The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [24]
Suddenly I came to myself—the car had arrived at my station. I felt fatigued and debilitated as I hurried off onto the platform. There was a bench at one end, and I sat down. I wondered if I were being shunned, for not a soul tried to sit down beside me; the bench seemed reserved for me alone. Overcome with contrition, I felt like crying as I vaguely watched the eddying current of travelers.
Apparently I had been too optimistic. In such a cruel, self-centered crowd would there ever be some soft-hearted fellow who would sell me his face? There was little hope. If I did single out one man, the crowd would probably turn its collective glare accusingly upon me. The clock that graced the wall of the station told a time common for all men … what was this lack of concern in people who had faces? Could having a face be such an important requirement? Was being seen the cost of the right to see? No, the worst of it was that my fate was too personal, too special. Unlike hunger, unrequited love, unemployment, sickness, bankruptcy, natural calamity, criminal exposure, my suffering was nothing I endured in common with other men. My misfortune was forever mine alone. Anyone at all could disregard me completely without feeling the slightest twinge of conscience. And I was not even permitted to protest that disregard.
I wondered if I weren’t becoming a kind of monster. Carlyle said that the robe makes the priest and the uniform the soldier; perhaps the face makes the monster. A monster’s face brings loneliness, and the loneliness informs his heart. If the temperature of my freezing loneliness were to drop even slightly, I should become a monster, indifferent to my appearance, and break with a crash all the bonds which bind me to this world. In heaven’s name what kind of monster would I be, what would I do? Just trying to imagine it was so frightful I wanted to scream.
MARGINALIA: The novel about Frankenstein is interesting. When a monster breaks dishes, it is usually laid to the destructive instinct of monsters; but this author explains it otherwise—dishes have the quality of being easily broken. Being a monster, he merely wished to assuage his loneliness, but the brittleness of the object necessarily made him an assailant. And so, as long as there exist such violable things—breakable, crushable, burnable objects, or objects that can bleed and die—the monster can only go on endlessly assaulting them. Basically, there is nothing new in the behavior of monsters, for the monster himself is nothing more than an invention of his victims.
No, I hadn’t screamed, though I thought I had already begun to. Help! Stop looking at me that way! If I’m to be forever stared at like that, I really will end up a monster! At length, unable to stand it, I brushed aside the forest of humanity and, as if taking shelter in some cave, rushed headlong into a nearby movie house, a “market place of darkness”—the only safe place for a monster.
I do not remember what movie was playing. I took an aisle seat in the balcony. The artificial darkness with its lingering warmth crept about me like a muffler. I gradually began to recover my composure, like a mole that has gone to ground. The movie house was an endless tunnel. I imagined that my seat was some speeding vehicle. I dashed along, cutting through the darkness. If I could fly at this speed, I couldn’t be followed by people. I’d give them the slip. I would arrive before them in the world of eternal night. And I’d call myself the king of the land where there are only drops of mist and phosphorescent animalcules and starlight. I took secret pleasure in such fancies, which were like children’s scribblings in public places. It was as if I were secretly eating something. It would not do to ridicule it, no matter how tiny a piece of darkness it was. Considered on a universal scale, this very darkness