Barbara had never imagined such a welter of movement and color. The soft flute-like voices, the slow shuffling of sandals on the dry earth, the pensive smiling faces, the pink flowers on every hand, made this different from any holiday crowd she had ever seen. It suggested a carnival of Venice orientalized, painted over and set blazing with Japanese necromancy.
Here and there jugglers and top-spinners displayed their skill to staring spectators. A cluster of shaven-headed babies swarmed silently about a sweetmeat seller, and beside his push-cart a man clad like a gray-feathered hawk whistled discordantly on a bamboo reed and gyrated with a vacant grin on his pock-marked face. Where the crowd was less close men tricked out in girls' attire, with whitened, clown-like faces, turned somersaults, and through the thickest of the press a dejected, blaze-faced ox, whose nose and forehead were painted with spots of scarlet, slowly drew a two-storied scaffold on which was perched the god of spring—a plaster figure wreathed with flowers. The animal's ears were tickled by long tassels of bright green and red, and his look was one of patient boredom. The man who led him wore a short jerkin, and his bare legs, from thigh to knee, were tattooed in big, blue, graceful leaves.
The greatest numbers surged about a large tent, outside of which waddled here and there mountains of men, their faces round as full moons, naked save for gaily colored aprons. The fat hung on their breasts in great creased folds like an overfed baby's, and in the lantern-light their flesh looked an unhealthy, mottled pink. Each wore his hair wound in a short queue, bent forward and tied in a stiff loop on the crown. As one of the vast hulks lumbered by, cooling his moon-face with a tiny fan, Daunt pointed him out to Barbara.
"That is the famous Hitachiyama," he told her, "the champion wrestler of Japan."
"How big he is!"
"It runs in families," he said. "They diet and train, too, from babyhood. He weighs three hundred and forty-seven pounds."
A roar came from the lighted canvas and a man emerged and wrote something on a sign-board like a tally-sheet. Daunt stopped and perused it. "You may be interested, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "to learn that Mr. Terrible-Horse has knocked out Mr. Small-Willow-Tree, but that Mr. Tiger-Elephant has been allowed a foul over Mr. Frozen-Stork. I wish we could see a bout, but we must hurry or we'll miss the geisha dancing."
They came presently where the roadway overlooked a sunken temple yard encircled by moats of oozy slime dotted with pink and white lotos buds. The inclosure was set with giant cryptomeria centuries old, and was crowded with people. Stone steps led down between twisted pine-trees and Shinto lanterns, to a gate on whose either side was a great stone cow, rampant, like the figures in coats-of-arms. There was a droll contrast between the posture and the placid bovine countenances. In the center of the inclosure rose a wide platform with a tasseled curtain like the stage of a theater. Opposite was a pavilion in which sat rows of women in dark-colored dress, moveless as images and holding musical instruments. The whole flagged space between jostled with the iridescent, lantern-carrying throng. A priest led the party to seats at one side on mats reserved for foreign visitors.
"Look, Barbara," said Patricia. "There goes our friend the expert—across there. He looks bigger and pastier than ever."
Bersonin was dressed in white flannel which accentuated his enormous size. A younger man was with him, smoking a cigarette, and in their wake followed a Japanese servant.