The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [8]
“Do you use plaster of Paris for making the mold?”
“No, I use a silicon paste. Because plaster of Paris always skips the details. Look, see how clearly even the cuticle of the nail comes out.”
I gingerly picked it up with the tips of my fingers; it had the soft feel of a living thing, and while I realized it was a fabrication, I had the weird sensation that it could infect me with—well, with death.
“It’s something of a profane feeling, isn’t it?”
“I expect a human body is.…” K triumphantly took up another finger and stood it vertically on the surface of the table, with the cut edge down. A dead man seemed to be thrusting his finger upward through the boards of the table. “The trick is to deliberately make them slightly dirty like this. If you went along with the patients’ ideas to prettify them, you would get something very strange. For example, this is a middle finger, so on the back side of the first joint, I tried applying this brownish spot. It looks a little like a tobacco stain, doesn’t it.”
“Do you put it on with a brush or something?”
“Not at all.…” For the first time, K laughed out loud. “If you painted it on, it would come right off, wouldn’t it? I build up different color elements from underneath. For example, for the nail, acetic acid vinyl … at the joints, the shadows of wrinkles … in places along the veins, a faint bluish green.”
“Isn’t this simply handicraft? Probably anyone could do it.”
“That’s true,” he said, jiggling his leg. “But such stuff as this is elementary compared to work on the face. Whatever you say, it’s the face that’s hardest. First of all, there’s the expression. As soon as you put on a bump or a wrinkle, even no more than a tenth of a millimeter, it takes on a profound meaning.”
“But you can’t make it move at all, I suppose, can you?”
“That’s expecting too much.” K spread his legs and directly faced me. “I’ve put all my efforts into making the outside of the face; I haven’t come to movement. Of course, you can partially make up for this deficiency by choosing an area where there’s little motion. But there’s another problem—ventilation. In your case, I wouldn’t know until I looked, but judging from what I see, you are perspiring even through the bandage. The sweat glands must still be alive. Because with the sweat glands alive, you can’t cover the whole face with something that allows no ventilation. It’s not only physiologically bad, but it would be so stifling I doubt you could stand it even half a day. It’s best to be moderate about this kind of thing. An extreme change would be as laughable as an old man’s fitting himself up with baby teeth. Any modification that doesn’t call attention to itself is by far the most effective.… Can you take off the bandage yourself?”
“I can … but.…” Musing how best to tell him I was not a patient, as K seemed to think, I said: “To tell the truth, I’m in something of a fix, since I haven’t completely made up my mind. I suppose there’s no particular need at this point to be so fussy about my facial injury, to the extent of making such stopgap substitutes as these.”
“Indeed there is!” K spoke emphatically, as if to encourage me. “Injuries to the body, especially the face, are not treated simply as problems of form. We should rather speak of them as belonging in the province of mental hygiene. Otherwise, who would willingly devote his efforts to cosmetic work? As a doctor, I have my pride. I should never be satisfied to be only a craftsman making imitations.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Do you, really?” he asked. “You’re the one who said my work was only on the level of handicraft.”
“I didn’t particularly mean it that way.”
“Don’t worry about it … please,” K rejoined with the generosity of an understanding schoolmaster. “When it comes right down to it, you’re not the only one who vacillates. No, it’s common enough to feel resistance to having