Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

This inexorable trajectory might have been cause for ecstasy. I’d heard it said that a singer whose range was so great that she could sing from soprano to contralto possessed an enormous talent. Well, I too had achieved that vast range—from heavenly choir to the sound of a toilet flushing.

Once my disbelief had subsided, I felt a strange sense of relief. I had lost the fear of falling any further.

FUBUKI’S THINKING COULD probably be summarized as follows: “You want to follow me to the bathroom? Fine. You can stay there.”

I stayed.

Anyone else in my situation would have quit. But not if they were Japanese. Fubuki thought she had found a way of forcing me to resign, and hence lose face. Cleaning bathrooms was not deemed honorable in the eyes of the Japanese, but it was less dishonorable than losing face.

I had signed a year’s contract, which expired on January 7th, 1991. It was now June. I would survive. I would do what a Japanese would have done.

By so doing I was not escaping the law that dictated that any foreigner wishing to integrate themselves into Japanese life must honor the customs of the empire. The inverse of this law does not hold true at all: those Japanese who take offense when outsiders fail to adhere to their code are unfazed by their own departures from other people’s conventions.

I was conscious of this imbalance and yet bowed to it wholeheartedly. I wondered if it stemmed from my childhood. I had been awestruck by the beauty of my Japanese universe when I was young, and as an adult I continued to draw upon its emotional reservoir. The contemptuous horror of the system was stripped bare to me, and I saw repudiated that which I had most loved, yet I remained faithful to it. I did not lose face.

For seven months I maintained the bathrooms of the Yumimoto Corporation. Strangely, I did not feel as if I had hit rock bottom in my life. The job was far less anxiety-provoking than verifying expense reports. Forced to choose between working at a calculator and counting out rolls of toilet paper in the storeroom, I would have chosen the latter, without hesitation. Far better to convert the absence of paper into the presence of paper.

LAVATORY CLEANLINESS AND mental hygiene go hand in hand. To those who will inevitably find my submission shameful, I need to say that never, not once during those seven months, did I feel humiliated.

The moment that I accepted Fubuki’s assignment, I entered into another dimension—a universe of pure derision. Reflexively, I knew that in order to cope during these seven months I would need to change my set of values. I had to turn my life upside down.

Through some mysterious process in my immune system, this reversal happened instantaneously. In a flash everything inside my head changed: dirty became clean, shame became glory, the torturer became the victim, and what was sordid became comic.

Let me emphasize the comic. The restroom period of my life was one of the funniest I have ever experienced—and there have been plenty of other funny periods. In the mornings, while the subway was carrying me toward Yumimoto headquarters, I already felt like laughing at what lay ahead for me on that day in my little kingdom. I had to struggle to stifle my hilarity.

Five women, myself included, worked in the Import-Export Division of the Yumimoto Corporation, and there were hundreds of men. Fubuki was the only woman to have reached managerial status. That left three other female employees, none of whom worked on this floor. My territory consisted only of the restrooms on the forty-fourth floor. Therefore the ladies’ room was, so to speak, the private domain of my superior and myself.

Incidentally, my restriction to the forty-fourth floor proved—as if more proof were necessary—the perfect inanity of my appointment. If toilet-bowl stains (what those in the military so eloquently call “skid marks”) were such an embarrassment for visitors, I didn’t see how they could prove any less offensive in the bathrooms on the forty-third floor.

I didn’t point this out. I would undoubtedly have been told that I was quite right. The bathrooms on that floor would have been added to my jurisdiction. No, I was content with the forty-fourth floor.

Not everything about my inversion of values existed purely in my mind. Fubuki was deeply humiliated by what she probably interpreted as my obtuseness and inertia. She had been banking on my quitting. By staying, I was calling her bluff. My dishonor was thrown right back into her lap.

This was never communicated in words. I did, however, have some proof of it.

One day I came across Mister Haneda in person in the men’s room. This meeting made quite an impression on both of us: on me because it was difficult to imagine God in such a place; and on him because he was probably not aware of my new assignment.

After the tiniest hesitation he smiled, clearly thinking that, given my legendary kookiness, I had somehow gone into the wrong bathroom by mistake. He stopped smiling when he saw me remove the empty towel roll and replace it with a fresh one. He didn’t dare look at me again.

I had thought this chance meeting might change things. Mister Haneda was too good a chairman to question the orders given by one of his subordinates, particularly if that subordinate were the only female manager in his division. Nevertheless, I had reason to believe that Fubuki was asked to explain what I was doing in there.

The next day, in the ladies’ room, she spoke to me in a measured voice.

“If you have any grounds for complaint, speak to me about them.”

“I haven’t complained to anyone.”

“You know very well what I mean.”

Actually, I didn’t know exactly what she meant. What should I have done to not look as if I were complaining? Run straight out of the bathroom to let Mister Hanada think I really had made a mistake?

Whatever the case, I loved the way my superior had put it—“If you have grounds for complaint… ”—especially the “if.”

Two other people were authorized to get me out of the bathrooms: Mister Omochi and Mister Saito.

It should go without saying that the vice-president couldn’t have cared less what happened to me. Indeed, he seemed downright enthusiastic about my new assignment.

“It’s good to have a job, isn’t it?” he would say cheerfully, when we met in the bathroom, and without a trace of sarcasm. He probably believed that cleaning bathrooms would give me the fulfillment I needed, the kind of fulfillment that only honest work can provide. The fact that a creature as inept as myself had finally found its place in society was, in his eyes, a positive event. He must also have been relieved that he was no longer paying me to sit around doing nothing.

Had anyone pointed out to him that my position was humiliating, he would have exclaimed, “You think it beneath her dignity? She should count herself lucky for working for us!”

In Mister Saito’s case things were very different. He seemed profoundly disturbed by this whole situation. I had begun to notice that he had grown terrified of Fubuki; she emanated forty times his power and authority. Nothing in the world would have given him the courage to impose his opinion.

When he came across me in the men’s room, a nervous little grin crept over his sickly face. My superior had been right when she had insisted upon Mister Saito’s humanity. He was good-hearted, if pusillanimous.

The most embarrassing moment came when I met Mister Tenshi. His face changed completely when he walked in the bathroom. After the first rush of surprise had passed, he turned orange.

“Amélie-san—” he whispered.

He stopped, realizing that there was nothing he could say. He walked straight back out, without having performed any of the functions for which the place was intended.