I listen, lying there with eyes half shut, looking
out between my drooping eyelids which are gradually
lowering, in involuntary heaviness, upon the enormous
red sun dying away over Nagasaki. I have a somewhat
melancholy feeling that my past life and all other
places in the world are receding from my view and
fading away. At this moment of nightfall I feel
almost at home in this corner of Japan, amidst the
gardens of this suburb; I have never had such an impression
before.
September 16th.
Seven o’clock in the evening. We shall
not go down into the town to-day; but, like good Japanese
citizens, remain in our loftly suburb.
In undress uniform we shall go, Yves and I, in a neighborly
way, as far as the fencing gallery, which is only
two steps off, just above our villa, and almost abutting
on our fresh and scented garden.
The gallery is closed already and a little mousko
seated at the door, explains with many low bows that
we come too late, all the amateurs are gone; we must
come again to-morrow.
The evening is so mild and so fine, that we remain
out of doors, following without any definite purpose
the pathway which rises ever higher and higher, and
loses itself at length in the solitary regions of
the mountain among the upper peaks.
For an hour at least we wander on,—an unintended
walk,—and finally find ourselves at a great
height commanding an endless perspective lighted by
the last gleams of daylight; we are in a desolate and
mournful spot, in the midst of the little Buddhist
cemeteries, which are scattered over the country in
every direction.
We meet a few belated laborers, who are returning
from the fields with bundles of tea upon their shoulders.
These peasants have a half savage air, half naked
too, or clothed only in long robes of blue cotton;
as they pass, they salute us with humble bows.
No trees in this elevated region. Fields of tea
alternate with tombs: old granite statues which
represent Buddha in his lotus, or else old monumental
stones on which gleam remains of inscriptions in golden
letters. Rocks, brushwood, uncultivated spaces,
surround us on all sides.
There are no more passers-by, and the light is failing.
We will halt for a moment, and then it will be time
to turn our steps downwards.
But, close to the spot where we stand, a box in white
wood provided with handles, a sort of sedan-chair,
rests on the freshly disturbed earth, with its lotus
of silvered paper, and the little incense-sticks burning
yet, by its side; clearly someone has been buried here
this very evening.
I cannot picture this personage to myself; the Japanese
are so grotesque in life, that it is almost impossible
to imagine them in the calm majesty of death.
Nevertheless, let us move further on, we might disturb
him; he is too recently dead, his presence unnerves
us. We will go and seat ourselves on one of these
other tombs, so unutterably ancient that there can
no longer be anything within it but dust. And
there, seated yet in the dying sunlight, while the
valleys and plains of the earth below are already
lost in shadow, we will talk together.
