The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [39]
Perhaps my depression was owing to fatigue. I told myself that for encouragement. It wasn’t only the mask; wasn’t it always like this when one finished a big job? Only those not responsible for the results can experience the pleasure of having finished a piece of work. Perhaps prejudice about faces functions in the subconscious too. No matter how much I fight against considering the face sacred, the root of the evil may exist in the depths of the subconscious. It is much the same as people who don’t believe in ghosts but are afraid of the dark.
I decided then to make myself go on with the work, whatever the price. Anyway, I had up my mind to try on the mask for a final check. First I undid the protuberance under the ear, then when I had loosened the part under the jaw, unfastened the lips, and extracted the nostril tubes, I was able to strip the mask completely from the cast. It had become a soft, gelatinous membrane, like a wet plastic bag. Then, reversing the order I had just followed, I carefully placed it over my face. There seemed to be no technical fault, and it clung to me like a well-fitting shirt; the lump in my throat descended with a gulp into my stomach.
I peered into the mirror. A man I did not know looked coolly back at me. Indeed, not the slightest detail would make one think it was me. The color, the luster, the feeling were all successful—a perfect disguise. Yet, what in heaven’s name was this emptiness? Perhaps it was the fault of the mirror—the lighting seemed somewhat unnatural—at once I opened the shutters and let in the daylight.
Keen shafts of sunlight, waving like the antennae of an insect, spread to every crevice of the mask. The pores, the sweat glands, the partial degeneration of some tissues, even the minute capillaries stood out distinctly. I could not discover a single defect. What then was the cause of this feeling that something was wrong? I wondered. Perhaps it was the fixity, the lack of expression? It had the weirdness of the face of a corpse whose make-up has been applied by the undertaker. Should I try moving some muscle as an experiment? Since I had not completed the preparation of the glue with which to stick the mask to my face—I intended to use something like adhesive plaster, but less sticky—I could not possibly make the mask move with the muscles, but the area around the nose and the mouth which were comparatively well set might possibly work.
First I tried the ends of the lips, drawing them slightly to the right and left. The result was very good. The extreme care I had taken from the standpoint of anatomy, fitting the directional fibers onto each other, had apparently not been in vain. Encouraged, I tried to smile. However, the mask simply would not smile. It merely contorted limply. It was so strange a distortion that I thought the mirror was bent. When it smiled it was full of the feeling of death, even more so than when it was immobile. I felt drained, as if the supports of my internal organs had been severed and my whole diaphragm collapsed.
But I don’t want you to misunderstand. For this is no over-dramatic plot to trade on my suffering. This was the mask I had chosen, for better or worse. It was the face I had come to after many months of experimentation. If I were dissatisfied with it, I could remake it to my own liking. But if it were not a question of the workmanship, what in heaven’s name should I do then? Henceforth, would I be able to accept the mask with good grace, frankly acknowledging it as my own face? Thus I felt that this debilitating sense of collapse, rather than the disorientation brought on by finding oneself with a new face, was