The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [95]
No, that’s enough. Enough of reasoning. If I searched, I could certainly find as many pretexts as I wanted. But no matter how many objections I marshalled, I should not be able to reverse the two facts that you pointed out to me. I should have gradually come round to the second one: that my mask had complained without ultimately doing anything. Enough of this coat of shame. It would be all right if it were only a question of clowns and fiascos, but since the experience had turned out to be worthless I was too wretched and embarrassed even to justify it. It would be meaningless to call it desperation. I had had a perfect alibi, unrestricted freedom, yet I had gained nothing. In addition, I had been ridiculous to destroy my own alibi by writing up such a detailed report. I was like some wretched creature in ideal sexual prime, but without a penis.
Yes, perhaps I should write about the movie. I think it was around the first of February. I did not name the movie in my notes, but rather than being unrelated to what I was writing about, it was much too pertinent. I had the feeling it would be ludicrous to mention it when I was making the mask, and I deliberately avoided it. However, as things have come to this pass, there is no purpose in being superstitious. Or perhaps the situation has changed; anyway, my impressions of it have completely altered. Surely it was not simply cruelty. The film was eccentric and did not create much of a sensation, but I think you will recall the title, One Side of Love.
A SLENDER, neat-looking, modestly dressed girl was gliding along in a quiet, stark setting. She had a transparent, sprite-like profile. As the picture showed her walking from right to left, she revealed only the left side of herself to us. She walked along almost rubbing against the concrete building in the background with her right shoulder, which we could not see. She seemed dazzled by the world, and this fitted her grief-stricken profile, strengthening even more the impression of her loveliness.
At the curb, on the same side of the street, three young men who looked like delinquents lolled against a railing, each with one foot propped against it, awaiting the arrival of a victim. Seeing the girl, one of them whistled at her. The girl showed no reaction, as if she lacked sense-organs to receive external stimuli. Another of the boys, provoked, left his place and approached her. With an experienced gesture he grasped the girl’s left arm from behind and tried to pull her back, muttering something obscene. The girl, as if resigned, stopped walking and slowly turned and looked in the direction of the young man. The right side of her face, which she revealed for the first time, was pitifully disfigured with keloid ridges and distortions, and was completely transformed. (No full explanation was given, but the name “Hiroshima” was constantly repeated in the following dialogue.) Startled, the young man stood in dumb amazement, while the girl, turning once more her beautiful, fairy-like profile, walked on as if nothing had happened.
She went down several streets, and every time she came to a crossing or other place that did not offer adequate cover on her right side, it was an obvious ordeal—I was about ready to jump out of my seat in sympathy for her—and finally, after several blocks, she came to a barracks-like structure surrounded with barbed wire. The building was strange. It was as if we had suddenly been taken back twenty years; soldiers in wartime uniform were roaming around the courtyard. Some, with empty expressions as if they had returned from the grave, were giving orders or complying with them; still others would repeatedly advance three steps, then freeze, and salute; among them the most impressive was an old soldier, who compulsively kept repeating