The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [23]
I was quite aware that an inevitable ultimatum would be thrust upon me as soon as I finished the work, yet procrastination gave temporary peace of mind, the two poisons cancelling each other. On the first Sunday morning in March I decided at last to go out into the city. I put the equipment for making casts in my briefcase and got on a streetcar.
The cars to the suburbs were rather crowded, but those that were headed downtown were still comparatively empty. Even so, after several months of not exposing myself to strangers, it was torture. Although I thought I was prepared for it, I stood facing the door, unable to turn around to look inside the streetcar. I reflected how absurd it was for me to be buried in my coat collar despite the stifling heat, unable to make the slightest physical movement, like an insect playing dead. How could I strike up a conversation with a stranger in such circumstances? Each time the car stopped I clung to the door handle, fighting my faintheartedness, wanting to return home.
Yet why in heaven’s name was I so frightened? I had not been accused by anyone, yet I shrank back with almost a guilty conscience, as if I were a criminal. If the facial expression were so essential a mask of identity, wouldn’t it be impossible to recognize a voice on the telephone? Couldn’t one say then that in the dark all men fear, suspect, and hate each other? Nonsense! A face that had properly functioning eyes, mouth, nose, and ears would be enough! A face is not something to show off to others, but something that serves one’s self! (No, there was no reason to get upset—a different I began to apologize shamefacedly—I only hesitated to disturb strangers by deliberately showing by expressionless face.) But I wondered if that were really all. With my prescription sunglasses, which were darker than ordinary ones, there was not the slightest reason to worry that someone might feel I was looking at him.
The streetcar turned a corner, and the side where I was standing was struck by the light in such a way that a couple with a child behind me were reflected in the glass of the door. The child, about five, was seated between his two young parents (they were animatedly talking together, pointing to some sort of poster—as I realized later, an advertisement for installment-plan bathtubs) and was just then staring apprehensively at me from under the brim of a navy-blue woolen hat with a ribbon on it. Wonder, fear, discovery, suspicion, hesitation, fascination, curiosity—all were crammed into his little eyes, and he seemed almost to be slipping into some ecstatic transport. I gradually began to lose my composure. The parents were typical, I thought, saying nothing to him nor even admonishing him to behave properly. I suddenly turned my full face toward the child, who clutched his mother’s sleeve; the mother, poking him with her elbow, replied with a scolding.
How would it be if, not saying a word, I were to plant myself in front of the parents and child and, contemptuous of their perplexity, remove my glasses and surgical mask and begin to undo my bandages? Their perplexity would turn to panic and then to entreaty. I would go on, regardless. To heighten the effect, I would rip off the last folds with a flourish. I would put my fingers under the upper edge of the bandage and in a single movement rip it down. But, as I imagined it, the face I displayed would be a completely different thing from my face since the accident. No, it would not only be different from my face; it would be quite unlike any human face. Bronze color, or gold, or a pure, waxy, transparent white would be fitting. But they would have no time to ascertain anything more. There would be no time in their fleeting impression to