The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [96]
It was a mental institution for old soldiers. The patients continued to live faithfully in the past, in an eddy of time that had stopped twenty years before, unaware that the war had been lost. The girl’s bearing as she walked through this depressing setting was amazingly lighthearted and insouciant. She and the men exchanged no words, but evident between them was a feeling of sympathy, as among fellow men who have been deprived of time. At length the girl, while being thanked by one of the orderlies, began to do the washing in a corner inside the building. This was an act of charity that the girl had chosen to perform once a week. When she looked up, she could see, between some buildings, a sun-drenched lot where children were innocently playing baseball.
Then the scene changed to a view of the girl’s life at home. Her house was a small, suburban dwelling where the family made pressed tin toys, a prosaic, bleak place. But when the right and left sides of the girl’s face appeared alternately in this simple setting, a delicate change came about and the cheap foot presses lined up in the workroom began to moan disconsolately. As this daily life was shown in conscientious, over-long detail, everything expressed an unutterable sense of grief for the future of this girl that would never come, and for the half of her face whose beauty would never be rewarded. On the other hand, we could understand how sympathy could be unbearable to her. And so we were not particularly surprised when in a fit of despair one day she was seized with the desire to apply sulphuric acid to the good side of her face and make it as ugly as the other. Of course, if she had done so, it would not have made sense. But she could think of no other way, and no one had the right to blame her.
Then, again on a different day, the girl suddenly turned to her brother and said: “It doesn’t look as if there’ll be war for a long time, does it?”
Yet, in the girl’s tone there was not the slightest note of wishing others ill. She apparently intended to suggest nothing like revenge on those who were unblemished. She seemed to nurture only the naïve hope that, if there were war, standards of value would be instantly reversed and people’s interest would concentrate far more on the stomach than the face, on life itself rather than outer appearances. The brother apparently understood her feeling very well, and matching her tone, said quite casually: “No, not for some time, I suppose. But as far as tomorrow is concerned, even the weather report isn’t very reliable, you know.”
“Yes, I suppose so. If you could know what was going to happen tomorrow so easily, there wouldn’t be much use for fortunetellers, would there?”
“True enough. Even with wars, you usually realize they’ve begun only after they’ve started.”
“That’s right, isn’t it? Accidents, too. If you knew you were going to have one before it happened, you wouldn’t have it.”
It was pathetic and unbearable to hear them talking about war as if they were waiting for a letter from someone.
But in the town there was nothing that announced a resurgence of stomachs or of life. The camera traveled the streets for the benefit of the girl, but all it could catch was distorted gluttony and prodigal wastage of life. A deep sea of exhaust gases … numberless construction sites … groaning bins for garbage disposal … clanging fire engines … the frantic eyes of crowds at amusement places and bargain counters … a police box ringing and ringing … and the continuous bawling of television commercials.…
At length, the girl felt that she could not stand waiting any longer. Then she who had seldom asked for anything earnestly began to coax her brother to take her somewhere, somewhere far away—just once in her life. The brother realized immediately that the stress fell on life rather than on once. Since there was no way of helping and since he did not feel he could let her be more lonely than she