The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [87]
Actually, had I waited a little longer, I should have torn the mask from my face in the middle of the act. I could not stand seeing you unsuspectingly seduced by a mask that the superintendent’s daughter had seen through so simply. Moreover, I too was tired. The mask was no longer a means by which to get you back, but only a hidden camera through which to watch your betrayal of me. I had made the mask for the purpose of recovering myself. But it had willfully escaped from me and, taking great pleasure in its evasion, had become defiant; the next time I would bar its way. Moreover, among you and the mask and me, you alone had escaped intact. What would happen if I were to let such a situation go on? From now on, “I” would try to kill the mask at every opportunity, and the mask, being the mask, by every means would forever try to contain my revenge. It would strike back, for example, with a plan to kill you.
When all was said and done, if I did not wish to make matters worse, there was nothing to do but liquidate this three-cornered relationship by a three-party agreement, which included you with us. Then I began writing these notes—at first, the mask had a terrible contempt for my determination, but since nothing resulted, it ridiculed me in silence—and close to two months have gone by since then. In the meantime we have met over ten times, and each time I was desperate when I thought of our approaching separation. The expression is not gratuitous; for me it really was a harrowing experience. How many times I lost my confidence and gave up these notes. I prayed for the fairy-tale miracle of awakening one morning to find the mask stuck firmly on my face, to discover it had become my real face. I even tried going to bed with it on. But the miracle, of course, did not happen.
At such times, what cheered me most was to watch the girl quietly playing with her yoyo in the shadow of the emergency stairs, unseen by anyone but me. She was burdened with a great misfortune that she could not perceive as misfortune. She did not know how much luckier she was than the rest of mankind aware of unhappiness. Perhaps this attitude of hers, her having no fear of losing, was instinctive. I wish that I, like the girl, could bear losing.
I happened on a curious photograph of a mask in the morning paper. It was a mask used by a primitive people. Over the whole surface, traces of impressed rope formed a geometric pattern, and a centipede-like nose began in the middle of the face and rose above the head, while from the jaw were suspended a number of oddly shaped, meaningless objects. The image was not clear, but I stared at it in fascination for a long time. The face of a tattooed man imposed itself over the picture, and then the veiled heads of Arabian girls; I was reminded of the story I had once heard of the women in The Tale of Genji who thought that revealing the face was the same as exposing the privates. I did not hear it from just anybody, I heard it from you. The mask had got the story from you at one or another of our meetings. What was your purpose, for heaven’s sake, in telling such a tale? They thought their hair was the only thing to show men, and they covered their faces with their sleeves in death. I mused about those women who hid with their faces, trying to penetrate your design, and this faceless period of history was unexpectedly brought home to me, unrolled like a picture scroll. In ancient times the face was not something one exposed to light; by bringing the face into full daylight, civilization was able to fix the core of man in it. Suppose the face did not simply exist but was made. I had planned to make a mask, but actually I had not made a mask at all. The mask had become my real face, and thought itself in fact real. No, that’s enough … such things are of little consequence at this point. The mask too apparently intended to come to terms, and so shall I get on with the conclusion? But later, if I could, I should like