Madame Chrysantheme | Page 5

legs were naked; to-day they were very wet, and their heads were
hidden under large shady conical hats. By way of waterproofs they
wore nothing less than mats of straw, with all the ends of the straws
turned outwards bristling like porcupines; they seemed clothed in a
thatched roof. They went on smiling, awaiting my choice.
Not having the honor of being acquainted with any of them in
particular, I choose at haphazard the djin with the umbrella and get into
his little cart, of which he carefully lowers the hood. He draws an
oil-cloth apron over my knees, pulling it up to my face, and then
advancing near, asks me in Japanese something which must have meant:
"Where to, sir?" To which I reply in the same language, "To the
Garden of Flowers, my friend."

I said this in the three words I had parrot-like learnt by heart,
astonished that such sounds could mean anything, astonished too at
their being understood. We started off, he running at full speed, I
dragged along by him, jerked about in his light chariot, wrapped in
oiled cloth, shut up as if in a box;--both of us unceasingly drenched all
the while, and dashing all around us the water and mud of the sodden
ground.
"To the Garden of Flowers," I had said, like an habitual frequenter of
the place, and quite surprised at hearing myself speak. But I was less
ignorant about Japan than might have been supposed. Many of my
friends had, on their return home from that country, told me about it,
and I knew a great deal; the Garden of Flowers is a tea-house, an
elegant rendezvous. There, I would inquire for a certain
Kangourou-San, who is at the same time interpreter, washerman, and
confidential agent for the intercourse of races. Perhaps this very
evening, if all went well, I should be introduced to the bride destined to
me by mysterious fate. This thought kept my mind on the alert during
the panting journey we have been making, the djin and myself, one
dragging the other, under the merciless downpour.
* * * * *
Oh, what a curious Japan I saw that day, through the gaping of my
oil-cloth coverings! from under the dripping hood of my little cart! A
sullen, muddy, half-drowned Japan. All these houses, men or beasts,
hitherto only known to me by 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 moments the rain fell so heavily that I tightly closed up 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 douche: we were trotting along through a mean, narrow

little back street (there are thousands like it, a perfect 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 by a lady, struggling with her
skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking
exactly like the figures painted on screens, tucked up under a gaudily
daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a pagoda, where an old
granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a hideous,
ferocious grimace at me.
How immense 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
could never suppose from the offing that so vast a plain could lie in the
recesses 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 by the side of this fellow.
When I part my oil-cloths to peep at anything, he is naturally always
the first object in my foreground: his two naked, brown, muscular legs,
scampering one after the other, 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,