The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [65]
Irritated, like a child that cannot have what it wants, I entered a coffee house and with water and ice cream alternately bathed the tumor of craving that rose in my throat hard as a fist. I wanted to do something, but what would be best I did not know. Would I end up by doing nothing at all or by forcing myself to do something I didn’t want to? I regretted having started nothing. It was a wretched feeling, like wearing wet socks. Under the mask my face felt as if it were in a steam bath, and I seemed to be bleeding at the nose. Apparently the time had come for serious action. As I well realized, I had become my own analyst, and was earnestly organizing my own cravings, sifting them out, to discern the real forms pent up in this tumor.
I DON’T mind telling the conclusion of my analysis first. It was sexual desire. I wonder, did you laugh? It was a somewhat commonplace conclusion, considering all the showy thinking leading up to it. Realizing this motive, I had some clue as to what was going on. But since this conclusion was like an elementary algebraic platitude, agreeing too readily without proof was more than I could bear. It would appear that self-respect could live in surprising compatibility with shame, considering their inconsistency.
Well, there is not much left to this third notebook. There was no point in being concerned with only the test run of the mask. But however tedious, I think it would be best to tell you what the grounds were: that the purest expenditure of freedom is actually the satisfaction of sexual desires. The expenditure of freedom, however pure, has no value in itself; value is rather in the production of freedom. I did not claim that my logic was faultless, but my actions on the following day were all inspired by this sexual desire, and I thought I had to be honest with myself, just as I expected fair judgment of you.
Since I was trying not to be unkind, it was not so difficult to understand the mask’s feeling, to grasp why it turned its back on arson and murder. In the first place, the mask was itself a serious act of violence against the custom of the world. Whether arson and murder would be more destructive than a mask could not be answered with pure common sense. To put it succinctly, it would be best to begin mass production of an elaborate mask, like the one used for myself, and presuppose a public opinion that in time would be favorable. In all likelihood, masks would attain fantastic popularity, my factory would grow larger and larger, and even working full time it would be unable to meet the demand. Some people would suddenly vanish. Others would be broken up into two or three people. Personal identification would be pointless, police photographs ineffective, and pictures of prospective marriage partners torn up and thrown away. Strangers would be confused with acquaintances, and the very idea of an alibi would collapse. Unable to suspect others, unable to believe in others, one would have to live in a suspended state, a state of bankrupt human relations, as if one were looking into a mirror that reflects nothing.
No, perhaps one would have to be prepared to accept an even more disadvantageous state. Everyone would begin to change masks one after the other, attempting to escape the anxiety of not seeing by becoming less apparent than the invisible. And when it became common practice to constantly seek new masks, the word “stranger” would become obscene, scrawled in public toilets; and identification of strangers—like definitions of family, nation, rights, duties—would become obscure, incomprehensible without copious commentary.
I wonder whether mankind could stand such an orgy of novelty, whether it would discover promise in such a weightless state, whether it would be able to evolve new customs. Of course, I do not intend to declare that it would be absolutely impossible. Indeed, the uncommon depth of man’s ability to adapt and his capacity for disguise are already well