Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

“In the meantime, shall I go and help Mister Unaji correct my mistakes?”

“Certainly not! You’ve done enough damage as it is!”

I DON’T KNOW how long it took my unfortunate colleague to restore order to the ledgers I had so systematically disfigured. But it took two days for Miss Mori to find an assignment she deemed within my capabilities.

A massive file was waiting for me on my desk when I arrived in the morning.

“You will doublecheck all the expenses for business trips,” she informed me.

“More accounting? But I have warned you about my deficiencies.”

“That won’t matter this time. This work will require your intelligence,” she explained with a sardonic smile.

She opened the file.

“Here, for example, is the file that Mister Shiranai has put together so that he can be reimbursed for his expenses for his trip to Düsseldorf. You will have to go over every sum and see if you get the same total to the nearest yen. As most of the bills are in German marks, you will have to work out the sums based on the rates of exchange on the dates indicated on each bill. Don’t forget that the rate changes every day.”

So began one of the worst nightmares of my life. From the moment I was given this new task, time disappeared into an eternal tunnel of torture. Never, but never, did I manage to reach a total that was even remotely close to those I was supposed to be double-checking. For example, if an employee had calculated that Yumimoto owed him 93,327 yen, I would get 15,211 yen, or perhaps 172,045. It was very soon clear that the errors fell in my camp.

At the end of the first day I approached Fubuki.

“I don’t think I’m capable of carrying out this assignment.”

“And yet this is work that requires intelligence,” she replied, implacable.

“I can’t work it out,” I admitted miserably.

“You’ll get used to it.”

I didn’t get used to it. I was, to the last possible degree and despite determined efforts on my part, incapable.

My superior decided to demonstrate how easy it was. She opened one of the files and started to work. Her fingers flew with lightning speed across her calculator. She didn’t even have to look at the keypad. I timed her. She was done in less than four minutes.

“I get the same figure as Mister Saitama, to the nearest yen.”

She put her stamp on the report.

Subjugated by this latest injustice of nature, I returned to my labors. Twelve hours were not enough for me to do what had taken Fubuki a trifling three minutes and fifty seconds.

I don’t know how many days passed before she realized that I had not yet finished double-checking a single file.

“Not even one!” she exclaimed.

“No, not even one,” I admitted, expecting the worst.

To my dismay, she was content simply to point to the calendar.

“Don’t forget that all the files need to be finished by the end of the month.”

I would have preferred she start screaming.

More days passed. I was in hell, assailed by streams of numbers and commas and decimal points that coagulated in my brain into an opaque magma, so that I could no longer distinguish them from each other. An optometrist assured me my eyesight was fine.

Figures, whose calm Pythagorean beauty I had always admired, became my enemies. The calculator, too, was set against me. Among my many psychomotor problems was one that was particularly debilitating. When I had to tap on a keypad for more than five minutes at a time, my hand suddenly became as sluggish as if I had sunk it into a sticky pile of mashed potatoes. Four of my fingers became irremediably immobilized; only the index finger managed to reach the keys, but did so incomprehensibly slowly and awkwardly.

Given that this phenomenon was coupled with my singular stupidity on the subject of numbers, I presented a fairly disconcerting spectacle. I started looking at each new number with as much astonishment as Robinson Crusoe spying a footprint in the sand. My numbed hand tried to reproduce it on the keyboard. To achieve this, my head kept having to make trips back and forth between the paper and the screen, to ensure that I hadn’t misplaced a comma or a zero someplace along the way. Strangely, this painstaking process still didn’t prevent me from committing even more colossal errors.

One day as I was tapping away pitifully, I looked up and saw my superior observing me with consternation.

“What is your problem?” she asked.

I told her about the mashed-potato syndrome paralyzing my hand. I thought it might make her feel more sym-pathetic. But her facial expression was eloquent. And what it said was, “I understand now: she really is mentally handicapped. This explains everything.”

THE END OF the month was drawing near and the pile of reimbursement files was as thick as ever.

“Are you sure you’re not doing it on purpose?”

“Absolutely sure.”

“Are there many… people like you in your country?”

I was the first Belgian she had met. I felt a rush of national pride.

“There are no other Belgians like me.”

“That’s reassuring.”

I burst out laughing.

“You find this amusing?”

“Has anyone ever told you, Fubuki, that it is wrong to mistreat the mentally impaired?”

“Yes. But I wasn’t warned that I would ever have one working for me.”

I laughed harder.

“I still don’t see what you find so amusing.”

“It must be part of my psychomotor illness.”

“You’d do better to concentrate on your work.”

THREE DAYS BEFORE the end of the month, I announced my decision not to go home in the evenings.

“With your permission, I will spend the night here at my desk.”

“Is your brain more efficient in the dark?” Fubuki asked.

“Let’s hope so. Perhaps being alone will help.”

I got her permission without difficulty. It was not unusual for employees to stay at the office all night when deadlines were looming.

“Do you think one night will be enough?”

“Probably not. I don’t intend to go home before the end of the month.”

I showed her my backpack.

“I’ve brought what I need.”

I WAS OVERWHELMED by a feeling of intoxication when I found myself alone in the Accounting Department. It dissipated as soon as I established that my brain worked no better at night than it did during the day. I worked nonstop. This produced absolutely no results.

At four in the morning I went and splashed water on my face, then changed clothes, drank a strong cup of tea, and returned to my desk.

The first employees arrived at seven o’clock. Fubuki arrived an hour later. She glanced at the pigeonhole where the completed expense forms would have been placed and saw that it was still empty. She shook her head.

Another sleepless night followed. The situation remained unchanged. My head was no clearer. And yet I was far from despairing; I felt an incomprehensible surge of optimism, which gave me a certain audacity. Without interrupting my calculations, I therefore conducted conversations with my superior on subjects that were far from relevant.

“Your first name has the word ‘snow’ in it. In the Japanese version of my name there is ‘rain.’ That strikes me as very pertinent. There is the same difference between you and me as between snow and rain. Which doesn’t alter the fact that we are made of exactly the same substance.”

“Do you really think you and I have anything in common?”

I laughed. Lack of sleep had made me giddy. I would sometimes feel deeply tired and dispirited, then suddenly start giggling.

My Danaides’ jar was constantly filling with figures that my feeble brain managed to empty out again. I was the Sisyphus of accounting, and like the mythical hero I never gave up. I tackled the inexorable operations for the hundredth time, the thousandth time. I should point out, in passing, this astonishing fact: I got everything wrong a thousand times. This would have been as maddening as a repetitive piece of music except that no two mistakes were alike. For each calculation I got a thousand different results. I was brilliant.