The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [30]
Surely, any number of explanations were possible—starting with extremely feasible ones like wanting a stand-in for a murderer, blackmailer or swindler to fanciful cases like wanting to buy and sell actual faces. Such a request would never arouse innocent speculation. If he had any presence of mind, he would weigh the very real item of the hundred dollars. You can’t get much for a hundred dollars. Wouldn’t it be common sense to ask at once what I meant, without brooding over it? Overcome by my bandage, he had assumed this stiff attitude as if tormented by irrational arguments in a dream. I had been unerring about the restaurant. And what pleased me more than anything else was that he was concerned about the bandage itself rather than about what lay underneath, as if stopped by the barbed-wire entanglement surrounding a camp.
As soon as I realized this, an amazing transformation took place within me, as if some master sleight-of-hand artist had waved his handkerchief. I was changed into a merciless assailant, aiming my polished, shining fangs straight at my opponent’s neck, like a bat that suddenly darts from an invisible hole.
“Well, even though I did say the face, just a little bit of the skin will do. I’m thinking of using it in place of the bandages.…”
The man’s expression grew darker and darker, and he puffed restlessly on his cigarette; he had apparently quite forgotten the original business. I had at first intended to tell him, and only him, something of the real facts in order to allay his opposition as much as possible, but there was apparently no longer any need to. Under my bandage I involuntarily smiled a secret, bitter smile. Once in a while it’s good to give vent to one’s anger.
“No. You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to peel your skin off. I want just a little skin surface … some wrinkles, or sweat glands, or pores, or.… In short all I want is a sample of skin.”
“Ah … a sample …?”
The man’s tenseness relaxed and he sighed with relief. Working his Adam’s apple up and down, he nodded his head in a number of short jerks; but he did not yet seem to have completely dismissed his doubts. I did not have to ask what was bothering him. He was probably worried about what in heaven’s name I was up to, putting on a face exactly the same as his. Yet I didn’t try to dispel his suspicions at once. While I was eating my food, which had at last been brought, I deliberately let him stew in uncertainty, adding now and then an ill-tempered thrust. I didn’t bear him any personal grudge. I was doubtless only trying to take my revenge against the convention of faces.
Surely, if I were not afflicted with these keloid scars there would be some good in these bandages. For example, I thought that the basic significance of the face could actually be well summed up in the effect of the bandages, that is, the disguising effect. A disguise is a spiteful game where the convention of the face is turned upside down; I suppose one might well think of it as a kind of art of concealment, by which one ultimately suppresses the heart by wiping out the face. In the case of executioners, strolling flute players, religious judges, primitive medicine men, priests of secret societies, and sneak thieves, a disguising mask was indispensable. It had not only the negative aim of concealing the man’s face, but also the positive objective of cutting off the connection between face and heart by concealing the expression, thus liberating him from ordinary, earthly ties. Take a more common example: disguise is part of the psychology of the dandy, who wants to wear his sunglasses even though there is no glare. Being released from any mental restraint,