The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [80]
Actually, it was really quite dangerous to attempt small talk. On the subject of garden plants, for example, our two conversations were in strange agreement; the subject of childless couples accidentally came up; without my being aware of it, technical chemical terms cropped up among my figures of speech; if I relaxed my attention there would be enough evidence to give the mask away. It would seem that man befouls his daily life with his own excretions far more than a dog does.
But for me your conduct was a brutal shock. Your self-possession while being seduced was a part of you I should never have imagined, although I could see that the mask was fascinated. It was a severe shock. Moreover, the foot that was touching your ankle was definitely my foot. But if I did not concentrate with all my strength I had no more than an indirect impression of things, as if they were out-of-focus, faraway, imaginary events. If my face were different from me, then so was my body. I had foreseen this, but when confronted with the fact, the thought was nonetheless painful. If I felt this way about your ankle, how would I be able to keep my senses when I touched your whole body? Could I resist the impulse to rip off my mask on the spot? Could this surrealist triangle of ours, which was already straining us to the limit, maintain itself against even greater pressure?
How hard I strove to endure the penance in the cheap hotel room. Without taking off my mask, without strangling you, I had to go on witnessing your being violated. I was as if bound hand and foot, with my head stuck in a bag with openings only for the eyes. I felt like shrieking. It was too easy! It was much too easy! Five hours had not yet gone by since I had met you. How easy it was! If only you had shown at least a modicum of resistance. Well, how long should you have resisted to satisfy me? Six hours? Seven? Eight? I was being stupid and ridiculous. Your licentiousness would be the same, if you held back for five, fifty, or five hundred hours.
Well, why didn’t I have the courage to put an end to this festering triangle? Because of a desire for revenge? Perhaps. But I think there was a different motive. Had it been simply desire for revenge, would it not have been more effective to tear the mask from my face on the spot? But I was afraid. Of course, the behavior of the mask, which was demolishing my calm everyday life, was cruel, but returning to the faceless, enclosed days was even more terrifying. Fear strengthened fear, and like a bird that has lost its feet and is unable to alight upon the ground, I would have to keep endlessly hovering. But that was not the end of it. If I really could not endure the situation, the mask, alive as it was, might well kill you. Your fornication would be difficult to deny, which gave me an alibi.
But I did not kill you. Why? I wonder. Because I did not want to lose you? No, precisely not wanting to lose you was reason enough for killing you. It would be senseless to seek rationality in jealousy. Just look at yourself. You who had rejected me so positively, who had rebelled against my face, now lay broken beneath the mask! It was too bad that the lights had been turned off, for I could not satisfy myself with my own eyes—your chin where maturity and immaturity existed strangely together, the grey wart in your armpit, the scar from your appendectomy, the tuft of frizzled hair mixed with something white, the chestnut-colored lips between your spread legs—all of them were about to be possessed, violated. I should like to see every last detail with my own eyes in the full light of day. You had seen and rejected the scar webs, seen and accepted the mask; surely you have no objection