The Face of Another

by Kōbō Abe

  However, the girl, barely turning her body, neither spoke nor changed her expression. I became even more flustered. I wonder if she could have sensed something. No, she couldn’t possibly. If I believed the grumblings of her father, her IQ was too low for elementary school, though from outward appearance she was a grown girl. Apparently from meningitis in childhood she had never developed mentally. Her weak mouth, like insect wings, her childish chin, her narrow, slanting shoulders, and contrasting, her adult thin nose and great, oval, deep-set eyes left little doubt that she was retarded.

  But the girl’s silence, as I passed on by, somehow gave me the feeling something was wrong. Anyway, I chattered along, forcing her to speak.

  “That’s a great yoyo. Does it work well?”

  The girl’s shoulders trembled with fear, and in confusion she hid the toy with her hand, answering me in a defiant tone.

  “It’s mine!”

  All at once I felt like laughing out loud. I was relieved and at the same time wanted to tease her some more. There was also something that worried me, and I was not altogether trifling with the girl, who once before had shrieked at my bandage disguise. In spite of her low IQ, the girl had the charm of a misshapen sprite. If things went well, the situation could go far in helping me recover some little power over the mask, which was beginning to become dangerous.

  “Is that true? How can I be sure you’re not telling a lie?”

  “You better believe it. I won’t be any trouble at all for you.”

  “All right, I believe you. But I think there really is someone else’s name written on the yoyo.”

  “You can’t go by that. Once upon a time, a cat said … it was a snow-white cat, without a single spot, like our cat.…”

  “Do let me see it.”

  “Even I keep some secrets.”

  “Secrets?”

  “Once upon a time, a cat said: ‘A mouse wants to put a bell on me … now what shall I do?’ ”

  “All right. Shall I buy you one exactly like this?”

  I was satisfied with myself just for being able to keep this exchange going, but the effect of my blandishments appeared to exceed by far my expectations.

  The girl stopped rubbing her back against the wall after a while and stood still, apparently weighing the significance of my words. Then she retorted with a suspicious look: “A secret from my father?”

  “Of course, it’s a secret from him.”

  At length I broke out laughing (I, laughing!), and aware of the effect of the jubilant mask, I duplicated the laughter on both levels of my face. Apparently the girl too at last understood. She relaxed her back, which she had kept stiff as a board, and thrust out her lower lip.

  “All right … all right,” she repeated in a sing-song voice. And rubbing the gold yoyo wistfully on the sleeve of her jacket, she said: “If you’ll really buy me another, I’ll return this one. But … I didn’t really steal this one without saying anything. It was promised a long time ago. But I’ll return it. I’ll go and return it right now. I really love it. Whenever I get any present from anybody I really love it.”

  She sidled along with her back to the wall and slipped by me. Children were children. Just as I was beginning to feel relief, the girl passed me and whispered: “Let’s play secrets!”

  Play secrets? What did she mean? There was nothing to worry about. A retarded girl like her would never understand such involved tactics. It would be easy to put it down to a restricted field of vision, yet a dog with a restricted field of vision compensates by a keener sense of smell. In the first place, the very fact that I had to be so worried seemed to prove that my self-confidence had again begun to waver.

  I had a terribly bad aftertaste. Just making my face look as if it were new, with my memories and my habits unchanged, was quite like dipping up water with a bottomless dipper. Since I had put a mask over my face, I needed one that would fit my heart. If possible, I wanted to be so perfect in my inventions and my acting as to be undetectable even by a lie detector.

  WHEN I took the mask off, the adhesive material, musty with sweat, gave off an odor like overheated grapes. At that very moment an unbearable fatigue flowed over me, eddying in my joints like syrupy tar. But everything depends on how you think of it. For a first trial, things had not gone altogether badly. The pain of giving birth to a child is no ordinary thing. Since a full-grown man was trying to be reborn as a completely different person, I should realize all the more that a certain amount of setback and friction was natural. I should be grateful rather that I hadn’t been fatally injured.

  I wiped off the back of the mask, replaced it on the antimony cast, washed my face, and rubbed in some ointment. Then I stretched out on the bed with the thought of giving my features the rest they had not had for a time. Perhaps as a reaction to the strain that had lasted too long, I fell into a deep sleep, although the afternoon sun was still bright. When I awakened darkness had already begun to fall.

  It was not raining, but a thick fog screened the backs of the stores that cut off my vision of the street itself. It seemed like some gloomy forest. Perhaps because of the fog the sky had taken on a faint rosy-to-purple tint. I opened the window wide, filling my lungs with the air, which was heavy like a salt breeze; this period of seclusion when I had no need to fear the eyes of others was like a seat reserved for me alone. Yes, wasn’t the real form of human existence apparent in this very fog? My real face, my mask, my scar webs—all such evanescent adornments were diaphanous as if pierced with light. Substance and essence were cleansed of all affectation. Man’s soul became something one could taste directly with the tongue, like a peeled peach. Of course, I doubtless had to pay the price in loneliness. But even that made no difference, did it? Perhaps my companions who had faces were as lonely as I. Whatever signboard of a face I hung out, I certainly had no need to select some shipwrecked castaway for the inside.

  Loneliness—since I was trying to escape it—was hell; and yet for the hermit who seeks it, it is apparently happiness. All right then, what about putting an end to acting like some maudlin, tragic hero and give the hermit’s role a try? Since I had deliberately put the stamp of loneliness on my face, there was no reason why I should not put it to good use. With advanced nuclear chemistry as my god, rheology as the words of my prayer, and the laboratory as my monastery, I had absolutely no fear that my daily work would be disturbed by loneliness. Far from it, wasn’t each day guaranteed more than ever before to be replete with simplicity, correctness, and peace as well?

  As I gazed at the sky, which was gradually assuming a rosier tint, my heart grew brighter too. When I thought of the tribulations I had undergone until now, the change was somewhat disappointing … rather out of proportion; but rowing out to sea like this had been an unique experience—perhaps I had no warrant for discontent. Giving heartfelt thanks that I had seized the opportunity of heaving to while still in sight of shore, I turned and looked at the mask on the table. I intended to bid it farewell, lightly with generosity and a clear, honest feeling of detachment.

  But the brightness of the sky had not reached the mask. This dark countenance, belonging to another person, staring expressionlessly back at me checked any intimacy; it was like something concealing its own independent desires. It was like an evil spirit, I thought, that had come from some legendary country. And suddenly I recalled a fairytale I had read or heard far in the past.

  Long ago, a king contracted a strange disease. It was a frightful malady that wasted his body. Neither doctors nor medicines were of any avail. Thereupon the king foreswore doctors and made a new law, which condemned to death anyone who looked upon his face. The law was effective; although the king’s nose disintegrated, and his hands disappeared from his wrists, and his legs vanished from the knees down, not a single person doubted that he was enjoying his customary health. The disease worsened, and the king, no longer able even to move, like a candle that had begun to melt, at length decided to seek help. But it was too late; his very mouth h
ad gone. He died, but not a single one of the king’s faithful ministers suspected his absence. And since the silent ruler never again committed an error, it is said that for many years hence his people respected and felt affection for their wise sovereign.

  I was suddenly irritated and, closing the window, threw myself once again on the bed. Actually I had tried the mask out for scarcely half a day—nothing to boast about. I could draw in my horns any time. Closing my eyes, I conjured up meaningless fragments of scenes one by one, starting with the rain-drenched window: a blade of grass sprouting from a crack in the pavement; a splotch on the wall in the shape of an animal; the bump on the old, scarred trunk of a tree; a spider’s web on the point of breaking under the weight of dewdrops. It was my ritual at times when I could not fall asleep.

  But now it didn’t work. Indeed, for no reason my restlessness grew more and more intense. Suddenly I thought how good it would be if the fog outside were poison gas. Or else, how nice if war erupted, or a volcano exploded, all the world were asphyxiated, the realities of life smashed to pieces. K, of the artificial organs, had told me of soldiers who had lost their faces on the battlefield and had committed suicide; and I knew very well that such incidents had occurred, for I had spent a great part of my youth in battle. It was simply a period when the market in faces was in a slump. How much significance could the roadway to others have when death was closer than one’s companions? The charging soldier did not need a face. This, indeed, was the only period when a bandaged face appeared beautiful.

  In my imagination, I was a gunner, aiming at anything that came in sight, picking off one thing after the other. At length, in the gun smoke, I fell asleep again.

  THE influence which the rays of the sun exert on the mental state is a strange thing. Or was it simply that I had had enough sleep? Anyway, after shifting from side to side in their brilliance, I awoke. It was already past ten, and my twilight musings, like morning dew, had quite evaporated.

  On the next day, the period of my sham departure from home would come to an end. If I intended to put my plan into execution, I would have to complete the training with the mask today. I made preparations and put on the mask with an unexpectedly buoyant feeling. I cut quite a stylish figure when, with some embarrassment, I got into the brand-new suit and slipped the ring on my finger, thus completing my disguise. I should never have dreamt it was the same self who spent morning and night in a smock stained with chemicals, brooding over molecular formulas. I was too impatient even to stop and ponder why I could never have imagined it to be me. And not only was it impatience; also I seemed slightly intoxicated with my own gaudy disguise. Deep inside my head was a fitful sound of fireworks, apparently announcing some grand opening. I was in fact behaving like a young blade setting off to the fair.

  This time I boldly decided to leave by the main entrance. Since in my mask I had been the “younger brother” all along, there was no particular need to avoid being seen; and if I met the superintendent’s daughter, I wanted to check on the location of the shop where they sold the yoyo. I had no idea where such toys might be sold. After our first child had died and the second had miscarried, I had had nothing to do with the world of children, which I perhaps consciously avoided. But unfortunately I saw neither the superintendent nor his daughter.

  Having no special goal in mind, I decided to begin my search for the yoyo. I knew nothing of the specialty shops, so I first looked in the toy sections of the department stores. Perhaps it was a fad now, for every store I visited had its showcase of yoyos, and around them the children clustered like flies. Entering such places was evidently not the most desirable kind of mental therapy, and I hesitated somewhat. But, well, I wanted to have done with this awkward “playing secrets,” and so, gathering myself together, I tried to squeeze in among the little vermin. But unfortunately I could not find the type of yoyo I was looking for. Come to think of it, considering its color and shape, it probably wasn’t a kind they would carry in department stores. It gave the feeling of cheap candies sold in a street stand. I left and walked around for about an hour, looking for just such a place. Finally, on a back street behind the station, I found a cramped shop that specialized in toys.

  As I had expected, it was quite different from the toy sections in the department stores. It was not a cheap place, like a shop that sells inexpensive sweets, but neither did it handle high-class merchandise. Perhaps aiming at slightly older children who would make their own purchases with their own small change, it somehow gave a sense of mysterious, innocent evil. In other words, it would frankly appeal to the kind of child who preferred colored sugar water in a triangular carton to bottled fruit juice. And, as I had anticipated, the yoyo was there. Holding the cleft, plastic sphere in my hands, I suddenly thought of its creator, who had been able to express so beautifully an off-beat idea, and I could not resist a bitter smile. There was great subtlety in the overstatement of the basically simple form. If he had not mercilessly sublimated his own tastes, he could not possibly have thought up such a thing. This was not denying his taste; rather it was shedding the utmost light of awareness on his discernment. He had cast his own taste on the ground like a worm and voluntarily smashed it with the heel of his shoe. Was that cruel? Naturally, cruelty exists. However, presuming that he had chosen of his own free will, hadn’t he also possibly experienced a feeling of release, as in stripping off one’s clothes, or the satisfaction of revenge against the world? For it was not merely a question of the freedom to act according to one’s tastes, but of the freedom to escape from one’s taste.…

  Yes, this was undeniably a concept that fitted in with my own viewpoint. I would have to walk along, treading my own tastes underfoot with every step, if I wanted to produce another heart suitable to my new face. The task, however, was not so difficult as I had imagined. My heart had become a withered leaf waiting to fall, as if the mask were possessed of the power to summon autumn, and the slightest help from me—a light shaking of the branch—would suffice to send the leaf drifting down. I wasn’t entirely unsentimental, but it was surprising not to feel any more pain than the sting of an insect … something like the smart of wintergreen in one’s eye. The ego is apparently not what it is said to be.

  But what kind of heart, in heaven’s name, did I intend painting over this old canvas? Of course, it would be neither the portrait of a child nor of myself. The heart in the cause of tomorrow’s plans, of the program of action—even though one could not explain it with terms in dictionaries: yoyo, travel postcards, jewel boxes, patent medicines—was something I could definitely prearrange, like a map drawn from aerial photographs. How many times I have obliquely hinted at it already. However, now that things had really jelled, perhaps I should not stop at mere hints just because of the pain of putting it into words. I shall try and state it clearly here. I, as a complete stranger, planned to seduce you, to violate you—you who were the symbol of the stranger.

  No, just a minute. I did not mean to write that. I do not intend to be so remorseful as to attempt to buy time by repeating what you already know without my writing it. What I wanted to write about was my strange behavior after buying the yoyo, which I can scarcely describe.

  The innermost third of the toy store was composed of display shelves with toy revolvers. Among them were a number beautifully made, apparently imported, and priced high. Not only were they quite heavy and their muzzles plugged with stoppers, but the trigger and magazine mechanisms were not in the least different from the real thing. I remembered having seen a newspaper article the other day, according to which a model revolver had been rebuilt to shoot actual bullets; I wondered if they had used such ones as these. Can you really imagine me absorbed in toy revolvers? Probably even my closest colleagues at the Institute could not. No, until I myself was actually taking part in the act, it would have been inconceivable even for me.

  The storekeeper wrapped up the yoyo. “You like it, don’t you?” he murmured with a seductive smile. “May I show you anything else you
might care for?” For a moment I began to doubt that I was myself. It might be more precise to say that I was confused at not showing a reaction typical of me. As I became conscious of this fact, my consternation seemed inconsistent, but that was because of the mask. The mask, indifferent to my confusion, nodded back at the storekeeper’s unsuspecting face, and as if confirming my own reality, I began to concentrate on the business of the “anything else.”

  That was a Walther air pistol. It had the power to pierce a half-inch board at three yards. The price at seventy-five dollars was rather high, but—guess what—I talked him down to seventy and bought it. (… “You’re sure it’s all right? It’s illegal, you know. An air pistol isn’t an air rifle, it’s considered a real pistol. The regulations are very strict about illegal possession of pistols. Please be very careful.…”) Nevertheless I bought it.

  It was a strange feeling. My real face tried to murmur quietly in a small voice, slipping deep into inconspicuous belly folds.… This shouldn’t be.… I had wanted to choose the extroverted, aggressive type, a hunter’s face, with the very simple motive that it would suit your seducer.… Let me change the subject here … I only asked the mask to help me recover … I never once asked it to do things its own way.… What in heaven’s name was I to do with this pistol I had acquired?

  But as I deliberately tapped the hard object in my pocket, the mask smiled at my perplexity and even appeared pleased. Of course, the mask itself could not really know the answer to my face’s questions. The future is merely a function of the past. There could be no plan of action tomorrow for a mask that had been alive not yet twenty-four hours. The human social equation, in short, is, like a child, too unrestricted.