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Updated: June 3, 2025
M. Kangourou brought a little laundry bill, which he wished respectfully to hand to me, with a profound bend of the whole body, the correct pose of the hands on the knees, and a long, snake-like hiss.
It seemed extraordinary that the quaint words, the curious phrases I had learned during our exile at the Pescadores Islands by sheer dint of dictionary and grammar, without attaching the least sense to them should mean anything. But so it seemed, however, for I was at once understood. I wished in the first place to speak to one M. Kangourou, who is interpreter, laundryman, and matrimonial agent.
He makes one for each word I utter, as if he were a mechanical toy pulled by a string; when he is seated before me on the ground, he limits himself to a duck of the head always accompanied by the same hissing noise of the saliva. "A cup of tea, Monsieur Kangourou?" Fresh salute and an extra affected gesticulation with the hands, as if to say, "I should hardly dare.
The wish to laugh leaves me suddenly, and instead, a profound chill seizes my heart. What! share even an hour of my life with that little doll? Never! The next question is, how to get rid of her. She advances smiling, with an air of repressed triumph, and behind her looms M. Kangourou, in his suit of gray tweed.
Let us seek amongst a less distinguished class of young persons, but without scars. And how about those on the other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered dresses? For instance, the dancer with the specter mask, M. Kangourou? or again she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming nape to her neck?"
But at eight o'clock three persons of the most extraordinary appearance, led by M. Kangourou, present themselves with profound bows at the door of my cabin.
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. July 12th Yves visits us whenever he is free, in the evening at five o'clock, after his duties on board are fulfilled.
It is ten o'clock when all is finally settled, and M. Kangourou comes to tell me: "All is arranged, Monsieur: her parents will give her up for twenty dollars a month the same price as Mademoiselle Jasmin."
It is hardly possible, however, for us to deceive ourselves: these would-be maidens, to whom M. Kangourou has introduced us, have already had in their lives one adventure, at least, and perhaps more; it is therefore only natural that we should have our suspicions. The Z -and Touki-San couple jog on, quarrelling all the time.
But as I have now become thoroughly Japanized, today they appear to me more diminutive, less outlandish, and in no way mysterious. I treat them rather as dancers that I have hired, and the idea that I ever had thought of marrying one of them now makes me shrug my shoulders as it formerly made M. Kangourou.
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