The Face of Another by Kōbō Abe

Author:Kōbō Abe
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780297177050
Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Published: 1964-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WELL, what to do? Rather than standing around, arms folded, not knowing what to do, I was overflowing and alert with curiosity. At any rate, I was walking alone with my mask, and I had no particular plan other than just to let it walk by itself. The first problem was to get used to the feel of things. Knowing that inadequate preparation of the mask could, make me shrink away from my project, I had intended to nurse it along with the greatest of caution. But since the occurrence at the toy shop, the tables were turned. Far from leading, I could only follow in dumb amazement after this searching spirit like a prisoner just liberated.

Well, what to do? Well, what to do? As I lightly stroked the jaw of the mask with my fingers, perhaps reacting to my old bandage disguise, I ostentatiously struck a number of poses, like a hunter testing decoys—eagerly expecting, licking of lips, watching, coveting, defying, verifying, desiring, showing confidence, aiming, searching—rolling, as it were, some of each into one compound expression, incessantly sniffing around like a badly behaved dog who has made off with something from under the shepherd’s nose. This was a sign that the mask was beginning to gain some self-confidence from others’ reactions; and I, in part, could not deny that I had a feeling of satisfaction in acting this way.

Yet, at the same time, I was terribly anxious. No matter how different I might be from my real face, I was still myself. Since I was not under the influence of hypnotism or drugs, whatever the acts of the mask—even the concealing of an air pistol in my pocket—it was the real I who would have to assume the ultimate responsibility. The personality of the mask was certainly not something that, rabbit-like, popped out of a magician’s hat; it must really be a part of me that had come into being without my being aware of it, because the gatekeeper, my real face, had been so severely forbidden access. And while I theoretically understood this to be so, nevertheless, it was as if I were suffering from amnesia; I could not conjure up the whole of the personality. Imagine my irritation at not being able to provide a content consonant with this abstract self. Once I distractedly tried to put on the brakes.

—The failure of that thirty-second experiment: was it because the testing technique was bad or was there something wrong with the hypothesis itself?

I want to recall my viewpoint concerning an important problem in the laboratory just now. I had obtained precisely the experimental results I had anticipated for certain types of high-molecular matter, verifying an hypothesis that a functional relationship apparently existed between the variation in the rate of elasticity under pressure and under temperature. This idea seemed to have been completely upset by the latest, thirty-second experiment, and I found myself in a serious quandary.

The mask, however, merely frowned, apparently but slightly distressed. While I thought it natural, I felt that my self-esteem had been injured, and I became rather defiant.

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