Fear and Trembling

by Amélie Nothomb

  “In that case, it’s Mister Omochi who’s a …”

  She interrupted me.

  “He’s an exceptional person. He’s also the vice-president. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “What if I spoke to the president about it. Mister Haneda. What kind of man is he?”

  “Mister Haneda is a remarkable man. He is very intelligent and a very good man. Unfortunately, there is no question of your going to him and complaining.”

  I knew she was right. It would have been inconceivable to skip even one rung in the corporate ladder—let alone several. I only had the right to speak to my immediate superior, who happened to be Miss Mori.

  “You’re my only hope, Fubuki. I know that there isn’t much that you can do for me. But thank you. Your kindness alone does me so much good.”

  She smiled.

  I asked her what the ideogram of her first name was. She showed me her business card. I looked at the kanji.

  “A snowstorm!” I exclaimed. “ ‘Fubuki’ means ‘snowstorm’! I can’t believe anyone’s actually called that.”

  “I was born during a snowstorm. My parents saw it as an omen.”

  The Yumimoto list came to mind: “Mori Fubuki, born in Nara on January 18, 1961.…” She was a winter baby. I suddenly imagined the snowstorm over the beautiful town of Nara and its innumerable bells. It made sense that this resplendent young woman should have been born on a day when the pristine, crystalline wonders of the sky drifted down upon one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth.

  She told me about her childhood in Kansai. I told her about mine, in the same province, in a village called Shukugawa, not far from Nara and near Mount Kabuto. Invoking these mythological places brought tears to my eyes.

  “I’m so glad we’re both daughters of Kansai! That’s where the heart of the old Japan still beats.”

  I was five years old when we left the Japanese mountains for the Chinese desert. That first exile made such a deep impression on me that I had felt I would do anything to return to the country that for so long I thought of as my native land.

  When we returned to our desks, I still had no solution to my amnesia problem. I knew less than ever about my status within the Yumimoto Corporation. But I had a great feeling of inner peace. I was a colleague of Fubuki Mori.

  I DID WHAT I could to give the impression of being busy while also appearing not to understand a word of what was being said around me. I served the managers cups of tea and coffee without a whisper of a polite reply, or responding to their thanks. They were unaware of the orders I was under, and therefore mildly astonished that the friendly white geisha had transformed herself into a Yankee with no manners and nothing to say for herself.

  Unfortunately, the ôchakumi didn’t take up much time. I decided, without asking anyone’s permission, to distribute the mail.

  This meant pushing an enormous metal trolley and passing by each desk. The work suited me. It allowed me to make use of my linguistic competence, since most of the addresses were in ideograms—and because I was beyond Mister Saito’s sphere of influence I didn’t need to hide the fact that I understood Japanese. I quickly discovered that memorizing the employee list hadn’t been a waste of time. Not only could I identify every single employee, I could also use the opportunity, if it arose, to wish them—or their wife or progeny—a happy birthday.

  “Here’s your mail, Mister Shiranai,” I would say with a smile and a bow, “and a happy birthday to your little Yoshiro, three today!”

  This always earned me a disbelieving stare.

  Distributing the mail took me all the longer because I had to travel throughout the entire Import-Export Division, which spread out over two gigantic floors. Accompanied by my trolley, which gave me a pleasingly industrious appearance, I spent endless amounts of time on the elevator—down to the mailroom, up to the forty-third floor, down to the mailroom, up to the forty-fourth floor. I liked this because just next to where I stood and waited for the elevator was the huge bay window. That was when I would indulge in what I called “throwing myself into the view.” I glued my nose to the window and imagined myself falling. The city was so far below that before I hurtled into the ground, I could look leisurely and appreciatively at everything around me.

  I had found my vocation. This simple, useful, human task was so conducive to contemplation that I decided I wouldn’t have minded doing it for the rest of my life.

  MISTER SAITO SUMMONED me to his office. I was treated to a well-deserved telling-off. I had committed the crime of showing initiative. I had taken a function upon myself without asking for permission from my direct superiors. What’s more, the Import-Export Division’s actual mail delivery boy, who came in the afternoons, was on the brink of a nervous breakdown because he thought he was about to be laid off.

  “Stealing someone else’s job is a very serious offense,” Mister Saito told me, quite rightly.

  I was devastated that my promising career had ended so soon. Apart from anything else, the problem of what I should do with myself presented itself again.

  I had an idea, one that in my innocence appeared luminously clever. In the course of my wandering around the company I had noticed that every office had one or several wall calendars that were hardly ever up-to-date, either because the adjustable red frame had not been moved forward to the correct date, or because the page for a new month had not been turned over.

  This time I did not forget to ask for permission.

  “Mister Saito, could I put the calendars to the correct date?”

  He answered yes without really thinking about it.

  Every morning I went into each office and moved the little red frame to the appropriate date. I had a position: I was the calendar-turner.

  Little by little, employees realized what I was doing. It spawned hilarity.

  “Are you doing okay?” they would ask. “This undertaking isn’t exhausting you too much?”

  “Oh, it’s terrible,” I would answer with a smile. “But I’m taking vitamins.”

  My new job had the inconvenience of not taking up enough time, but it did allow me to use the elevator, and therefore to throw myself into the view. It had the added benefit of entertaining my colleagues.

  A sort of professional pinnacle arrived when we went from February to March. It was not enough simply to adjust the red frame on that day. I had to turn over an entire page, sometimes even tear off the February page.

  The employees greeted me as you would a champion athlete. I assassinated the months of February with sweeping gestures, like a samurai, miming a merciless struggle against—in this case—a giant photograph of a snow-covered Mount Fuji. Then I would leave the battlefield, feigning exhaustion, with the sober pride of a victorious warrior, to the banzais! of my delighted spectators.

  Word of my glory reached the ears of Mister Saito. I expected a towering telling-off for having played the fool and had therefore prepared my defense.

  “You gave me permission to make the calendars up-to-date,” I began before even being subjected to his fury.

  He replied not with anger but with his usual tone of simple displeasure.

  “Yes. You may continue. But stop making a spectacle of yourself. You’re distracting the employees.”

  I was amazed by so light a reprimand.

  “Photocopy this for me,” he added.

  He handed me a huge sheaf of pages. There must have been a thousand of them.

  I put the sheaf into the automatic feed of the photocopier, which executed the task with exemplary speed and courtesy. I delivered the original and the copies to my superior.

  He called me back.

  “Your photocopies are slightly crooked,” he said, holding up one sheet. “Start over.”

  I went back to the photocopier, thinking I must have put the pages into the automatic feed at a slight angle. This time I gave the task my utmost attention. The results looked impeccable. I took my oeuvre back to Mister Saito.

  �
�They’re crooked again,” he told me.

  “That’s not true!” I cried.

  “It’s extremely bad manners to say that to your superior.”

  “I’m sorry. But I made sure that the photocopying was perfect.”

  “It isn’t. Look.”

  He showed me one page, which I thought irreproachably straight.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “The text is not absolutely parallel to the edge of the page.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “If I say so, yes!”

  He threw the sheaf of paper into his wastepaper basket.

  “Are you using the automatic feed?”

  “Indeed I am.”

  “That explains it. Don’t use the automatic feed. It’s not accurate enough.”

  “Mister Saito, if I don’t use the automatic feed it’ll take me hours to get to through all this.”

  “Where’s the problem?” He smiled. “You didn’t have enough to do as it was.”

  I understood: this was my punishment for the business with the calendars.

  I installed myself at the photocopier as if it were the galley of a ship. Each time I had to lift up the top, place the page face-down with minute precision, press the button, and check the results. It was three o’clock when I started on my treadmill. At seven o’clock I still had not finished. Employees came by from time to time. If they had more than ten copies to do, I would humbly ask them to consent to use the machine at the other end of the corridor.

  I glanced at the contents of what I was photocopying. They were the rules of the golf club of which Mister Saito was a member. I started to laugh.

  The next minute I felt more like crying, thinking about all the innocent trees that my superior was wasting to chastise me. I imagined the forests of the Japan of my childhood—maples, cedars, and ginkgoes—felled for the sole purpose of punishing a creature as insignificant as myself. I remembered, again, that Fubuki’s family name meant “forest.”

  Then along came Mister Tenshi, director of the Dairy Products Department. He held the same position as Mister Saito, who was manager of the General Accounting Department. I looked at him in amazement. Surely someone in his position delegated his photocopying.

  He answered my unspoken question.

  “It’s eight o’clock. I’m the only person in my office. Tell me, why don’t you use the automatic feed?”

  I told him with a humble smile that I was following specific instructions from Mister Saito.

  “I see,” he said in a voice full of hidden meaning.

  He seemed lost in thought for a while, then spoke.

  “You’re from Belgium, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a happy coincidence. I’ve got a very interesting project involving your country. Could you find the time to do a report for me?”

  I gazed at him as one might the Messiah. He explained that a Belgian cooperative had developed a new process for removing the fat content of butter.

  “I believe in low-fat butter,” he said. “It’s the future.”

  “I’ve always thought so, too,” I replied, inventing an opinion on the spot.

  “Come and see me in my office tomorrow.”

  I finished my photocopying in a trance. A career opportunity was opening up before me. I put the sheaf of paper on Mister Saito’s table and left, triumphant.

  WHEN I ARRIVED at work the next day, Fubuki looked at me with a frightened expression.

  “Mister Saito wants you to start the photocopying again. He thinks the pages are crooked.”

  I burst out laughing and told her about the little game in which our boss seemed to be indulging himself on my account.

  “I’m sure that he hasn’t even looked at the latest photocopies. I did them one by one, calibrated to the nearest millimeter. I don’t know how many hours I spent on it—all this for his golf club’s rules and regulations.”

  “He’s torturing you!”

  I reassured her.

  “Don’t worry. He’s keeping me amused.”

  I went back to the photocopier, which I was beginning to know very well, and entrusted the work to the automatic feed. I was convinced that Mister Saito would announce his verdict without paying the least attention to my work. I felt a wave of emotion when I thought of Fubuki. She was so kind. Thank goodness she was there.

  In the end, Mister Saito’s predictable reaction suited me perfectly. The day before, I had spent more than seven hours producing the thousand photocopies one by one. That gave me an excellent alibi for the hours that I would spend in Mister Tenshi’s office. The automatic feed did the job in about ten minutes. I picked up my tome and slipped away to the Dairy Products Department.

  Mister Tenshi gave me contact numbers for the Belgian cooperative.

  “I will need a full report, with as much detail as possible, on this new low-fat butter. You can sit at Mister Saitama’s desk. He’s away on business.”

  “Tenshi” means “angel.” I thought he wore his name extremely well. Not only was he giving me a chance, he was leaving me carte blanche, which is exceptional in Japan. And he had taken this initiative without asking for anyone else’s opinion.

  I was aware this meant he was running a considerable risk. I consequently felt an instant, boundless devotion to Mister Tenshi—the devotion that every Japanese worker owes to his boss, the devotion I had been unable to feel toward Mister Saito or Mister Omochi. Mister Tenshi had suddenly become my commander, my captain-in-arms. Like a samurai, I was prepared to fight to the death for him.

  I threw myself into the battle of low-fat butter. The time difference meant that I could not call Belgium immediately, so I started by talking to Japanese consumer organizations and to people at the Department of Health, to learn what the dietary habits of the Japanese population were with respect to butter, and what effects they were having on average cholesterol levels. The average Japanese citizen, I discovered, was eating more and more butter. Obesity and cardiovascular diseases were gaining ground rapidly.

  When the time of day permitted, I called the Belgian cooperative. The thick rural accent in my native tongue on the other end of the line moved me. My compatriot, flattered to be talking on the phone with someone in Japan, was extremely helpful. Ten minutes later, I received a ten-page fax, detailing the new process for removing the fat content of butter for which the cooperative held the patent.

  I was compiling the report of the century. It opened with an overview of the Japanese butter market, its growth since 1950, and the parallel growth of health problems linked to excessive consumption of saturated fat. Next I outlined the current processes for removing fat from butter, the new Belgian technique, its considerable advantages, etc. As I had to write this in English, I took the work home with me. I needed my dictionary for the scientific terms. I stayed up all night.

  I arrived at Yumimoto two hours early the following morning to type up the report and hand it to Mister Tenshi, so that I wouldn’t arrive late at Mister Saito’s office.

  The latter called me in straightaway.

  “I have inspected the photocopying that you left on my desk last night. You’re improving, but it is not yet perfect. Start over.”

  And he threw the pile of paper into the trash.

  I bowed my head and complied. I forced myself not to laugh.

  Mister Tenshi joined me at the photocopier. He congratulated me with all the warmth that his respectful reserve would allow.

  “Your report is excellent and you drafted it with extraordinary speed. In the meeting, would you like me to indicate who its author is?”

  This was a man of rare generosity. He would have been committing a professional error had I asked him to.

  “Definitely not, Mister Tenshi. That would do you as much harm as it would me.”

  “You’re right. Even so, I could suggest to Mister Saito and Mister Omochi in a forthcoming meeting that you would be useful to me. Do you think Mister Saito would take
offense?”

  “Quite the opposite. Look at the piles of unnecessary photocopying that he has me doing just to get me out of his office. It’s obvious he’s looking for ways of getting rid of me. He’d be delighted if you offered him an opportunity.”

  “Then you won’t be offended if I attribute your report to myself?”

  I was astonished. It was simply not done to show such consideration to an underling.

  “Oh, Mister Tenshi, I would be honored if you took credit for it.”

  We parted in a state of mutual high esteem. I looked forward to the future with confidence. Soon I would be done with Mister Saito’s harassment, with the photocopier, and with the absurd ban on speaking my second language.

  EVERYTHING ERUPTED SEVERAL days later. I was summoned to Mister Omochi’s office. I went into the vice-president’s lair without the least apprehension, not knowing why he wanted to see me.

  Mister Tenshi was there. He turned toward me and gave me a smile filled with more humanity than I had ever seen. What it said was, “We’re going to endure a terrible ordeal, but we will endure it together.”

  I thought I knew what it meant to be bawled out. What we underwent there in Mister Omochi’s office revealed how ignorant I was. Mister Tenshi and I were subjected to demented screaming. I still wonder which was worse: the content or the delivery.

  The content was incredibly insulting. My companion in misfortune and I were called traitors, incompetents, snakes, deceitful, and—the height of injury—individualists.

  The delivery explained much about Japanese history. I would have been capable of anything to stop the hideous screaming—invade Manchuria, persecute millions of Chinese, commit suicide for the Emperor, hurl my airplane into an American battleship, perhaps even work for two Yumimoto Corporations.

  The most unbearable part was seeing my benefactor humiliated because of me. Mister Tenshi was an intelligent and conscientious man; he had taken a considerable risk for me, and with full knowledge of the facts. He had acted out of pure altruism. As a reward for his kindness, he was being dragged through the mud.

  His head was lowered and his shoulders hunched. I tried to follow his example. His face expressed submission and shame. I imitated him. Then the Obese One offered up his most outrageous accusation.