The Face of Another (11 page)

Surely, any number of explanations were possible—starting with extremely feasible ones like wanting a stand-in for a murderer, blackmailer or swindler to fanciful cases like wanting to buy and sell actual faces. Such a request would never arouse innocent speculation. If he had any presence of mind, he would weigh the very real item of the hundred dollars. You can’t get much for a hundred dollars. Wouldn’t it be common sense to ask at once what I meant, without brooding over it? Overcome by my bandage, he had assumed this stiff attitude as if tormented by irrational arguments in a dream. I had been unerring about the restaurant. And what pleased me
more than anything else was that he was concerned about the bandage itself rather than about what lay underneath, as if stopped by the barbed-wire entanglement surrounding a camp.

As soon as I realized this, an amazing transformation took place within me, as if some master sleight-of-hand artist had waved his handkerchief. I was changed into a merciless assailant, aiming my polished, shining fangs straight at my opponent’s neck, like a bat that suddenly darts from an invisible hole.

“Well, even though I did say the face, just a little bit of the skin will do. I’m thinking of using it in place of the bandages.…”

The man’s expression grew darker and darker, and he puffed restlessly on his cigarette; he had apparently quite forgotten the original business. I had at first intended to tell him, and only him, something of the real facts in order to allay his opposition as much as possible, but there was apparently no longer any need to. Under my bandage I involuntarily smiled a secret, bitter smile. Once in a while it’s good to give vent to one’s anger.

“No. You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to peel your skin off. I want just a little skin surface … some wrinkles, or sweat glands, or pores, or.… In short all I want is a sample of skin.”

“Ah … a sample …?”

The man’s tenseness relaxed and he sighed with relief. Working his Adam’s apple up and down, he nodded his head in a number of short jerks; but he did not yet seem to have completely dismissed his doubts. I did not have to ask what was bothering him. He was probably worried about what in heaven’s name I was up to, putting on a face exactly the same as his. Yet I didn’t try to dispel his suspicions at once. While I was eating my food, which had at last been brought, I deliberately let him stew in uncertainty, adding now and
then an ill-tempered thrust. I didn’t bear him any personal grudge. I was doubtless only trying to take my revenge against the convention of faces.

Surely, if I were not afflicted with these keloid scars there would be some good in these bandages. For example, I thought that the basic significance of the face could actually be well summed up in the effect of the bandages, that is, the disguising effect. A disguise is a spiteful game where the convention of the face is turned upside down; I suppose one might well think of it as a kind of art of concealment, by which one ultimately suppresses the heart by wiping out the face. In the case of executioners, strolling flute players, religious judges, primitive medicine men, priests of secret societies, and sneak thieves, a disguising mask was indispensable. It had not only the negative aim of concealing the man’s face, but also the positive objective of cutting off the connection between face and heart by concealing the expression, thus liberating him from ordinary, earthly ties. Take a more common example: disguise is part of the psychology of the dandy, who wants to wear his sunglasses even though there is no glare. Being released from any mental restraint, he can be utterly free and accordingly infinitely cruel.

However, this is not the first time I have thought about the disguising effect of my bandage. Yes—the first time was before the incident of the Klee picture—I recall being pretty self-complacent, comparing myself with a transparent man, for I alone could see and yet not be seen by others. Then there was also the time I went to visit K of the artificial organs. K stressed the anesthetic nature of disguise and earnestly advised me that I would ultimately be poisoned by my bandages; and now was the third time. Over half a year had gone by. Could it be that I was still plodding around the same circle? No, there seemed to be a slight difference among them. For indeed I
was
now actually experiencing the hidden pleasure
of the disguised spy—the first time had been mere bluff, and the second time I had just been advised by someone else. My thinking seemed to move in a spiral. Of course, I was not without apprehension as to whether the direction of the movement was following a rising curve, or whether it had begun to fall.

Therefore I lured the man out of the department store, maintaining an aggressive attitude all the while; and taking a room in a nearby hotel, I succeeded two hours later in obtaining an impression of the skin of his face by the method I had used in making the mold of the scar webs, but.… The man, having finished the job, thrust the hundred-dollar bill into his pocket. He left as though furtively escaping, and as I saw him off I was suddenly overcome with an unbearable feeling of loneliness, as if all my strength had been drained from me. If the convention of the face were empty, perhaps a disguise too was just as empty.

E
XCURSUS
:
No, such thinking was wrong. Perhaps I felt this way because I imagined the change in my thinking that would come with the completion of the mask would be something like the reaction to wearing a disguise. It was thus no doubt natural for me to be uneasy, since I had deviated from my aim to restore the roadway between myself and others. But my original analogy had been unreasonably fanciful. Since the mask was not my real face, treating it as a disguise was like talking black into white. If the mask was an enlargement of the roadway, then a disguise would be a blocking of it, and the two conflicted with each other. If this were not true, I who was so avidly reaching out for the mask, so eagerly trying to escape from the disguise of my bandages, was a stupid clown
.

Finally, I shall put down one more thing that occurs to me now: isn’t the mask something required mainly by the victim and the disguise, on the contrary, by the assailant?

THE WHITE
       NOTEBOOK

I
HAVE
at length changed to a new notebook, but my state has not altered so abruptly. Actually, several weeks passed without incident before I could go on to a new page, and I remained unable to move ahead. There followed several uneventful weeks, quite suited to my anonymous face, which had neither eyes, nose, or mouth. Two things did happen, though: I sold a patent to raise funds, and I received some unexpected criticism from the younger men in the Institute about this year’s budget. The patent was still far from being of practical use and was extremely specialized; it was doubtless unnecessary to consider it too seriously. However, the budget question—even though it had no direct relationship with the plans for my mask—was an important one, and I had to give it some thought. When my colleagues spoke about it, they apparently seemed to think of it as a political move on my part. Some time ago I had agreed to the formation of a special section incorporating the hopes of the Young Members Group, but when it came down to the essential budgeting, I simply went back on my word. As they said, it was nothing so complicated as intrigue, or jealousy, or the stifling of ambitions. It was nothing but a lapse of memory. I thought I must accept meekly the criticism that I was deficient in zeal for my work. I was scarcely aware of it before, but when they spoke up I did indeed realize that for some time my enthusiasm for my work had been ebbing. I did not want to recognize the fact, but I wondered if perhaps it was
the influence of the scars. Of course, aside from the more or less underhandedness involved, to tell the truth I actually felt a sort of exhilaration at their protests. Instead of constrained smiles directed at a cripple, I was now being treated on an equal footing.

Now, what in heaven’s name was to become of the discovery made at the Noh mask exhibition when I thought I had at last resolved the central problem of the choice of a face?

How painful it is to write about it. The expression is not some hidden door, unlikely to be seen; it is like a front door, constructed and decorated to be the first thing to greet the visitor’s eyes. Or like a letter, it apparently cannot exist without an addressee in mind; it is not some advertising handbill to be passed out indiscriminately. Recognizing the validity of this comparison, I at once decided to entrust the right of choice to you, and although I felt I had shifted a heavy burden of responsibility from my own shoulders, the problem was not so easily resolved.

That evening … a dirty fog, welling up like muddy water, shut out the sky about an hour earlier than usual … an evening the color of earthenware where the crude light of the street lamps committed its showy act of violence, spurring the advance of time.… As I walked along in the crowd, which became more dense near the station, I again attempted to play the role of assailant, trying to dispel the unbearable feeling of loneliness which had beset me from the moment of separating from the man. But this failed me, for I had no one to confront as in the department-store restaurant. Once the crowd had gathered—it was a conscience-stricken, end-of-Sunday throng—its faces formed a chain, like amoebae extending their pseudopodia toward each other; there was no place at all for me to wedge in. Still, I was not so irritated as before. I was relaxed enough to take in the brilliance of
the tangled mass of neon signs which breathed and streamed through the fog. Perhaps because I now had my plan. The potassium alginate mold of the face I had finally purchased weighed heavily in the briefcase at my side—not to be outdone, my face bandages, equally cumbersome with the moisture they had absorbed from the fog, counterpointed the weight of the briefcase—but anyway I had my plan to try. And I reflected that this expectant waiting for the place to materialize had bolstered me up considerably.

Yes, that evening, my heart was open to you, quite as if the front of it had been sliced away. It was not only the passive expectation of shifting the burden of choice onto your shoulders, nor, of course, was it only the utilitarian motivation of entering the final stage when I would actually produce the mask. How shall I put it … I was continually shortening the distance between us—softly, like running barefoot over grass.

It was perhaps relief and confidence stemming from the opportunity to tempt you into being my accomplice, however indirectly, in the lonely work of producing the mask. For me, whatever you may say, you are the most important “other person.” No, I do not mean it in a negative sense. I mean that the one who must first restore the roadway, the one whose name I had to write on the first letter, was first on my list of “others.” (Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world.)

H
OWEVER
, as soon as I confronted you, my hopes changed into a heap of shapeless rags, like seaweed pulled out of the water. No, don’t misunderstand. I do not mean to find fault with your manner when you greeted me. Far from that, you always sympathized with me—too generously, as far as that goes. The one exception is when you refused me that time I ran my hand under your skirt. I, and only I, am to blame for that incident. For it is not true that one has the right to be loved by the person one loves, as the poets say.