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By Root 453 0

I was terrifying! I had come to have a new and better opinion on the feeling of release that the mask provided. If I were to return straight home just as I was—it was a stimulating thought to me—I should produce a considerable effect on you in whom the sensations of last night were most surely still alive. It would definitely be worth trying. Providing I could stand it. Unfortunately I did not have the confidence. The sensations of the preceding night were still alive in me too. Perhaps I should have accused you, gone into a frenzy, and exposed everything in a fit of anger. No matter how agonizing, I wanted to leave this three-cornered relationship alone for the time being. I would meet you as “myself” after composing myself and accustoming myself to the ordinary world for a while.

But was the world really ordinary? I wonder. The gate to the Institute was still closed. When I entered through the side door, the guard, who was admiring a flowerpot as he brushed his teeth, was startled into speechlessness for an instant. I restrained him from dashing to the entryway and simply asked for the key. The smell of chemicals was familiar as an old coat. But the deserted Institute building—was it the odor? the sound of my footsteps?—was like some ghostly precinct inhabited only by tree spirits. To restore my relation with the present, I turned my attendance tab up and hastily changed into my white work smock. The report of the experiment-in-progress that had been assigned to the Group C assistants was written on the blackboard. The results were excellent. I was interested in them but in nothing more. In this building people showed a spirit of competition, were driven by desire for fame, were prey to jealousies, maneuvered to get the start on others by secretly sending for foreign publications, were disturbed by private matters, and became frantic about experiments and budgets, yet I felt this was a life worth living. I had the feeling, however, that it was not actually I who was devoting myself so assiduously to this work, but someone else who resembled me, and that this me was merely another tree spirit. I had not bargained for that at all. For a given technique there are the laws of that technique, and they cannot be influenced by anyone. Or if one did not maintain human relationships on all kinds of levels—like water fleas with other water fleas, jellyfish with other jellyfish, parasites with other parasites, pigs with other pigs, chimpanzees with other chimpanzees, field mice with other field mice—then would not chemistry and physics be meaningless too? Of course not! Human relationships are merely trivial appendages of human endeavor. If they are not, the only thing left to do is to give up this makeshift masked play and commit suicide.

A scar on a section of skin, bothersome to no one, could have no effect on my work. This work, no matter what anyone said, was mine. Whether I were a transparent man, a noseless man, a hippopotamus-faced man, so long as I could think, so long as I could manipulate my instruments, I should always fix my compass on this work.

Suddenly I thought of you. They say that women fix their compasses on love. I doubt the veracity of this, but women apparently can be happy with love alone. Well, then, I wonder if you are happy now. Suddenly I called to you aloud and longed to hear your voice answering me. I took the receiver off the hook and dialed the number but hung up on the second ring. In my heart I was not ready yet. I was still afraid.

After a while, the office workers gradually began to come in, greeting me one by one with surprised, sympathetic words. The building—and I too—at length took on its human aspect. I had been too anxious. Being here was not particularly good, but it was not especially disagreeable. If I could make my work at the Institute a roadway to others, supplementing my deficiencies with my mask, and get used to the double life, then by putting them together I could become a complete man. No, a mask was no substitute for a real face. It gave to a real face the unreal privilege