• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 483 0

and anxiety would return; when the various masquerades one had thought of as mere holiday exuberance would be seen as noisome, possibly harmful offenses. For example: unlicensed dealers would specialize in plagiarizing other people’s faces and members of the Diet would engage in swindling; certain well-known artists would be accused on suspicion of car theft; leaders of the Socialist Party would make Fascist speeches; bank directors would be indicted for bank robbery—all such antics would be frequent occurrences. And while at first I laughed as if at some circus act, I suddenly realized that someone else, my exact image, would be assiduously picking pockets and shoplifting before my very eyes.… Realizing this, I was obliged to face facts. Thus, one would have to consider the fabricated alibi as a burden too, preventing proof of guilt as well as substantiation of innocence. The pleasure of deceiving would fade to a shadow before the anxiety of being deceived. Teachers would lose their educational ideals (since the concept of forming the personality would have vanished); mass truancy of students would follow; and parents (that is, nearly everybody) would begin to curse the mask. Immediately newspaper editors, sensitive to the winds of change, would begin to advocate a registration system for masks; but unfortunately masks and registration systems would not be at all compatible—in the same way that a jail without doors would be meaningless. A registered mask could not be a mask for long. Public opinion would reverse itself; people would fling their masks aside and urge the intervention of the government to banish the mask. This movement would take the form, rarely witnessed in history, of cooperation between citizen and police, and in no time at all laws proscribing the mask would be enacted.

However, governmental fear of excesses would be the same as before. Even though officials promised to discipline infringements of the law, they would handle them as minor offenses at best. The weakness here would be that such action would stimulate curiosity and result in the spread of illegal factories and black-market gangs, bringing a period of confusion like the prohibition era in America. Then, although probably too late, the law would be revised: masks would be legal in cases of conspicuous injury to the face or as prescribed by a doctor to treat a patient afflicted with some serious nervous disorder. But the falsification of documents and corrupt practices by mask makers would continue, and soon there would no longer even be special cases. A special Inspector of Masks would be appointed, and the mask submitted to thoroughgoing control. Yet crimes perpetrated by masks would show absolutely no decline. They would fill the newspaper columns, and ultimately right-wing groups would appear, wearing identical masks like uniforms. There would be scandalous assassinations of government officials. Courts too would be able to do nothing but view the mere wearing of a mask as the equivalent of premeditated homicide, and ultimately public opinion would unhesitatingly support this.

EXCURSUS: Even though these fancies were drunken musings, they were of absorbing interest. The result was highly casuistic: in a hundred-man group, each member would have a ninety-nine percent alibi and a one-percent suspicion of involvement, for even though an act was committed, there would be no single agent. At first blush, the act of wearing a mask would appear to suggest premeditated crime, but why did one sense it to be of an animal-like cruelty? Perhaps it was because of the perfect anonymity of the offence. Perfect anonymity means the sacrificing of one’s name to the perfect group. Rather than some intellectual trickery for the purpose of self-defense, this sacrifice is rather the instinctive tendency of individuals face to face with death. Just as various groups—racial, national, trade, social, religious—first attempt to erect altars in the name of loyalty at the time of invasion by the enemy. For the individual, death is fatal; for the perfect group, it