The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [76]
I was understandably tense as I awaited your answer. My whole body was stiff and awkward with my efforts to conceal my underlying motive. If I had not put on the mask, though you consented, I would not have had the confidence to walk along with you. More than that, I was even doubtful that I could manage to dissimulate my agitated breathing. I continued to wait with a feeling of being enclosed in a thin glass jar—in a jar of glass thinner than paper, that would fly to pieces at a mere sneeze. I cannot deny that I was also irritated, but it was true too that your answer was slow in coming. Was it something you had to hesitate about? I clung to the fact that you were hesitating. Such a situation was one that required a prompt decision either way. The more you hesitated the more unnatural and false our position would be. If you did not want to, you should say a simple “no”; but by hesitating you implied that your consent was already half given. You would soon have no excuse for refusing, because you had already half consented. Perhaps I should put in another good word to make the decision easier. Just then, a young man in a hurry pushed his way roughly between us. I became aware that the two of us had become a conspicuous obstacle, an eddy in the streaming crowd. Desperately regaining your balance, you gave me a suspicious glance. Then you looked at me as if you were flipping indifferently through the pages of a calendar. Displeased with your expression, I closed the distance between us, thinking to hasten the decision a little, and just as I began to speak, you finally answered.
But when I heard your response, while I applauded in my heart that things had gone well, I wondered why I had the painful feeling that I had been betrayed. It was all right since it was I, but what if it had been some complete stranger? Once you had hesitated, you acquiesced. There was a significance that you should have had to hesitate in acquiescing. In short, it suggested something like a sexual barrier. You realized what it would mean to consent to walk side by side with me for seven or eight minutes over a distance of several hundred yards, and I naturally could assume that this was more than simple kindness. This was too much to do in return for a button I had picked up for you. To put it bluntly, by your acquiescence you had consciously aroused my erotic feelings. And since you consciously provoked them, you too must have some feeling.…
No, things were going all right. How could I dare object now, since I had originally planned just such a situation. If, by chance, you had turned me down, all the pains I had taken would have come to nothing. I could set another day, but even though I had been lucky the first time, a second time would simply make you more cautious, and I would be unable to avoid letting you know my real intentions. Yes, things were all right this way. I was made to realize fully last night that getting you back through the mask and getting all the others back through you was not the insipid thing one might imagine from the impression the words alone make; when all was said and done, getting you back was breaking down the barriers of sex and bursting through my own vileness. Since I was trying to get over the barrier and since my companion was disposed to consent, there was no point in making a fuss. You could not be so impudent as to haul out the old alibi of not having realized what was going on. If I wanted to break the fence myself, but didn’t want to let my companion do so, that would be simple rape. But it would be amazing if the roadway between us were restored by such one-sided lechery. With such an act, the mask would have to disappear from the world, without leaving a trace that it had been alive. Moreover, if all I wanted was to rape, my real, scar-webbed face would have sufficed.
This was theoretically true, perhaps. But, having you with me