Madame Chrysantheme | Page 4

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 the other terrestrial sounds--was sonorous, incessant, softly
monotonous, just like the cascade of a crystal waterfall.

III.
The next day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour,
merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,--a thick
rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of
the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole
world had amassed themselves in Nagasaki bay, and had chosen this
great green funnel to stream down to their hearts' content. And it rained,
it rained, it became almost as dark as night, so thickly did the rain fall.
Through a veil of crumbled water, we still perceived the base of the
mountains, but the summits were lost to sight among the great somber

masses weighing down upon us. Above us shreds of clouds, seemingly
torn from the dark vault, draggled across the trees, like vast gray
rags,--continually melting away in water, torrents of water. There was
wind too, and it howled through the ravines with a deep-sounding 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 wretched weather for a first landing, and how was I to find a wife
through such a deluge, in an unknown country!
* * * * *
No matter! I dressed myself and said to Yves, who smiled at my
obstinate determination in spite of unfavorable circumstances:
"Hail me a 'sampan,' brother, please."
Yves then, by a motion of his arm through the wind and rain,
summoned a kind of little white wooden sarcophagus which was
skipping near us on the waves, sculled by a couple of yellow boys stark
naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then
through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers
throws open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a
mat in what is called the "cabin" of a sampan.
There was just room enough for my body to lie in this floating coffin,
which is moreover scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new
deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my
lid, and thus I started off for the town, lying in this box, flat on my
stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments
almost over-turned; and through the half-opened door of my rat-trap I
saw, upside down, the two little creatures to whom I had entrusted my
fate, children of eight or ten years of age at the most, who, with little
monkeyish faces, had however fully developed muscles like miniature
men, and were already as skillful as any regular old salts.
* * * * *

They began to shout; no doubt we were approaching the landing-place.
And indeed, through my trap-door, which I had now thrown wide open,
I saw quite near to me the gray flag-stones on the quays. I got out of
my sarcophagus and prepared to set foot for the first time in my life on
Japanese soil.
All was streaming around us, and the irritating, tiresome rain dashed
into my eyes.
No sooner had I landed, than there bounded towards me about a dozen
strange beings, of what description it was almost impossible to make
out through the blinding showers--a species of human hedge-hog, each
dragging some large black thing; they came screaming around me and
stopped my progress. One of them opened and held over my head an
enormous closely-ribbed umbrella, decorated on its transparent surface
with paintings of storks; and they all smiled at me in an engaging
manner with an air of expectation.
I had been forewarned: these were only the djins who were touting for
the honor of my preference; nevertheless I was startled at this sudden
attack, this Japanese welcome on a first visit to land (the djins or
djin-richisans, are the runners who drag little carts, and are paid for
conveying people to and fro, being hired by the hour or the distance, as
cabs are with us).
Their