The Face of Another

by Kōbō Abe

  Suddenly my companion arose and came to look at me with an expression of suspicion. At that instant I was enveloped by a strange feeling of harmony, sharp yet rapturous, shocking yet smooth, as if too many sleeping pills were all at once beginning to take effect. Perhaps cracks were opening in this husk of mine. For some time we gazed at each other, but my companion laughed first. Drawn in, I too chuckled, and then with no resistance I slipped into his face. At once we fused, and I became him. I wasn’t particularly envious of his face, but I did not find it unpleasant; I had apparently begun to feel and to think with it. Everything was going perfectly, so that even I who knew the trick scarcely suspected it.

  Surely the glove fitted too well. I wondered if, swallowing the thing whole as I did, some reaction wouldn’t occur later. I stepped back five or six steps and shut my eyes, then judging the moment when I looked most cantankerous, I snapped them open. But my face was laughing as before, vibrating like a tuning fork. There seemed to be no mistake. Moreover, I appeared to have grown, at a conservative estimate, five years younger.

  Yet why had I been so worried until yesterday? I had rationalized that one need have no scruples about the skin of the face, because it is unrelated to a man’s personality; but this was merely prevarication, bound after all by prejudice. Compared to scar webs or bandages, this plastic mask was a far more living face. The former were trompe l’œil doors painted on a wall, but the mask was like a door ajar, through which the fragrance of sunlight is wafted in.

  Someone’s footsteps, which apparently had been audible for quite some time, gradually grew louder as they approached. They came steadily closer; they were my pulse. The open door was urging me on.

  Well, let’s go out! Let’s go into a new world, someone else’s world, through someone else’s face.

  MY heart was throbbing. It was palpitating with the anxiety and anticipation of a child who for the first time is permitted to ride on a train alone. Thanks to the mask, everything would change completely. It was not only me; the world itself would appear in completely new garb. I was exhilarated by the bubble of my anticipation, and the shame that had so distressed me seemed to have vanished.

  EXCURSUS: I expect I should confess: I had taken quite a few sleeping pills that day. No, not only that day. I had begun to do so regularly for some time previously. Yet it was not in order to deaden my anxiety, as one might imagine. I was trying to maintain a more rational state and offset my futile irritation. As I have often repeated, my mask was more than anything else a challenge to the prejudice surrounding the face. I must be continually alert to the mask, as one is to handling complicated machinery.

  And one more thing: when I took certain types of sleeping pills and tranquilizers simultaneously in the right amounts, for several seconds after the effect of the medicine was apparent I was strangely possessed by a pure, clear stillness, as if I were peering into myself with a telescopic lens. Of course, as I had no assurance that it was not some ecstatic narcosis, I omitted writing about it; but now I have come to feel that a deeper meaning than I had imagined was concealed in the experience of those several seconds. Something, for example, that would bring me closer to the essence of human relations that are composed of the transitory elements we call the face.

  As the drugs began to take effect, I experienced first the feeling of stumbling over rocks. For an instant my body floated in air and I was seized with a slight giddiness. Then a fragrance like crushed grass tickled my nose, and my mind wandered out into a distant countryside. No, the expression is perhaps not exact. Suddenly the flow of time seemed to disappear, and I lost my bearings, drifting away outside the current. It was not only that I drifted away; all the things that had flowed along with me, creating the relationship we had had until now, crumbled to pieces. With a feeling of release as I was freed from the flow, I became supremely optimistic, taking a generous view of everything; I repeated my singularly rash judgment that my own face was identical to yours in that it resembled a Buddhist saint’s. The period during which I was quite indifferent to the thing we call face lingered on for seven or eight minutes.

  Perhaps then in an eddy of that current, not only was I indifferent to the scar webs, but also I had gone beyond the face itself and arrived at the other side of the problem. I may have glimpsed, if only for a moment, a freedom which was unimaginable when I relied on human relationships seen through the window of the face. Perhaps I had stumbled unexpectedly on the terrible truth that anyone closing the window of the soul with a mask of flesh was merely shutting away scar webs inside. Having lost my face, perhaps I could make contact with another world of real things, which were not pictures painted in windows. This pellucid feeling of release could not ultimately be false—it could not be a temporary trick of the drugs.

  But—distressingly enough—my mask might restrict the freedom of facelessness. And wasn’t this the cause, surprisingly, of my shame about the mask? Yet the mask already screened my face. And the drugs, close to twice the usual amount, were beginning to make me forget the freedom of having no face.

  I remonstrated with myself. After all, wasn’t the ugly duckling in the fairytale ultimately granted the right to be transformed into a swan?

  In order to become completely someone else, I had to get out of my ordinary clothes. But unfortunately I had made no preparations for such a contingency, and that evening, deciding that mental adjustment made more difference than clothes, I decided simply to put on a jacket and go out. It was a commonplace, ready-made one that would surely not be conspicuous.

  Walking on air as I was, it seemed strange that my weight should make the emergency stairs creak. Fortunately I met no one until I came out on the front street. However, the instant I turned the corner of the lane, I almost collided head on with a woman neighbor carrying a basket of groceries. Shocked as if I had bitten on a firecracker, I stood stock still in my tracks, but the woman simply glanced up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. Good. Wasn’t it the best assurance that nothing at all had happened?

  I continued walking. Since for the time being my objective was just getting used to the mask, I had decided on no particular destination. As I had anticipated, simply walking at first was rather hard work. The joints of my knees were stiff as if rusty, and there was considerable looseness in the mask’s breathing apparatus. Although there was no question of the mask blushing, the muscles of my back were writhing with worry lest my shame, and my real face, be seen. If my mask could be penetrated, it was more likely to be due to my awkwardness. Since I was behaving like a suspect, I would be suspected. After all, I was merely trying to change the design on the wrapping-paper a little. All would be well if only I were not challenged. If I had no deception within me there was nothing to fear from anyone.

  Though I reasoned in that way, my initial enthusiasm was gone, and I felt more and more dispirited, for my physical state betrayed my emotions just as my emotions betrayed my thoughts. I walked for about three hours. If there was a brightly lit shop window on my side, I would pretend interest in the store front across the street and cross over. If a street was glaring with neon street lights, I would pick my way toward the darker lanes, pretending to seek adventure. At a trolley stop, when I saw a car pulling up, I consciously hastened my steps to avoid meeting anyone; on the other hand, when someone overtook me, I deliberately slowed up to let them pass. I was finally disgusted with myself. I could continue walking in this fashion for days and never get used to managing the mask.

  There was a small tobacconist’s that shared a shop front with a bakery. I decided to attempt a little exploit. The expression is exaggerated; all I decided was to purchase some cigarettes. As I approached, I began to experience palpitations in the area between my abdomen and my diaphragm. I began to shed tears. Suddenly the mask increased in weight and seemed about to slide off. My legs were cramped as if I were descending some fathomless precipice on a single rope. For a mere package of cigarettes, I was putting up a struggle as if I were in combat with so
me monster.

  However, for some reason, as soon as my eyes met those of the shop girl, who came indifferently toward me, I instantly became audacious. Was it because the girl did not show any more reaction to me than to an ordinary customer? And was it also because I could feel the cigarette resting lightly in my fingers like a little dead bird? No, the reason seemed rather to lie in the transformation of the mask. I was afraid of my own shadow as long as I imagined others to be looking at me, but when I was actually looked at, I seemed to become aware of my real character. Perhaps in my imagination the mask was something that exposed me, but in actuality it was an opaque means of concealment. While beneath the mask the blood vessels expanded and the sweat glands poured out their moisture, the surface didn’t shed a single drop of perspiration.

  Thus I was easily able to recover from my fear of blushing, but I was already exhausted. I did not have the energy to walk further and, hailing a taxi, I returned directly to the apartment. I felt depressed when I considered that all I had gotten for so much wear and tear was a mere pack of cigarettes, but taking into account my awareness of the mask I realized I had profited to some extent. As proof of it, when I returned to my room, took off the mask, washed away the adhesive material, and again looked at my real face, the merciless scar webs seemed less real. The mask had already become just as real as the webs, and if the mask was a temporary form, so were the webs. Apparently the mask was safely beginning to take root on my face.

  THE following day I resolutely decided to increase the scope of testing. Quite early, on getting up, I questioned the superintendent of the apartment house, saying I would like to rent the room next door for my younger brother if it were still free. The “younger brother,” of course, was my other self, the one who wore the mask.

  Unfortunately, I was too late, for a tenant had been accepted the day before.

  However, the contretemps did not change my plans. I had taken the occasion to let it be known I had a “younger brother,” and it was more important to have impressed this on the man.

  As the “younger brother” lived in a remote suburb and was engaged in work at most irregular hours, he wanted a room to relax in from time to time. However, if the place next door was rented, we had had to bow to circumstances. The two of us were in about the same situation, and so we had decided not to be too demanding and to share my room.

  Then without a moment’s delay I suggested that I pay an increase in my rent of thirty percent. The superintendent put on a distressed look, but at heart he was not the least troubled. Finally I succeeded in securing an extra latchkey for my “younger brother.”

  About ten o’clock I put on my mask and went out. My purpose was to complete the “younger brother” ’s attire along with the beard and the glasses. For some while, I was unable to escape the tenseness that came with the first sortie of the day—was it because the roots of the mask’s beard, which had seemed to show signs last night of growing, had really begun to sprout like real roots? Or was it because of the increased dose of tranquilizers? Anyway, while waiting for the bus, I calmly began to puff on a cigarette.

  But I was really made aware of the stubborn power the mask had over me when I entered a department store to order some clothes. Though it might have been appropriate to chose something quite flashy to match the beard and glasses, I selected a conservative three-button suit with a narrow collar, a style which was the fad of the moment. It was unbelievable. First, the very fact that I had any awareness of fashion was itself beyond comprehension. However, that wasn’t all; I deliberately went to the jewelry department and purchased a ring. The mask was apparently beginning to walk on its own and to ignore my plans. I didn’t consider this particularly bothersome, but it was nevertheless strange. Although there was nothing funny, gasps of incoherent laughter came welling up one after the other as if I were being tickled, and I seemed to be in an unaccountably jovial mood.

  After leaving the department store, I decided to attempt another little venture. It was not much … just dropping into a small Korean restaurant that was situated in an inner lane away from the busy street. Since I had not had a decent meal for some time, my stomach easily persuaded me; in any case, the tasty barbecued meat had long been a favorite of mine. But was that my only motive for going in?

  To what extent I was aware of my motives was another question. But it would be false to say that there was no reason for deliberately choosing a Korean restaurant. I had clearly taken into consideration that the restaurant was Korean and that there would be Korean customers. Of course, I had unconsciously reckoned that even if there still were some crudeness about my mask, Koreans would probably take no notice of it, and moreover I felt it would be easier to associate with them. Or perhaps, seeking points of similarity between myself who had lost my face and Koreans who were frequently the objects of prejudice, I had, without realizing it, come to have a feeling of closeness with them. Of course, I had no prejudice against Koreans personally. Being faceless did not qualify one for having prejudices. Indeed, since racial prejudice generally goes beyond an individual’s private ends, and because it decidedly casts its shadow on history, it has unmistakable substance. Thus, subjectively, the very act of seeking refuge among them was theoretically perhaps a form of prejudice, but.…

  Blue smoke enshrouded the place. An ancient electric fan made a clattering noise. Fortunately the three customers all seemed to be Koreans. At first blush, two of them were indistinguishable from Japanese, but the fluent exchange among them in Korean was unmistakable proof they were the real thing. Although it was mid-day, the three had emptied a good many bottles of beer, which had greatly speeded up their usual hurried manner of speaking.

  As I ran my hands over the cheeks of my mask to check it, I was at once infected by their cheerfulness. Perhaps I was predisposing myself to getting drunk, feeling that I could if I really wanted to. Or was my state of mind like that of the beggar, a frequent type in novels, who wants to talk with his rich relatives? Anyway, sitting down at a table, I ordered some barbecued meat, preening like a movie hero.

  A cockroach crawled up the wall. Rolling up a newpaper that someone had apparently forgotten, I struck it down. I absently glanced at the headlines; there were the usual columns of Help Wanted advertisements, guides to movies, music halls, and other amusement centers. As I threaded through the columns of the advertisements, a scene characterized by enigmas and whisperings began to unfold, to which the endless chattering of the three men was appropriate accompaniment.

  Attached to an ashtray was a fortunetelling device. You put in a coin and pushed a button; out of a hole underneath came a tube of paper rolled to the size of a matchstick. My mask had apparently become so zestful as to want to try such a trivial thing. I opened the roll of paper and read my fortune:

  Moderately lucky. If you wait, there will be fair weather for a sea voyage. If you see a “weeping mole,” go west.

  In spite of myself I let out a suppressed laugh, and one of the three Koreans suddenly broke into Japanese. Turning to the girl who had brought my order, he shouted:

  “Hey! Girl! You’ve got the face of a Korean country girl.”

  I felt that he had screamed rather than simply raised his voice. Startled as if I myself had been insulted, I looked questioningly at the girl, but as she placed the plate of meat before me, she smiled at the laughter of the three, appearing not the least perturbed. I was confused. Perhaps there was not such a pejorative meaning to the Korean’s expression “country girl” as I had thought. Anyway, “rustic” fitted the man who was making the fuss more than it suited the girl, a middle-aged fellow who was the crudest of the three. Judging from their laughter, they had perhaps made a simple joke on themselves. Moreover, it was quite possible that the girl actually was Korean. It was not uncommon for Koreans of her generation to speak only Japanese. If she were Korean, his remark, far from poking fun, was rather more an affirmative, friendly remark. It must surely be that. In the first place, a Korean wouldn’t use t
he term “Korean” negatively, would he?

  As my mind shifted back and forth, I ultimately came to feel unbearable remorse about my superficial self-deception, which contained such an impudent feeling of closeness to the Koreans. Figuratively, my attitude was like that of a white beggar treating a colored emperor as his bosom friend. Even though we were both objects of prejudice there was a difference between their case and mine. They had the right to sneer at people with prejudice; I did not. They had companions who joined with them against prejudice; I did not. If I sincerely wanted to stand on an equal footing with them, I should bravely have to cast aside my mask and lay bare my scars. And who am I to talk about faceless spooks? No, that’s a meaningless hypothesis; I wonder how people incapable of loving themselves are able to find companions.

  I could only return dejectedly to my hideaway with the feeling that I was again stricken to the core with a sense of shame, that everything was detestable. The enthusiasm I had felt until then had suddenly cooled. However, once again I committed a surprising blunder, out of sheer carelessness, in front of the apartment house. As I was casually turning into the lane I suddenly happened on the superintendent’s daughter.

  The girl, leaning against the wall, was playing awkwardly with a yoyo, an especially large one that shone with a golden color. Startled, I stopped in my tracks. That was quite stupid. The lane was a blind alley intended only for people using the parking lot in back or the emergency staircase. Until I had introduced myself to the superintendent’s family as the “younger brother,” I should not have gone in and out through the back entrance wearing the mask. Of course, since it was a brand-new apartment house with new tenants coming in almost every day, it would have been all right if I had just gone on by without paying any attention, but … I tried at once to regain my footing, but it was too late. The girl had apparently already become aware of my confusion. How could I muddle through the situation? “I’m in that room up there,” I said, thinking how awkward my explanation was but having no other inspiration. “My brother lives there.… I wonder if he’s in now …? He’s the one with the bandages wrapped all round like this.… Do you know who it is?”