by Bruno Noble
Fubuki arranged her handbag strap on her shoulder and stepped into the lift. I had noticed that she always placed one hand on her stomach as the lift started its long drop to the ground floor. ‘You know, it’s best not to ask yourself that question,’ she replied pragmatically. ‘If he’s being mean, beat him at his own game; don’t give him any satisfaction and he’ll get bored of it. If he thinks it’s important, be grateful; he’ll then send something more interesting your way. Who knows? Maybe this is a test and, if you pass it, you’ll be rewarded with a job that meets your aspirations.’ I recalled her wise words the following morning when, panting after my six trips from the photocopying room, I asked Mr Omochi where he’d like me to put the originals and their photocopies.
Mr Omochi, who looked as though he hadn’t even moved from the day before, stared at me blankly before nodding his head in the direction of the filing cabinet in the far corner of his office. It was as tall as me, and as wide as I was tall. It had five drawers, four of which were empty, the bottom one containing shoes, ties and empty bottles of saké.
‘Omochi-san.’ I bowed. ‘Which would you like me to file there, the photocopies or the originals?’
Mr Omochi looked at me languidly. ‘File both of them.’ He looked pleased at my start of surprise.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask what point the exercise had if the copy were to be kept with the original and not distributed to a second party, if the two were to finish their brief lives in the graveyard of the furthest recess of Mr Omochi’s office. Instead, I asked, ‘Under what heading, Omochi-san?’
Mr Omochi, not without some effort, leant forward and propped himself up on his fingers – that were so short and stubby that I thought for a second he was resting on his knuckles – from which simian posture he grunted, ‘Show some initiative, can’t you?’
I filed them under ‘Originals’ and ‘Photocopies’.
Sharon
Gaia said, ‘I’ve watched you dance.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You dance like a housewife. Or like a schoolgirl. Like you’re at the school disco or something.’ Gaia put her hand on my arm. ‘Pierre thinks it’s cute and he tolerates it from you because of Wanda. Come on, don’t get all put out.’ She rested her head on my shoulder in a low, friendly, tender head butt. ‘You need to dance like a tart. Like you mean it. Look at me next time. Don’t go for the steel poles: they’re too slick, too fast and it’s difficult to create tension and to keep control. Go for the brass ones: they provide more friction, they’re easier to hold and you can try something slower, more sensual. Has a customer asked you for your phone number yet?’
‘No. Does that mean I haven’t been very good?’
‘Yes. But what are you going to do when you are asked?’
I opened my eyes wide.
‘You need to think about it. Have your answer ready.’
‘Do you ever give your number out?’
‘In for a penny, in for a pound. What’s the big deal? It’s only sex. It’s what’s at the heart of every family, right?’ She squeezed my arm. ‘If you were a man, you’d ask for my number, wouldn’t you?’
I returned the gentle head-to-head and we laughed. She knew she was right.
We remained seated for a while, the two of us squeezed in between the arms of the high-backed armchair, taking the two-hourly ten-minute break we were entitled to. The club was hot, the temperature kept high in order to keep us – the girls – warm and the customers thirsty.
Mie
Gradually, I filled the filing cabinet with documents and their originals, approaching the last drawer with some trepidation, worrying about how to ask Mr Omochi whether his shoes, ties and saké bottles took precedence over the documents and their copies. To my surprise, I never had to, as first the shoes disappeared, then the bottles and then the ties, with the end result that there was always the space I needed. The first filing cabinet full, Mr Omochi jutted his chin out at its neighbour and my heart sank.
I discovered the photocopier’s automatic feeder, a technological advance that I suspected Mr Omochi remained unaware of, and decided to use the ‘extra’ time this gave me to read what I was photocopying and so use my English and learn more about the diverse nature of Yumimoto’s extensive business. Inadvertently, my world geography improved, too, and the exercise took me back to Mrs Watanabe’s globe as I read about Yumimoto’s importation of cheese from Finland, solder from Singapore, fibre optics from Canada, tyres from France, jute from Togo, watches from Switzerland and fashion labels from England in exchange for our exportation of steel, cars and electronics.
Fubuki had graduated from taking down letters to attending meetings in the formal capacity of minutes-taker, while I faced imprisonment in an unventilated photocopier room having parked my intellectual abilities and hung my mind up on a tenterhook to wither and die, so little was it needed.
*
The days in the office passed like conveyor-belt sushi, evenly spaced, with little differences between them but always, if only at occasionally irregular intervals, coming around again, with Tuesdays following Mondays as certainly as the ebi nigiri on the pink-bordered saucer followed the tako nigiri on the black-bordered one. I considered the saucers proceeding slowly around the sushi bar, each piece of nigiri waiting passively for a diner to determine its fate, lifted a saucer off the slowly moving belt and, holding a piece of tekkamaki between my chopsticks, said to Fubuki, ‘I need a strategy. I have to take my future into my own hands. I must,’ I said, punning on the meaning of nigiri – which is ‘grasp’, as the rice is shaped by hand – ‘seize the day.’
Fubuki had taken to socialising with some of the girls from the typing pool and had been good enough to invite me to join them. I found that I liked them and discovered that my parents and I weren’t alone in thinking the way we did about certain Japanese customs. The girls confirmed that the pressure they faced to conform to their half of Japan’s anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife was strong, and they railed against Japan’s punishing corporate world that made it impossible for women to combine a career with a family. To my astonishment, they lived in fear of becoming long-term parasaito shingurus who, partnerless, reach their thirties and still live at home; and yet, seemingly in contradiction, not one of the girls claimed to want to get married, believing, apparently, that staying single was preferable to what they imagined marriage to be like.
‘What’s so hard to understand?’ asked Fubuki, eyeing some futomaki on the conveyor belt. ‘We can have a great life. We can go out with our girlfriends and buy nice clothes and pay for holidays.’
‘Yes, but you’re all terrified of being single at 25. So it’s a bit of a contradiction.’
Fubuki sighed. ‘Personally, I’m fed up with all the men who think I must be desperate just because I’m single.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I replied. ‘I think I’ve been asked out by every man on our floor. Except for my superiors.’
‘Actually, they’re the only ones who’ve asked me out,’ said Fubuki, naturally. ‘I think I scare the others away.’ She looked at me and arched her beautiful, quite perfect eyebrows. ‘So, how many have you accepted?’
‘You know. None.’
‘Exactly. So there’s nothing different about any of us. We don’t want to commit to a life of domestic drudgery. We value our independence. We know better than to take our work to our bedrooms. And our men, if we’re frank, are not worth the bother. If we must, a one-night stand will do. Personally,’ Fubuki shrugged, ‘I can’t be bothered. Not often, anyway.’ She stared down two young men on the other side of the conveyor belt and then looked at me and said, ‘So. It seems to me we have got to exactly the same place but via two quite different paths.’
‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘But, for me, it’s more about, you know –’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Fubuki, not unkindly, and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘But, tell me, how exactly do you plan to “seize the da
y”?’
I had to admit that I did not know.
*
‘Atashi-san.’ An agitated Mr Saito stood to attention behind his desk and requested I follow him, which I did, rattled by his formal use of my surname, past Mr Omochi’s empty office and on to Mr Hanada’s that admitted of a round conference table and a sofa besides Mr Hanada’s desk, desk chair, visitors’ chairs and filing cabinets. Mr Omochi stayed seated while Mr Hanada rose to greet us and invited Mr Saito and me to join them at the table. I believed I must have misheard him and remained standing on the doorsill, my feet unable to take the necessary steps to reach the one empty space around that table, my eyes desperately seeking Mr Saito’s for help. Mr Saito leafed though a pile of papers while Mr Omochi looked on without interest, his remarkable girth such that, arms fully stretched, he could only just rest his wrists, bandaged in his blue shirt’s white cuffs, on the table. Mr Hanada guided me to my seat and resumed his own. I kept my hands on my lap and my eyes downcast; they were like rocks in my head I could not lift.
Mr Hanada looked at me kindly from above his glasses and asked, ‘Would you like me to start again, Mie-san?’
‘Yes please, Hanada-san.’ I inclined my head, gratefully registered his use of my first name and determined to pay attention to every word.
‘We are to receive, a week today, much earlier than anticipated, a delegation from the Netherlands-based More Stage Services with whom we intend to enter into negotiation for the domestic distribution of the European sound and lighting companies they represent and, reciprocally, for the European distribution of the hi-fi brands in our electronics industry portfolio. A list of the European companies and Japanese brands and of every product in question is to be found in these briefing packs together with the names, job titles and biographies of both delegations – are you following, Atashi-san?’
‘Yes, yes.’ I nodded furiously.
‘Marc Nobel and Allison Boonstra of MSS are native English speakers; the third in their delegation is Adam Johnson, their American London-based banker. Please familiarise yourself with every detail of MSS’s business and with the biographies of every participant you will find in the main body of the text. Familiarise yourself, in the first appendix, with every detail of the brand names, of the products – their prices, margins and the volumes they sell in. Very important: please read through the second appendix containing the questions they may ask, the answers we may give, the questions we will ask and the answers they may give. Atashi-san, you will have to be familiar with these in both Japanese and English. I don’t believe, Atashi-san, that your English language and literature course at university covered the high fidelity and information technologies?’
Of course it hadn’t.
Mr Hanada closed the file and folded his hands together, leaning forward on his forearms. ‘Atashi-san, the change in schedule has thrown us. The interpreter we would normally employ for an occasion like this is unavailable. However, Messrs Omochi and Saito have satisfied me that you are a Yumimoto Corporation employee at heart by now and’ – and here he looked at his notes before looking at me again – ‘Tokyo University of Foreign Studies gave you such an excellent reference – you were not aware? Your tutor wrote that he considers you the best student of English he has ever taught – that I feel sure you will execute your duties as interpreter admirably and make Yumimoto proud of you.’
*
The week went by in a fug of intense study. I cancelled the social engagements I had and, having memorised the briefing pack in its entirety at my desk during the day, in the evenings I criss-crossed Akihabara, the district in which Tokyo’s electronics shops were located, entering every shop, asking after every product in Yumimoto’s portfolio and on MSS’s distribution list and acquiring their brochures and specification sheets. I asked the salesmen their opinions on the respective merits of the radios, cassette decks, turntables, speakers and all-in-one music centres and noted the prices at which they were on sale.
On the rare occasions when I wasn’t thinking about the first important meeting of my career, I was worrying about Fubuki. She had expressed her delight for me in a manner that had not rung true. Her formal expressions of joy had been correct, but her eyes had held no warmth. Her altruism in deciding not to speak to me all week for fear of distracting me seemed unnecessary, and appeared, as the week lengthened, more cold than kind. I chewed on this at intervals before deciding to take her at face value, a decision that I felt was validated at the end of the week when she fell in step with me as we exited the Yumitomo building.
‘Your big day on Monday!’ she exclaimed, eyes wide open. ‘I just wanted to wish you the best of luck – not that you’ll need it. You noticed, I hope, that I’ve been as good as my word and stayed quite out of your way so that you could concentrate? Tuesday first thing, you’ll have to tell me all about it!’
‘Thank you, Fubuki.’
‘It will be your day – seize it! Don’t let an opportunity like that go by without making your contribution.’ She leant forward and tapped me on the shoulder with a polished fingernail.
‘My contribution,’ I replied thoughtfully, ‘will be to interpret everything as faithfully as possible.’
‘Nonsense!’ replied Fubuki. ‘You are the only person who will be able to strike up any kind of rapport with the gaijin, so you have a crucial role to play there too. Not only are you the only one to speak their language – you are the only woman on our team to face off against the woman on theirs. Hanada-san couldn’t spell this out for you, probably, so I’m glad I told you.’
I kept my eyes on Fubuki as she strode off, a head taller than the other commuters hurrying home on a Friday evening, and, as though sensing me watching her, she turned around and waved before disappearing down an entrance to the underground. Her words had galvanised me. They enabled me to admit something I had hitherto kept suppressed, namely, that much as I had been happy to have been given a role interpreting, I considered the interpreter’s a passive rather than an active role, one in which I would speak not for myself but for another, in which I would count for nothing. What Fubuki had said, though, shone a light on Mr Hamada’s closing words to me such that I understood them differently now. I knew that a great contribution was expected of me, above and beyond the literal translation of the spoken word.
*
On Monday morning, our delegation greeted that of MSS in the reception area by the lift lobby of the 44th floor. The lift doors opened and twelve of us bowed. Mrs Boonstra, Mr Johnson and Mr Nobel appeared surprised to be faced with twelve crowns, bobbed their heads and then leapt, index fingers poised, to the consoles to either side of the lift doors, only to be confused, I assumed, by the mix of English, kanji and picture signs, too late to prevent the lift doors from closing. A minute later they reappeared, we bowed, they bowed, Mrs Boonstra keeping one finger on the appropriate lift button until her colleagues had exited the lift into the lobby. Once in the boardroom, there followed thirty-six exchanges of cards; a stack of business cards in my name had, as if by a miracle, appeared on my desk that morning. I translated Mr Fujimoto’s welcome and introductions and then Mr Nobel’s. Mr Fujimoto enquired about our guests’ trip and the weather they’d left behind; I translated this, too, and our guests’ replies. Mr Hanada then presented the day’s agenda and asked for agreement; I translated them both. And so the morning progressed, a ping-pong of items queried, ticked, agreed upon or parked for later discussion, with moments in which both sides conferred in hushed tones or took bathroom breaks. I had done my homework well and was able to translate the technical jargon without difficulty.
We adjourned for lunch over bento boxes that Mrs Boonstra admired greatly and took pictures of. She was a handsome blonde with a ruddy complexion and a ready smile who would have scared most Japanese men. She sought me out at the first opportunity more, I guessed, because we were the only women in the room than because we had a language in common. She waved the agenda at me. ‘Tonight’s dinner. I hope to God y
ou’re going to be there!’
Messrs Johnson and Nobel stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, bento boxes in one hand and chopsticks in the other, and looked out. ‘You have a beautiful view,’ said Mr Johnson to my colleagues nearest him and, a bit louder, with expansive arm gestures, ‘A beautiful view.’ Everyone nodded and exhaled and made general sounds of agreement while ignoring the breach of etiquette that standing with one’s bento box entailed. Mr Nobel, I could see, was unfamiliar with chopsticks: I had to resist the temptation to help him and, instead, as discreetly as I could manage, using a paper napkin, I picked bits of food up from the floor by the window before they could get trodden into the carpet.
The afternoon progressed much as the morning had done, only more slowly; lunch had to be digested. Coffee was served and served again.
We reached the last of the agenda items, namely the price at which we would import a new English brand of esoteric, top-end stereophonic equipment. Mr Omochi argued that the recommended retail price was such that Yumimoto simply could not bid any higher; Mr Nobel pointed out that the manufacturer’s and his, the distributor’s, margins would be too severely eroded should they sell at a price lower than the one they had proposed. Mr Omochi requested Mr Nobel recall the many distributors, the many middle men, that require satisfaction in Japan’s wholesale-to-retail business modus operandi; Mr Nobel thought it instructive to consider an American competitor’s product that had a higher recommended retail price. I wondered if I were the only one to see the similarities between the two men: physically, they were alike, with Mr Nobel’s goatee seemingly, on his business adversary, having climbed up the face and on to the head.