The Face of Another (14 page)

Keen shafts of sunlight, waving like the antennae of an insect, spread to every crevice of the mask. The pores, the sweat glands, the partial degeneration of some tissues, even the minute capillaries stood out distinctly. I could not discover a single defect. What then was the cause of this feeling that something was wrong? I wondered. Perhaps it was the fixity, the lack of expression? It had the weirdness of the face of a corpse whose make-up has been applied by the undertaker. Should I try moving some muscle as an experiment? Since I had not completed the preparation of the glue with which to stick the mask to my face—I intended to use something like adhesive plaster, but less sticky—I could not possibly make the mask move with the muscles, but the area around the nose and the mouth which were comparatively well set might possibly work.

First I tried the ends of the lips, drawing them slightly to the right and left. The result was very good. The extreme care I had taken from the standpoint of anatomy, fitting the
directional fibers onto each other, had apparently not been in vain. Encouraged, I tried to smile. However, the mask simply would not smile. It merely contorted limply. It was so strange a distortion that I thought the mirror was bent. When it smiled it was full of the feeling of death, even more so than when it was immobile. I felt drained, as if the supports of my internal organs had been severed and my whole diaphragm collapsed.

But I don’t want you to misunderstand. For this is no over-dramatic plot to trade on my suffering. This was the mask I had chosen, for better or worse. It was the face I had come to after many months of experimentation. If I were dissatisfied with it, I could remake it to my own liking. But if it were not a question of the workmanship, what in heaven’s name should I do then? Henceforth, would I be able to accept the mask with good grace, frankly acknowledging it as my own face? Thus I felt that this debilitating sense of collapse, rather than the disorientation brought on by finding oneself with a new face, was the depression accompanying extinction, as if I were witnessing my own shadow fading away under a magic cloak. (Under such circumstances I wondered whether I should be able to carry out my plans for the future.)

Of course, expression comes like the annual growth rings in a tree trunk, and perhaps it would be quite impossible to laugh with no preparation at all. Depending on the life one has led, a tendency to repeat certain expressions causes them to become fixed by sags and wrinkles. A smiling expression becomes naturally engraved in a face that is often smiling. Chronic anger engraves itself on the face, too. But on my mask, which was like the face of a new-born infant, there was not the crease of a single growth-ring as yet. Even with a smile on it, the face of a forty-year-old child would naturally be somewhat monstrous. Indeed, it would have to be. Actually the work of making wrinkles suitable for my face was included
in my first plans after I had gone to my hideaway. If only I could succeed, this mask would become natural and easily managed. This was something I had anticipated; there was absolutely no need of losing my head now. The result was that, far from heeding my throbbing shame, by cleverly sidestepping the real problem I inevitably involved myself deeper and deeper.

W
ELL
, it would seem I have come around to the point of my hideaway in the S— Apartments, where I began. But when did I get off the subject? Oh, yes, it must be just about the time when, alone with myself in hy hideaway, I had begun to undo my bandage. Well, I shall try to go on from there without wasting any more time.

The first task, needless to say, was providing the mask with wrinkles. No special technique was necessary, but it was terribly time-consuming work for which I could not have too much determination, perseverance, and attentiveness.

First, I applied glue to my whole face. I put the mask on, starting from the nose. Then I fixed the nostril tubes in place and inserted the part that went over the lips into the gums. Next, I tapped the ridge of the nose, the cheeks, and the chin, taking great care to make a perfect fit with no sags, and pressed the whole surface down. I waited for it to set, and then, warming it with an infra-red lamp maintained at the
prescribed degree of heat, I repeated certain specific expressions. The material decreased sharply in flexibility when the prescribed degree of heat was exceeded, and wrinkles fitting the expressions naturally appeared along the Langer lines, that is, following the direction of the fibers I had previously installed. Concerning the content and distribution of the expressions, I drew up the following tentative list as ratios of 100 percent.

It cannot be considered satisfactory to analyze such a complicated and delicate thing as expression into these few components. However, by combining just this many elements on my palette, I should be able to get almost any shade. The percentages, needless to say, indicate the frequency of occurrence of each item. In brief, I postulated a type of man who expressed his emotions in approximately such ratios. I should be hard pressed for a ready answer if I were asked what the standard of judgment was. I weighed these expressions one by one on the scales of my intuition, placing myself in the position of a seducer and imagining the scene when I would confront you who were the symbol of “the others.”

Like some fool, I repeated getting angry, crying, and laughing
until morning. As a result, it was already drawing toward evening when I awoke the next day. A light like red glass came through the cracks in the shutters, and apparently the rain that had been going on for some time had stopped. However, my disposition had not cleared equally well, and a fatigue like old tea grounds clung to me. The area around my temples throbbed feverishly, but that was not unexpected. I had been moving my facial muscles for over ten hours.

But it was not the movement alone: I had been straining all my nerves, really laughing when I laughed, really angered when I expressed anger.

Anyway, in that time even the most trivial expression became deeply etched on the surface of my face as an unalterable coat of arms. For example, if I had repeatedly made artificial smiles, then my mask would be forever branded with artificial smiles. So I was obliged to be prudent of even casual imprints when I considered that they would be formally recorded as a part of my life.

I prepared a hot towel and massaged my face. The steam penetrated my skin. As I had stimulated the sweat glands with the infra-red lamp and blocked the openings with adhesive material, the skin was naturally inflamed. It would surely have a bad effect on the keloid scar too. But the condition could not get any worse than it was, and at this point it served no purpose to be concerned about it. It makes no difference to a dead man whether he is buried or cremated.

For three more days I repeated the process in the same order. Since I had corrected what needed correcting and the mask had arrived at a stable state, on the third day I decided to try eating my supper while wearing it. I should have to try it sometime, of course; why put off what could be done now? And I would be prepared when the situation demanded it. After the adhesive had set sufficiently, I tousled my hair to conceal the hairline, put on some amber sunglasses so that
the line around my eyes was not obvious, and completed my preparations just as if I were going out.

Avoiding looking into the nearby mirror, I first laid out on the table the dishes of food left over from the evening before and, imagining that I was dining in a restaurant with a lot of people, I slowly raised my face and looked in the mirror.

Of course, my companion raised his face too and looked back. Then adjusting the movements of his features with mine, he began to chew his bread. When I ate my soup, he ate his. Our breathing, exactly coordinated, was most natural. The dullness of the nerves around my lips slightly reduced my sense of taste and made chewing awkward; but when I got accustomed to it, I would certainly be able to forget the feeling of the lips as easily as of a false tooth. Yet drops of saliva and soup tended to escape from the corners of my lips, and I realized I needed to pay constant attention.

Suddenly my companion arose and came to look at me with an expression of suspicion. At that instant I was enveloped by a strange feeling of harmony, sharp yet rapturous, shocking yet smooth, as if too many sleeping pills were all at once beginning to take effect. Perhaps cracks were opening in this husk of mine. For some time we gazed at each other, but my companion laughed first. Drawn in, I too chuckled, and then with no resistance I slipped into his face. At once we fused, and I became him. I wasn’t particularly envious of his face, but I did not find it unpleasant; I had apparently begun to feel and to think with it. Everything was going perfectly, so that even I who knew the trick scarcely suspected it.

Surely the glove fitted too well. I wondered if, swallowing the thing whole as I did, some reaction wouldn’t occur later. I stepped back five or six steps and shut my eyes, then judging the moment when I looked most cantankerous, I snapped them open. But my face was laughing as before, vibrating like a tuning fork. There seemed to be no mistake. Moreover,
I appeared to have grown, at a conservative estimate, five years younger.

Yet why had I been so worried until yesterday? I had rationalized that one need have no scruples about the skin of the face, because it is unrelated to a man’s personality; but this was merely prevarication, bound after all by prejudice. Compared to scar webs or bandages, this plastic mask was a far more living face. The former were
trompe l’œil
doors painted on a wall, but the mask was like a door ajar, through which the fragrance of sunlight is wafted in.

Someone’s footsteps, which apparently had been audible for quite some time, gradually grew louder as they approached. They came steadily closer; they were my pulse. The open door was urging me on.

Well, let’s go out! Let’s go into a new world, someone else’s world, through someone else’s face.

M
Y
heart was throbbing. It was palpitating with the anxiety and anticipation of a child who for the first time is permitted to ride on a train alone. Thanks to the mask, everything would change completely. It was not only me; the world itself would appear in completely new garb. I was exhilarated by the bubble of my anticipation, and the shame that had so distressed me seemed to have vanished.

E
XCURSUS:
I expect I should confess: I had taken quite
a few sleeping pills that day. No, not only that day. I had begun to do so regularly for some time previously. Yet it was not in order to deaden my anxiety, as one might imagine. I was trying to maintain a more rational state and offset my futile irritation. As I have often repeated, my mask was more than anything else a challenge to the prejudice surrounding the face. I must be continually alert to the mask, as one is to handling complicated machinery
.

And one more thing: when I took certain types of sleeping pills and tranquilizers simultaneously in the right amounts, for several seconds after the effect of the medicine was apparent I was strangely possessed by a pure, clear stillness, as if I were peering into myself with a telescopic lens. Of course, as I had no assurance that it was not some ecstatic narcosis, I omitted writing about it; but now I have come to feel that a deeper meaning than I had imagined was concealed in the experience of those several seconds. Something, for example, that would bring me closer to the essence of human relations that are composed of the transitory elements we call the face
.