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  Yurio ran his fingers across the tea table, came to the package with the notebooks, and pulled them out of the envelope. He clutched them briefly and announced in a clear, calm voice, “I feel hatred and confusion here.”

  SEVEN • JIZ OF DESIRE: KAZUE’S JOURNALS

  • 1 •

  APRIL 21

  GOTANDA: KT (?), ¥15,000

  Rain since morning. I left work at the usual time and headed toward the Shimbashi Station entrance to the Ginza Subway Line. The man ahead of me kept glancing back vigorously over his shoulder as he walked. I assumed he was trying to spot a cab. The rain bouncing off his umbrella splashed onto the front of my Burberry trench coat, causing it to stain. I fumbled angrily through my purse, looking for my handkerchief. I pulled out the one I’d stuffed in my bag yesterday and patted busily at the raindrops. The rain in Shinibashi is gray and stains whatever it hits. I didn’t want to have to pay for dry cleaning. I quietly cursed the man as he climbed into his cab. “Hey, asshole, watch what you’re doing!” But as I did so I recalled the vibrant way the rain had bounced off his umbrella, and that led me to think about how strong men are in general. I was seized with a feeling of desire, soon to be followed by disgust. Desire and disgust. These two conflicting emotions always accompanied my thoughts of men.

  The Ginza Line. I hate the orange color of the train. I hate the gritty wind that whips through the tunnels. I hate the screech of the wheels. I hate the smell. Usually I wear earplugs so I can avoid the sounds, but there’s not much I can do to avoid the smell. And it’s always worse on rainy days. It’s not just the smell of dirt. There’s the smell of people: of perfume and hair tonic, of breath and age, sports pages and makeup and menstruating women. People are the worst. There are the disagreeable salary men and the exhausted office ladies. I can’t stand any of them. There aren’t very many high-class men out there who catch my attention. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be long before they’d do something to make me change my opinion of them as well. There’s one more reason I hate the subway. It’s what links me to my firm. The instant I step down into the subway and head toward the Ginza Line, I feel as if I’m being pulled into a dark subterranean world, a world lurking beneath the asphalt.

  As luck would have it, I was able to get a seat at Akasaka-mitsuke. I peered over at the documents the man sitting next to me was reading. Was he in my line of work? Which company does he work for? How did his company rank? He must have felt my gaze, because he folded the page he was reading so I could no longer see it.

  At my office I am surrounded by papers. The stacks piled on my desk form a veritable wall all the way around me and I don’t let people peek at my desk while I’m working. I sit there hidden behind the wall of paper, earplugs in place, lost in my work. A pile of white pages stretches in front of my eyes, and to my left and right are other piles. I sort them carefully so they won’t tumble over. But they’re stacked higher than my head. I want them to grow so high they’ll brush the ceiling and cover up the fluorescent bulbs. Fluorescent lights make me look so pale—I have no choice but to wear bright red lipstick when I’m at work. It’s the only way to counteract the washed-out look. Then, to balance out the lipstick I have to wear blue eye shadow. Since that makes my eyes and lips stand out too starkly, I draw my eyebrows in with a dark pencil; if I don’t I won’t look balanced, and if things aren’t balanced it is very difficult—if not impossible—to live in this country of ours. That’s why I feel both desire and disgust for men and both loyalty and betrayal for the firm I work for. Pride and phobia, it’s a quagmire. If there were no dirt, there would be no reason for pride. If we had no pride, we’d just walk around with our feet in the mud. One requires the other. That’s what a human being such as myself needs to survive.

  Dear Ms. Sat,

  All the noise you make is annoying. Please do everyone a favor and try to be a little quieter when you’re working. You are inconveniencing others in the office.

  This letter was on top of my desk waiting for me when I got in this morning. It had been typed on a computer, but I couldn’t care less who wrote it. I snatched it up and walked to the office manager’s desk, waving the paper noisily as I went.

  The office manager had graduated from the economics department of Tokyo University. He was forty-six. He’d married another woman in the firm, who had graduated from junior college, and they had two children. The manager had the tendency to squash whatever achievements other men made and to steal the successes women attained. Earlier, he had ordered me to revise a report I had written. Then he stole my original thesis and represented it as his own work: “Avoiding Risks Related to the Cost of Construction.” This kind of misappropriation was an everyday occurrence with the research office manager, and the only way I could succeed was to learn to outmaneuver him. For that reason, I had to try to protect my spirit, to keep things in balance, and accent my most impressive abilities. That was the only way I was going to get to a clear understanding of the true meaning of things. I had to remain firm and concentrate.

  “Excuse me, but I just found this note on my desk. I’d like to know what you intend to do about it,” I said to him.

  The office manager took out his metal-framed reading glasses and put them on. As he slowly read over the note, a sardonic smirk rose to his lips. Did he think I wouldn’t notice?

  “What do you expect me to do? It looks like a private matter to me,” he said, scrutinizing the clothes I was wearing. Today I had on a polyester print blouse and a tight navy-blue skirt accessorized with a long metal chain. I had worn the same outfit yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the day before that.

  “So you might think. But private matters influence the workplace environment,” I told him.

  “I wonder.”

  “Well, I’d like some kind of evidence that the noise I make really is annoying and, moreover, just what it takes to be annoying.”

  “Evidence?”

  The office manager glanced at my desk with a perplexed look. My desk was piled high with papers. Next to it sat Kikuko Kamei. Kamei was staring at her computer monitor, her fingers flying feverishly over the keyboard. After a minor restructuring last year, all the office personnel who were in managerial positions got their own computers. Of course, I was the assistant office manager, so I was given one. But the rank-and-file Kamei did not. Undeterred, she proudly came to work each day with her own laptop. She wore a different outfit every day as well. At some point one of my colleagues said to me, “So, Ms. Sat, why don’t you wear a different dress to work every day like Ms. Kamei does? It would give us all more to enjoy on the job.” To that I had replied tartly, “Yeah? Well, are you going to increase my salary so I can go out and buy a new outfit for every day of the year?”

  “Ms. Kamei, sorry to bother you but would you mind coming here for a minute?” the office manager said. Kamei looked at the two of us. The color of her face changed as she hurried to our side. Her high heels clicked noisily, which caused all the other people working at their desks to look up in surprise. I could tell that she had intentionally made the noise.

  “What can I do for you?” Kamei asked, as she looked from the office manager to me, clearly comparing us as she did. Kamei was thirty-two, five years younger than I. Five years but a world apart. She’d joined the company after the enactment of new equal-employment laws. A graduate of Tokyo University Law School, she was extremely conceited. And to top it off, she wore flashy clothes. I’d heard that she spent over half her salary on them. She still lived at home, and since her father had been a bureaucrat of some sort and was still in good health, she was affluent. I, on the other hand, had a mother who was a full-time housewife, and I had had to work to provide for her and my sister once my father died. How was I supposed to have money to spend on clothes?

  “I have a question to ask you,” the office manager began. “Does the noise that Ms. Sat makes disturb the others around her? I realize this is an awkward question and I apologize, but your desk is right next