The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [31]
However, this is not the first time I have thought about the disguising effect of my bandage. Yes—the first time was before the incident of the Klee picture—I recall being pretty self-complacent, comparing myself with a transparent man, for I alone could see and yet not be seen by others. Then there was also the time I went to visit K of the artificial organs. K stressed the anesthetic nature of disguise and earnestly advised me that I would ultimately be poisoned by my bandages; and now was the third time. Over half a year had gone by. Could it be that I was still plodding around the same circle? No, there seemed to be a slight difference among them. For indeed I was now actually experiencing the hidden pleasure of the disguised spy—the first time had been mere bluff, and the second time I had just been advised by someone else. My thinking seemed to move in a spiral. Of course, I was not without apprehension as to whether the direction of the movement was following a rising curve, or whether it had begun to fall.
Therefore I lured the man out of the department store, maintaining an aggressive attitude all the while; and taking a room in a nearby hotel, I succeeded two hours later in obtaining an impression of the skin of his face by the method I had used in making the mold of the scar webs, but.… The man, having finished the job, thrust the hundred-dollar bill into his pocket. He left as though furtively escaping, and as I saw him off I was suddenly overcome with an unbearable feeling of loneliness, as if all my strength had been drained from me. If the convention of the face were empty, perhaps a disguise too was just as empty.
EXCURSUS: No, such thinking was wrong. Perhaps I felt this way because I imagined the change in my thinking that would come with the completion of the mask would be something like the reaction to wearing a disguise. It was thus no doubt natural for me to be uneasy, since I had deviated from my aim to restore the roadway between myself and others. But my original analogy had been unreasonably fanciful. Since the mask was not my real face, treating it as a disguise was like talking black into white. If the mask was an enlargement of the roadway, then a disguise would be a blocking of it, and the two conflicted with each other. If this were not true, I who was so avidly reaching out for the mask, so eagerly trying to escape from the disguise of my bandages, was a stupid clown.
Finally, I shall put down one more thing that occurs to me now: isn’t the mask something required mainly by the victim and the disguise, on the contrary, by the assailant?
THE WHITE
NOTEBOOK
I HAVE at length changed to a new notebook, but my state has not altered so abruptly. Actually, several weeks passed without incident before I could go on to a new page, and I remained unable to move ahead. There followed several uneventful weeks, quite suited to my anonymous face, which had neither eyes, nose, or mouth. Two things did happen, though: I sold a patent to raise funds, and I received some unexpected criticism from the younger men in the Institute about this year’s budget. The patent was still far from being of practical use and was extremely specialized; it was doubtless unnecessary to consider it too seriously. However, the budget question—even though it had no direct relationship with the plans for my mask—was an important one, and I had to give it some thought. When my colleagues spoke about it, they apparently seemed to think of it as a political move on my part. Some time ago I had agreed to the formation of a special section incorporating the hopes of the Young Members Group, but when it came down to the essential budgeting, I simply went back on my word. As they said, it was nothing so complicated as intrigue, or jealousy, or the stifling of ambitions. It was nothing but a lapse of memory. I thought I must accept meekly the criticism that I was deficient in zeal for my work. I was scarcely aware of it before, but when they spoke up I did indeed realize