The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [88]
Yesterday I gave you a map to lead you to this hideaway for our last meeting. The appointed hour is gradually approaching. I wonder if I haven’t left something out. It is too late if I have. The mask was loath to part from you. Since the button you gave me is rightly the mask’s, let it be buried with him.
You must have finished reading by now. I have placed the key under the ashtray at the head of the bed and want you to open the closet. To the left of the rubber boots in the front lie the corpse of the mask and the button. I leave it all up to you. I shall have returned home a step ahead of you. I pray with all my heart that you will come back with your usual expression, as if nothing has happened.…
A record for me alone,
appended to the Grey Notebook,
written on the back of the last
page and to be read backwards
toward the beginning of the notebook.
… I kept on waiting. I simply went on waiting, emotionlessly, like barley sprouts that, having been repeatedly trampled on the whole winter long, only await the signal to raise their heads.…
I thought of you reading through the three notebooks in the hideaway apartment with no room even to stretch your legs, an apartment born with an old face. Like some protozoan organism with but a single fiber of nerve, I continued to float quietly in lightless, colorless, empty expectation.
But curiously, all I could think of was this image of you. Why was I incapable of tracing the place in these notes at which your inner nature was depicted? Far from that, I had come to the point where, like some scene observed through dirty glass, I could not locate any particular passage in these notes, which I had read and reread time and time again until I should have been able to recite any phrase. My heart was cold, salty, and limp, like a piece of half-dried squid. Was it because I had given up, thinking it would be unavailing no matter how much I tried to start all over again? Yes, this state of blankness was one I had experienced on finishing a series of experiments. And the more involved these experiments, the more profound the blank that followed.
Thus, this bold wager put me in a situation where everything was up to you, no matter what the dice turned up. Of course, I knew very well that exposing the true character of the mask would probably hurt and humiliate you. But you had wounded me by your betrayal, and we were about even on these two points. There was no object in being defiant; I had absolutely no intention of accusing you, no matter what reaction you showed to the notes. Tentatively, the situation had deteriorated even further from what it had been before the advent of the mask. Our relationship had come to be locked in a column of ice, but as one solution, I was amply prepared to be receptive to your reactions.
No, I could not go so far as to call this a solution, yet at least it was saving the situation. Bitter regret, irritation, defeatism, imprecation, self-tormenting sentimentalism—all such bitterness I wrapped away, and for good or for bad I heaved a sigh of resignation as if I had accomplished something by this. It was not that I had no desire for things to turn out right. I had raised the white flag by not taking off my mask when I was in bed with you but waiting to tell you about it in these notes. Whatever the result, it would surely be much better than this extraordinary three-sided relationship—this self-intoxication with jealousy that continued to grow like a cancer.
I could not say that I had reaped no harvest at all. My efforts did seem to have put me in a better position than before, but such an experience could not be wiped away, leaving no mark at all. At least I had made a big catch simply by realizing that my real face was merely an incomplete mask. I was perhaps being too optimistic, but this knowledge gave me great strength. Even if I were to be enclosed forever in this unmelting column of ice, I would discover sufficient