Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The next day, Passepartout, worn out and famished, told himself that he must eat at all costs, and that the sooner the better. He did have the resource of selling his watch, but he would sooner have died of hunger. Now was the moment, if ever, for this good fellow to use the strong, if not melodious, voice with which nature had endowed him.
He knew a few refrains of France and England, and he resolved to try them. The Japanese must surely be lovers of music, since everything among them is done to the sound of cymbals, of the tam-tam, and of drums, and they could not but appreciate the talents of a European virtuoso.
But perhaps it was a little early to get up a concert, and the music-lovers, roused unexpectedly, might not have paid the singer in coin bearing the mikado's effigy.
So Passepartout decided to wait a few hours; but, as he walked along, he reflected that he would seem too well dressed for a strolling performer, and the idea then came to him of exchanging his clothes for some cast-offs more in keeping with his situation. This exchange ought, moreover, to yield a balance in cash, which he could apply at once to satisfying his appetite.
The resolution once taken, it had still to be carried out. Only after much searching did Passepartout track down a native secondhand dealer, to whom he set out his request. The European suit pleased the dealer, and soon Passepartout came out got up in an old Japanese robe and crowned with a sort of ribbed turban, faded by the action of time. But, in return, a few small silver coins jingled in his pocket.
«Good,» he thought, «I will just imagine we are at carnival time!»
Passepartout's first care, thus «Japanned,» was to enter a modest-looking «tea-house,» and there, on the remains of some poultry and a few handfuls of rice, he breakfasted like a man for whom dinner would still be a problem to solve.
«Now,» he said to himself when he was copiously restored, «the thing is not to lose my head. I no longer have the resource of selling these cast-offs for others still more Japanese. So I must find some way of leaving as quickly as possible this land of the Sun, of which I shall keep only a woeful memory!»
Passepartout then thought of visiting the steamers leaving for America. He counted on offering himself as a cook or a servant, asking for no pay but his passage and his food. Once at San Francisco, he would see about getting himself out of the fix. The important thing was to cross the forty-seven hundred miles of Pacific that stretch between Japan and the New World.
Passepartout, being no man to let an idea languish, made for the port of Yokohama. But as he approached the docks, his plan, which had seemed so simple at the moment the idea came to him, seemed to him more and more unworkable. Why should a cook or a servant be needed aboard an American steamer, and what confidence would he inspire, got up as he was? What recommendations could he offer? What references could he name?
As he was reflecting thus, his eyes fell on a huge poster that a sort of clown was carrying about through the streets of Yokohama. This poster was worded thus in English:
JAPANESE ACROBATIC TROUPE OF THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM BATULCAR --- LAST PERFORMANCES Before their departure for the United States of America OF THE LONG-NOSES-LONG-NOSES, PLACED UNDER THE DIRECT INVOCATION OF THE GOD TINGOU Grand Attraction!
«The United States of America!» cried Passepartout, «that is exactly the thing for me!...»
He followed the poster-man, and, at his heels, he was soon back in the Japanese town. A quarter of an hour later, he halted before a vast shed, crowned with several clusters of streamers, and whose outer walls represented, without perspective but in violent colours, a whole band of jugglers.
It was the establishment of the honourable Batulcar, a sort of American Barnum, director of a troupe of tumblers, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, balancers, gymnasts, who, according to the poster, were giving their last performances before they left the Sun's empire for the states of the Union.
Passepartout went in under a peristyle that fronted the shed, and asked for Mr. Batulcar. Mr. Batulcar appeared in person.
«What do you want?» he said to Passepartout, whom he took at first for a native.
«Do you need a servant?» asked Passepartout.
«A servant,» cried the Barnum, stroking the thick grey tuft that flourished under his chin, «I have two, obedient, faithful, who have never left me, and who serve me for nothing, on condition that I feed them... And there they are,» he added, showing off his two brawny arms, furrowed with veins as thick as double-bass strings.
«Then I am of no use to you at all?
--None.
--The devil! It would have suited me very well, though, to leave with you.
--Now then!» said the honourable Batulcar, «you are a Japanese the way I am a monkey! Why on earth are you dressed like that?
--One dresses as one can!
--True enough. You are a Frenchman, are you?
--Yes, a Parisian of Paris.
--Then you must know how to pull faces?
--My word,» replied Passepartout, vexed to see his nationality provoke this question, «we Frenchmen do know how to pull faces, that is true, but no better than the Americans!
--Right. Well, if I do not take you as a servant, I can take you as a clown. You understand, my good man. In France they show off foreign clowns, and abroad, French ones!
--Ah!
--You are strong, besides?
--Especially when I get up from table.
--And you can sing?
--Yes,» replied Passepartout, who had in former days sung his part in a few street concerts.
«But can you sing upside down, on your head, with a spinning top turning on the sole of your left foot, and a sabre held in balance on the sole of your right?
--By Jove!» replied Passepartout, who remembered the first exercises of his young days.
«You see, that is the whole of it!» replied the honourable Batulcar.
The engagement was concluded hic et nunc.
At last Passepartout had found a place. He was engaged to do anything and everything in the famous Japanese troupe. It was not very flattering, but in under a week he would be bound for San Francisco.
The performance, announced with great fanfare by the honourable Batulcar, was to begin at three o'clock, and soon the formidable instruments of a Japanese orchestra, drums and tam-tams, were thundering at the door. It is easy to understand that Passepartout had not been able to study a part, but he was to lend the support of his sturdy shoulders in the great feat of the «human cluster» performed by the Long-Noses in the service of the god Tingou. This «great attraction» of the show was to close the series of exercises.
Before three o'clock, the spectators had invaded the vast shed. Natives and Europeans, Japanese and Chinese, men and women and children, crowded onto the narrow benches and into the boxes facing the stage. The musicians had gone back inside, and the full orchestra—gongs, tam-tams, clappers, flutes, tambourines, and bass drums—was going at it furiously.
This performance was what all these acrobat exhibitions are. But it must indeed be admitted that the Japanese are the finest balancers in the world. One, armed with his fan and little scraps of paper, performed the so graceful trick of the butterflies and flowers. Another, with the fragrant smoke of his pipe, rapidly traced in the air a series of bluish words that formed a compliment addressed to the assembly. This one juggled with lighted candles, which he put out one after another as they passed before his lips, and relit one from another without interrupting his marvellous juggling for a single instant. That one reproduced, by means of spinning tops, the most improbable combinations; under his hand, those humming machines seemed to take on a life of their own in their endless gyration; they ran along pipe-stems, along sabre-edges, along wires—veritable hairs stretched from one side of the stage to the other; they went round great crystal vases, they climbed bamboo ladders, they scattered into every corner, producing harmonic effects of a strange character by combining their various tones. The jugglers juggled with them, and they spun in the air; they tossed them like shuttlecocks, using wooden battledores, and they kept spinning; they stuffed them into their pockets, and when they drew them out again, they were spinning still—until the moment when a released spring made them burst open in sprays of fireworks!
There is no need to describe here the prodigious feats of the troupe's acrobats and gymnasts. The tricks with the ladder, the pole, the ball, the barrels, and the rest were performed with remarkable precision. But the chief attraction of the performance was the exhibition of those «Long-Noses,» astonishing balancers whom Europe does not yet know.
These Long-Noses form a particular guild placed under the direct invocation of the god Tingou. Dressed like heralds of the Middle Ages, they wore a splendid pair of wings on their shoulders. But what distinguished them more especially was that long nose with which their faces were adorned, and above all the use they made of it. These noses were nothing less than bamboos, five, six, ten feet long, some straight, others curved, these smooth, those warty. Now, it was on these appendages, solidly fixed, that all their balancing feats were performed. A dozen of these followers of the god Tingou lay down on their backs, and their comrades came to frolic on their noses, reared up like lightning-rods, jumping, vaulting from one nose to the next, and performing the most improbable tricks.
To finish, the human pyramid had been specially announced to the public, in which some fifty Long-Noses were to make up the «Car of Juggernaut.» But rather than forming this pyramid by taking their shoulders as a point of support, the honourable Batulcar's performers were to fit themselves together only by their noses. Now, one of those who formed the base of the car had left the troupe, and, as it was enough to be strong and nimble, Passepartout had been chosen to replace him.
Certainly the worthy fellow felt quite crestfallen when—sad memory of his youth—he had put on his medieval costume, adorned with many-coloured wings, and a six-foot nose had been fitted onto his face! But after all, this nose was his bread and butter, and he made up his mind to it.
Passepartout came on stage and took his place with those of his colleagues who were to form the base of the Car of Juggernaut. All stretched out on the ground, noses reared toward the sky. A second section of balancers came to plant themselves on these long appendages, a third tiered itself above, then a fourth, and on these noses that touched only by their tips, a human monument soon rose to the very friezes of the theatre.
Now the applause was redoubling, and the orchestra's instruments were bursting out like so many thunderclaps, when the pyramid tottered, the balance broke, one of the noses of the base gave way, and the monument collapsed like a house of cards...
It was the fault of Passepartout who, abandoning his post, clearing the footlights without the help of his wings, and climbing to the right-hand gallery, fell at the feet of a spectator, crying out:
«Ah! my master! my master!
--You?
--Me!
--Well then! in that case, to the steamer, my boy!...»
Mr. Fogg, Mrs. Aouda, who was with him, and Passepartout had rushed through the corridors out of the shed. But there they found the honourable Batulcar, furious, demanding damages for «the breakage.» Phileas Fogg appeased his fury by throwing him a handful of banknotes. And, at half past six, just as it was about to leave, Mr. Fogg and Mrs. Aouda set foot on the American steamer, followed by Passepartout, his wings on his back, and on his face that six-foot nose which he had not yet managed to tear off!