The Face of Another (28 page)

After I had arrived in the vicinity of my hideaway, I telephoned you, not being able to wait any longer.

“Has … ‘he’… come back?”

“Yes, but he said something about going right out to work again.”

“I’m glad you answered the telephone. If he had answered I should have hung up at once.”

I spoke casually, trying to make my recklessness plausible, but after saying nothing for a while, you said in a thin voice: “I feel sorry for him.”

These words pierced me, spreading rapidly throughout my body like pure alcohol. Perhaps these were your first feelings about the real me. But I could not think about such things now. If I could not get my hands on something quickly—anything, a log, a drum—I was apparently going to drown. Surely, if “he” really existed, this rendezvous would be a bit too reckless. He might come back at any time, for any reason. Even if he did not return, it was very possible he might telephone. It would be all right during the day, but what justification could you give for leaving the house at such an hour as this? I thought that you would naturally be reluctant; however, you consented with no hesitation at all. You too, struggling no less than I, were thrashing about in the waves searching for something to cling to. After all you were a shameless person too. You were prudish, hypocritical, shameless, impulsive, wanton, and lascivious, I thought, grinding my teeth under my bandages. I smiled a tight, cynical smile. Finally a shudder stopped the gnashing and froze the smile on my face.

What kind of a person were you, for God’s sake?

What kind of a person were you, you who had gone through
the barrier of taboos unopposed and unabashed, who had seduced the seducer, plunged him into self-contempt, you who had never been violated? Yes, you had not once tried to ask the given name, family name, or occupation of the mask. As if you had seen through to the real person behind it. The freedom of the mask and its alibi completely faded away befor this behavior of yours. If there is a God, may he appoint you a hunter of masks. I would most certainly be hunted down by you.

A
VOICE
called to me from the bottom of the emergency stairway. It was the superintendent’s daughter. She was demanding the yoyo. For an instant, I was going to answer, and then, seized with panic, I nearly ran away. It was not I who had made the agreement with the girl but the mask. At length I got control of myself and in my confusion realized that what I could do was pretend not to understand. I could only assume that she had mistaken me for someone else.

But the girl did not appear to notice my theatricals and simply repeated her demands for the yoyo. Or was she perhaps thinking that since the “mask” and the “bandage” were brothers, an agreement made with one would automatically include the other? No, such wishful thinking was successfully demolished by the girl’s next words.

“Don’t worry.… We’re playing secrets.”

Indeed, had she seen through me from the beginning? Yet how could I have been seen through? Where had I made my mistake? Could she have peeped in through a crack in the door as I was putting on my mask?

But the girl only shook her head right and left, repeating that she did not understand why I did not understand. Was my mask something that could not deceive the eyes of a retarded girl? No, I suppose that she had been able to see through me precisely because she was retarded. Just as my mask would not fool a dog. An uninhibited intuition is often far more keen than the analytical eyes of an adult. There could not be such apparent deficiencies in a mask that had successfully deceived you who were closest to me.

No, the significance of this experience was not a simple thing, like seeking an alibi. Suddenly I could not control the shiver that rose gradually in me at the profound realization of this “uninhibited intuition.” Such intuition suggested that my whole year’s experience could be completely destroyed with a single blow. Wasn’t it a sign that the girl had seen directly through to my real self without being taken in by the outward appearance of the mask or bandage? Such eyes actually existed. What I was doing must surely be funny to a girl like this.

Suddenly, the passions of the mask, my hatred for the scars, began to seem unbearably hollow, and the triangle with its roaring spin began gradually to lose momentum, like a carrousel whose motor has been switched off.

While the girl waited by the door, I got the yoyo. “It’s a game of secrets,” the girl whispered softly once more. She ran down the stairs, wrapping the string around her finger, childlike, unable to hide the smile that appeared in the corners of her lips. For no reason, tears welled up in my eyes. I washed my face, removed the ointment, and put on the mask after spreading it with adhesive material; but quite some space
had already come between it and my face. Never mind. I was quietly sad, like the surface of a tranquil lake under a cloud-filled sky, but I said again and again to myself that it would be well if I believed the child’s eyes with complete confidence. Wouldn’t anybody first have to return to this kind of intuition if he sincerely wanted to face others?

A
ND
that night when I came home from my second meeting with you, I decided to begin writing these notes.

Actually, had I waited a little longer, I should have torn the mask from my face in the middle of the act. I could not stand seeing you unsuspectingly seduced by a mask that the superintendent’s daughter had seen through so simply. Moreover, I too was tired. The mask was no longer a means by which to get you back, but only a hidden camera through which to watch your betrayal of me. I had made the mask for the purpose of recovering myself. But it had willfully escaped from me and, taking great pleasure in its evasion, had become defiant; the next time I would bar its way. Moreover, among you and the mask and me, you alone had escaped intact. What would happen if I were to let such a situation go on? From now on, “I” would try to kill the mask at every opportunity, and the mask, being the mask, by every means would forever
try to contain my revenge. It would strike back, for example, with a plan to kill you.

When all was said and done, if I did not wish to make matters worse, there was nothing to do but liquidate this three-cornered relationship by a three-party agreement, which included you with us. Then I began writing these notes—at first, the mask had a terrible contempt for my determination, but since nothing resulted, it ridiculed me in silence—and close to two months have gone by since then. In the meantime we have met over ten times, and each time I was desperate when I thought of our approaching separation. The expression is not gratuitous; for me it really was a harrowing experience. How many times I lost my confidence and gave up these notes. I prayed for the fairy-tale miracle of awakening one morning to find the mask stuck firmly on my face, to discover it had become my real face. I even tried going to bed with it on. But the miracle, of course, did not happen.

At such times, what cheered me most was to watch the girl quietly playing with her yoyo in the shadow of the emergency stairs, unseen by anyone but me. She was burdened with a great misfortune that she could not perceive as misfortune. She did not know how much luckier she was than the rest of mankind aware of unhappiness. Perhaps this attitude of hers, her having no fear of losing, was instinctive. I wish that I, like the girl, could bear losing.

I happened on a curious photograph of a mask in the morning paper. It was a mask used by a primitive people. Over the whole surface, traces of impressed rope formed a geometric pattern, and a centipede-like nose began in the middle of the face and rose above the head, while from the jaw were suspended a number of oddly shaped, meaningless objects. The image was not clear, but I stared at it in fascination for a long time. The face of a tattooed man imposed itself over the picture, and then the veiled heads of Arabian girls; I was reminded
of the story I had once heard of the women in
The Tale of Genji
who thought that revealing the face was the same as exposing the privates. I did not hear it from just anybody, I heard it from you. The mask had got the story from you at one or another of our meetings. What was your purpose, for heaven’s sake, in telling such a tale? They thought their hair was the only thing to show men, and they covered their faces with their sleeves in death. I mused about those women who hid with their faces, trying to penetrate your design, and this faceless period of history was unexpectedly brought home to me, unrolled like a picture scroll. In ancient times the face was not something one exposed to light; by bringing the face into full daylight, civilization was able to fix the core of man in it. Suppose the face did not simply exist but was made. I had planned to make a mask, but actually I had not made a mask at all. The mask had become my real face, and thought itself in fact real. No, that’s enough … such things are of little consequence at this point. The mask too apparently intended to come to terms, and so shall I get on with the conclusion? But later, if I could, I should like to hear your confession too.… I don’t know where we go from here, but there appears to be time left to talk things over together.

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.…

… 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.