Fear and Trembling

Начало книги

MISTER HANEDA WAS senior to Mister Omochi, who was senior to Mister Saito, who was senior to Miss Mori, who was senior to me, I was senior to no one.

You could put this another way. I took orders from Miss Mori, who took orders from Mister Saito, and so on up the ladder; of course, orders that came down could jump a level or two.

And so it was that, within the import-export division of the Yumimoto Corporation, I took orders from everyone.

ON THE 8th of January in 1990 an elevator spat me out on the top floor of a towering Tokyo office building. An enormous bay window at the far end of the landing sucked me over with the irresistible force of a shattered porthole on an airplane. Far, very far, below, I could see the city; it seemed so distant and unreal from that height that suddenly I wasn’t sure I had ever even set foot there.

It didn’t occur to me that I ought to introduce myself at the reception desk. Actually, at that moment, I didn’t have a single thought in my head, nothing aside from fascination with the endless space outside the great bay window.

Читать дальше →