It is at times like these that Tsudanuma-san strikes up conversation with me, employing this forced slack to practice his English and share some stories about his daily life.
There's not much chance for small talk in this company, in the office personal relations are
quite cold and detached, so i'm glad to hear reports about his quest for the ideal pillow
or the weekly fights with the car's battery.
Sometimes though, his stories end abruptly mid-flow, as if the narrative had just been about to cross into some forbidden territory.
For instance, he would tell me how he did spend some months in my home country, on more occasions also,but at my inquiries about places and reasons for his stay he'd come back
with a scant "here and there, doing stuff".
The Japanese are indeed very private persons, you could spend a year or more with the same colleague sitting beside you without getting to know the exact place where he lives.
Day after day sharing the same desk and exchanging casual conversation but still the intimacy
doesn't go beyond the name of the train line he uses on his commute.
When some complicity has been established you may be eventually told which Tokyo ward he calls his home, narrowing down the potential areas of residence from the overall count of twenty three wards to one. And that's about it.
Still, such abrupt changings of subject, those sudden silences where moments ago words yet smoothly flew, seem to hint at some dark or shameful secret, some past life shrouded in a carefully constructed mystery careless conversation was just about to end up unveiling.
Not that Tsudanuma-san's physique hints at some previous role in a spy story-like scenario:
a scrawny man in his mid fifties, bespectacled eyes under a hairline which already beat retreat,
his funny hopping gait would hardly recall the action movie hero's resolute stride.
Were there indeed some mystery hidden beneath his unassertive looks, one could
well presume it wouldn't be a dignified one.
And so the role of the clown fell upon him, the way in which even the smallest social group
has its members settling down in well-defined characters, relieving interaction of all negotiating processes and providing everyone a commonly understood script to go by in daily joint activities. Even more so in Japan, where everything reeking of personal bias or opinion is meticulously
avoided in public situations.
Consequently, here at work we have the alpha males, sales people of course, the babe, the sophisticated and fashion-conscious youngster,the nerdy and well-mannered girl, the stranded divorcee in her late forties, the funny fatso, the sensible young mother and the zealous know-it-all. And the foreigner, yours truly, of course.
But there is more to Tsudanuma-san than just the company's underdog: in the back of the
warehouse, two shelves loaded with row after row of cheap brandy are the sole witnesses of his
true self being disclosed, of him eventually exposing that purported second life of his.
Halfway through uneasy conversation, too many points to be avoided to let words flow unhinged,
he plunges two fingers in his wallet and provides a slightly crumpled, analog-era photograph.
A quasi-afro halo of black-hair looms upon muscles carved in marble, the young man in white
ballet attire, just like the other girls and boys around him.
"This is me, and this is my wife."he points discretely, "this is how we met".
His extended stay on the continent, thus, was not only the peak of his professional career as
a ballet dancer, it was also the occasion to meet his then, up until now, wife.
Conversation follows and further details emerge, but that doesn't belong here.
What does is the image of that young man, his will and hopes and sore joints,
superimposed on the office's clown and invisible to all.
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