The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [85]
But in the end, I could only keep silent like a fish. To show you the trick of the mask was nothing but disarming myself. If I could pull you down to my level, it might be all right to disarm. But the sacrifice was too great. Even though I might tear the mask off of your hypocrisy, you had a thousand layers of masks, and one after another a new one would appear; but my mask was only a single ply, and under that there remained not even a layer of ordinary face.
Our house, which I had not been in for a week, completely soaked up my daily life like a sponge; the walls, the ceilings, the floor matting seemed secure and solid; but for someone who had had the experience of the mask I could not help but perceive, however disagreeable it might be, that this solidity was merely a kind of sexual barrier that had become custom. And just as the existence of the barrier was merely a promise rather than a reality, I who had taken off the mask found my existence also shallow and illusory. And I thought of the mask—of the other world that I touched upon through the mask—as having a far greater reality. This feeling did not concern the house alone but also you. Although twenty-four hours had not yet passed since my desperate feeling of defeat, comparable only to death, incorrigibly I was already beginning to feel a withering hunger for the reality of you that I had been able to discover through my sense of touch. I began to tremble. They say that when a mole fails to touch anything with the ends of its whiskers, it develops a neurosis; I too required something to touch and was apparently already beginning to develop withdrawal symptoms, just as a drug addict whose source has been cut off still yearns for narcotics though he realizes they are a virulent poison.
I had exhausted my patience. I wanted to swim back to firm land quickly any way I could. I thought this was our house, but it was only a temporary shelter; and the mask itself—it was far from being a temporary face, for it had cured me of my seasickness while I was wearing it—seemed to be real land. I decided to go out as soon as we had finished supper, on the pretext of having suddenly remembered an urgent experiment, that I could not leave half done. I said that I should perhaps be staying away for the night. Although this was quite unprecedented, you did not seem to disapprove, nor did your face with its vaguely commiserating expression show any suspicion. There was no need to be concerned, whatever the excuse, if a faceless monster was going to spend the night out.
After I had arrived in the vicinity of my hideaway, I telephoned you, not being able to wait any longer.
“Has … ‘he’… come back?”
“Yes, but he said something about going right out to work again.”
“I’m glad you answered the telephone. If he had answered I should have hung up at once.”
I spoke casually, trying to make my recklessness plausible, but after saying nothing for a while, you said in a thin voice: “I feel sorry for him.”
These words pierced me, spreading rapidly throughout my body like pure alcohol. Perhaps these were your first feelings about the real me. But I could not think about such things now. If I could not get my hands on something quickly—anything, a log, a drum—I was apparently going to drown. Surely, if “he” really existed, this rendezvous would be a bit too reckless. He might come back at any time, for any reason. Even if he did not return, it was very possible he might telephone. It would be all right during the day, but what justification could you give for leaving the house at such an hour as this? I thought that you would naturally be reluctant; however, you consented with no hesitation