Kimono by John Paris

J >> John Paris >> Kimono

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

Geoffrey had never spoken to her of her mother. He had never seemed
to have the least interest in her identity. These "Jap women," as he
called them, were never very real to him. She dreaded the possibility
of revealing to him her secret, and then of receiving no response to
her emotion. Also she had an instinctive reluctance to emphasise in
Geoffrey's mind her kinship with these alien people.

After dinner, when she had gone up to her room, Geoffrey was left
alone with his cigar and his reflection.

"Funny that she did not speak more about her father and mother. But I
suppose they don't mean much to her, after all. And, by Jove, it's a
good thing for me! I wouldn't like to have a wife who was all the time
running home to her people, and comparing notes with her mother."

Upstairs in her bedroom, Asako had unrolled the precious _obi_. An
unmounted photograph came fluttering out of the parcel. It was a
portrait of her father alone taken a short time before his death. At
the back of the photograph was some Japanese writing.

"Is Tanaka there?" Asako asked her maid Titine.

Yes, of course, Tanaka was there, in the next room with his ear near
the door.

"Tanaka, what does this mean?"

"Japanese poem," he said, "meaning very difficult: very many meanings:
I think perhaps it means, having travelled all over the world, he
feels very sad."

"Yes, but word for word, Tanaka, what does it mean?"

"This writing means, World is really not the same it says: all the
world very many tell lies."

"And this?"

"This means, Travelling everywhere."

"And this at the end?"

"It means, Eveything always the same thing. Very bad translation I
make. Very sad poem."

"And this writing here?"

"That is Japanese name--Fujinami Katsundo--and the date, twenty-fifth
year of Meiji, twelfth month."

Tanaka had turned over the photograph and was looking attentively at
the portrait.

"The honoured father of Ladyship, I think," he said.

"Yes," said Asako.

Then she thought she heard her husband's step away down the corridor.
Hurriedly she thrust _obi_ and photograph into a drawer.

Now, why did she do that? wondered Tanaka.

CHAPTER XIV

THE DWARF TREES

_Iwa-yado ni
Tateru maisu no ki,
Na wo mireba,
Mukashi no hito wo
Ai-miru gotashi._

O pine-tree standing
At the (side of) the stone house,
When I look at you,
It is like seeing face to face
The men of old time.

For the first time during the journey of their married lives, Geoffrey
and Asako were pursuing different paths. It is the normal thing, no
doubt, for the man to go out to his work and to his play, while the
wife attends to her social and domestic duties. The evening brings
reunion with new impressions and new interests to discuss. Such a life
with its brief restorative separations prevents love growing stale,
and soothes the irritation of nerves which, by the strain of petty
repetitions, are exasperated sometimes into blasphemy of the heart's
true creed. But the Barrington _menage_ was an unusual one. By
adopting a life of travel, they had devoted themselves to a
protracted honeymoon, a relentless _tete-a-tete_. So long as they were
continually on the move, constantly refreshed by new scenes, they did
not feel the difficulty of their self-imposed task. But directly their
stay in Tokyo seemed likely to become permanent, their ways separated
as naturally as two branches, which have been tightly bound together,
spread apart with the loosening of the string.

This separation was so inevitable that they were neither of them
conscious of it. Geoffrey had all his life been devoted to exercise
and games of all kinds. They were as necessary as food for his
big body. At Tokyo he had found, most unexpectedly, excellent
tennis-courts and first-class players.

They still spent the mornings together, driving round the city, and
inspecting curios. So what could be more reasonable than that Asako
should prefer to spend her afternoons with her cousin, who was so
anxious to please her and to initiate her into that intimate Japanese
life, which of course must appeal to her more strongly than to her
husband?

Personally, Geoffrey found the company of his Japanese relatives
exceedingly slow.

In return for the hospitalities of the Maple Club the Barringtons
invited a representative gathering of the Fujinami clan to dinner at
the Imperial Hotel, to be followed by a general adjournment to the
theatre.

It was a most depressing meal. Nobody spoke. All of the guests were
nervous; some of them about their clothes, some about their knives and
forks, all of them about their English. They were too nervous even to
drink wine, which would have been the only remedy for such a "frost."

Only Ito, the lawyer, talked, talked noisily, talked with his mouth
full. But Geoffrey disliked Ito. He mistrusted the man; but, because
of his wife's growing intimacy with her cousins, he felt loath to
start subterranean inquiries as to the whereabouts of her fortune. It
was Ito who, foreseeing embarrassment, had suggested the theatre party
after dinner. For this at least Geoffrey was grateful to him. It saved
him the pain of trying to make conversation with his cousins.

"Talking to these Japs," he said to Reggie Forsyth, "is like trying to
play tennis all by yourself."

Later on, at his wife's insistence, he attended an informal
garden-party at the Fujinami house. Again he suffered acutely from
those cruel silences and portentous waitings, to which he noticed that
even the Japanese among themselves were liable, but which apparently
they did not mind.

Tea and ice-creams were served by _geisha_ girls who danced afterwards
upon the lawn. When this performance was over the guests were
conducted to an open space behind the cherry-grove, where a little
shooting-range had been set up, with a target, air-guns and boxes of
lead lugs. Geoffrey, of course, joined in the shooting-competition,
and won a handsome cigarette case inlaid with Damascene work. But he
thought that it was a poor game; nor did he ever realize that this
entertainment had been specially organized with a view to flattering
his military and sporting tastes.

But the greatest disillusionment was the Akasaka garden. Geoffrey was
resigned to be bored by everything else. But his wife had grown so
enthusiastic about the beauties of the Fujinami domain, that he had
expected to walk straight into a paradise. What did he see? A dirty
pond and some shrubs, not one single flower to break the monotony of
green and drab, and everything so small. Why, he could walk round the
whole enclosure in ten minutes. Geoffrey Barrington was accustomed
to country houses in England, with their broad acres and their lavish
luxuriance of scent and blossom. This niggling landscape art of the
Japanese seemed to him mean and insignificant.

* * * * *

He much preferred the garden at Count Saito's home. Count Saito,
the late Ambassador at the Court of St. James, with his stooping
shoulders, his grizzled hair, and his deep eyes peering under the
gold-rimmed spectacles, had proposed the health of Captain and Mrs.
Barrington at their wedding breakfast. Since then, he had returned
to Japan, where he was soon to play a leading political role. Meeting
Geoffrey one day at the Embassy, he had invited him and his wife to
visit his famous garden.

It was a hanging garden on the side of a steep hill, parted down the
middle by a little stream with its string of waterfalls. Along either
bank rose groups of iris, mauve and white, whispering together like
long-limbed pre-Raphaelite girls. Round a sunny fountain, the source
of the stream, just below the terrace of the Count's mansion, they
thronged together more densely, surrounding the music of the water
with the steps of a slow sarabande, or pausing at the edge of the pool
to admire their own reflection.

Count Saito showed Geoffrey where the roses were coming on, new
varieties of which he had brought from England with him.

"Perhaps they will not like to be turned into Japanese," he observed;
"the rose is such an English flower."

They passed on to where the azaleas would soon be in fiery bloom.
For with the true gardener, the hidden promise of the morrow is more
stimulating to the enthusiasm than the assured success of the full
flowers.

The Count wore his rustling native dress; but two black cocker
spaniels followed at his heels. This combination presented an odd
mixture of English squire-archy and the _daimyo_ of feudal Japan.

On the crest of the hill above him rose the house, a tall Italianate
mansion of grey stucco, softened by creepers, jessamine and climbing
roses. Alongside ran the low irregular roofs of the Japanese portion
of the residence. Almost all rich Japanese have a double house,
half foreign and half native, to meet the needs of their amphibious
existence. This grotesque juxtaposition is to be seen all over Tokyo,
like a tall boastful foreigner tethered to a timid Japanese wife.

Geoffrey inquired in which wing of this unequal bivalve his host
actually lived.

"When I returned from England," said Count Saito, "I tried to live
again in the Japanese style. But we could not, neither my wife nor I.
We took cold and rheumatism sleeping on the floor, and the food made
us ill; so we had to give it up. But I was sorry. For I think it is
better for a country to keep its own ways. There is a danger nowadays,
when all the world is becoming cosmopolitan. A kind of international
type is springing up. His language is _esperanto_, his writing is
shorthand, he has no country, he fights for whoever will pay him most,
like the Swiss of the Middle Ages. He is the mercenary of commerce,
the ideal commercial traveler. I am much afraid of him, because I am
a Japanese and not a world citizen. I want my country to be great and
respected. Above all, I want it to be always Japanese. I think that
loss in national character means loss of national strength."

Asako was being introduced by her hostess to the celebrated collection
of dwarf trees, which had made the social fame of the Count's sojourn
as Ambassador in Grosvenor Square.

Countess Saito, like her husband, spoke excellent English; and her
manner in greeting Asako was of London rather than of Tokyo. She took
both her hands and shook them warmly.

"My dear," she said, in her curious deep hoarse voice, "I'm so glad to
see you. You are like a little bit of London come to say that you have
not forgotten me."

This great Japanese lady was small and very plain. Her high forehead
was deeply lined and her face was marked with small-pox. Her big mouth
opened wide as she talked, like a nestling's. But she was immensely
rich. The only child of one of the richest bankers of Japan, she
had brought to her husband the opportunity for his great gifts as a
political leader, and the luxury in which they lived.

The little trees were in evidence everywhere, decorating the living
rooms, posted like sentinels on the terrace, and staged with the
honour due to statuary at points of vantage in the garden. But their
chief home was in a sunny corner at the back of a shrubbery, where
they were aligned on shelves in the sunlight. Three special gardeners
who attended to their wants were grooming and massaging them, soothing
and titivating them, for their temporary appearances in public. Here
they had a green-house of their own, kept slightly warmed for a few
delicate specimens, and also for the convalescence of the hardier
trees; for these precious dwarfs are quite human in their ailments,
their pleasures and their idiosyncracies.

Countess Saito had a hundred or more of these fashionable pets, of all
varieties and shapes. There were giants of primeval forests reduced to
the dimensions of a few feet, like the timbers of a lordly park seen
through the wrong end of a telescope. There were graceful maple trees,
whose tiny star-like leaves were particularly adapted to the process
of diminution which had checked the growth of trunk and branches.
There were weeping willows with light-green feathery foliage, such
as sorrowing fairies might plant on the grave of some Taliessin
of Oberon's court. There was a double cherry in belated bloom; its
flowers of natural size hung amid the slender branches like big birds'
nests. There was a stunted oak tree, creeping along the earth with
gnarled and lumpy limbs like a miniature dinosaur; it waved in the air
a clump of demensurate leaves with the truculent mien of boxing-gloves
or lobsters' claws. In the centre of the rectangle formed by this
audience of trees, and raised on a long table, was a tiny wisteria
arbour, formed by a dozen plants arranged in quincunx. The
intertwisted ropes of branches were supported on shining rods of
bamboo; and the clusters of blossom, like bunches of grapes or like
miniature chandeliers, still hung over the litter of their fallen
beauty, with a few bird-like flowers clinging to them, pale and
bleached.

"They are over two hundred years old," said their proud owner, "they
came from one of the Emperor's palaces at Kyoto."

But the pride of the collection were the conifers and
evergreens--trees which have Japanese and Latin names only, the
_hinoki_, the _enoki_, the _sasaki_, the _keyaki_, the _maki_, the
_surgi_ and the _kusunoki_--all trees of the dark funereal families of
fir and laurel, which the birds avoid, and whose deep winter green in
the summer turns to rust. There were spreading cedar trees, black like
the tents of Bedouins, and there were straight cryptomerias for the
masts of fairy ships. There was a strange tree, whose light-green
foliage grew in round clumps like trays of green lacquer at the
extremities of twisted brandies, a natural _etagere_. There were the
distorted pine-trees of Japan, which are the symbol of old age, of
fidelity, of patience under adversity, and of the Japanese nation
itself, in every attitude of menace, curiosity, jubilation and gloom.
Some of them were leaning out of their pots and staring head downwards
at the ground beneath them; some were creeping along the earth
like reptiles; some were mere trunks, with a bunch of green needles
sprouting at the top like a palm; some with one long pathetic branch
were stretching out in quest of the infinite to the neglect of the
rest of the tree; some were tall and bent as by some sea wind blowing
shoreward. Streaking a miniature landscape, they were whispering
together the tales of centuries past.

The Japanese art of cultivating these tiny trees is a weird and
unhealthy practice, akin to vivisection, but without its excuse. It is
like the Chinese custom of dwarfing their women's feet. The result is
pleasing to the eye; but it hurts the mind by its abnormality, and the
heart by its ruthlessness.

Asako's admiration, so easily stirred, became enthusiastic as Countess
Saito told her something of the personal history of her favourite
plants, how this one was two hundred years old, and that one three
hundred and fifty, and how another had been present at such and such a
scene famous in Japanese history.

"Oh, they are lovely," cried Asako. "Where can one get them? I must
have some."

Countess Saito gave her the names of some well-known market gardeners.

"You can get pretty little trees from them for fifty to a hundred
_yen_ (L5 to L10)," she said. "But of course the real historical trees
are so very few; they hardly ever come on the market. They are like
animals, you know. They want so much attention. They must have a
garden to take their walks in, and a valet of their own."

This great Japanese lady felt an affection and sympathy for the girl
who, like herself, had been set apart by destiny from the monotonous
ranks of Japanese women and their tedious dependence.

"Little Asa Chan," she said, calling her by her pet name, "take care;
you can become Japanese again, but your husband cannot."

"Of course not, he's too big," laughed Asako; "but I like to run
away from him sometimes, and hide behind the _shoji_. Then I feel
independent."

"But you are not really so," said the Japanese, "no woman is. You see
the wisteria hanging in the big tree there. What happens when the
big tree is taken away? The wisteria becomes independent, but it lies
along the ground and dies. Do you know the Japanese name for wisteria?
It is _fuji_--Fujinami Asako. If you have any difficulty ever, come
and talk to me. You see, I, too, am a rich woman; and I know that it
is almost as difficult to be very rich as it is to be very poor."

* * * * *

Captain Barrington and the ex-Ambassador were sitting on one of the
benches of the terrace when the ladies rejoined them.

"Well, Daddy," the Countess addressed her husband in English, "what
are you talking about so earnestly?"

"About England and Japan," replied the Count.

As a matter of fact, in the course of a rambling conversation, Count
Saito had asked his guest:

"Now, what strikes you as the most surprising difference between our
two countries?"

Geoffrey pondered for a moment. He wanted to answer frankly, but he
was still awed by the canons of Good Form. At last he said: "This
Yoshiwara business."

The Japanese statesman seemed surprised.

"But that is just a local difference in the manner of regulating a
universal problem," he said.

"Englishmen aren't any better than they should be," said Geoffrey;
"but we don't like to hear of women put up for sale like things in a
shop."

"Then you have not actually seen them yourself?" said the Count.
He could not help smiling at the characteristic British habit of
criticising on hearsay.

"Not actually; but I saw the procession last month."

"You really think that it is better to let immoral women stray about
the streets without any attempt to control them and the crime and
disease they cause?"

"It's not that," said Geoffrey; "it seems to me horrible that women
should be put up to sale and exposed in shop windows ticketed and
priced."

Count Saito smiled again and said:

"I see that you are an idealist like so many Englishmen. But I am only
a practical statesman. The problem of vice is a problem of government.
No law can abolish it. It is for us statesmen to study how to restrain
it and its evil consequences. Three hundred years ago these women
used to walk about the streets as they do in London to-day. Tokugawa
Iyeyasu, the greatest of all Japanese statesmen, who gave peace to the
whole country, put in order this untidiness also. He had the Yoshiwara
built, and he put all the women there, where the police could watch
both them and the men who visited them. The English might learn from
us here, I think. But you are an unruly people. It is not only that
you object for ideal reasons to the imprisonment of these women; but
it is your men who would object very strongly to having the eye of the
policeman watching them when they paid their visits."

Geoffrey was silenced by the experience of his host. He was afraid,
as most Englishmen are, of arguing that the British determination to
ignore vice, however disastrous in practice, is a system infinitely
nobler in conception than the acquiescence which admits for the evil
its right to exist, and places it among the commonplaces of life.

"And how about the people who make money out of such a place?" asked
Geoffrey. "They must be contemptible specimens."

The face of the wise statesman became suddenly gentle.

"I really don't know much about them," he said. "If we do meet them
they do not boast about it."

CHAPTER XV

EURASIA

_Mono-sugo ya
Ara omoshiro no
Kaeri-bana._

Queer--
Yes, but attractive
Are the flowers which bloom out of season.

Although he felt a decreasing interest in the Japanese people,
Geoffrey was enjoying his stay in Tokyo. He was tired of traveling,
and was glad to settle down in the semblance of a home life.

He was very keen on his tennis. It was also a great pleasure to see
so much of Reggie Forsyth. Besides, he was conscious of the mission
assigned to him by Lady Cynthia Cairns to save his friend from the
dangerous connection with Yae Smith.

Reggie and he had been at Eton together. Geoffrey, four years the
senior, a member of "Pop," and an athlete of many colours, found
himself one day the object of an almost idolatrous worship on the part
of a skinny little being, discreditably clever at Latin verses, and
given over to the degrading habit of solitary piano practicing on
half-holidays. He was embarrassed but touched by a devotion which was
quite incomprehensible to him; and he encouraged it furtively. When
Geoffrey left Eton the friends did not see each other again for some
years, though they watched each other's careers from a distance,
mutually appreciative. Their next meeting took place in Lady
Everington's drawing-room, where Barrington had already heard fair
ladies praising the gifts and graces of the young diplomat. He heard
him play the piano; and he also heard the appreciation of discerning
judgment. He heard him talking with arabesque agility. It was
Geoffrey's turn to feel on the wrong side of a vast superiority, and
in his turn he repaid the old debt of admiration; generosity filled
the gulf and the two became firm friends. Reggie's intelligence
flicked the inertia of Geoffrey's mind, quickened his powers of
observation, and developed his sense of interest in the world around
him. Geoffrey's prudence and stolidity had more than once saved the
young man from the brink of sentimental precipices.

For Reggie's unquestionable musical talent found its nourishment
in love affairs dangerously unsophisticated. He refused to consider
marriage with any of the sweet young things, who would gladly
have risked his lukewarm interest for the chance of becoming an
Ambassador's wife. He equally avoided pawning his youth to any of
the maturer married ladies, whose status and character, together with
those of their husbands, license them to practice as certificated
Egerias. His dangerous _penchant_ was for highly spiced adventuresses,
and for pastoral amourettes, wistful and obscure. But he never gave
away his heart; he lent it out at interest. He received it again
intact, with the profit of his musical inspiration. Thus his liaison
with Veronique Gerson produced the publication of _Les demi-jours_, a
series of musical poems which placed him at once in the forefront of
young composers; but it also alarmed the Foreign Office, which was
paternally interested in Reggie's career. This brought about his
banishment to Japan. The _Attente d'hiver_, now famous, is his candid
musical confession that the coma inflicted upon him by Veronique's
unconcern was merely the drowsiness of the waiting earth before the
New Year brought back the old story.

Reggie would never be attracted to native women; and he had not the
dry inquisitiveness of his predecessor, Aubrey Laking, which might
induce him to buy and keep a woman for whom he felt no affection. The
love which can exchange no thoughts in speech was altogether too
crude for him. It was his emotions, rather than his senses, which were
always craving for amorous excitement. His frail body claimed merely
its right to follow their lead, as a little boat follows the strong
wind which fills its sails. But ever since he had loved Geoffrey
Barrington at Eton it was a necessity for his nature to love some one;
and as the haze of his young conceptions cleared, that some one became
necessarily a woman.

He soon recognized the wisdom of the Foreign Office in choosing Japan.
It was a starvation diet which had been prescribed for him. So he
settled down to his memories and to _L'attente d'hiver_, thinking that
it would be two long years or more before his Spring blossomed again.

* * * * *

Then he heard the story of the duel fought for Yae Smith by two young
English officers, both of them her lovers, so people said, and the
vaguer tale of a fiance's suicide. Some weeks later, he met her for
the first time at a dance. She was the only woman present in Japanese
dress, and Reggie thought at once of Asako Barrington. How wise of
these small women to wear the kimono which drapes so gracefully their
stumpy figures. He danced with her, his right hand lodged somewhere in
the folds of the huge bow with the embroidered peacock, which covered
her back. Under this stiff brocade he could feel no sensation of a
living body. She seemed to have no bones in her, and she was as
light as a feather. It was then that he imagined her as Lilith, the
snake-girl. She danced with ease, so much better than he, that at the
end of a series of cannons she suggested that they might sit out the
dance. She guided him into the garden, and they took possession of a
rustic seat. In the ballroom she had seemed timid, and had spoken in
undertones only; but in this shadowy _tete-a-tete_ beneath the stars,
she began to talk frankly about her own life.

She told him about her one visit to England with her father; how she
had loved the country, and how dull it was for her here in Japan. She
asked him about his music. She would so like to hear him play. There
was an old piano at her home. She did not think he would like it very
much--indeed, Reggie was already shuddering in anticipation--or else?
Would she come to tea with him at the Embassy? That would be nice! She
could bring her mother or one of her brothers? She would rather come
with a girl friend. Very well, to-morrow?

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23