Thing of the Moment

by Bruno Noble

  The following months passed in a blur of administration and goodbyes. I resigned, as protocol dictated, first to Mr Saito, then to Mr Omochi and, last, to Mr Hanada. Mr Mizuka hovered at my elbow on my last day as I said good-bye to my colleagues; I pictured him behind me, dustpan and brush in hand, as though to sweep up after me and obliterate all trace of my passage through Yumimoto. What had I contributed to this mammoth organisation over three years, besides stacks of photocopies? Disappointingly little. The office goodbyes were perfunctory and the good wishes for my future expressed not so much insincerely as indifferently with, to my surprise, the exception of Fubuki who, I think, belatedly realised she would be losing a friend, a same-sex ally, and regretted having cooled towards me since my backfiring demonstration of initiative. Her hugs, in the privacy of the ladies’ loos, were tighter than they needed to have been.

  Taka received my news in exchange for his: he had just got engaged to a young woman he’d met in his company’s secretarial pool. Michi and Keiko were delighted for me, and they promised to visit me in London. Margaret, understated as always, simply patted me on the shoulder.

  My parents’ reactions to my news pleased me the most. Weekly telephone calls would be no substitute for the presence of an only child, but they put a brave face on it and did everything they could to be supportive of my going and to dispel any sentiment of guilt I might have had about leaving them. On the evening that I broke my news, my father opened some of his best sake, my mother played her English 45 rpm hit singles and I blinked back my tears.

  Sharon

  Mr Self stood behind me and shook my office chair lightly in order to attract my attention. ‘Sharon.’ He had to speak loudly to be heard above an ordinary day’s tumult: the banter, the invectives, the quoting, the pricing, the pleading, the closing of deals, the fizz and crackle of the squawk box. ‘Do you have a moment?’

  I looked at Jonathan, who pursed his lips and gave a barely perceptible nod.

  I followed Mr Self down the trading floor’s central aisle to its meeting rooms, thinking how droll he was, this now balding, punk hippy of a personnel manager at the service of sharp-suited investment bankers, and into a room in which stood Yuuto and Mr Johnson. Mr Johnson and I had never spoken but I knew him by sight: an American who worked in a department different to mine where he did deals of a kind that I never quite understood. A limp, nondescript Englishman called David, absent on this occasion, usually followed him like a shadow in poor light.

  We sat around a table in the same room I had been interviewed in five years ago. Mr Self crossed his legs, one knee against the table, and reclined as far as the swivelling office chair allowed. Yuuto gave a series of nods, as though reluctant and yet compelled to do so by the tic of his cultural, formal upbringing. Mr Johnson spun a biro on his fingertips. The contrast between the dapper, precise bond salesman and investment banker with the bohemian, unkempt personnel manager was striking. I envied each not his appearance, but his certainty. I considered my colleagues solid, rooted behind their costumes, but I felt vacant, hollow behind mine.

  Mr Self uncrossed his legs and leant forward, crossing his arms at the wrists on the table, and we all, subconsciously or otherwise, did the same. A replacement for the last Japan desk assistant had been found by Mr Johnson. Yuuto was happy for her to be entrusted to me and he had undertaken to modify his conduct around her in the hope that she would stay longer than the others. Mr Self looked pointedly at Yuuto, who only grinned in return. I was to be her mentor, to guide her, explain everything to her, pre-empt and answer her questions, assist her to settle in and bring any unhelpful behaviour by Yuuto to Mr Self’s attention. At this, Yuuto narrowed his eyes at me in what I took to be a smile, and patted his brilliantined hair.

  ‘Her name,’ said Mr Self, consulting some loose sheets of paper on the table before him, ‘is Mie Atashi.’

  ‘Mie,’ corrected Mr Johnson, looking at Yuuto for confirmation. ‘It’s pronounced me-é, not my.’

  ‘Her English is excellent,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘Quite excellent. Better than mine. Honestly.’

  ‘Better than your Japanese,’ said Yuuto, and laughed at his own joke.

  ‘And she’s quick. Sharp. She’ll be a great addition. You’ll see.’

  Mr Self pushed the papers towards me. ‘Here’s her CV. Yuuto has a copy. She starts on Monday. I’ll have her desk ready and, for the rest, well, you know what to do. We have absolute faith in you, Sharon!’

  How I welcomed such words! They were my daily bread, the validation I needed.

  Mie

  Society can fool you into thinking you are what it tells you you are, and it can seduce you into trying to be what you think it wants you to be. Key to the manipulation of image, to the person you present to the world, is fashion. In Japan, because of the long distances we commute and because our homes are small, we socialise in public places and, as our homes are unavailable to convey whatever statements we wish to make, our clothes and accessories must do the heavy lifting. The tension between the social imperative for conformity and the individual’s need for self-expression can be acute. For many, labels become the clothing equivalent of the bids made under the various conventions in a game of bridge: code that delivers a great amount of information succinctly, economically, to a partner – indeed, labels are aspirational and have an important role to play in the mating game, the selection of a life partner. For me, however, with no interest in encouraging suitors, clothes were my suit of armour, my first line of defence in repelling invaders. Labelless, I hoped they would say, Leave me alone, I’m not interested and I’m not interesting.Look, I wear flat shoes and no make-up; my stockings end above the knee and my skirts below it; my blouses are high and my arms rarely bared. In theory, I should have deterred all would-be beaus; in practice, I found myself approached by men who considered themselves similar to me: men like David, who were drab and grey, timid and introvert.

  I was introduced to David by Mr Johnson, who greeted me warmly on my first day at the bank. ‘Mie! You made it! Great!’ He shook my hand vigorously. ‘How was the trip? Did you find the apartment okay?’ The bank had found me an apartment on a three-month let in Clapham, on the Northern Line for direct access to the City, where the bank was located. ‘Here. Let me take you to human resources. John is expecting you.’ We stopped on the first-floor corridor, one entire wall of which was glass that gave onto the biggest confined space I had ever seen. ‘This,’ said Mr Johnson, waving his arms expansively, ‘is our trading floor. It’s where you’ll be. John will show you. Bonds, equities, foreign exchange, everything.’

  The hubbub reached us through the glass. I considered my new colleagues, some in groups, some alone, some silent, reading papers or watching screens that teetered in piles on their desks, some talking, others gesticulating. I thought of my ordered classroom, of Yumimoto’s organised import-export department, and of how neither had prepared me for a work environment of such teeming chaos.

  ‘Just over 300 people. It’s a quiet day today. No data out. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Come on, one more floor. Okay. Here, we have origination. This is where I am. This is David. David works with me. David, this is Mie.’

  I shook hands with a man some five years older than me. He was my height, which was unusual for a European male, and, despite appearing shy and too demure to hold my eyes for any length of time, he held my hand for longer than I considered appropriate. He had pale brown hair and sandy eyes. He smiled, more at the floor than at me, and, speaking quietly, said that Mr Johnson had spoken well of me and that he hoped I’d be happy in my new job. His suit and shirt were creased, his shoes were unpolished and his tie was a monochrome grey. He was a moth to Mr Johnson’s butterfly and, in the space of that handshake, I understood I was to be the candle he’d singe his wings on.

  Mr Johnson nodded in the direction of a man striding between the desks in our direction. ‘Here comes John. This is where I hand you over to him. Again, welcome. I’m so pleased to
have you with us.’

  ‘It was nice to meet you,’ called David after me, raising his voice above a whisper as Mr Self walked me to a meeting room.

  Tieless and long-haired Mr Self, more in the manner of a university lecturer than a head of personnel in an investment bank, talked me through the formalities as he pushed various employment-related papers at me across the meeting-room table. ‘So you’ll be assistant to Yuuto Kawaguchi in the Japan fixed income team,’ said Mr Self. ‘Specifically, Yuuto will expect you to book his travel, hotels and restaurants and to mediate between the front and back offices.’ I was fascinated by an open dark mauve shirt, the cuffs of which remained unbuttoned, and by silver chains around his neck and wisps of coloured string tied around one wrist. Undecided whether he was a punk or a hippy, I could only marvel at the contradistinction I could already tell he posed in this institution. Mr Self uncrossed his legs and leant forward with his arms straight on the table. ‘Look, I’ll be honest,’ he said. ‘We call it the Japan team but it’s not much of a team, is it? No assistant seems to stay longer than a month, and Yuuto turns down anyone else we try to hire to grow the team. We want to put an end to this turnover of junior staff. If it all gets too much – before it all gets too much – do say. Yuuto has a way about him that, well, is not to everyone’s liking. If anything becomes an issue for you, come and talk to me about it.’ He sat back. ‘We’re going to place you under Sharon’s wing. She’s assistant to the UK team and you’ll be sitting back to back, so do learn everything you can from her.’ He stood. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you down and introduce you to the fixed income team.’

  Sharon

  There was a peppery irony to the fact that Sebastian left my life for Japan at around the time that Mie from Japan entered it. She was, for a short time, the prickly reminder of where or what I had lost him to, but I couldn’t bring myself to hold it against her.

  There was a quality to Mie that elevated her above Yuuto’s other Japanese desk assistants. They had been either expats’ daughters or expats’ wives who had sought diversion or pocket money rather than careers, and who had allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by the pace and pressures of the macho trading room environment. The more uncertain and nervous they had become, the more irritable Yuuto had been, and the louder his voice behind me had grown when he either instructed them or told them off. The more make-up and the more ostentatious the brands and labels they had worn, the less time they had lasted.

  The first time I saw Mie, I had to resist an impulse to laugh and brought my hand to my mouth, just like the Japanese assistants’ did when they were embarrassed. She was dressed like a grandmother: in a below-the-knee-length woollen skirt, socks and sandals with an ever-so-slight heel and a plain, dark blouse. Over one arm was an ill-matching jacket; over the other hung a large, featureless handbag. Jet black, pomaded hair was pulled back in a tight bun above a plain face that was free of cosmetics. Initially, I thought her eyebrows had been painted on, so perfectly had they been plucked into crescent shapes.

  Mie had a focus and a dogged commitment to the job that the others had lacked. She seemed to apply herself consciously even to walking and moving, as though every action were considered, executed only once properly deliberated and weighed. She never said as much, but gave the impression that, having left home and Japan for this job, failure was not an option.

  At first, I considered her if not stupid then a little slow, because she asked questions about everything; I feared for Mr Johnson, who I quite liked and who I knew had stuck his neck out in hiring her. I came to realise, however, that her questions were good ones, that she never repeated them and that they demonstrated a desire to go beyond the mechanics of a task to a full understanding of the reason behind it. I didn’t always have the answers and felt the blood go to my face when replying, ‘We don’t need to know that,’ as an alternative to repeating, ‘I don’t know.’

  To begin with, Mie shadowed my every move. I showed her how the UK sales team’s clients were organised in my database and we replicated the same for the Japan team’s clients. We wrote sale and buy tickets together, had the salespeople and then the traders sign them together and walked the carbon copies to the back office together.

  ‘Sharon, what did Jonathan do just then?’

  ‘He sold his client this… this bond.’ I waved the trading slip at her on which I had written the names of the client and a company, a rate, a date, a price, an identifying code and the day’s date and time.

  ‘What is a bond, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Why did the client want to buy it?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Why did we want to sell it?’

  ‘It’s what we do!’ I cried in exasperation.

  ‘It’s what we do on the UK desk,’ said Jonathan, a phone on each shoulder and his back turned to Yuuto. ‘I don’t know about the Japan desk, though. I think there you’ll only get to write lunch orders, Mie.’

  Yuuto replied at length in Japanese.

  ‘No need to translate, Mie!’ said Jonathan cheerily. ‘I think I got the gist!’

  Mie looked seriously at the three of us in turn and then stood up. Yuuto looked at her from the corner of his eyes to gauge the effects of his words, but she seemed quite unfazed by whatever it was he had said. ‘Come on,’ she said, holding her hand out for the slips. ‘Trading.’

  We placed the slips in front of the trader for signing.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said to me as he signed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mie to the trader. ‘Why did you quote this price instead of another?’

  ‘Are you questioning my pricing?’

  ‘Come on, Mie!’ I took the duplicate slips in one hand and Mie’s elbow in the other. To the trader: ‘Thanks!’ To Mie: ‘Now’s not the time! Not while they’re busy!’

  ‘All right. So, back office next?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is the back office, exactly? Excuse me, what is it you do here?’

  ‘What do I do?’ asked a settlements clerk.

  ‘Yes. What does the back office do?’

  ‘It’s where we settle the trades.’

  ‘Mie!’ I took her by the arm again. ‘Save it. We can’t be away from our desks too long. Not when phones need answering and tickets are being written.’

  Mie walked, or had the appearance of walking, from below the knees only. She managed to glide and beetle along simultaneously, without bobbing. Seen across a bank of desks, when only the top half of her was visible, she gave the impression of riding a horizontal escalator, a moving stairway.

  ‘How on earth does she do that?’ reflected Curtis admiringly.

  Mie was humourless but not unfriendly. She made me recognise that I used humour ingratiatingly, in order to gain approval and acceptance, and I was fearful that she would consider it a weakness. To my amazement, I discovered that men found this rather dour, resolute quality of Mie attractive. Yuuto seemed a little in awe of her, and Mr Johnson and his sidekick, David, supposedly to help her settle in, took to entertaining her in The George, a pub that was so noisy that its customers had to get close to hear each other speak above the din of City traders. Occasionally, I would join them and make up a four in which Mr Johnson would address us all animatedly, David would look doe-eyed at Mie with barely a word, and Mie would look gravely at each of us in turn before asking a question about the financial markets that Mr Johnson would answer at length.

  I joined Mr Johnson at the bar in order to help him carry the drinks back to the table David and Mie had secured.

  ‘So, how’s she settling in?’ he asked, having elbowed his way into an ordering position.

  ‘I think she’s doing very well,’ I replied.

  ‘Does she have many friends?’

  ‘Outside of work? I don’t think so. She’s been too busy looking for an apartment. The company one was only for three months. Anyway, she’s found one.’

  ‘Oh good. Say, do you th
ink you could take her out with your friends? Just a couple of times?’ He looked apologetically at me and then down at his feet. ‘You know.’

  ‘Of course! In fact, I’d already decided to. And we have a date.’

  Mr Johnson looked up at once. ‘Oh, great! Thank you!’

  Mie

  At home, at school and at university, I had been content, pleased to have met people’s expectations despite, I had to admit to myself, my early assertion that I was to be the only measure of my qualities and achievements. In London I was happy. I learnt bus routes and delighted in the freedom bus passengers had to hop on and off their open platforms. I discovered the city on foot, and the better I grew to know London’s streets the better I felt I came to know myself. I moved to a long-term rental, still in Clapham, and learnt some of the complexities of financial markets as I explored an industry that became less opaque to me by the day. For the first time, I paid my bills, I decided what I ate and where, I chose how to spend my leisure time.

  On weekends, I explored London’s parks, museums, suburbs and cinemas. On one or two weekday evenings a week, Sharon and other fixed income teams’ assistants and I would huddle around a bottle of white wine in one of the City’s wine bars. Less frequently, Adam and David would have me sip bitter in one of the City’s many pubs. I wrestled with the concept of what constituted me – was I Japanese? Was that relevant to life in a cosmopolitan city? In London, I felt like a citizen of the world, a hard-working professional who reaped the benefit, the investment of her hard work and her vision and who aspired patiently to a thing as yet undefined. Where telephone wires had once been my fantasist’s way out to the world, the Northern Line and the rest of London’s tube system came to form the web I travelled. I lived with the smell of brake dust; it accompanied me to and from work and, on weekends, home as I took the tube back with heavily laden shopping bags from Tooting’s markets. While Clapham was vibrant, relatively young and trendy, Tooting was a world away. With virtually every step from Clapham South, through Balham to Tooting and, on a good day, on to Tooting Bec, faces grew darker, the shops more full of exotic produce and the prices lower. Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans in coloured dress smiled, bartered, bought and sold. Occasionally, I would see Far East Asians – Chinese, Malay – but no Japanese who, I was told, congregated in North London. South Koreans, I learned, were colonising New Malden to the west. How different to the City at the other end of my Northern Line journeys, where white-skinned, besuited Englishmen with umbrellas and newspapers tucked under their arms conformed to Taka’s stereotype! Admittedly, there were Europeans and Americans there too, but they, to my uncultivated eye, were not easy to distinguish.