The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [78]
But there was something dissatisfying in this last desire for revenge, and I was worried. I had confirmed your unfaithfulness, true, but what sort of revenge should I take? Should I trust the evidence in your face and ask for your repentance, or should I press you for a divorce? Not at all; by doing anything like that, I should lose you. If a relationship with you were no more than my observing your unfaithfulness through the mask, that would be all right; I would go on watching my whole life long. And wouldn’t I have ample vengeance by the very continuation of such perversion? For you would have to put up forever with a division of yourself that matched this split in me. Neither love nor hate … neither mask nor real Face.… Perhaps I had found a temporary equilibrium in such depressing circumstances.
HOWEVER, it was the triumphant mask’s turn now to begin to lose its composure in the presence of my anxieties. As, some ten minutes later, I stirred my spoon around in my coffee in the restaurant at the end of the underground passage, the word of consent you casually uttered frightened away the self-confidence of the mask and seemed to drive it into two facing mirrors, talking with itself.
“My husband is away on business just now.…”
Well, what did you mean? You said nothing more, nor did the mask ask. Of course, if one put a common-sense interpretation on it, one could take it that you were justifying your answer to my invitation: that you need not return home to prepare supper and that it would make no difference if you ate out. But there was something courageous in the somber frigidity of your tone, as if you were standing firm, and your attitude seemed to have the effect of snapping a finger at the nose of the mask with its air of self-conceit. I wonder how we had ever been able to converse at all before this. Yes, the mask—surely it had read the line somewhere before—complimented you on the shape of your fingers and then asked about the cut on your right thumb that you had got making buttons. And after noting that your hand did not attempt to escape its gaze, it broached the subject of human relations, like some algebraic equation that does not include such divers items as name, occupation, and address. It was immediately after that, I think, that I began to explore your feelings. The mask did not try to question with whom of us the initiative for the seduction lay and manipulated you according to its own wishes, eagerly watchful. Having been outdistanced, I was simply dumb with amazement, like a child who has suddenly been pushed aside by its companion.
MARGINAL NOTE: Oh yes, I remember at that time being overcome with panic lest my real self be discovered behind the mask.
Surely, there was no proof at all that the mask had committed the seduction and that you were the one who had been seduced. Regardless of the wiles of the mask, which had gone about the matter with surprising adeptness, you had wanted to be seduced, hadn’t you? Nevertheless, there was no possibility of doing things over at this point, and in order to spur itself on, the mask acted the seducer even more boldly.
However, that was beside the point, for the fact was that you were seduced. There is a saying that if you overcome one arm then you are revenged only one arm’s worth; if you overcome both arms then you are revenged two arm’s worth. All during the time we were in the restaurant the mask tried its utmost not to bring up again the subject of your husband. Thus, it felt it could even bring up the subject of the scar webs with composure, and though it might convince itself that the story concerned some one else, it was still a horrible thing. It was an annoying situation, because when you showed no disposition at all to mention your husband, I became blindly angry. Indeed, it was ignoring him—that is, me. Perhaps it was bitter contempt for him. I was very distressed, for I could