Amélie Nothomb - Fear and Trembling

I continued from time to time to look up between sums to contemplate she who had sentenced me to this torture. I was still mesmerized by her beauty. Her only flaw was the overly immaculate way she blow-dried her shoulder-length hair, immobilizing it into an imperturbable curve so rigid that it seemed to say, “I am a female executive.” I would succumb to the delicious fantasy of changing her hairstyle. I would set her dazzlingly black hair free. I teased it mentally to make it seem carefree. Sometimes I really let myself go and made her hair look like she had just spent a night of torrid love. She was quite sublime when she looked wild and abandoned.

Fubuki caught me staring at her hair.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was thinking that in Japanese ‘hair’ and ‘god’ are the same word.”

“ ‘Paper,’ too, don’t forget. Get back to your work.”

My mental haze was getting worse by the hour. I knew less and less clearly what I should and should not say. While I was looking up the rate of exchange for the Swedish Crown on February 20th of the year before, my mouth began to speak on its own initiative.

“What did you want to be when you were little?”

“An archery champion.”

“That would have been perfect for you!”

As she didn’t return the question, I kept going.

“When I was little I wanted to become God. The Christian God with a capital ‘G.’ When I was about five I realized this would never happen. So I put a little water in my wine and decided to become Christ. I imagined myself dying on the cross before all of humanity. When I was seven, I realized that this was never going to happen. So I decided to become a martyr, and stuck to this choice for many years. It didn’t work either.”

“And then?”

“You know what happened then. I got a job in accounting at the Yumimoto Corporation. I can’t sink any lower.”

“You think not?” she asked with a strange smile.

THE LAST NIGHT of the month had arrived. Fubuki was the last to leave. I wondered why she didn’t just tell me to go home. It was obvious I would never be able to complete even a fraction of my work.

I was alone again. My third sleepless night in a row in the gigantic office. I was tapping away on the calculator and noting down the increasingly incongruous results.

Then the most fantastic thing happened: my mind flipped.

Suddenly I was weightless. I got up. I was free. I had never been so free in all my life. I walked over to the bay window and looked down on the glittering city far below me. I ruled the world! I was God! I threw my body out of the window to be rid of it.

I switched off the neon lights. The lights below provided enough illumination to see clearly. I went to the kitchen to get a Coke, which I drank without stopping. When I returned to my desk I untied my shoelaces and threw off my shoes. I leapt up onto a desk, then hopped from desk to desk, whooping with joy.

My clothes hampered me, so I took them off one by one, scattering them around me. When I was naked I did a handstand. I’d never been able to do that before in my life. I walked over all the nearby desks on my hands. Then, after executing a perfect flip, I leapt up and found myself sitting in my superior’s place.

“Fubuki, I am God. Even if you don’t believe in me, I am God. You give the orders, but they don’t mean much. I rule. I’m not interested in power. It is so much more perfect to rule. You have no idea of my glory. Glory is a wonderful thing. It means having angels trumpet in my honor. I have never been as glorious as I am tonight. All thanks to you. You don’t know it, but you have given rise to my glory!

“Pontius Pilate didn’t know either that his deeds hastened Christ’s triumph. There was the Christ of the olive grove. I am the Christ of computers. The darkness that surrounds contains a mature forest of computers.

“I am looking at your computer, Fubuki. It is magnificent. In the shadows it looks like one of those statues on Easter Island. It is after midnight, meaning it is Friday, my Good Friday, known as the day of Venus in France and the day of gold in Japan, though I can’t find any connection whatsoever between Judaeo-Christian suffering, Latin sensuality, and Japanese adoration of an incorruptible metal.

“Since I left the secular world behind to take up holy orders, time has lost all meaning and been transformed into a calculator onto which I tap out numbers riddled with mistakes. I think that it’s Easter. From the heights of this Tower of Babel, I see Ueno Park and the trees are covered in snow. Cherry trees in blossom. Easter.

“I’ve always found Easter as uplifting as Christmas is depressing. A god that becomes a baby is kind of worrisome. Some poor martyr who becomes God—well, that’s another matter.”

I put my arms round Fubuki’s computer and showered it with kisses.

“I’m a poor crucified creature too. The best thing about crucifixion is that it’s the end. My suffering will end. They’ve crammed my body with numbers so numberless that there’s no more room for even a decimal point. They will slice my head off with a saber. I won’t feel anything.

“It is a very great thing to know when you are going to die, Fubuki. You can prepare yourself and make your last day into a work of art. In the morning my torturers will arrive and I will tell them: ‘I have failed! Kill me. But grant me one last wish: Let Fubuki be my executioner. Let her unscrew my head like the top of a peppermill. My blood will flow and it will be black pepper. Drink ye of it: For this is my pepper of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Sneeze in remembrance of me.’ ”

Suddenly, I realized how cold it was. I could hug the computer to me as tight as possible but I knew it wouldn’t keep me warm. I put my clothes back on. My teeth were still chattering. I lay down on the ground and dumped the contents of Fubuki’s wastebasket over myself. I lost consciousness.

SOMEONE WAS STANDING over me shouting. I opened my eyes and saw bits of trash. I closed them again.

I slipped back into the abyss.

I heard Fubuki’s gentle voice.

“That’s just like her. She’s covered herself in garbage so that we won’t dare touch her. She’s made herself untouchable. That’s what she’s like. She has no dignity. When I tell her that she’s stupid she tells me that it’s more serious than that, that she’s mentally retarded. She always has to put herself down. She thinks that it makes her less of a target. She’s wrong.”

I wanted to explain that the trash protected me from the cold. I didn’t have the strength to speak. Huddled under Fubuki’s garbage, I was warm. I went under again.

I EMERGED. THROUGH a layer of crumpled paper, empty soda cans, and cigarette stubs soaked in Coke, I saw the clock. Ten in the morning.

I stood up. No one dared to look at me, except Fubuki.

“Next time you decide to dress up as a tramp, don’t do it on our premises. There are subway stations for that sort of thing.”

Sick with shame, I took my backpack and fled to the bathroom, where I changed and washed my hair under the tap. When I came back, someone had already cleaned up the traces of my madness.

“I wanted to clean it up myself,” I said.

“Yes,” commented Fubuki, “You might at least have been capable of that.”

“I imagine you’re thinking about the expense reports. You’re right. It’s beyond my abilities. I can solemnly announce that I renounce the task.”

“You took your time,” she observed snidely.

So that’s what it was, I thought. She wanted me to say it. Obviously. It’s much more humiliating.

“The deadline is end of day,” I continued.