Part 13
There were several hundred elegant women who slowly came out, one after another, their feet too small and their shoes too high. Oh, the line of strange little painted faces and the finery that emerged from that narrow doorway! The cut of the pantaloons, the cut of the tunics, the combination of forms and colors, must be as old as China, and how far it seems from us! They are like dolls of another age, another world, who have escaped from old parasols or decorated jars, to take on reality and life this beautiful April morning. Among them are Chinese ladies with deformed toes and incredibly small, pointed shoes; their stiff, heavy masses of hair are pointed too, and arranged at the nape of the neck like birds' tails. There are Tartar ladies, belonging to the special aristocracy known as "the eight banners;" their feet are natural, but their embroidered slippers have stilt-like heels; their hair is long, and is wound like a skein of black silk on a piece of board placed crosswise back of their heads, so that it forms two horizontal cones with an artificial flower at each end.
They paint themselves like the wax figures at the hairdressers',--white, with a bright pink spot in the middle of each cheek; one feels that it is done according to custom and etiquette, without the least attempt at creating an illusion.
They chatter and laugh discreetly; they lead by the hand the most adorable babies (who were as good as little porcelain kittens during mass), decked out, and their hair dressed in the most comical fashion. Many of the women are pretty, very pretty; almost all seem decent, reserved, and _comme il faut_.
The exit from the church was accomplished quietly, with every appearance of peace and happiness, in complete confidence in these surroundings so recently the scene of massacre and other horrors. The gates of the enclosure are wide open, and a new avenue, bordered by young trees, has been laid out over what was not long since a charnel-house.
A great number of little Chinese carts, upholstered in beautiful silk or in blue cotton, are waiting, their heavy wheels decorated with copper; all the dolls get in with much ceremony, and depart as though they were leaving some festive performance.
Once more the Christians in China have won a victory, and they triumph generously--until the next massacre.
* * * * *
At two o'clock to-day, as is the Sunday custom, the marine band plays in the court at headquarters,--in the court of the Palace of the North, which I had known filled with strange and magnificent débris in a cold autumn wind, but which at present is all cleared up as neat as a pin, with the April green beginning to show on the branches of the little trees.
This semblance of a French Sunday is rather sad. The feeling of exile which one never loses here is made all the keener by the poor music, to which there are but few listeners; no dressy women or happy babies, just two or three groups of idle soldiers and a few of the sick or wounded from the hospital, their young faces pale and wan, one dragging a limb, another leaning on a crutch.
And yet there are moments when it does suggest home; the going and coming of the marines and of the good Sisters reminds one of some little corner of France; beyond the glass galleries which surround this court rises the slender Gothic tower of the neighboring church, with a large tricolored flag floating from the top, high up in the blue sky, dominating everything, and protecting the little country we have improvised here in the haunts of the Chinese emperors.
* * * * *
What a change has taken place in this Palace of the North since my stay here last autumn.
With the exception of the part reserved for the general and his officers, all the galleries and all the dependencies have become hospital wards for our soldiers. They are admirably adapted to this purpose, for they are separated from one another by courts, and stand on high foundations of granite. There are two hundred beds for the poor sick soldiers, who are most comfortably installed in them, with light and air at pleasure, thanks to the way this fantastic palace is built. The good Sisters with their white pointed caps move about with short, quick steps, distributing medicines, clean linen, and smiles.
A small parlor is set apart for the head-nurse,--an elderly woman, with a fine, wrinkled face, who has just received the cross, in the presence of all the troops, for her admirable services during the siege. Her little whitewashed parlor is altogether typical and charming, with its six Chinese chairs, its Chinese table, its two Chinese water-colors of flowers and fruits that hang on the wall,--all chosen from amongst the most modest of the Sardanapalian reserves of the Empress; added to these is a large plaster image of the Virgin, enthroned in the place of honor, between two jars filled with white lilacs.
White lilacs! The most magnificent bunches of them grow in all the walled gardens of this palace; they are the sole joyful signs of April, of real spring under this burning sun; and they are a boon to the Sisters, who make regular thickets of them in honor of the Virgin and saints, on their simple altars.
I had known all these mandarins' and gardeners' houses, which extend on among the trees, in complete disarray, filled with strange spoils, filth, and pestilential smells; now they are clean and whitewashed, with nothing disagreeable about them. The nuns have established here a wash-house, there a kitchen where good broth is made for the invalids, or a linen room, where piles of clean-smelling sheets and shirts for the sick are ranged on shelves covered with immaculate papers.
Like the simplest of our sailors or soldiers, I am very much inclined to be charmed and comforted by the mere sight of a good Sister's cap. It is no doubt an indication of a regrettable lack in my imagination, but I have much less of a thrill when I look upon the head-dress of a lay nurse.
* * * * *
Outside of our quarters, in these unheard-of times for Pekin, Sunday is marked by the great numbers of soldiers of all countries who are circulating about its streets.
The city has been divided into districts, each placed under the care of one of the invading peoples, and the different zones mingle very little with one another; the officers occasionally, the soldiers almost never. As an exception, the Germans come to us sometimes, and we go to them, for one of the undeniable results of this war has been to establish a sympathy between the men of the two armies; but the international relations of our troops are limited to this one exception.
The part of Pekin that fell to France--several kilometres in circumference--is the one where the Boxers destroyed most during the siege, the one that is most ruined and solitary, but also the one to which life and confidence soonest returned. Our soldiers take kindly to the Chinese, both men and women, and even to the babies. They have made friends everywhere, as may be seen by the way the Chinese approach them instead of running away.
In the French part of Pekin every little house flies the tricolor as a safeguard. Many of the people have even pasted on their doors placards of white paper, obtained through the kind offices of some of our men, on which may be read in big, childish handwriting: "We are Chinese protected by French" or "Here we are all Chinese Christians."
And every little baby, naked or clothed, with his ribbon and his queue, has learned, smilingly, to make the military salute as we pass.
* * * * *
At sunset the soldiers turn in, the barracks are closed. Silence and darkness everywhere.
The night is particularly dark. About two o'clock I leave my quarters with one of my comrades of the land force. Lantern in hand, we set forth in the dark labyrinth; challenged at first here and there by sentinels, then, meeting no one but frightened dogs, we cross ruins, cesspools, and wretched streets that breathe death.
A very dubious-looking house is our goal. The watchmen at the gate, who were on the lookout, announce us by a long, sinister cry, and we plunge into a series of winding passageways and dark recesses. Then come several small rooms with low ceilings, which are stuffy, and lighted only by dim, smoky lamps; their furnishings consist of a divan and an arm-chair; the air, which is scarcely breathable, is saturated with opium and musk. The patron and the patroness have both the _embonpoint_ and the patriarchal good nature which go along with such a house.
I beg that my reader will not misunderstand me; this is a _house of song_ (one of the oldest of Chinese institutions, now tending to disappear), and one comes here simply to listen to music, surrounded by clouds of overpowering smoke.
Hesitatingly we take our places in one of the small rooms, on a red couch covered with red cushions embroidered with natural representations of wild animals. Its cleanliness is dubious and the excessive odors disturb us. On the papered walls hang water-colors representing beatified sages among the clouds. In one corner an old German clock, which must have been in Pekin at least a hundred years, ticks a shrill tick-tock. It seems as though from the moment of our arrival our minds were affected by the heavy opium dreams that have been evolved on this divan under the restraint of the oppressive dark ceilings; and yet this is an elegant resort for the Chinese, a place apart, to which, before the war, no amount of money would admit any European.
Pushing aside the long, poisonous pipes that are offered us, we light some Turkish cigarettes, and the music begins.
The first to appear is a guitarist, and as marvellous a one as could be found at Granada or Seville. He makes his strings weep songs of infinite sadness.
Afterwards, for our amusement, he imitates on his guitar the sound of a French regiment passing, the muffled drums and the trumpets in the distance playing the "March of the Zouaves."
Finally, three little old women appear, stout and rather pale, who are to give us some plaintive trios with minor strains that correspond with the dreams that follow opium smoking. But before beginning, one of the three, who is the star,--a curious, very much dressed little creature, with a tiara of rice-paper flowers, like a goddess,--advances toward me on the toes of her tortured feet, extends her hand to me in European fashion, and says in French, with a Creole accent, and not without a certain distinction of manner, "Good evening, colonel."
It was the last thing I expected! Certainly the occupation of Pekin by French troops has been prolific in unexpected results.
MONDAY, April 22.
My journey to the Tombs of the Emperors takes some time to organize. The replies that come to headquarters state that the country has been less safe for the past few days, that bands of Boxers have appeared in the province, and they are waiting further instructions before consenting to my departure.
In the meantime I make another visit in the hot spring sunshine to the horrors of the Christian cemeteries violated by the Chinese.
The confusion there is unchanged; there is the same chaos of melancholy marbles, of mutilated emblems, of steles fallen and broken. The human remains which the Boxers did not have time to destroy before they were routed lie in the same places; no pious hand has ventured to bury them again, for, according to Chinese ideas, it would be accepting the proffered injury to put them back in the ground; they must lie there, crying for vengeance, until the day of complete reparation. There is no change in this place of abomination, except that it is no longer frozen; the sun shines, and here and there yellow dandelions or violet gillyflowers are blossoming in the sandy soil.
As to the great yawning wells which had been filled with the bodies of the tortured, time has begun to do its work; the wind has blown the dust and dirt over them, and their contents have dried to such an extent that they now form a compact gray mass, although an occasional foot or hand or skull still protrudes above the rest.
In one of these wells, on the human crust that rises nearly to the top of the ground, lies the body of a poor Chinese baby, dressed in a torn little shirt and swathed in red cotton,--it is a recent corpse, hardly stiff as yet. No doubt it is a little girl, for the Chinese have the most atrocious scorn for girls; the Sisters pick them up like this along the roads every day, thrown while still alive upon some rubbish heap. So it was, no doubt, with this one. She may have been ill, or ill-favored, or simply one too many in a family. She lies there face downward, with extended arms and little doll-like hands. Her face, from which the blood has been running, is lying on the most frightful rubbish; a few of the feathers of a young sparrow lie on the back of her neck, over which the flies are meandering.
Poor little creature in her red woollen rags with her little hands outstretched! Poor little face hidden so that no one shall see it more before its final decomposition!
FOOTNOTE:
[2] A few days later, by order of the superior officers, those accusing statues were withdrawn from the market and the models destroyed. Only the statuettes of the French remained on sale, and they have become very rare.
VII
THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS
I
PEKIN, Friday, April 26, 1901.
At last the day has come for my departure for the sacred wood which encloses the imperial tombs.
At seven o'clock in the morning I leave the Palace of the North, taking with me my last autumn's servants, Osman and Renaud, as well as four African riflemen and a Chinese interpreter. We start on horseback on animals chosen for the journey, which will be transported by rail whenever we are.
First, two or three kilometres across Pekin in the beautiful morning light, along great thoroughfares magnificent in their desolation, the route of pageants and of emperors; through the triple red gates, between lions of marble and obelisks of marble, yellow as old ivory.
Now the railway station--it is in the centre of the city at the foot of the wall of the second enclosure, for the Western barbarians dared to commit the sacrilege of piercing the ramparts in order to introduce their submersive system.
Men and horses go aboard. Then the train threads its way across the devastated Chinese City, and for three or four kilometres skirts the colossal gray wall of the Tartar City, which continues to unfold itself, always the same, with the same bastions, the same battlements, without a gate, without anything, to relieve its monotony and its immensity.
A breach in the outer wall casts us forth at last into the melancholy country.
And for three hours and a half it is a journey through the dust of the plain, past demolished stations, rubbish, ruins. According to the great plans of the allied nations, this line, which actually goes to Pao-Ting-Fu, is to be extended several hundred leagues, so as to unite Pekin and Hang-Chow, two enormous cities. It would thus become one of the great arteries of new China, scattering along its way the benefits of Occidental civilization.
At noon we alight at Tchou-Tchou, a great walled city, whose high battlemented ramparts and two twelve-storied towers are perceived as through a cloud of ashes. A man is scarcely recognizable at twenty paces, as in times of fog in the north, so filled with dust is the air; and the sun, though dimmed and yellow, reflects a heat that is overpowering.
The commandant and the officers of the French port, which has occupied Tchou-Tchou since the autumn, were kind enough to meet me and to take me for breakfast to their table in the comparative freshness of the big dark pagodas where they with their men were installed. The road to the tombs,[3] they tell me, which latterly has seemed quite safe, has been less so for a few days, a band of two hundred marauding Boxers having yesterday attacked one of the large villages through which I must pass, where they fought all the morning,--until the appearance of a French detachment who came to the aid of the villagers sent the Boxers flying like a flock of sparrows.
"Two hundred Boxers," continued the commandant of the post, making a mental calculation; "let me see, two hundred Boxers: you will have to have at least ten men. You already have six horsemen; I will, if you wish, add four more."
I felt that I ought to make some suitable acknowledgment, to reply that it was too much, that he overpowered me. Then under the eyes of the Buddhas, who were watching us breakfast, we both began to laugh, struck all at once by the air of extravagant bluster in what we were saying. In truth it had the force of
"Paraissez, Navarrois, Maures et Castillans;"
and yet, ten men against two hundred Boxers are really all that are necessary. They are tenacious and terrible only behind walls, those fellows; but in a flat country--it is highly probable, moreover, that I shall not see the queue of one. I accept the reinforcement,--four brave soldiers, who will be delighted to accompany me; I accept so much the more readily, since my expedition will thus take on the proportions of a military reconnaissance, and this, it appears, will be a good thing just now.
At two o'clock we remount our horses, for we are to sleep in an old walled town twenty-five kilometres farther on, called Laï-Chow-Chien (Chinese cities seem to claim these names; we know of one called Cha-Ma-Miaou, and another, a very large, ancient capital, Chien-Chien).
We make a plunge and disappear at once in a cloud of dust which the wind chases over the plain,--the immense, suffocating plain. There is no illusion possible; it is the "yellow wind" which has arisen,--a wind which generally blows in periods of three days, adding to the dust of China all that of the Mongolian desert.
No roads but deep tracks, paths several feet below the surface, which could only have been hollowed there in the course of centuries. A frightful country, which has, since the beginning of time, endured torrid heat and almost hyperborean cold. In this dry, powdery soil how can the new wheat grow, which here and there makes squares of really fresh green in the midst of the infinite grays? There are also from time to time a few sparse clumps of young elms and willows, somewhat different from ours, but nevertheless recognizable, just showing their first tiny leaves. Monotony and sadness; one would call it a poor landscape of the extreme north, lighted by an African sun,--a sun that has mistaken the latitude.
At a turn of the crooked road a band of laborers who see us suddenly spring up, are frightened, and throw down their spades to run away. But one of them stops the others, crying, "Fanko pink" (French soldiers). "They are French, do not be afraid." Then they bend again over the burning earth, and peaceably continue their work, looking at us as we pass by from the corners of their eyes. Their confidence speaks volumes on the somewhat exceptional kind of "barbarians" our brave soldiers have known how to be, in the course of a European invasion.
[Illustration: CHINESE VILLAGE CARTS, THE ONLY VEHICLE USED IN THE NORTH OF CHINA]
The few clumps of willows scattered over the plains almost always shelter under their sparse foliage the villages of tillers of the soil,--little houses of clay and of gray brick, absurd little pagodas, which are crumbling in the sunshine. Warned by watchmen, men and children come out as we pass to look at us in silence with naïve curiosity; bare to the waist, very yellow, very thin, and very muscular; pantaloons of the ever similar dark blue cotton. Out of politeness each one uncoils and allows to hang down his back his long plaited hair, for to keep it on the crown of the head would be a disrespect to me. No women; they remain concealed. These people must have much the same impression of us that the peasants of Gaul had when Attila, chief of the army, passed with his escort, except that they are less frightened. Everything about us is astonishing,--costumes, arms, and faces. Even my horse, which is an Arabian stallion, must seem to them a huge, unusual, superb animal beside their own little horses, with their big rough heads.
The frail willows, through which the sunlight sifts upon the houses and tiny pagodas of these primitive lives, scatter over us their blossoms, like tiny feathers or little tufts of cotton-wool, which fall in a shower, and mingle with the never-ending dust.
On the plain, which now begins again, level and always the same, I keep two or three hundred metres in advance of my little armed troop, to avoid the excessive dust raised by the trot of the horses' feet; a gray cloud behind me when I turn around shows me that they are following. The "yellow wind" continues to blow; we are powdered with it to such an extent that our horses, our moustaches, our uniforms have become of the color of ashes.
Toward five o'clock the old walled town where we are to pass the night appears before us. From afar it is almost imposing in the midst of the plain, with its high crenellated ramparts so sombre in color. Near by, no doubt, it would show but ruin and decrepitude, like the rest of China.
A horseman, bringing along with him the inevitable cloud of dust, comes out to meet me. It is the officer commanding the fifty men of the marine infantry who have occupied Laï-Chou-Chien since October. He informs me that the general has had the kindly thought of having me announced as one of the great mandarins of Occidental letters, so the mandarin of the town is coming out to meet me with an escort, and he has called together the neighboring villages for a fête which he is preparing for me.
In fact, here the procession comes, from out the crumbling old gates, advancing through the wasted fields, with red emblems and music.
Now it stops to await me, ranged in two lines on each side of the road. And following the usual ceremonial, some one, a servant of the mandarin, comes forward, fifty feet in advance of the others, with a large red paper, which is the visiting-card of his master. He himself, the timid mandarin, awaits, standing, with the people of his house, having come down from his palanquin out of deference. I extend my hand without dismounting, as I have been told to do, after which, in a cloud of gray dust, we make our way toward the great walls, followed by my cavaliers, and preceded by the procession of honor with music and emblems.