The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [35]
THEN for several weeks I continued to walk through the silence, mechanically, as if I were moving on borrowed joints. Suddenly one day I looked up and saw that it was early summer. Outside my window the wind was teasing the slender, soft-green branches of the pine tree. My decision was equally abrupt. I wonder if you remember. I have quite forgotten what the motive was, but it was the night I suddenly exploded in the middle of dinner.
“Why in God’s name are you living with me?” I knew that no matter how I shouted, the silence persisted; unable to look you straight in the face, I fixed my eyes in the vicinity of the yellowish-brown darned spot around the little green button at your breast. Trying not to yield to my own voice, I continued to scream. “Well, come on! What about answering? Why do you go on being married to me? It’s best for the both of us to clear the air right now. Is it simple force of habit? Well, speak up. Don’t mince words. You can’t force yourself into something you can’t understand, you know.”
Withdrawing to my study after these harsh and condescending words. I felt miserable, like a paper kite beaten by the rain. I wondered what connection there could be between the me who was acting out this mad affair about a face and the me who was the acting head of the Institute, with a monthly salary of 850 dollars. The more I thought about it the more my kite filled with holes until at length the paper tore away, leaving only the skeleton.
Down to the skeleton, I suddenly came to myself. I was aware that the abuse I had spewed out at you a moment ago should in fact have been addressed to myself. Yes, we had been married eight years. Eight years was not a short time. It should be long enough at least to know what the other liked and didn’t like in foods. If we could tell each other’s tastes in what we ate, wouldn’t it be the same with our tastes in faces? There was no need to struggle for a subject of conversation.
I groped confusedly among my memories. Surely somewhere there must be a document certifying that I could act for you. There must be. If we had been far apart even before the accident, what was I trying to recapture at this late date with all the fuss about the mask? Nothing was worth the trouble of getting back. There wasn’t a single thing to hide from the eight uneventful years we had spent together; since I was enclosed by a wall of nonexpression thicker than my bandages, I had lost all right to complain. One cannot request payment for what one had not lost. Shouldn’t I ultimately reconcile myself to the idea that my original real face too was a kind of disguise and, without struggling, be content with the present state of things?
The problem was quite profound. That I thought it profound was itself most profound. Thus, I should probably persevere in the attempt to be your stand-in. It wasn’t work I liked, but mobilizing all my memories of your impressions and conversations, I attempted to conjure up various men’s expressions, that you might like. It gave me a weird, indecent feeling, as if a caterpillar were crawling down my collar. But far from conjuring up a definite image of the man, I was at my wits’ end trying first to define you. The lens had to be focused. I couldn’t see you, no matter how I tried, if you moved around like a jellyfish. Yet when I forced my concentration, you seemed to become a dot, a line, a face, at last changing into profileless space, slipping through the net of my senses.
I was terribly confused. What in heaven’s name had I seen, what had I talked to, what had I felt during all the time we lived together? Was I that ignorant of you? I stood in blank amazement before the unknown territory of you, which was enveloped in an endlessly spreading milky mist. I was so desperately ashamed I could have wrapped my head with another two bandages.
However, perhaps it was just as well I was