In the afternoon, there was a trivial incident. In a corner of the laboratory a group of four or five men had put their heads together, and as I casually approached, one of the younger men in the middle hastily tried to conceal something. When I questioned them, I found that it was really nothing to hide: it was a petition about what to do concerning the problem of Korean immigration and emigration. In addition, although I did not censure him, he began to apologize profusely, while the other men watched us with distaste.
Was it that a faceless man is not competent to sign his name on behalf of Koreans? Of course, the assistant bore me no ill will; perhaps he was rather being respectful out of a feeling of pity for me. If men from the very beginning had not had faces, the problem of racial differences would never have arisen, whether one were Japanese, Korean, Russian, Italian, or Polynesian. But still, why did this so magnanimous young man make such a distinction between me who had no face and Koreans who had a different kind of face? When man evolved from the monkey, he did not do so by his use of tools, as is usually claimed, but because he had come to distinguish himself from monkeys by his face.
However, I asked to sign the petition. Everyone held his breath in expectation. But there was a lingering feeling of distaste. Why did I have to do something so meaningless? This invisible wall called “face” stood barring my way. Could you call this an ordinary world?
Suddenly I was aware of an unbearable fatigue, and, producing some suitable excuse, I returned home earlier than usual. I still was not completely confident of regaining the feeling of my real face, and even if I waited longer, there might well be no great improvement. Since I was wearing the bandage covering, as long as I did not talk I need have no fear that my agitation would be discernible; and, moreover, the agitation would not be mine alone. Would it not rather be far more painful for me to pretend not to see your agitation? I said to myself over and over again that even if I did encounter obvious confusion on your part, I should not be provoked by it and lose control of myself.
But even though you had not seen me for a week, you smiled at me just as before I left, without showing the slightest sign of embarrassment in your acts or in your expression; and I could only stand for a moment dumfounded at this lack of concern. It was as if you had been kept in cold storage for a week. Had I become for you, I wonder, such a meaningless entity that you did not even feel the need to conceal your secrets? Or was this extraordinary shamelessness, this devil’s heart in saint’s clothing, your true character? Well, at last becoming rather ill-tempered, I demanded an account of the time I had been away; but without the slightest change of expression as you busied yourself with my clothes, you started in talking about the enlargement of the house next door, which was a violation of the building code, and of the war of letters that was raging between us and its owner; then you kept up a chatter in an innocent tone, like some child playing alone with his blocks, about domestic matters: a rumpus in the neighborhood over children who had not been able to sleep because of barking dogs, the branches of the trees in the garden that hung over into the street, should you close the window when the television set was on, should we buy a new washer because the old one made noise.… Were you the same person as the one last night who, like some fountain, profusely overflowed with the feelings of a mature woman? I could not believe it. Although I had fought bitterly against the division of my self into the mask and the face, for which I had had to prepare myself well, you endured the instantaneous split with composure and showed not the slightest regret. What did this mean, for heaven’s sake? It was too unfair! How would it affect you, I mused, if I told you everything I knew? If I had had the button in my hands at that moment I should have thrust it in your face without a word.
But in the end, I could only keep silent like a fish. To show you the trick of the mask was nothing but disarming myself. If I could pull you down to my level, it might be all right to disarm. But the sacrifice was too great. Even though I might tear the mask off of your hypocrisy, you had a thousand layers of masks, and one after another a new one would appear; but my mask was only a single ply, and under that there remained not even a layer of ordinary face.
Our house, which I had not been in for a week, completely soaked up my daily life like a sponge; the walls, the ceilings, the floor matting seemed secure and solid; but for someone who had had the experience of the mask I could not help but perceive, however disagreeable it might be, that this solidity was merely a kind of sexual barrier that had become custom. And just as the existence of the barrier was merely a promise rather than a reality, I who had taken off the mask found my existence also shallow and illusory. And I thought of the mask—of the other world that I touched upon through the mask—as having a far greater reality. This feeling did not concern the house alone but also you. Although twenty-four hours had not yet passed since my desperate feeling of defeat, comparable only to death, incorrigibly I was already beginning to feel a withering hunger for the reality of you that I had been able to discover through my sense of touch. I began to tremble. They say that when a mole fails to touch anything with the ends of its whiskers, it develops a neurosis; I too required something to touch and was apparently already beginning to develop withdrawal symptoms, just as a drug addict whose source has been cut off still yearns for narcotics though he realizes they are a virulent poison.
I had exhausted my patience. I wanted to swim back to firm land quickly any way I could. I thought this was our house, but it was only a temporary shelter; and the mask itself—it was far from being a temporary face, for it had cured me of my seasickness while I was wearing it—seemed to be real land. I decided to go out as soon as we had finished supper, on the pretext of having suddenly remembered an urgent experiment, that I could not leave half done. I said that I should perhaps be staying away for the night. Although this was quite unprecedented, you did not seem to disapprove, nor did your face with its vaguely commiserating expression show any suspicion. There was no need to be concerned, whatever the excuse, if a faceless monster was going to spend the night out.
After I had arrived in the vicinity of my hideaway, I telephoned you, not being able to wait any longer.
“Has … ‘he’… come back?”
“Yes, but he said something about going right out to work again.”
“I’m glad you answered the telephone. If he had answered I should have hung up at once.”
I spoke casually, trying to make my recklessness plausible, but after saying nothing for a while, you said in a thin voice: “I feel sorry for him.”
These words pierced me, spreading rapidly throughout my body like pure alcohol. Perhaps these were your first feelings about the real me. But I could not think about such things now. If I could not get my hands on something quickly—anything, a log, a drum—I was apparently going to drown. Surely, if “he” really existed, this rendezvous would be a bit too reckless. He might come back at any time, for any reason. Even if he did not return, it was very possible he might telephone. It would be all right during the day, but what justification could you give for leaving the house at such an hour as this? I thought that you would naturally be reluctant; however, you consented with no hesitation at all. You too, struggling no less than I, were thrashing about in the waves searching for something to cling to. After all you were a shameless person too. You were prudish, hypocritical, shameless, impulsive, wanton, and lascivious, I thought, grinding my teeth under my bandages. I smiled a tight, cynical smile. Finally a shudder stopped the gnashing and froze the smile on my face.
What kind of a person were you, for God’s sake?
What kind of a person were you, you who had gone through the barrier of taboos unopposed and unabashed, who had seduced the seducer, plunged him into self-contempt, you who had never been violated? Yes, you had not once tried to ask the given name, family name, or occupation of the mask. As if you had seen through to the real person behind it. The freedom of the mask and its alibi completely faded away befor this behavior of yo
urs. If there is a God, may he appoint you a hunter of masks. I would most certainly be hunted down by you.
A VOICE called to me from the bottom of the emergency stairway. It was the superintendent’s daughter. She was demanding the yoyo. For an instant, I was going to answer, and then, seized with panic, I nearly ran away. It was not I who had made the agreement with the girl but the mask. At length I got control of myself and in my confusion realized that what I could do was pretend not to understand. I could only assume that she had mistaken me for someone else.
But the girl did not appear to notice my theatricals and simply repeated her demands for the yoyo. Or was she perhaps thinking that since the “mask” and the “bandage” were brothers, an agreement made with one would automatically include the other? No, such wishful thinking was successfully demolished by the girl’s next words.
“Don’t worry.… We’re playing secrets.”
Indeed, had she seen through me from the beginning? Yet how could I have been seen through? Where had I made my mistake? Could she have peeped in through a crack in the door as I was putting on my mask?
But the girl only shook her head right and left, repeating that she did not understand why I did not understand. Was my mask something that could not deceive the eyes of a retarded girl? No, I suppose that she had been able to see through me precisely because she was retarded. Just as my mask would not fool a dog. An uninhibited intuition is often far more keen than the analytical eyes of an adult. There could not be such apparent deficiencies in a mask that had successfully deceived you who were closest to me.
No, the significance of this experience was not a simple thing, like seeking an alibi. Suddenly I could not control the shiver that rose gradually in me at the profound realization of this “uninhibited intuition.” Such intuition suggested that my whole year’s experience could be completely destroyed with a single blow. Wasn’t it a sign that the girl had seen directly through to my real self without being taken in by the outward appearance of the mask or bandage? Such eyes actually existed. What I was doing must surely be funny to a girl like this.
Suddenly, the passions of the mask, my hatred for the scars, began to seem unbearably hollow, and the triangle with its roaring spin began gradually to lose momentum, like a carrousel whose motor has been switched off.
While the girl waited by the door, I got the yoyo. “It’s a game of secrets,” the girl whispered softly once more. She ran down the stairs, wrapping the string around her finger, childlike, unable to hide the smile that appeared in the corners of her lips. For no reason, tears welled up in my eyes. I washed my face, removed the ointment, and put on the mask after spreading it with adhesive material; but quite some space had already come between it and my face. Never mind. I was quietly sad, like the surface of a tranquil lake under a cloud-filled sky, but I said again and again to myself that it would be well if I believed the child’s eyes with complete confidence. Wouldn’t anybody first have to return to this kind of intuition if he sincerely wanted to face others?
AND that night when I came home from my second meeting with you, I decided to begin writing these notes.
Actually, had I waited a little longer, I should have torn the mask from my face in the middle of the act. I could not stand seeing you unsuspectingly seduced by a mask that the superintendent’s daughter had seen through so simply. Moreover, I too was tired. The mask was no longer a means by which to get you back, but only a hidden camera through which to watch your betrayal of me. I had made the mask for the purpose of recovering myself. But it had willfully escaped from me and, taking great pleasure in its evasion, had become defiant; the next time I would bar its way. Moreover, among you and the mask and me, you alone had escaped intact. What would happen if I were to let such a situation go on? From now on, “I” would try to kill the mask at every opportunity, and the mask, being the mask, by every means would forever try to contain my revenge. It would strike back, for example, with a plan to kill you.
When all was said and done, if I did not wish to make matters worse, there was nothing to do but liquidate this three-cornered relationship by a three-party agreement, which included you with us. Then I began writing these notes—at first, the mask had a terrible contempt for my determination, but since nothing resulted, it ridiculed me in silence—and close to two months have gone by since then. In the meantime we have met over ten times, and each time I was desperate when I thought of our approaching separation. The expression is not gratuitous; for me it really was a harrowing experience. How many times I lost my confidence and gave up these notes. I prayed for the fairy-tale miracle of awakening one morning to find the mask stuck firmly on my face, to discover it had become my real face. I even tried going to bed with it on. But the miracle, of course, did not happen.
At such times, what cheered me most was to watch the girl quietly playing with her yoyo in the shadow of the emergency stairs, unseen by anyone but me. She was burdened with a great misfortune that she could not perceive as misfortune. She did not know how much luckier she was than the rest of mankind aware of unhappiness. Perhaps this attitude of hers, her having no fear of losing, was instinctive. I wish that I, like the girl, could bear losing.
I happened on a curious photograph of a mask in the morning paper. It was a mask used by a primitive people. Over the whole surface, traces of impressed rope formed a geometric pattern, and a centipede-like nose began in the middle of the face and rose above the head, while from the jaw were suspended a number of oddly shaped, meaningless objects. The image was not clear, but I stared at it in fascination for a long time. The face of a tattooed man imposed itself over the picture, and then the veiled heads of Arabian girls; I was reminded of the story I had once heard of the women in The Tale of Genji who thought that revealing the face was the same as exposing the privates. I did not hear it from just anybody, I heard it from you. The mask had got the story from you at one or another of our meetings. What was your purpose, for heaven’s sake, in telling such a tale? They thought their hair was the only thing to show men, and they covered their faces with their sleeves in death. I mused about those women who hid with their faces, trying to penetrate your design, and this faceless period of history was unexpectedly brought home to me, unrolled like a picture scroll. In ancient times the face was not something one exposed to light; by bringing the face into full daylight, civilization was able to fix the core of man in it. Suppose the face did not simply exist but was made. I had planned to make a mask, but actually I had not made a mask at all. The mask had become my real face, and thought itself in fact real. No, that’s enough … such things are of little consequence at this point. The mask too apparently intended to come to terms, and so shall I get on with the conclusion? But later, if I could, I should like to hear your confession too.… I don’t know where we go from here, but there appears to be time left to talk things over together.
Yesterday I gave you a map to lead you to this hideaway for our last meeting. The appointed hour is gradually approaching. I wonder if I haven’t left something out. It is too late if I have. The mask was loath to part from you. Since the button you gave me is rightly the mask’s, let it be buried with him.
You must have finished reading by now. I have placed the key under the ashtray at the head of the bed and want you to open the closet. To the left of the rubber boots in the front lie the corpse of the mask and the button. I leave it all up to you. I shall have returned home a step ahead of you. I pray with all my heart that you will come back with your usual expression, as if nothing has happened.…
A record for me alone,
appended to the Grey Notebook,
written on the back of the last
page and to be read backwards
toward the beginning of the notebook.
… I kept on waiting. I simply went on waiting, emotionlessly, like barley sprouts that, having been repeatedly trampled on the whole winter long, only await the signal to raise their heads.…
I thought of you readi
ng through the three notebooks in the hideaway apartment with no room even to stretch your legs, an apartment born with an old face. Like some protozoan organism with but a single fiber of nerve, I continued to float quietly in lightless, colorless, empty expectation.
But curiously, all I could think of was this image of you. Why was I incapable of tracing the place in these notes at which your inner nature was depicted? Far from that, I had come to the point where, like some scene observed through dirty glass, I could not locate any particular passage in these notes, which I had read and reread time and time again until I should have been able to recite any phrase. My heart was cold, salty, and limp, like a piece of half-dried squid. Was it because I had given up, thinking it would be unavailing no matter how much I tried to start all over again? Yes, this state of blankness was one I had experienced on finishing a series of experiments. And the more involved these experiments, the more profound the blank that followed.
Thus, this bold wager put me in a situation where everything was up to you, no matter what the dice turned up. Of course, I knew very well that exposing the true character of the mask would probably hurt and humiliate you. But you had wounded me by your betrayal, and we were about even on these two points. There was no object in being defiant; I had absolutely no intention of accusing you, no matter what reaction you showed to the notes. Tentatively, the situation had deteriorated even further from what it had been before the advent of the mask. Our relationship had come to be locked in a column of ice, but as one solution, I was amply prepared to be receptive to your reactions.
No, I could not go so far as to call this a solution, yet at least it was saving the situation. Bitter regret, irritation, defeatism, imprecation, self-tormenting sentimentalism—all such bitterness I wrapped away, and for good or for bad I heaved a sigh of resignation as if I had accomplished something by this. It was not that I had no desire for things to turn out right. I had raised the white flag by not taking off my mask when I was in bed with you but waiting to tell you about it in these notes. Whatever the result, it would surely be much better than this extraordinary three-sided relationship—this self-intoxication with jealousy that continued to grow like a cancer.