The Face of Another (16 page)

As my mind shifted back and forth, I ultimately came to feel unbearable remorse about my superficial self-deception, which contained such an impudent feeling of closeness to the Koreans. Figuratively, my attitude was like that of a white beggar treating a colored emperor as his bosom friend. Even though we were both objects of prejudice there was a difference between their case and mine. They had the right to sneer at people with prejudice; I did not. They had companions who joined with them against prejudice; I did not. If I sincerely wanted to stand on an equal footing with them, I should bravely have to cast aside my mask and lay bare my scars. And who am I to talk about faceless spooks? No, that’s a meaningless hypothesis; I wonder how people incapable of loving themselves are able to find companions.

I could only return dejectedly to my hideaway with the feeling that I was again stricken to the core with a sense of shame, that everything was detestable. The enthusiasm I had felt until then had suddenly cooled. However, once again I committed a surprising blunder, out of sheer carelessness, in front of the apartment house. As I was casually turning into the lane I suddenly happened on the superintendent’s daughter.

The girl, leaning against the wall, was playing awkwardly with a yoyo, an especially large one that shone with a golden color. Startled, I stopped in my tracks. That was quite stupid. The lane was a blind alley intended only for people using the parking lot in back or the emergency staircase. Until I had introduced myself to the superintendent’s family as the “younger brother,” I should not have gone in and out through
the back entrance wearing the mask. Of course, since it was a brand-new apartment house with new tenants coming in almost every day, it would have been all right if I had just gone on by without paying any attention, but … I tried at once to regain my footing, but it was too late. The girl had apparently already become aware of my confusion. How could I muddle through the situation? “I’m in that room up there,” I said, thinking how awkward my explanation was but having no other inspiration. “My brother lives there.… I wonder if he’s in now …? He’s the one with the bandages wrapped all round like this.… Do you know who it is?”

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.

W
HEN
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.

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.

T
HE
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.