The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [4]
For example, one day—it was the noon break, and I had just returned from a liaison meeting between my colleagues and another department—a young assistant, a girl, graduated just this year, approached me with a mischievous expression, turning over the pages of some book.
“Look, Doctor. This is a fascinating picture.” Under her slim, teasing finger lay a line drawing by Klee entitled False Face.
The features were divided horizontally by parallel lines and, depending on how the picture was viewed, could be conceived of as a bandage wrapped round and round. Slight, narrow apertures revealed only the eyes and the mouth, and the expression was expressionless to the point of cruelty. Suddenly I was overcome by an indescribable feeling of humiliation. Of course, the girl hadn’t intended malice. What had given her the idea was basically the result of my own conscious provocation. Easy does it! If I were to get angry at this point, all my efforts would fail. Although I admonished myself thus, I was so upset that the picture appeared to be my very own face seen through the girl’s eyes. A false face, seen but unable to look back. It was intolerable to think that I appeared to the girl like this.
Suddenly, I ripped the book in two. And with it my heart. From the tear my insides came running out like a rotten egg. I became an empty, cast-off skin. Piling the torn pages together, I regretfully handed them back to the girl. But it was too late. The thermostat of the isothermic tank, which in normal circumstances was inaudible, made a tremendous noise like the bending of a zinc plate. The girl’s knees knocked together with such force under her skirt that they might well have fused.
IT SEEMED that I could not yet really comprehend the meaning behind my confusion at that time. I was so ashamed I writhed in anguish, still I did not rightly grasp what I had to be ashamed about. No, if I had tried I might have been able to understand, but perhaps I was taking refuge in what is commonly called “childish behavior,” instinctively avoiding a deeper search. I can hardly believe that the face is so important to a man’s existence. A man’s worth should be gauged by the content of his work; possibly the convolutions of the surface of the brain have something to do with it, but his face certainly does not. If the loss of a face can cause conspicuous change in the scale of evaluation, it may well be owing to a fundamental emptiness of content.
But soon afterwards—several days after the incident of the picture—I was forced to realize to my dismay that the relative importance of a face far exceeds such wishful thinking. The warning came from the inside, stealthily. Absorbed in my defences against the outside, I was taken by surprise and easily overcome. The attack was so sharp and sudden that even while I was being overcome I was unable to grasp it at once.
That evening when I returned home I had an unusual longing to listen to Bach. It did not have to be Bach necessarily, but in my hangnail, wound-up mood, I wanted no jazz, no Mozart—Bach was indeed the most appropriate. I have never been a connoisseur of music, but perhaps I use it well. Sometimes, when my work was not making much headway, I chose music in keeping with my needs. If I chose to interrupt my thinking for a while there was piquant jazz; when I wanted impetus for a spurt there was the speculative Bartok; if I desired a feeling of freedom, there was the Beethoven of the quartets; when I wished