Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

Such devotion had made it absolutely impossible for her to wed. She could not, however, be reproached for working too hard because, in the eyes of the Japanese, you can never work too hard. There was therefore something contradictory in the rules laid down for women: irreproachable assiduity in their work habits meant that they might reach twenty-five without marrying and, consequently, make themselves open to reproach. The core of the system’s sadism lay contained in this contradiction: obeying the rules eventually meant disobeying the rules.

I was fairly sure Fubuki was ashamed of being a spinster. She was too obsessed with perfection to permit the least omission in her compliance with the supreme instructions. I wondered whether she’d had casual lovers. Perhaps she had. What is beyond doubt is that she would never have flaunted jeopardizing her nadeshiko, her aura of virginity. Besides, given her schedule, I couldn’t see how she would have even found the time for a banal affair.

I watched the way she behaved in the presence of an unmarried man—handsome or ugly, young or old, affable or loathsome, intelligent or dim-witted, it didn’t matter, so long as he was not inferior to her in the corporate hierarchy of our company or his own. She would suddenly become so studiously sweet that it almost veered toward aggression. Hopelessly flustered, her hands fluttered toward her wide belt, nervously adjusting the buckle back around to the middle (her belt was too large for her tiny waist and tended to slip). Her voice became so tender it sounded like a sob.

I called this “Miss Mori’s nuptial display.” There was something nearly comic about watching her succumb to these antics, which I felt demeaned both her beauty and her position. There was something sad about it all, especially as the males for whose benefit she was deploying her seduction strategies didn’t even seem to notice, and were therefore perfectly indifferent to them. I sometimes felt like shaking them and saying:

“How about showing a bit more chivalry? Can’t you see all the trouble she’s going to for you? Look, I know she’s not doing herself any favors, but if you only knew how beautiful she is when she isn’t trying so hard. Far too beautiful for you. You should weep with joy to be coveted by a pearl like her.”

To Fubuki, I wanted to say:

“Stop it! Do you honestly believe this ridiculous performance is going to attract him? You’re more seductive when you’re treating me like a decaying fish. Pretend that he is me. Talk to him as if you were talking to me. Tell him that he’s mentally unbalanced, worthless. At least you’d get a reaction.”

There was also something I longed to whisper to her:

“Fubuki, wouldn’t it be a thousand times better to stay unmarried than tie yourself down with some creep? What would you do with a husband like that? And how can you feel ashamed of not marrying one of these men, when you’re so sublime, so Olympian? They’re almost all shorter than you. Don’t you think that’s a sign? You’re too long a bow for any of these pathetic little shooters.”

When an eligible bachelor had departed, my superior’s face took less than a second to switch from simpering to stony coldness. Sometimes she’d look up and catch my mocking eye, then pinch her lips with hatred.

WORKING FOR ONE of the companies that did business with Yumimoto was a twenty-seven-year-old Dutchman named Piet Kramer. Although not Japanese, he had reached a level in the hierarchy equal to that of my fair torturer. As he was about six feet two, I thought that he was a potential match for Fubuki, and indeed, when he came to our office she threw herself into her nuptial display, frenetically twisting her belt backward and forward.

Kramer was a good man, and nice-looking. He was all the more suitable as a possible match because he was Dutch. Quasi-German origins made his membership in the white races less of a hindrance.

“You’re lucky to work with Miss Mori. She’s so kind!” he said to me one day.

This declaration amused me. I decided to make use of it by passing it along to Fubuki—with an ironic smile.

“That means he’s in love with you,” I added.

She looked at me in astonishment.

“Is that true?”

“Definitely,” I assured her.

She was thoughtful for a few moments. This is what she must have been thinking: She’s white and she knows the white people’s customs. I can trust her for once. But, whatever happens, she mustn’t know.

She affected indifference.

“He’s too young for me.”

“He’s only two years younger than you. According to Japanese tradition that’s the perfect gap for you to be an anesan niôbô.”

Anesan niôbô means “older-sister wife.” The Japanese think the ideal marriage involves a woman with slightly more experience than the man, so that she puts him at ease.

“I know, I know.”

“In that case, what is wrong with him?”

She didn’t reply. She seemed to go into a trance.

A few days later, Piet Kramer’s arrival was announced. Fubuki was thrown into a state of panic.

It was terribly hot. The Dutchman had taken off his jacket and his shirt displayed gigantic rings of sweat under his armpits. I saw Fubuki’s face change. She forced herself to speak normally, as if she hadn’t noticed anything, but her words sounded unnatural because in order to get the sound out of her throat she had to throw her head forward. The woman who was always so beautiful and so calm looked like a guinea fowl on the defensive.

While engaged in this pitiable spectacle, she was surreptitiously watching her colleagues, hoping against hope that they hadn’t noticed anything. Alas, how could you tell if anyone had seen? More to the point, how could you tell if anyone Japanese had seen? The faces of Yumimoto’s managerial staff expressed the impassive goodwill typical of meetings between two friendly companies.

The saddest part of it was that Piet Kramer hadn’t noticed the commotion, nor had the slightest sense of the internal crisis agitating the kind Miss Mori. Her nostrils were palpitating. It wasn’t difficult to guess why. She was trying to discern how far the Dutchman’s axillary opprobrium extended.

It was then that the poor man unwittingly but fatally compromised his chance to contribute to the expansion of the Eurasian race. Seeing a blimp in the sky, he ran over to the bay window. The speed of his movement released into the surrounding atmosphere a fireworks display of olfactory particles, which were dispersed around the office by the draft created by his displacement. There was no doubt about it: Piet Kramer’s sweat stank.

No one in the enormous office could have failed to notice it. As for Kramer’s boyish enthusiasm about the blimp, which was a commonplace sight, no one seemed to find it endearing.

By the time the malodorous foreigner left, my superior’s face was drained of blood. Matrimonial hopes were about to deteriorate even further. Mister Saito made the first dig.

“I couldn’t have stood it a minute longer!”

By saying this he had authorized everyone to malign their visitor. The others lost no time in making the most of it.

“Don’t whites realize that they smell like corpses?”

“If we could only get them to realize how badly they stink, we’d have a fantastic market for really efficient deodorants in the West!”

“We might help them smell a bit better, but we can’t stop them sweating. They’re made like that.”

“Even the women sweat.”

They were ecstatically happy. The thought that what they were saying might upset me didn’t occur to them. At first I was flattered. Perhaps they didn’t think of me as white. I quickly set myself straight. If they were talking like this in front of me it was simply because I didn’t count.