The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [19]
No, certainly all the signs were not bad. The creases of the metallic scar webs made me reflect on the irrational role of the face: one must be sent packing like a mangy mongrel because of extra protuberances of barely two or three millimeters. Suddenly I discovered the really vulnerable spot in my enemy.
These metallic scar webs could exist only as a negative picture for making the back of the mask. How shall I put it: it was a negative existence which was to be covered over by the mask and thus wiped out. But was that all? It was indeed a negative existence, but even a mask that would wipe out the scar webs could not possibly exist without using them as a base. In short, this metal base was the point of departure for constructing the mask, and at the same time the mask’s objective was to obliterate the base.
Let’s try thinking a little more concretely. For example, I could simply use the eyes as they were, making no change in position, shape, or size. Suppose I went about it boldly; should I make a jutting forehead; or should I make the lower part of the face project; or, if neither of the two, should I make the whole thing bulge out, with goggle eyes? The same went for the nose and the mouth. Indeed, the choice of a facial type was apparently not the ambiguous thing I had imagined until now. Perhaps this manner of thinking was limiting, compared to a slapdash, grab-bag freedom in choosing, but it was far more suited to my nature. In any event, this way I could see what had to be done. Even though I might take the long road of trial and error, first I had to try actually modeling and studying what facial type was possible with the finished mask. This way of doing things really suited me. (Apparently my colleagues’ criticism of me—that I was more of a technician than a scientist—was not altogether off the mark.)
Unawares, I became totally absorbed, plotting the metal base from every angle with my finger, holding my two hands over it, covering and shading it. The molded face was such a delicate thing … with the touch of a finger it turned into a different person, more strange than a brother or a cousin … with a turn of the palm, an utter stranger.
I dare say this was the first time I was able to have such a positive feeling since I had started making the mask.
YES, I guess I could say that my experience that night was indeed one of the important and crucial points. It wasn’t all that impressive, but I considered it a decisive landmark, much like the point at which the water of a catchment basin takes a determined direction that leads at last into the river.
For the experience of that night was at least a turning point; and it was a fact that something like a channel, however uncertain, opened between the problem of the technical realization and the selection of a face, which until then had been nothing more than parallel lines. Even though I had no method in view for making the mask, I actually felt encouraged and confident that one way or another the possibility was there, precisely because I was accumulating concrete data.
I decided the following morning to purchase some clay and begin to practice modeling. I had not determined my goal, but I groped my way along fumblingly. Guided by an anatomical chart of the facial muscles, the work of carefully building up the thin clay layer by layer was dramatic, quite as if I were assisting at the birth of an adult, sentient human; and I felt that the rather pointless standard of choice itself was beginning to jell, gradually