, arising no
doubt from the human dwelling-places--a mingled odor, I fancied, of
dried fish and incense. Not a creature was to be seen; of the inhabitants,
of their homes and life, there was not a vestige, and I might have
imagined myself anywhere in the world.
My djin had fastened his little cart under a tree, and together we
climbed the steep path on the slippery red soil.
"We