The Face of Another (6 page)

“I suppose you’re surprised,” I said in a neutral voice. “I was covered with liquid air. I’m apparently predisposed to keloids. Hmm … rather bad … the whole face is a regular web of scar tissue. You probably don’t exactly fancy the bandage, but it’s still better than letting people see what’s underneath.”

With a perplexed expression, my companion muttered something, but I could hardly catch what he said. The reunion—how stridently had he insisted just thirty minutes ago that as soon as we met we should go where we could get something to drink—was sticking in my throat like a fishbone. But the point was not to say disagreeable things, so I immediately changed the subject and broached the business at hand. Needless to say, he lost no time in grabbing at this life preserver.

His explanation boiled down to this. A faithful reproduction of an original biological form is not possible by modeling upon the bone, no matter how experienced the modeler may be; what can be correctly judged from the anatomical structure of the bones is at best merely the placing of the tendons. Thus, for example, if you tried to reconstruct a whale, which has especially developed subcutaneous tissue and fatty layers, on the basis of the skeleton alone, you would get a monster not in the slightest like a whale—something between a dog and a seal.

“Well. I suppose one’s right in assuming that there would be considerable error possible in modeling the face too, wouldn’t there?”

“If the trick were possible, there wouldn’t be such things as unidentifiable skeletons. You don’t have to go so far as a whale; a human face is a delicate thing, isn’t it? It’s not easily imitated even by montage photography. Yet, if it were absolutely impossible to get away from the bony structure, plastic surgery couldn’t exist to start with.”

Whereupon, he took a quick glance at my bandages, mumbled embarrassedly, and then fell silent. I didn’t have to ask what worried him. No, let him think what he wanted. What was disagreeable was his quite inexcusable blushing without making any attempt to hide his discomfort.

E
XCURSUS:
I wonder what this shyness of mine is, fundamentally. Perhaps, at this point, I should bring up the incident of the wig burning once again. The present situation is just the opposite; by having
my
wig discovered I have discountenanced my companion, which worries me even more. Is that the hidden key to solve the riddle of my face?

Yet he was a bungling fellow. Although I tried my best to muddle through with inoffensive, ordinary conversation, he couldn’t help stumbling and blushing. I had extracted from him most of what was directly pertinent to my plans; I should
have left him then with the uncomfortable memory of our meeting. Those things which evoked shame in me could easily become the source of gossip. But I was tempted to let rumors fly, like keyhole whisperings. His feeling of embarrassment was beginning to infect me too. I started in on justifications that were better left unsaid.

“I can just about imagine what you’re thinking. You get ideas when you relate my questions to this bandage, don’t you? But that would be a big mistake. It’s too late for me at my age to begin worrying over an injured face.”

“You’re the one who’s mistaken. What in heaven’s name am I supposed to imagine?”

“If I’m wrong, let it go. But even you unconsciously judge people by their faces, don’t you? I think it’s rather natural for you to be concerned about me. But if you really think about it, does an identity card fully identify the man it represents? My experience has made me do a lot of thinking. Don’t we actually cling too much to our identity cards? Because of them we produce freaks that devote themselves to forgery and alteration.”

“I agree … completely … alteration is the right word … quite … they say that women who wear heavy make-up are frequently hysterical, but.…”

“Incidentally, what would it be like if a man’s face were as expressionless as an egg, with no eyes, or nose, or mouth?”

“Hmm. You couldn’t distinguish among people, I suppose.”

“Between thieves and policemen … assailants and victims.…”

“And
my
wife and my neighbor’s wife.…”—as if wanting help. He put a match to his cigarette and gave a short, soft laugh. “That’s interesting. Interesting, but there’s still something of a problem. For heaven’s sake, would human life be easier or not?”

And I too laughed with him; perhaps I should have stopped at this point. But my thoughts had already taken on an uncontrollable momentum, circling constantly around my face. They could only go on circling, aware of the danger, until the centrifugal force broke them free.

“Life wouldn’t be easier or not easier. Aren’t both generalizations logically impossible? Since there’s no correlation, there can be no comparison.”

“When there is no correlation, that’s retrogression.”

“Well, then. Are you trying to say that the difference in skin color has yielded a profit for history? I absolutely can’t accept such a meaning for correlation.”

“Good heavens! Were you discussing the race problem? But isn’t that something of an overblown interpretation?”

“If it were possible, I should like to blow it up as much as I could. To every single face in the world. Only, with a mug like mine the more I talk about it the more it becomes a prisoner’s lament.”

“If you allow me to talk only about the race problem … but that’s too unreasonable … putting all responsibility on the face is.…”

“But I’m asking you, every time I daydream about people on other planets I wonder why in heaven I always start with speculating on what they look like.”

“We’re getting off the track again,” he said, vigorously stubbing out his cigarette after scarcely three puffs. “It would suffice, I should imagine, if you simply explained it as being due to curiosity.”

I sensed keenly the sudden change of his tone, but just as abruptly as the plate stops spinning in a game of spin-the-plate, my façade fell away.

“Just take a little look at that picture,” I said, still not having learned from experience and pointing to what was apparently
a reproduction of a European Renaissance portrait. “What do you think of that?”

“Well, if I answer casually, you look as though you would snap me up, but … well, it’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is. Putting a halo back of the face like that is a false, deceptive idea. Because of it, the face is instilled with lies.”

There was a strange smile on my companion’s face. It was a remote smile, as if he were looking at something far away, but his constraint had disappeared.

“It won’t work. No matter how you exaggerate I can’t feel anything without first understanding. Is it because there aren’t any common words between us? I specialize in extinct plants and animals, but in art, I lean toward the modern.”

No,
IT WAS
useless to complain. Better get used to such looks right now. To expect better results was only pampering myself. I had been able to get hold of necessary information, and my first plan was to try to overcome my basic humiliation.

I began to hate the paleontologist when I realized that the catch I had brought back from my visit was in reality merely inedible bait. Rather, it was apparently foodstuff, but unfortunately I didn’t know anything about the art of cooking.

Miserably, I recognized that the large margin of error in
modeling, even when one began with the same bone structure, forced the plan for the mask another step further. I could choose any face I wanted, but I did have to pick one—anyone. But wouldn’t any face at all be to my satisfaction? I should have to decide after sifting through numberless possibilities. What in heaven’s name was the scale of measurement for faces?

If you didn’t intend special meaning to a face, then any would do. When you went to the trouble of making it, you didn’t choose a cardiac’s puffiness. Yet it probably wouldn’t do at all to take a movie star as the model. This freedom, at first comforting, was in fact a terribly bothersome problem.

I don’t mean to insist unduly on an ideal face. Besides, such a thing probably doesn’t exist. However, since I was going to make a selection, I had to have some standard or other. Even an inappropriate facial guide, however awkward, would somehow be all right—I hadn’t the faintest notion whether to be subjective or objective—but when all was said and done I dragged out the decision for close to half a year.

M
ARGINAL NOTE:
It would be a mistake to settle this whole thing with vague standards. Rather I should doubtless take into consideration my inner impulse to reject standards. Choosing a standard, in other words, is to commit oneself to others. However, at the same time, men have the opposite desire of trying to distinguish themselves from others. Perhaps the two could be related thus:

A
=
the factor of commitment to others; B = the factor of resistance to others; n = age; f = one’s degree of viscosity [its decrease is the hardening of the self and at the same time the forming of the self; generally it stands in inverse proportion to age, but in a locus curve one can observe a number of individual
differences among people according to sex, personality, work, etc.]
.

In short, with age the degree of my viscosity was decreasing very much, and I felt strong opposition to changing faces at this late date. I must doubtless admit that the paleontologist’s view that heavily made-up women are prone to hysteria is an extremely astute theory. Psychoanalytically speaking, hysteria is an infantile phenomenon
.

In the meantime, of course, I was not idle. I had a mountain of largely technical work, such as tests of material for the flat epidermis, and my engrossment provided me with a fine excuse to postpone the showdown.

The flat epidermis took up an unimaginable amount of time. Quantitatively, it formed the most important part of the skin; but, more than that, the success or failure of producing the feeling of mobile skin was at stake. I profited by my colleagues’ distance from me in the laboratory and quite openly made use of the equipment and materials, but even so it took more than three full months. I considered it a comical contradiction that, while my plans for the mask advanced, I had taken no decision concerning the form of the face, but that did not worry me very much. Yet I could not forever take shelter from the rain under another’s eaves. This period passed. Then, the work began to make progress, and I was gradually cornered.

For the ceratin layer of the skin surface, I made a simple, very suitable discovery in the family of acrylic resins. And for the subcutaneous tissue, it would apparently be enough to spray something of the same quality as the skin itself into a sponge and let it harden. The fatty layer was easy: I would simply saturate a sponge with liquid silicon and make it airtight by enclosing it in a membrane. Thus, by the second
week in the new year I had completed my preparations as far as the materials were concerned.

With things as they now stood, I could no longer make excuses. If I did not come to some decision about what sort of face to make, I could not advance a step further. But no matter how much I thought about it, my head, like a museum storeroom, was in utter confusion with a thousand sample faces. Yet, if I kept shrinking from making a choice, I would never come to any decision. I borrowed a warehouse storage list, deciding there was no other course open to me except to gather my courage and check the faces off one by one. However, on the first page of the list appeared some unexpectedly obliging instructions, “rules for classification,” which I read with pounding heart:

1. The standard of value for faces is definitely objective. If one is involved in personal feelings, one makes the error of being taken in by imitations.
   
2. There is no such thing as a standard of value for faces. There are only pleasure and displeasure, and the standard of selection is continually cultivated through refinement of taste.
   

It was as I had anticipated. When one is advised that something is black and white at the same time, it would be better to have no advice at all. Moreover, as I read along, comparing each face, I had the feeling that every one could be equally justified, and thus the degree of complication deepened. At last I was sick at the thought of so many faces, and I still wonder why I didn’t decide to put a stop to my plans at that time.