Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

Toward the end came a painfully poignant moment. Perhaps only I and Mister Omochi heard it—a frail voice, a child’s voice.

“Okoruna. Okoruna.”

It was the plea a little girl would make to her enraged father.

“Don’t be angry. Don’t be angry.”

This sad supplication was what a gazelle, torn to pieces and half devoured, might say to a lion, begging for its life. I knew this was a stunning departure from the dogma of submission, from the ban on defending oneself from anything that comes from above. Mister Omochi seemed a tiny bit disconcerted by this unfamiliar voice, but it didn’t stop him. In fact, something about it seemed to give him greater satisfaction, and he began screaming even more loudly.

An eternity later, either because the monster had tired of his toy, or because this invigorating exercise had whetted his appetite for a double futon-mayonnaise sandwich, he left.

A deathly silence fell over the accounting department. No one except me dared look at Fubuki. She remained prostrate for a few minutes, then struggled to her feet and fled without saying a word.

I KNEW SHE had gone where women go when they have been raped—where there is flowing water, where you can be sick to your stomach, where you can be alone. In the offices of Yumimoto the place that best filled these requirements was the bathroom.

I simply had to go and comfort her. It was no good trying to reason with myself, or remember all the humiliations she had inflicted on me, the insults she had thrown in my face. My ridiculous compassion dictated. “Ridiculous” is the right word. It would have been a hundred times smarter to have intervened between Mister Omochi and my superior. That, at least, would have been courageous. Whereas what I did was thoughtless.

I ran to the women’s room. She was standing in front of one of the sinks, crying. I don’t think she saw me come in. Unfortunately, she did hear me speak.

“Fubuki, I’m so sorry. I’m with you with all my heart. I’m on your side.”

I was already moving toward her, stretching out an arm that quivered with comforting intentions, when she turned to me with a look of incredulous anger.

Pathological fury made her voice unrecognizable.

“How dare you? How dare you?” she screamed.

I can’t have been having one of my intelligent days. I tried to offer an explanation. I touched her arm.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I only wanted to… say I was your friend.”

In a paroxysm of hatred, she threw off my arm so that it whirled like a turnstile.

“Will you be quiet? Will you leave?”

I stayed rooted to the spot, dumbfounded.

She walked toward me with Hiroshima in her right eye and Nagasaki in her left. Had she had the right to kill me, she would not have hesitated to exercise it.

I finally understood, and ran out of the bathroom.

BACK AT MY desk, I spent the rest of the day simulating busyness while analyzing my stupidity, vast subject for meditation that it was.

Fubuki had been humiliated from head to toe before her colleagues. The only thing she had been able to hide from us, the last bastion of honor she had been able to preserve, had been her tears. She had had the strength not to break down in front of us.

And I had gone and watched her cry. It was as if I had wanted to drink the final full measure of her shame. She could never have believed what I did was based on kindness, though misguided kindness.

An hour later, she sat back down at her desk. No one so much as looked at her. She, however, stared at me. Her dried eyes bored into me with hatred. I could read clearly what they were telling me: “You’ve got it coming to you.”

Then she went back to work as if nothing had happened, leaving me to interpret at leisure my sentence.

It was clear she believed my behavior had been an act of pure revenge. I knew there was no doubt in her mind that my sole objective had been retaliation for the way she had mistreated me in the past, to pay her back for what she had done to me.

I longed to tell her she was wrong, to say, “Okay, it was stupid and thoughtless, but I beg you to believe me. I had no other motive than my good, well-meaning, and stupid humanity. Yes, it’s true I resented what you did to me, but when I saw you being humiliated, all I felt was simple compassion. You’re perceptive enough to know that no one in this entire company—no, on this entire planet—respects and admires you, holds you in such awe, as much as I do.”

I will never know how she would have reacted had I actually said this to her.

THE FOLLOWING DAY. Fubuki greeted me with an expression of magisterial serenity.

She’s recovered, she’s feeling better, I thought.

“I’ve got a new assignment for you. Follow me,” she announced in a controlled voice.

I followed her out of the room. I was already worried. My new appointment was not in the Accounting Department? Where was she taking me?

My apprehension grew sharply when I realized that we were heading for the bathroom. It can’t be, I thought. We’ll turn right or left at the last minute and head toward some office.

We veered neither to port nor to starboard. She was steering me into the bathroom. I told myself that she probably wanted someplace to talk about what happened yesterday. I was wrong.

“This is your new job,” she declared in a calm voice.

With an assured expression of professionalism and efficiency, she informed me of my new task. My responsibilities were, as necessary, to replace the roll of “clean, dry toweling” when it had been used up, and to replenish the stock of toilet paper in each stall. She entrusted me with the precious keys to a storeroom in which these marvels were housed, safe from the covetous looks of the employees of the Yumimoto Corporation.

Then this delicate creature picked up a toilet brush and began to explain with convincing seriousness how it was to be used. I would never have imagined I would ever see the elegant Fubuki holding such an instrument, let alone pass it on to me as if it were a royal scepter.

Somehow, in my amazement, I managed to ask a question.

“Who am I taking this job over from?”

“From no one. The cleaning women come in at night.”

“Have they handed in their resignations?”

“No, but you must have noticed that their nightly cleaning duties are not really enough. During the course of the day we often run out of towels, or discover that one of the toilet-paper rolls is empty, or even that one of the toilet bowls is stained. It’s embarrassing, especially when we have people visiting from another company.”

I asked myself which would be more embarrassing for an employee: to see a toilet bowl stained by one of their own, or stained by someone from another company. I didn’t have the time to consider fully this question of etiquette because Fubuki evidently felt I had been told everything I needed to know.

“From now on, thanks to you, we will no longer endure any further inconvenience,” she concluded with a sweet smile.

And she left. I was alone, dumbstruck, my arms hanging limply by my sides. The door opened again. It was Fubuki. Like an actor with a perfect sense of timing, she had returned to give me one last piece of information.

“I meant to tell you. Your work also includes the men’s bathrooms.”

LET ME RECAPITULATE. As a child, I had wanted to become God, then, having decided this was beyond my reach, I chose to become Jesus. Finally I settled on becoming a martyr.

As an adult, I renounced my religious ambitions, returned to the land of my early childhood, and looked for work as an interpreter in a Japanese company. Alas, that was too much to hope for. I was brought down a notch and became an accountant. But now there was no stopping the lightning speed of my decline. I was given the position of doing nothing at all. I should have guessed that nothing at all was still too good for me, for at last came my final assignment: lavatory attendant. My career was in the toilet.