The Face of Another (20 page)

Anyway, today the line of demarcation between enemy and fellow man, which in other times was easily and clearly distinguishable, has become blurred. When you get on a streetcar, you have innumerable enemies around you rather than fellow men. Some enemies come into your house disguised as letters, and some, against which there is no defense, infiltrate into your very cells in the guise of radio waves. In such circumstances, enemy encirclement becomes custom to which we are already inured, and “fellow man” is as inconspicuous as a needle in a desert. We have coined concepts of succor, such as “All men are brothers,” but where is such a vast, imaginary repository of “brothers”? Wouldn’t it be more logical
to reconcile oneself to the fact that others are enemies and abandon such highflown, misplaced hopes? Wouldn’t it be safer to hurry up and produce some antibody for loneliness?

And why shouldn’t we men, surfeited with loneliness, become involved in impersonal eroticism even with our wives, not to mention other women? My own case cannot be exceptional. If, as a function of the mask, I acknowledge a considerable abstracting of the human relationship—indeed, I am probably addicted to empty fancies precisely because of this abstracting—I, who am trying to find some solution, had best shelve my own problems and shut up. Yes, no matter how clever I am, the very subject of my plans is perhaps merely erotic fancy
.

If that is so, the plans for the mask were not my own special desire alone, but merely the expression of a contemporary, detached man’s common craving. Even though it seemed at first blush that I had again lost to the mask, in reality I had not at all
.

Just a minute! The plans for the mask were not the only thing. The fate of having lost my face and of being obliged to depend on a mask was in itself not exceptional, but was rather a destiny I shared with contemporary man, wasn’t it? A trivial discovery indeed. For my despair lay in my fate, rather than in the loss of my face; it lay in the fact that I did not have the slightest thing in common with other men. I envied even a cancer victim, because he shares something with other men. If this turned out to be untrue, the hole into which I had fallen was not an abandoned well provided with an emergency escape; it was a penitentiary cell, recognized by everyone but me. My uncertainty exerted a tremendous influence on my despair. Even you could probably understand what I wanted to say. Youths whose voices are beginning to change and girls who are beginning to menstruate know that the temptations of masturbation create a lonely despair, for
they are convinced that this temptation is their unique sickness. Or their humiliating feeling of desperation at a first little theft (marbles or bits of erasers or pencil leads), which like measles every one of us has experienced once, seems a crime of which they and they alone should be ashamed. If such stupidity extends beyond a given period of time it ultimately produces toxic symptoms, and these people may become either actual sexual criminals or inveterate thieves. No matter how they may try to universalize their feeling of guilt to avoid this trap, it will probably be to no avail. Rather, escaping from loneliness by realizing that everyone is equally guilty is by far the most effective way of settling things
.

Perhaps because of this realization, when I later went out to drink saké, to which I was unaccustomed, I had such a feeling of closeness to others that I wanted to embrace all the strangers I saw. (I will write about this episode immediately following this passage and have decided to avoid duplication here.) Was this not because I had dimly felt among them the intimacy of kindred souls who had also lost their faces? Of course, it was not that I felt close to fellow men, but that I recognized the very lonely, abstract relationship in which everyone is an enemy. I could hardly imagine an occasion where we would frolic around together like puppies on some vague electric blanket of good intentions, like the cast of characters in a novel
.

But as for me, it was a big discovery just knowing that on the other side of these concrete walls, people with the same destiny as I were prisoners. When I strained my ears, a groaning from the next cell came palpably to me. As time passed, innumerable sighs, murmurings, and sobbing cries swirled up like cumulus clouds, filling the whole jail with the sound of cursing
.

—I’m not the only one
 … 
I’m not the only one
 … 
I’m not the only one
.…

Even in the daytime, if luck is with them, they are allotted time for exercise and bathing, and it may be that they will find the opportunity of secretly sharing their fate by looks, and gestures, and whisperings
.

—I’m not the only one
 … 
I’m not the only one
 … 
I’m not the only one
.…

When you take all these voices together, the dimensions of the jail are no trifling matter. But that is to be expected. The crimes with which they are charged—the crime of having lost one’s face, the crime of shutting off the roadway to others, the crime of having lost understanding of others’ agonies and joys, the crime of having lost the fear and joy of discovering unknown things in others, the crime of having forgotten one’s duty to create for others, the crime of having lost a music heard together—these are crimes which express contemporary human relations, and thus the whole world assumes the form of a single penal colony. Even so, the anguish at my being a prisoner remains unchanged. Moreover, in contrast to their having lost only their spiritual face, I have undergone a physical loss, and so there is naturally a difference in the degree of our solitude. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling hope. It is not the same as being buried alive, and surely there is cause for hope. Isn’t it true that the liabilities of an incomplete person—not being able, without the mask, to sing, to exchange blows with an enemy, to be a lecher, to dream—have become a common subject between me and others, and I alone am not guilty? Perhaps so. Perhaps so indeed
.

Now, I wonder what you think of these points. If there is nothing wrong with my reasoning, even you are no exception, and I presume you cannot but agree, but—of course, you must agree—if you do not, there is no reason for you to force me into a corner like some wounded monkey by brushing my hand off your skirt, nor to ignore the trap of the mask, nor to drive me into a state where I could not help but write these
notes. The fact has been made clear that your face—the mobile, harmonious type—was a mask too. In short, we are two spots of the same ink. It was not solely my responsibility. Indeed, simply writing these notes has been fruitful. It was impossible to be left without any communication at all. You will surely agree with this point
.

I am saying that you must not make fun of my writing. For the act of writing is not simply replacing facts with arrangements of letters; it is a kind of venturesome trip. I am not like a postman on a preordained route. There is danger, and discovery, and satisfaction. I was beginning to feel there was some purpose to the writing itself, so much so that I thought I should like to go on with these notebooks for ever and ever. But I was able to curb the inclination. I should be able to avoid the ridiculous posture of an abominable monster offering gifts to an unattainable maiden. My three-day schedule stretched into four and then into five days. If I can get you to read these notes, the work of restoring the roadway will surely become ours together. Was this the song of a man being led off to prison, singing to bolster his courage? No, I was averse to over-optimism, and I had no intention of flattering myself. I realized that we were fellow casualties and anticipated an attitude of mutual sympathy. Well, let’s try bravely putting out the light. When the lights go out, that’s the end of the masquerade ball. In the dark, with neither face nor mask, I should like us to try to reestablish relations with each other. I should like to believe the new melody that comes to me from the darkness
.

W
HEN
I got off the streetcar, I at once dashed into a beer parlor. I was strangely grateful for the texture of the glasses, frosted with drops of water. Perhaps it was because the breathing of the skin on my face was hindered by the mask, but the mucous membranes in my throat had dried up right to the back of my nose. I downed a pint of beer in one gulp, as if I were a suction pump.

I had drunk no alcohol for some time, and the effect was more rapid than usual.

Of course, no color appeared on the mask. Instead the scar tissues began to feel creepy, almost to writhe. Not caring, I tossed off two, then three, glasses, as if in a race, and at length the writhing began to subside. Carried away, I followed up the beer with a bottle of saké.

In the meantime, the irritation I had been feeling suddenly vanished, and I became strangely arrogant, defiant. Apparently even the mask was beginning to feel tipsy.—Faces, faces, faces, faces.… I rubbed my eyes, wet with tears in place of sweat, and scowled around through the noise and cigarette smoke at the innumerable faces that packed the place.—So what! Just speak up if you’ve got any complaint! You can’t?—I could see no reason why they should. As I drank my saké, my drunken babbling was proof enough of my respect and esteem for the mask. I zestfully abused my superiors and boasted what a big shot a friend of a friend of a friend was; in short, it was as if I had become someone other than my real face. Even
so, this was a pretty sloppy way of getting drunk. The real face definitely could not get drunk the way the mask did. The best the real face could do was to put on a drunken face. Even dead drunk, it would be only a fraction of the mask, never like the mask itself. If I wished to wipe away name, occupation, family, even official registration, I had merely to resort to a lethal dose of poison.… But the mask was different.… It was prodigious the way it got drunk.… It could become a completely different person even without alcohol.… Like me, as a matter of fact …! Me …? No, this is the mask.… Again the mask had become presumptuous, forgetting all about our truce.… But I was no less tipsy than it.… Could I be responsible for tomorrow’s plans in such a state …? These questions were not pressing, and without realizing it, I went along with the mask’s demand for autonomy.

The mask was growing thicker and thicker. It had grown at last into a concrete fortress that enveloped me; and I crept out into the night streets wrapped in concrete armor, feeling like a member of a heavily equipped hunting party. Through the peepholes, the streets looked like the haunts of deformed stray cats. There they loitered, their noses suspiciously in the air, looking greedy, seeking their own tattered tails and ears. I hid beneath my mask, which had neither name nor status nor age, elated at the security guaranteed me alone. If their freedom were a freedom of frosted glass, then mine was the freedom of flawlessly transparent glass. In an instant, my craving had reached the boiling point, and very soon I should not be able to help having a try at making this freedom materialize. Yes, what we call the goal of life is doubtless the consumption of freedom. People often treat the preservation of freedom as if it were the goal of human existence; but isn’t this merely an illusion, after all, that stems from a chronic lack of freedom? Since people make goals out of such things, they fall into the dilemma of talking beyond the confines of
this universe; they become misers, or failing that, religious fanatics—one or the other, at least. Yet even the plans for tomorrow could not themselves be a goal. Since by seducing you I shall try to enlarge the validity of my passport, the plans must rather be thought of as a kind of means to an end. With no regret, I shall use the mask now to its fullest capacity.

E
XCURSUS:
Of course, this was merely alcoholic sophism. The instant I revealed my love to you, I did not intend to beg you to accept such irrefutable logic for impudently justifying the illicit intercourse, nor did I myself intend to. Precisely because I did not, I was preparing my farewell address to the mask. But what worried me slightly was that I could not help but want to use exactly the same logic even in a sober state
.

“The goal does not lie in the results of research, the very process of research is itself the goal.” Yes
 … 
words that any researcher would utter as a matter of course. While at first blush they seemed unrelated to my case, I could not help but feel that I was after all saying the same thing as they. The process of research, in short, was merely the expenditure of freedom upon matter. The results of research, on the contrary, by being calculated in terms of value, encourage the preservation of freedom. The point of the words was to warn against the tendency to overemphasize only results and to confuse means and ends. I thought this was a much more enlightened logic, but on reflection what I had put forth was quite like the alcoholic babblings of the mask. I was not at all satisfied with the explanation. Was it not simply that, although I had intended to control the mask, I had actually found it to be unmanageable? Or was freedom like some powerful medicine which, though beneficial in small quantities, produces ill effects as soon as one exceeds the given dosage? I should like to hear what you think. Surely, if I must follow the mask’s dictates, then not only the hypothesis of the mask as a prison, which I went to some pains to describe, but the whole body
of these notes could be the product of misunderstanding. I could by no means believe that you would support such arguments to justify illicit relations
.