When we have reached our destination he says “Goodnight,”
just touches Chrysantheme’s hand, and descending
once more by the slope which leads to the quays and
the shipping, he crosses the roadstead in a sampan,
to get on board the ‘Triomphante.’
Meantime, we, with the aid of a sort of secret key,
open the door of our garden, where Madame Prune’s
pots of flowers, ranged in the darkness, send forth
delicious odors in the night air. We cross the
garden by moonlight or starlight, and mount to our
own rooms.
If it is very late—a frequent occurrence—we
find all our wooden panels drawn and tightly shut
by the careful M. Sucre (as a precaution against thieves),
and our apartment is as close and as private as if
it were a real European house.
In this dwelling, when every chink is thus closed,
a strange odor mingles with the musk and the lotus—an
odor essential to Japan, to the yellow race, belonging
to the soil or emanating from the venerable woodwork;
almost an odor of wild beasts. The mosquito-curtain
of dark-blue gauze, ready hung for the night, falls
from the ceiling with the air of a mysterious vellum.
The gilded Buddha smiles eternally at the night-lamps
burning before him; some great moth, a constant frequenter
of the house, which during the day sleeps clinging
to our ceiling, flutters at this hour under the very
nose of the god, turning and flitting round the thin,
quivering flames. And, motionless on the wall,
its feelers spread out star-like, sleeps some great
garden spider, which one must not kill because it
is night. “Hou!” says Chrysantheme,
indignantly, pointing it out to me with levelled finger.
Quick! where is the fan kept for the purpose, wherewith
to hunt it out of doors?
Around us reigns a silence which is almost oppressive
after all the joyous noises of the town, and all the
laughter, now hushed, of our band of mousmes—a
silence of the country, of some sleeping village.
A QUIET SMOKE
The sound of the innumerable wooden panels, which
at nightfall are pulled and shut in every Japanese
house, is one of the peculiarities of the country
which will remain longest imprinted on my memory.
From our neighbor’s houses these noises reach
us one after the other, floating to us over the green
gardens, more or less deadened, more or less distant.
Just below us, Madame Prune’s panels move very
badly, creak and make a hideous noise in their wornout
grooves.
Ours are somewhat noisy too, for the old house is
full of echoes, and there are at least twenty screens
to run over long slides in order to close in completely
the kind of open hall in which we live. Usually,
it is Chrysantheme who undertakes this piece of household
work, and a great deal of trouble it gives her, for
she often pinches her fingers in the singular awkwardness
of her too tiny hands, which never have been accustomed
to do any work.
