CHAPTER VIII
THE NECESSARY VEIL
When night comes on, we light two hanging lamps of religious symbolism,
which burn till daylight, before our gilded idol.
We sleep on the floor, on a thin cotton mattress, which is unfolded and
laid out over our white matting. Chrysantheme's pillow is a little
wooden block, cut so as to fit exactly the nape of her neck, without
disturbing the elaborate head-dress, which must never be taken down; the
pretty black hair I shall probably never see undone. My pillow, a
Chinese model, is a kind of little square drum covered over with serpent-
skin.
We sleep under a gauze mosquito-net of sombre greenish-blue, dark as the
shades of night, stretched out on an orange-colored ribbon. (These are
the traditional colors, and all respectable families of Nagasaki possess
a similar net.) It envelops us like a tent; the mosquitoes and the night-
moths whirl around it.
This sounds very pretty, and written down looks very well. In reality,
however, it is not so; something, I know not what, is lacking, and
everything is very paltry. In other lands, in the delightful isles of
Oceania, in the old, lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if mere
words could never express all I felt, and I struggled vainly against my
own inability to render, in human language, the penetrating charm
surrounding me.
Here, on the contrary, words exact and truthful in themselves seem always
too thrilling, too great for the subject; seem to embellish it unduly.
I feel as if I were acting, for my own benefit, some wretchedly trivial
and third-rate comedy; and whenever I try to consider my home in a
serious spirit, the scoffing figure of M. Kangourou rises before me--
the matrimonial agent, to whom I am indebted for my happiness.
