Part 19 (2/2)
But, of course, the night time is the time to see them.”
”I suppose so,” said Geoffrey vaguely.
”They sit in shop windows, one might say,” Reggie went on, ”only with bars in front like cages in the Zoo. And they wear gorgeous kimonos, red and gold and blue, and embroidered with flowers and dragons. It is like nothing I can think of, except aviaries full of wonderful parrakeets and humming-birds.”
”Are they pretty?” Asako asked.
”No, I can't say they are pretty; and they all seem very much alike to the mere Westerner. I can't imagine any body picking out one of them and saying, 'I love her'--'she is the loveliest.' There is a fat, impa.s.sive type like Buddha. There is a foxy animated type which exchanges _badinage_ with the young nuts through the bars of her cage; and there is a merely ugly lumpy type, a kind of cloddish country-girl who exists in all countries. But the more exclusive houses don't display their women. One can only see a row of photographs. No doubt they are very flattering to their originals.”
Asako was staring at the buildings now, at the high square prison houses, and at the low native roofs. These had each its little platform, its _monohos.h.i.+_, where much white was.h.i.+ng was drying in the sun.
At the farther end of one street a large stucco building, with a Grecian portico, stood athwart the thoroughfare.
”What is that?” said Asako; ”it looks like a church.”
”That is the hospital,” answered Reggie.
”But why is there a hospital here?” she asked again.
Yae Smith smiled ever so little at her new friend's ignorance of the wages of sin. But n.o.body answered the question.
There was a movement in the crowd, a pus.h.i.+ng back from some unseen locality, like the jolting of railway trucks. At the same time there was a craning of necks and a murmur of interest.
In the street opposite, the crowd was opening down the centre. The police, who had sprung up everywhere like the crop of the dragons'
teeth, were dividing the people. And then, down the path so formed, came the strangest procession which Geoffrey Barrington had ever seen on or off the stage.
High above the heads of the crowd appeared what seemed to be a life-size automaton, a moving waxwork magnificently garbed in white brocade with red and gold embroidery of phenixes, and a huge red sash tied in a bow in front. The hem of the skirt, turned up with red and thickly wadded, revealed a series of these garments fitting beneath each other, like the leaves of an artichoke. Under a monumental edifice of hair, bristling like a hedgehog with amber-coloured pins and with silver spangles and rosettes, a blank, impa.s.sive little face was staring straight in front of it, utterly expressionless, utterly unnatural, hidden beneath the glaze of enamel--the china face of a doll.
It parted the grey mult.i.tude like a pillar of light. It tottered forward slowly, for it was lifted above the crowd on a pair of black-lacquered clogs as high as stilts, dangerous and difficult to manipulate. On each side were two little figures, similarly painted, similarly bedizened, similarly expressionless, children of nine or ten years only, the _komuro_, the little waiting-women. They served to support the reigning beauty and at the same time to display her long embroidered sleeves, outstretched on either side like wings.
The brilliant figure and her two attendants moved forward under the shade of a huge ceremonial umbrella of yellow oiled paper, which looked like a membrane or like old vellum, and upon which were written in Chinese characters the personal name of the lady chosen for the honour and the name of the house in which she was an inmate. The shaft of this umbrella, some eight or nine feet long, was carried by a sinister being, clothed in the blue livery of the j.a.panese artisan, a kind of tabard with close-fitting trousers. He kept twisting the umbrella-shaft all the time with a gyrating movement to and fro, which imparted to the disc of the umbrella the hesitation of a wave. He followed the Queen with a strange slow stride. For long seconds he would pause with one foot held aloft in the att.i.tude of a high-stepping horse, which distorted his dwarfish body into a diabolic convulsion, like Durer's angel of horror. He seemed a familiar spirit, a mocking devil, the wicked _Spielmann_ of the ”Miracle” play, whose harsh laughter echoes through the empty room when the last cup is emptied, the last s.h.i.+lling gone, and the dreamer awakes from his dream.
Behind him followed five or six men carrying large oval lanterns, also inscribed with the name of the house; and after them came a representative collection of the officials of the proud establishment, a few foxy old women and a crowd of swaggering men, spotty and vicious-looking. The _Orian_ (Chief Courtesan) reached the cross-roads. There, as if moved by machinery or magnetism, she slowly turned to the left. She made her way towards one of a row of small, old-fas.h.i.+oned native houses, on the road down which the Barringtons had come. Here the umbrella was lowered. The beauty bowed her monumental head to pa.s.s under the low doorway, and settled herself on a pile of cus.h.i.+ons prepared to receive her.
Almost at once the popular interest was diverted to the appearance of another procession, precisely similar, which was debouching from the opposite road. The new _Orian_ garbed in blue, with a sash of gold and a design of cherry-blossom, supported by her two little attendants, wobbled towards another of the little houses. On her disappearing a third procession came into sight.
”Ah!” sighed Asako, ”what lovely kimonos! Where do they get them from?”
”I don't know,” said Yae, ”some of them are quite old. They come out fresh year after year for a different girl.”
Yae, with her distorted little soul, was thinking that it must be worth the years of slavery and the humiliation of disease to have that one day of complete triumph, to be the representative of Beauty upon earth, to feel the admiration and the desire of that vast concourse of men rising round one's body like a warm flood.
Geoffrey stared fascinated, wondering to see the fact of prost.i.tution advertised so unblus.h.i.+ngly as a public spectacle, his hatred and contempt breaking over the heads of the swine-faced men who followed the harlot, and picked their livelihood out of her shame.
Reggie was wondering what might be the thoughts of those little creatures m.u.f.fled in such splendour that their personality, like that of infant queens, was entirely hidden by the significance of what they symbolized. Not a smile, not a glance of recognition pa.s.sed over the unnatural whiteness of their faces. Yet they could not be, as they appeared to be, sleep-walkers. Were they proud to wear such finery?
Were they happy to be so acclaimed? Did their heart beat for one man, or did their vanity drink in the homage of all? Did their mind turn back to the mortgaged farm and the work in the paddy-fields, to the thriftless shop and the chatter of the little town, to the _sake_-sodden father who had sold them in the days of their innocence, to the first numbing shock of that new life? Perhaps; or perhaps they were too taken up with maintaining their equilibrium on their high shoes, or perhaps they thought of nothing at all. Reggie, who had a poor opinion of the intellectual brightness of uneducated j.a.panese women, thought that the last alternative was highly probable.
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