The Face of Another (17 page)

On the next day, the period of my sham departure from home would come to an end. If I intended to put my plan into execution, I would have to complete the training with the mask today. I made preparations and put on the mask with an unexpectedly buoyant feeling. I cut quite a stylish figure when, with some embarrassment, I got into the brand-new suit and slipped the ring on my finger, thus completing my disguise. I should never have dreamt it was the same self who spent morning and night in a smock stained with chemicals, brooding over molecular formulas. I was too impatient even to stop and ponder why I could never have imagined it to be me. And not only was it impatience; also I seemed slightly intoxicated with my own gaudy disguise. Deep inside my head was a fitful sound of fireworks, apparently announcing some
grand opening. I was in fact behaving like a young blade setting off to the fair.

This time I boldly decided to leave by the main entrance. Since in my mask I had been the “younger brother” all along, there was no particular need to avoid being seen; and if I met the superintendent’s daughter, I wanted to check on the location of the shop where they sold the yoyo. I had no idea where such toys might be sold. After our first child had died and the second had miscarried, I had had nothing to do with the world of children, which I perhaps consciously avoided. But unfortunately I saw neither the superintendent nor his daughter.

Having no special goal in mind, I decided to begin my search for the yoyo. I knew nothing of the specialty shops, so I first looked in the toy sections of the department stores. Perhaps it was a fad now, for every store I visited had its showcase of yoyos, and around them the children clustered like flies. Entering such places was evidently not the most desirable kind of mental therapy, and I hesitated somewhat. But, well, I wanted to have done with this awkward “playing secrets,” and so, gathering myself together, I tried to squeeze in among the little vermin. But unfortunately I could not find the type of yoyo I was looking for. Come to think of it, considering its color and shape, it probably wasn’t a kind they would carry in department stores. It gave the feeling of cheap candies sold in a street stand. I left and walked around for about an hour, looking for just such a place. Finally, on a back street behind the station, I found a cramped shop that specialized in toys.

As I had expected, it was quite different from the toy sections in the department stores. It was not a cheap place, like a shop that sells inexpensive sweets, but neither did it handle high-class merchandise. Perhaps aiming at slightly older children who would make their own purchases with their own
small change, it somehow gave a sense of mysterious, innocent evil. In other words, it would frankly appeal to the kind of child who preferred colored sugar water in a triangular carton to bottled fruit juice. And, as I had anticipated, the yoyo was there. Holding the cleft, plastic sphere in my hands, I suddenly thought of its creator, who had been able to express so beautifully an off-beat idea, and I could not resist a bitter smile. There was great subtlety in the overstatement of the basically simple form. If he had not mercilessly sublimated his own tastes, he could not possibly have thought up such a thing. This was not denying his taste; rather it was shedding the utmost light of awareness on his discernment. He had cast his own taste on the ground like a worm and voluntarily smashed it with the heel of his shoe. Was that cruel? Naturally, cruelty exists. However, presuming that he had chosen of his own free will, hadn’t he also possibly experienced a feeling of release, as in stripping off one’s clothes, or the satisfaction of revenge against the world? For it was not merely a question of the freedom to act according to one’s tastes, but of the freedom to escape from one’s taste.…

Yes, this was undeniably a concept that fitted in with my own viewpoint. I would have to walk along, treading my own tastes underfoot with every step, if I wanted to produce another heart suitable to my new face. The task, however, was not so difficult as I had imagined. My heart had become a withered leaf waiting to fall, as if the mask were possessed of the power to summon autumn, and the slightest help from me—a light shaking of the branch—would suffice to send the leaf drifting down. I wasn’t entirely unsentimental, but it was surprising not to feel any more pain than the sting of an insect … something like the smart of wintergreen in one’s eye. The ego is apparently not what it is said to be.

But what kind of heart, in heaven’s name, did I intend painting over this old canvas? Of course, it would be neither
the portrait of a child nor of myself. The heart in the cause of tomorrow’s plans, of the program of action—even though one could not explain it with terms in dictionaries: yoyo, travel postcards, jewel boxes, patent medicines—was something I could definitely prearrange, like a map drawn from aerial photographs. How many times I have obliquely hinted at it already. However, now that things had really jelled, perhaps I should not stop at mere hints just because of the pain of putting it into words. I shall try and state it clearly here. I, as a complete stranger, planned to seduce you, to violate you—you who were the symbol of the stranger.

No, just a minute. I did not mean to write that. I do not intend to be so remorseful as to attempt to buy time by repeating what you already know without my writing it. What I wanted to write about was my strange behavior after buying the yoyo, which I can scarcely describe.

The innermost third of the toy store was composed of display shelves with toy revolvers. Among them were a number beautifully made, apparently imported, and priced high. Not only were they quite heavy and their muzzles plugged with stoppers, but the trigger and magazine mechanisms were not in the least different from the real thing. I remembered having seen a newspaper article the other day, according to which a model revolver had been rebuilt to shoot actual bullets; I wondered if they had used such ones as these. Can you really imagine me absorbed in toy revolvers? Probably even my closest colleagues at the Institute could not. No, until I myself was actually taking part in the act, it would have been inconceivable even for me.

The storekeeper wrapped up the yoyo. “You like it, don’t you?” he murmured with a seductive smile. “May I show you anything else you might care for?” For a moment I began to doubt that I was myself. It might be more precise to say that I was confused at not showing a reaction typical of me. As I
became conscious of this fact, my consternation seemed inconsistent, but that was because of the mask. The mask, indifferent to my confusion, nodded back at the storekeeper’s unsuspecting face, and as if confirming my own reality, I began to concentrate on the business of the “anything else.”

That was a Walther air pistol. It had the power to pierce a half-inch board at three yards. The price at seventy-five dollars was rather high, but—guess what—I talked him down to seventy and bought it. (… “You’re sure it’s all right? It’s illegal, you know. An air pistol isn’t an air rifle, it’s considered a real pistol. The regulations are very strict about illegal possession of pistols. Please be very careful.…”) Nevertheless I bought it.

It was a strange feeling. My real face tried to murmur quietly in a small voice, slipping deep into inconspicuous belly folds.… This shouldn’t be.… I had wanted to choose the extroverted, aggressive type, a hunter’s face, with the very simple motive that it would suit your seducer.… Let me change the subject here … I only asked the mask to help me recover … I never once asked it to do things its own way.… What in heaven’s name was I to do with this pistol I had acquired?

But as I deliberately tapped the hard object in my pocket, the mask smiled at my perplexity and even appeared pleased. Of course, the mask itself could not really know the answer to my face’s questions. The future is merely a function of the past. There could be no plan of action tomorrow for a mask that had been alive not yet twenty-four hours. The human social equation, in short, is, like a child, too unrestricted.

I was unable to make up my mind immediately whether, frankly, to mock or to fear this creature aged zero. However, the creature in dark glasses reflected from the mirror of the station washroom, was wild and defiant, perhaps abetted by an association of ideas with the object concealed in its pocket.

W
ELL
, 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.

M
ARGINAL NOTE:
Originally the mask was nothing more than a means for recovering myself. I mused that it seemed like having the house taken over when one has let but one room; self-respect had little to do with the matter
.

—Well. What in heaven’s name do you want? If I felt like it, I could stop you right now.

However, the mask coolly and nonchalantly took no notice.

—You understand, I suppose … I’m no one. Since I have had to undergo the anguish of being someone up till now, I shall deliberately take this opportunity to withdraw again from becoming someone. Even you don’t really think you would like to make someone of me, do you? As a matter of fact it would be impossible even if you did, so shouldn’t we let things go as they are? Ah, I told you so, take this crowd … and it’s not even a holiday. A crowd isn’t formed after people gather; people gather after the crowd forms. It’s true … students wearing their hair like hoodlums, modest housewives made up like actresses who won their reputation by their indecency, porcine girls wearing the latest fashions designed for bony mannequins. Lost in the crowd, it’s all right to pretend for a moment to be no one. Or do you intend to insist that only you and I are different?

I could make no answer. There could be none. For it was the mask itself that had set forth the ideas conceived in my head. (I wonder if you laughed just now? No, it would be too selfish of me to expect that. It was a bad joke. If I could get you to realize that there was a partial truth in the explanation, I should be quite satisfied, but.…)

I who had been defeated—or who pretended to have been defeated—decided to let the mask have its way without further opposition. Whereupon the mask set up surprisingly (considering that it was nobody) sensible and bold plans which were in no way inferior to the incident of the pistol I spoke of before. Anyway, when I had finished lunch, I would try going as far as our house and check the looks of things. No, I do not refer to the looks of the house, but to my own. How far could I endure the seducer’s ordeal, which had at last been set for the morrow? At least I should try getting a look at the house. I entertained my own inner hopes, but since I was unable to express them, I readily agreed.