Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

Not one of them guessed the significance of this episode for their colleague. Had no one noticed the Dutchman’s armpits, she might still have deluded herself, closing her eyes (and nose) to this congenital defect in her potential fiancé.

She knew now that nothing would be possible with Piet Kramer. To have had the least contact with him would have been worse than losing her reputation; it would have meant losing face. She could count herself lucky that apart from me no one knew the designs she had had on the bachelor. And I didn’t count.

Her head held high and her jaws clamped shut, she went back to work. From the terrible stiffness of her features, I could tell just how much hope she had placed in this man. And I had had something to do with it. I had encouraged her. Without my meddling, she might not have considered him seriously.

So if she was suffering, it was largely because of me. I should have taken pleasure in this. I took none.

TWO WEEKS AFTER I had left my position in accounting I committed my greatest blunder of all.

It had begun to seem as if I had again been forgotten about within the walls of the Yumimoto Corporation. This was the best thing that could have happened to me, and I was beginning to enjoy myself. From the unimaginable depths of my lack of ambition, I could conceive of no happier fate than sitting at my desk, contemplating the passage of seasons, and gazing upon the face of my superior. Serving tea and coffee, regularly throwing myself into the view out of the window, and not touching my calculator were all activities that more than fulfilled my fragile need to find a place within the organization.

After all, I deserved the situation I was in. I had gone to some trouble to prove to my superiors that my best intentions would not necessarily prevent me from being a disaster. Now they understood. Their unstated though universally approved policy was something along the lines of: “Don’t let her do anything anymore!” And I had shown that I was up to these new expectations.

This sublimely fallow period could have lasted until the end of time, had I not committed that blunder.

One fine day we heard thunder in the distance. Mister Omochi was shouting. The rumbling came closer. We all started looking at each other apprehensively.

The door to the Accounting Department gave way like an outdated dam under the pressure of the vice-president’s bulk surging in. He stopped in the middle of the room and howled like an ogre demanding lunch.

“FUBUKI-SAN!”

We knew then who was to be sacrificed to satisfy the appetite—worthy of Baal—of the Obese One. The few seconds of relief experienced by those temporarily spared were followed by a collective shiver of sincere empathy.

My superior immediately stood up and stiffened. She looked straight ahead, toward me therefore, but without seeing me. Magnificent as ever, she contained her terror and awaited her fate.

For a moment I thought Mister Omochi was going to take out a saber hidden between two rolls of fat and slice off her head. Had it fallen toward me I would have caught it and cherished it to the end of my days.

That cannot happen, I reasoned to myself. Those methods belong to another age. He’ll do what he usually does: summon this latest victim to his office and give her the dressing-down of the century.

What he did was far worse. Perhaps he was in a more sadistic mood than usual. Perhaps it was because his victim was a woman, a very pretty woman. He did not give her the dressing-down of the century in his office. He did it right there, in front of the forty employees of the Accounting Department.

You could not imagine a more humiliating fate for any human being, and certainly not for a Japanese, and especially not for the proud and sublime Miss Mori, than this public pillorying. The monster wanted her to lose face; that was clear.

He approached her slowly, savoring the sway his destructive power held over her. Fubuki didn’t move so much as an eyelash. She was more beautiful than ever. Then his fleshy lips began to quiver and he produced from them a volley of seemingly endless ranting.

Tokyoites have a tendency to speak at supersonic speed, particularly when they are telling someone off. The vice-president was also short-tempered and loose-jowled, and the combination of it all loaded his voice with such a scoria of fatty rage that I understood almost nothing of what he was actually saying.

However it did not require familiarity with the Japanese language to grasp the essential point: a terrible punishment was being inflicted upon a living creature, and it was happening a few steps from me. It was an abhorrent spectacle. I would have done anything to make him stop, but he did not stop—the supply of invective in his guts proved inexhaustible.

What crime could Fubuki have committed to deserve this? I never actually found out. I knew her abilities, her enthusiasm for work, and her professional demeanor, and they were all exceptional. Whatever wrongs she might have done had to have been venial. Even if they were not, the least Mister Omochi could have done was recognize how invaluable an employee this exceptional woman was, and temper his rage.

It was pointless to wonder what my superior’s error might have been. Probably nothing for which she would have reproached herself. Mister Omochi was the boss. He was well within his rights, if he so wished, to use any pretext to sate his sadistic appetites on an employee. He didn’t need a reason.

I was suddenly struck by what I was actually witnessing. He was raping Miss Mori, and if he had succumbed to this act of beastliness while being watched by forty people, the exhibitionism only amplified his pleasure. I wondered if someone that fat—he weighed at least three hundred pounds—was physically capable of having sex with a woman. As if in compensation, his bulk made him all the more potent at yelling, at making this beautiful creature’s frail silhouette tremble not from passion but with terror.

I saw Fubuki’s body yield. She had always held herself erect, a monument of pride. If her body was abandoning her, that was evidence enough of sexual assault. Her legs gave out. She slumped into her chair.

I can’t have been the only one to realize the nature of what was happening. I sensed profound discomfort in the others around us. They averted their eyes, concealing their shame behind their files or their computer screens.

At this stage, Fubuki was hunched over, her slender elbows resting on her desk, her tightly balled fists against her forehead. The vice-president’s verbal machine gun shook her frail back at regular intervals.

I was somehow not sufficiently unwise to let myself do what, in other circumstances, would have been a normal reflex: to intervene. There is no doubt it would have aggravated the situation—for both the sacrificial lamb and for me. And yet I cannot pretend I felt proud of myself. Honor sometimes means doing something very unwise. Be-having like an idiot is better than dishonor. To this day I blush for having chosen sensible restraint over common decency. Someone should have done something; and since there was no chance the others would have put themselves at risk, it should have been me.

I know Fubuki would never have forgiven me for it, but she would have been wrong. The worst thing about the whole ghastly episode was the way the rest of us meekly watched, and did nothing. Our submission to absolute authority was abject.

It seemed to me that as time went on Mister Omochi’s screams became more intense, proving, if further proof were even necessary, the hormonal element of the scene. His energy recharged tenfold by the spectacle of his own desire, the vice-president was becoming increasingly brutal. His shouting gathered strength, its physical impact overwhelming his victim.