The Face of Another - Kobo Abe [97]
Thus, several weeks later, the brother and sister went to the seashore. In a room of a country inn facing the darkening sea, the girl, hiding the injured right side of her face in the shadows and wanting to show even her brother only her beautiful side, looked happier than she ever had before, as she tied a ribbon in her hair. When the sister said that the sea was expressionless, the brother answered that that was not true at all, that it was the best of talkers. But this was their only difference of opinion, and as each vibrated to the other like a lover, the slightest word became doubly meaningful. The girl tried to pretend she was smoking a cigarette. At last their excitement gave way to a comfortable feeling of fatigue, and each of them lay down on their beds that stood side by side. In the meantime, from the window they had left open to see the moon, they watched the golden globe fall into the sea, spreading out along the horizon between sky and water; the girl spoke, but her brother no longer answered.
The girl watched the ridge of the moon gradually arch like a golden whale; for some time she waited for something to happen, but then at once reflected that this was a trip for the purpose of ending her waiting. Placing her hand on her brother’s shoulder, she shook him to awaken him, whispering: “Won’t you kiss me?”
The brother was too upset to go on pretending to be asleep. Looking through half-closed eyes at his sister’s transparent, porcelain-like profile, he could neither scold her, nor, of course, could he consent. But the girl was not discouraged. “You can never tell … there might be a war tomorrow,” she continued, whispering entreatingly, supplicatingly, as she brought her lips closer and closer to her brother’s, her breath coming in gasps.
Thus the desperate destruction of a taboo began with a mad, incomplete fusion between the two discordant hammers of anger and desire. Love and hate … serenity and murderous intent … fusion and rejection … caressing and beating … tossed between conflicting passions, a high-speed plunge from which there was no return. But if this is shameful, who today can avoid being implicated?
Day was gradually breaking in the semicircle of sky, when the girl, listening for the breathing of her sleeping brother, softly arose and began to put on her clothes. Beside her brother’s pillow she placed two envelopes she had previously prepared and quietly left the room. The moment the door closed the brother, who was supposed to be sleeping, opened his eyes wide. A senseless groan came from his half-open lips and a line of tears ran down his cheeks. Leaving the bed, he went to the window and looked out, gritting his teeth savagely. At last he saw the girl, like a white bird, running with little steps toward the black, heaving sea. Again and again the white bird was thrown back by the waves until at last it rode upon them, appearing and disappearing as it swam toward the open sea.
His knees had begun to ache unbearably on the hard floor when a single line of red lights appeared in the distance. His eyes were distracted by them for an instant, and when he looked again, the white spot of his sister had completely vanished, never to be seen again.
IT seems to be proverbial that the story of the ugly duckling ends with the swan’s song. This is typical opportunism. How would you feel if you were the swan? No matter what song others sang for the girl, she did die, she was unmistakably defeated. I don’t want to be like the swan. I don’t want that. If I die, there is no one to think of me as a swan, and furthermore I have a chance of winning. Well, when I first saw the movie I turned my face away in anger, but it is different now. I cannot escape a new sense of envy for the girl.
Anyway, she did act. She tried splendidly to break down an especially difficult sexual taboo, and even death, since she chose it herself, was far better than doing nothing. Thus she made even utterly unrelated