The Face of Another

by Kōbō Abe

  So my siftings finally left, most suitably for my condition, these sacrificial compulsions.

  BY THE WAY, I wonder what you think of this reasoning. Yes, of course I mean reasoning. While that night I intended to expend freedom purely by succeeding in reasoning that there was nothing for me but a sexual crime, actually I committed no act that might possibly be construed as a crime. It was not that I felt no inclination to do so, nor that there was no opportunity, but one way or another I did not translate my thinking into action. So the only thing I am asking you about is my reasoning.

  I was not so optimistic as to expect to gain your approval. Perhaps, as you see it, this clearly reflects some foolish deficiency in me. Since I am already in fact experiencing the failure of reasoning, I cannot but accept the existence of a deficiency. At that time it was not apparent to me, however, and I cannot grasp it even now. Didn’t all this reasoning mean, perhaps, that while I pretended to submit reluctantly to the forceful persuasions of the mask, I was covering up to myself the fact that the mask’s wish was my own.

  As far as sex was concerned, from the beginning my inclination to kick over the off-limits sign was as violent as my reticence about doing so. That was as it should be. I had tried not to mention this, but as long as I did not agree to a sexual crime, my plans to let the mask seduce you could not actually come off. If it were a question of a single seduction, perhaps there was no problem. But if I intended to create a new world by continuing the relationship between you and the mask, I should certainly have to live as a sexual lawbreaker. If not, how could I put up with this double life without being eaten away to the marrow of my bones by jealousy? Perhaps, the mask’s tedious persuasions were due to my own conscious provocation.

  Yes, oddly enough, the instant I was given any reasonable support, I at once completely sympathized with the aspirations of the mask. Remember that I was not famished for sex, as if it were hunger or thirst. What concerned the mask was a transgression of sexual taboos. If I had no consciousness of taboos, it would be doubtful whether I could feel such shuddering fascination. And when I looked at this fascination without blinking, the poison of my jealousy, by which I was most troubled, suddenly seemed to lose its virulence; and I began to wallow in erotic impulses, quite as if I were taking an antidote.

  Through my new, lecherous eyes, the whole town appeared like some mysterious fortress composed of sexual off-limit signs. It would have been fine if the fences had been strong, but every one, worm-eaten, nails missing, looked as though it would collapse at any moment. Even though these very fences with their air of preparation against invasion pricked the interest of the people in the streets, when one approached and looked carefully, the worm holes and traces of nail holes were sham, yet no one ventured too close. What in heaven’s name were sex and sexual taboo? To think about the meaning of the sham, the origin of the fences, would inevitably make one a lecher. Of course, the lecher himself was only one of the fences. And precisely because of this, he would have to shed tears of remorse and anguish over his own desires. When he broke the sexual taboo he would be pulverizing his own fences at the same time. However, once one has become interested in the existence of the fence one’s mind will never be at ease until one has ascertained its real origin. The lecher in general is like an honest, hard-working investigator who, once aware of a mystery, will go to any length to solve it.

  I too, a novice investigator, dropped into a bar, anticipating nothing special. As a place that openly displayed its fake wormholes and nail holes, it had a certain interest. Moreover, what they sold in the bar was the fake mask of alcohol. It was just the place for me now.

  There was the comfortable feeling I had anticipated. Fake darkness that shut out fake light … suspended desires incapable of doing good or of perpetrating evil, dream-like … the proper mixture of hypocrisy and evil.… When I had taken my seat and ordered a whiskey and water, and the pores of my whole body had begun to open, I began to toy with the finger of a girl in navy blue seated next to me. No, it was not I, but the mask. Although the girl’s fingers were sweaty, the sweat was rough, as if starchy. Of course, the girl just let herself be played with. She was neither angry nor not angry. It was the same whether I did something or nothing; nothing or everything, it was all the same.

  When I told a lie, so did she. Apparently she began to think of something else at once, and of course I pretended not to notice. Should I make this girl just for this once, tonight, in revenge for the scars, for you, and for my real face? No, no need to worry, for while anything at all could happen here, nothing at all would. I told a lie and she told another, and then for some reason she suddenly took me aback by suggesting that I might be an artist.

  “Why? Is there something that makes me look as if I painted pictures?”

  “But, in general, artists don’t want to appear special, do they?”

  “True enough … but then is make-up something to show oneself off or conceal oneself with?”

  “Both,” she said, nibbling a pebble-like cocktail cracker, which she held with the tips of her fingers. “Both intentions are sincere, after all, aren’t they?”

  “Sincere?” Suddenly I felt dispirited, as if I had been shown the secret of a sleight-of-hand trick. “That’s all shit!”

  The girl wrinkled up her nose: “Disgusting! Must you be so obvious?”

  True! Any real thing is a fake here, and any fake passes for the genuine article. Amusing oneself with painting pictures of holes on taboo fences just before getting aroused was apparently what one did in a place like this (if I got any more drunk than I was, my very realization that I had a mask on would be dangerous) and under the palm of my hand the girl’s thighs, as if bored, began to yawn. The psychological moment had apparently come for me to leave. Nothing had happened, but it made no difference. I should consider it benefit enough to have approached the forbidden fence and ascertained its strength. However disagreeable, tomorrow I should have to try a desperate assault on my fence.

  I felt no distance between this experience and the subsequent events; it was as if I were looking through a telescope. However, I did not make the mistake of giving in to my drunken impulses and tearing off the mask; I told the taxi driver to take me not to my own house, but to my hideaway. It would appear that the distance between my real face and the mask, no matter how precisely I tried to match the surfaces, no matter how strong the adhesive materials I used, could not be filled in simply. All night long I dreamed of you, between short intervals of wakefulness. In the dreams, you seemed to be continually appealing to me for something. I thought you were warning me about how close I was to lechery, but later that seemed mere imagination. Once I dreamt of being in a jail.

  THE next day, as I had anticipated, I had a terrible hangover. My whole face was swollen and smarting. Perhaps I had been poisoned by the adhesive materials, for I had not taken the proper care of my face after coming home. When I had vomited and then washed my face, I felt better. But it was still before ten. Since I was not to go out until after three, I decided to lie down for two or three hours more.

  What a sorry thing it was to put off even for a few hours the great moment on which I had staked the efforts of a year. Thrashing wretchedly around on the bed, seeking some cool place on the mattress, I couldn’t fall asleep. How stupid of me to have poured down the drinks. What in God’s name was so enjoyable about tearing around as I had? I felt there was something I had to remember … roaming the streets, wearing my mask, trying to be a transparent being … fences … taboos.… Yes, I was on the verge of becoming a lecher.… Save for being the acting head of a high-molecular-research institute, I was completely insipid and inexcusably harmless.… Yes, come what may, I had to be a lecher in order to get over the fences.

  I frantically tried to scrape the remains of my drunkenness out of the back of my cranium by recalling in detail my impressions of the preceding night. But the erotic feelings, so vivid then, would not come back. Was it because I was not wearing my mask?
That was it! The instant I put on the mask, the lawbreaker would be resuscitated. There must surely lie concealed in even the most harmless being a criminal capable of responding to a mask.

  I am not going so far as to say that all masked actors have criminal tendencies. It is also true that a certain head clerk of a well-known general affairs section, though he actually demonstrates a pre-eminent genius by showing special interest in costumed processions on company excursions, is on the contrary an uncommon optimist, quite satisfied with his present situation.… However, if we realize that this law-abiding every-day life is definitely not as safe as the world of crime, we still might have nothing to do with criminals—but it is doubtful. It is unbelievable that there are people who have never once in their lives wanted to be transparent beings, who live in a world where they would be lost if they ever forgot a single one of the many things one has to do: assiduously punching the time clock every day, having personal seals made, ordering calling cards, saving money, measuring collar sizes, collecting autographs, taking out life insurance, registering real estate, writing Christmas cards, pasting photographs on identity papers.… Somehow, for a brief moment, I seemed to have dropped off into a doze. A wind had apparently sprung up, and I was awakened by the noise of the shutters. My headache and my nausea seemed better, but I was still not completely recovered.

  I wanted to take a bath, but unfortunately the water pressure was low and there would not be enough to rise to the second story. I decided to try the public bath. After hesitating between the mask or my bandages, I finally decided to go out with the mask. I was hesitant about the impression the bandages would make on my fellow bathers. And I also liked trying the mask in all kinds of situations. (When I put it on, my pluck returned at once.) As I was searching through the pockets of my coat for my wallet, my hand touched something hard. The air pistol … and the gold yoyo. Thinking that I might see the superintendent’s daughter on the way out, I wrapped the yoyo up with my soap and towel and went out.

  Unfortunately, I did not meet the girl. I did not anticipate any particular trouble, but I gave the neighborhood public bath a wide berth and set out toward some baths a bus stop away, at the next intersection. Since the place had just opened, there were few bathers and the water was still clean. As I soaked in the pool to rid myself of the last of my hangover, submitting to the steam, I was suddenly aware of a man wearing a black shirt in a corner on the other side. No, it was not a shirt, but tattooing! I could not make out the design very well in that light, but he gave the impression of wearing a fish skin.

  At first, I tried as much as possible not to look, but I could not take my eyes away. The pattern did not particularly bother me, but the very idea of tattooing left me at a loss, like a name on tip of the tongue.

  Perhaps I felt here a true kinship with my mask. Surely the mask and tattooing have a surprising element in common: they both seek to bring about a transformation by obliterating the real skin. But of course, there were points of difference too. Fundamentally the mask was something removable, but tattooing was assimilated and incorporated into the skin. The mask, moreover, furnished an evasion of reality, but tattooing, of course, was an effort to make oneself obvious and showy. If it were a question of conspicuousness, my scar webs would be second to nothing.

  Nevertheless, what I did not understand was why in heaven’s name one would go to such lengths to be conspicuous. Of course, the man himself would probably not be able to answer such a question as that—I suppose being conspicuous was meaningful to him, precisely because he could not answer. By and large, there are many monstrous individuals who, liking riddles, pose meaningless problems and make a business of forcing people who are unable to answer to pay a forfeit.… There also appears to be some problematic element in tattooing that forces an answer.

  I myself sometimes became frantic trying to find an answer. I tried, for example, to trace how I should feel if I were to be tattooed. And the first thing I thought of were the eyes of others that would descend upon me like thorns. Since I had already gone through the experience of the scar webs, I could understand very well. Then gradually the sky would draw away … and around me would be the shining brilliance of high noon. The place where I stood would alone be completely dark. Yes, yes, I seem to remember that tattooing is the sign of an exile.… Since it was the sign of vice, it repelled light.… But for some reason I did not feel the slightest bit cornered or regretful—it was natural that I should not—for, by carving a sign of vice on myself, I would be condemning myself to oblivion by my own volition, and then there would be no point in regret.

  When the man got out of the bath, the image of a demon covered with cherry blossoms coiled around his body. Amber sweat was pouring from him, and feeling that I was his accomplice, I had the most exhilarating sense of his attitude of rejection. Quite true, the kinship between the mask and the tattooing depended apparently on which side of the real face one lived. As long as there were people who could bear to live with tattooing, there would be those who could put up with masks too.

  However, at the exit of the baths, the tattooed man shocked me by picking a quarrel. When his tattooing was covered by his long-sleeved shirt he seemed younger and smaller, much less impressive. But he was accustomed to taking care of himself and therefore an expert in the art of intimidation.

  In a hoarse voice the man demanded an apology for my impolite staring. Judging from his words, he was quite provoked. It would have been best if I had begged his pardon as he demanded; but I did the wrong thing at the wrong time, for underneath my mask I was boiling like soup from my long stay in the bath and felt dizziness coming on.

  “But tatooing’s something you want to show off, isn’t it?”

  The man let fly with his fist before I had even finished speaking. But my instinct to protect the mask was no less rapid. The fact that his first blow had missed seemed to excite him even more. He grappled with me, shaking me roughly, apparently wanting to land one good blow on my face. At length, he had me up against a partition, and his arm or my own—I am not clear which, since we were all entangled—gouged up from below my jaw, and in an instant my mask was ripped from my face.

  I was as shocked as if my pants had been stripped off in public. Indeed, my opponent’s amazement was no less than my own. Muttering unintelligibly in a cowardly way, he hastily departed, indignant as if he himself had been victimized. I wiped away the sweat and readjusted the mask, feeling half dead. Apparently there was a crowd of bystanders, but I did not have the courage to look around. Had it been on a stage, surely everybody would have had a good laugh. The next time I went out, I would definitely not forget my air pistol.

  EXCURSUS: How in the world did my tragicomedy appear to the tattooed fellow, not to speak of the people gathered there? No matter how they might laugh, they could not dismiss the matter so simply. Perhaps it would remain an unforgettable memory for the rest of their lives. But in what form, for heaven’s sake? Would it penetrate their hearts like a bullet…? Or would it distort the appearance of the world by its impact on their eyeballs.…? Whichever it was, they would never again stare hard at a stranger’s face, that I could say for sure. Strangers were transparent, like ghosts, and the world was filled with gaps like a picture painted on glass with thin pigments. The world itself, like the mask, began to seem difficult to believe in, and I was stricken with an unutterable sense of loneliness. I needed to feel no responsibility for strangers. For what they were looking at was the truth. What was visible was only the mask, and those strangers had perceived a truth more profound than eyes could see directly. No matter how bad the truth appeared from without, it had its own reward.

  I had an experience over twenty years ago: I once saw the abandoned corpse of a child. The body was lying face upward in a clump of bushes in back of the school. I think I had gone to retrieve a baseball and had happened to see it by chance. The corpse had swollen up like a rubber ball, and the whole thing had a faint pinkish tinge. There was movement around the
mouth, and looking closely, I saw that myriads of maggots were wriggling around, working at the lips. I was terrified, and for many days afterwards could not get my food down. It was at the time a frightful, excruciating impression, but with the passage of the years—perhaps the corpse had grown older with me—all that remained, enveloped in a peaceful sorrow, was the faint flush of the smooth, wax-like skin. And now, I did not even think of avoiding the memory of the body. I had even come to be fond of the memory. Every time I recalled the body, I was taken by a feeling of our being fellow creatures. It reminded me that, outside of plastics, there was a world that could be touched with one’s hands. The dead body would go on living with me forever as a symbol of another world.

  No, I am not making such excuses only for complete strangers. At this point, these misgivings should concern you too. I want you to believe my words, even though I feel they may cause you much pain. It is not really pain, but a memory of the impression I had when I looked under the mask. Perhaps, indeed, the time will come when these memories will be as dear to you as the corpse is to me.

  I DELAYED my departure to take care of my bruises and change the adhesive materials, and then, as I headed directly for the bus stop in front of the station, I made a detour to buy the mask some items for daily use: a lighter, a memorandum book, a wallet. I arrived at the bus stop at precisely four o’clock. I had decided to lie in ambush there, waiting for you to return from your handicraft class that met every Thursday. It was the beginning of the evening rush hour, and a clamor filled the space around me as if I were in an amusement park. Yet I wondered why I was possessed with a strange feeling of quiet, as if I were in a forest where the leaves had started to fall. Perhaps my previous shock remained and was overwhelming my senses from within. When I closed my eyes, innumerable stars flashing light eddied up like swarms of mosquitoes. Perhaps my blood pressure was rising too. Certainly my experience had been traumatic. But apparently it wasn’t altogether bad. The humiliation, acting as shock treatment, was spurring me on to lawbreaking.