“Ho! Oume-San-an-an-an!” (In English:
“Hi! Madame Pru-u-u-u-une!”)
These intonations in her little voice are unknown
to me; her longdrawn call in the echoing darkness
of midnight has so strange an accent, something so
unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal
feeling of far-off exile.
At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us,
only half awake and much astonished; by way of a night-cap
she wears a monstrous cotton turban, on the blue ground
of which a few white storks are playfully disporting
themselves. Holding in the tips of her fingers
with an affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk
of her beflowered lantern, she gazes intently into
our faces, one after another, to assure herself of
our identity; but the poor old lady cannot get over
the mousko I am carrying.
At first it was only to Chrysantheme’s guitar
that I listened with pleasure: now I am beginning
to like her singing also.
She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep assumed
voice of the virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes,
always very high, are soft, thin, and plaintive.
She will often teach Oyouki some romance, slow and
dreamy, which she has composed, or which comes back
to her mind. Then they both astonish me, for
on their well-tuned guitars they will search out accompaniments
in parts, and try again each time that the chords are
not perfectly true to their ear, without ever losing
themselves in the confusion of these dissonant harmonies,
always weird and always melancholy.
Generally, while their music is going on, I am writing
in the verandah, with the superb stretched out in
front of me. I write, seated on a mat on the
floor and leaning upon a little Japanese desk, ornamented
with swallows in relief; my ink is Chinese, my ink-stand,
just like that of my landlord, is in jade, with dear
little frogs and toads carved on the rim. In
short, I am writing my memoirs,—exactly
as M. Sucre does downstairs! Occasionally I fancy
I resemble him—a very disagreeable fancy.
My memoirs,—composed of incongruous details,
minute observations of colors, shapes, scents, and
sounds.
It is true that a complete imbroglio, worthy of a
romance, seems ever threatening to appear upon my
monotonous horizon; a regular intrigue seems ever
ready to explode in the midst of this little world
of mousmes and grasshoppers: Chrysantheme in
love with Yves; Yves with Chrysantheme; Oyouki with
me; I with no one. We might even find here, ready
to hand, the elements of a fratricidal drama, were
we in any other country than Japan; but we are in
Japan, and under the narrowing and dwarfing influence
of the surroundings, which turn everything into ridicule,
nothing will come of it all.
