Confessions of a Mask (23 page)

I had one friend at the university with whom I was on familiar terms. His family owned a long-established confectioner's shop. At first glance, he appeared to be an uninteresting, diligent student; the cynical tone of voice he used toward people and life, together with the fact that he had a frail build similar to mine, aroused a sympathetic attraction in me. But while my cynicism came from a desire for creating an impression and for self-defense, the same attitude in him seemed to be rooted in some firmer feeling of self-confidence. I wondered where he got his confidence. After a tim
_e
he guessed that I was still a virgin and, speaking with
_a
mixture of overwhelming superiority and self-contempt, confessed that he had been visiting brothels. Then he sounded out my feelings on the subject.

". . . So if you'd like to go sometime, just give me a call. I'll take you any time."

"H'm. If I want to go, all right. . . . Maybe. . . . I'll make up my mind soon," I answered.

He seemed abashed, and yet triumphant. His expression reflected my own feeling of shame; it was as though he thought he completely understood my present state of mind and was being reminded of the time when he himself had experienced exactly the same feelings. I felt harassed. It was that restless feeling, already well-established in me, of wanting actually to have the feelings with which I was credited.

Prudery is a form of selfishness, a means of self-protection made necessary by the strength of one's own desires. But my true desires were so secret that they did not allow even this form of self-indulgence. And at the same time any imaginary desires—that is, my simple and abstract curiosity concerning women—allowed me such a cold freedom that there was almost no room for this selfishness in them either. There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might even be the most immoral desire a man can possess.I devised a pathetic secret exercise. It consisted of testing my desire by staring fixedly at pictures of naked women. . . . As may be easily imagined, my desire answered neither yes or no. Upon indulging in that bad habit of mine, I would try to discipline my desire, first by refraining from my usual daydreams, and later by forcibly calling up mental images of women in the most obscene poses. At times it seemed my efforts were successful. But there was a falseness about this success that seemed to grind my heart into powder.

At last I decided it was sink or swim. I telephoned my friend and asked him to meet me one Sunday afternoon at five o'clock at a certain teashop. This was toward the middle of January in the second year after the end of the war.

"So you finally made up your mind?" He laughed delightedly over the telephone. "All right, I'll be there. And listen—I'll be there for sure. I won't forgive you if you don't come." . . .

After I had hung up, his laughing voice still echoed in my ears. I was aware that I had been able to counter his laughter with nothing better than an invisible, twisted smile. And yet I felt a ray of hope or, better said, a superstitious belief. It was a dangerous superstitution. Only vanity makes people take risks. In my case it was the commonplace vanity of not wanting to be known as a virgin at the age of twenty-two.Now that I think of it, it was on my birthday that I thus steeled myself for the test. . . .

We stared at each other as though each was trying to probe the other's mind. Today my friend too realized that either a serious face or a broad grin would look equally absurd, and he exhaled cigarette smoke rapidly from his expressionless lips. After a few words of greeting he began talking impersonally about the poor quality of the confections served at this shop. I was scarcely listening to him and broke into his remarks:

“I wonder if you've made up your mind also. I wonder if a fellow who takes someone to such a place for the first time becomes a lifelong friend or a lifelong enemy."

"Don't scare me. You know what a coward I am. I wouldn't know how to play the part of a lifelong enemy."

"It's good that you know even that much about yourself." I deliberately talked down to him, making a show of bravado.

"Well, then," he said, looking as grave as a committee chairman, "we ought to go somewhere and have something to drink. It's a little too much for a beginner if he's sober."

"No, I don't want to drink." I felt my cheeks grow cold. "I'm going without taking a single drink. I have nerve enough without it."In quick succession there came a ride on a gloomy streetcar and a gloomy elevated, an unfamiliar station, an unfamiliar street, a corner where shabby tenements stood in rows, and purple and red lights under which the women's faces looked swollen. The customers walked along the clammy, thawing street, passing each other in silence, their footfalls as hushed as though they were barefoot. I felt not the slightest desire. It was nothing but my feeling of uneasiness that goaded me on, exactly as though I were a child pleading for a midafternoon snack.

"Any place will do," I said. "Any place will do, I tell you." I felt as though I wanted to turn and flee from the artificially husky voices of the women saying: "Stop a minute, honey; wait just a minute, honey. . . ."

"The girls in this house are dangerous. . . . You like that one? God, what a face! But at least that house is fairly safe."

"The face doesn't make any difference," I said.

"All right then, just to be different I'll take the pretty one. Don't hold it against me later."

At our approach the two women jumped up as though some devil had taken possession of them. We went in the house, which was so small that our heads seemed to touch the ceiling as we entered. Giving a smile that revealed her gold teeth and gums, the spindly one with a country accent took me off to a tiny three-mat room.A sense of duty made me embrace her. Holding her in my arms, I was about to kiss her. Her heavy shoulders began shaking crazily with laughter.

"Don't do thaaat! You'll get lipstick on you. This here's the way."

The prostitute opened her big mouth, its gold teeth framed by lipstick, and produced her sturdy tongue like a stick. Following her example, I stuck out my tongue also. The tips of our tongues touched. . . .

Perhaps I will not be understood when I say there is a numbness that resembles fierce pain. I felt my entire body becoming paralyzed with just such a pain, a pain that was intense, but still could not be felt at all. I dropped my head onto the pillow.

Ten minutes later there was no doubt of my incapacity. My knees were shaking with shame.

I assumed that my friend had no suspicion of what had happened, and surprisingly enough, during the next few days I surrendered myself to the drab feelings of convalescence. I was like a person who has been suffering an unknown disease in an agony of fear: just learning the name of his disease, even though it is an incurable one, gives him a surprising feeling of temporary relief. He knows well, though, that the relief is only temporary. Moreover, in his heart he foresees a still more inescapable hopelessness, which, by its very nature, will give a more permanent feeling of relief. I too had probably come to expect a blow that it would be even more impossible to parry, or to say it another way, a more inescapable feeling of relief.

During the following weeks I met my friend at school many times, but neither of us ever referred to the incident. About a month later he came to visit me one evening, accompanied by another student, a mutual acquaintance of ours. This was T, a great ladies' man, full of vanity and always boasting that he could make any girl in only fifteen minutes. In no time our conversation descended to the inevitable theme.

"I just can't get along without it any more—I simply can't control myself," T said, looking closely at me. "If any of my friends were impotent I'd really envy them. More than that, I'd bow down to them."

My friend saw that my face had changed color, and he turned the conversation to a new subject, addressing T:

You promised to lend me a book by Marcel Proust, remember? Is it interesting?"

"I'll say it's interesting. Proust was a
sodomite" he
used the foreign word. "He had affairs with footmen.”“What's a sodomite?" I asked. I realized that by feigning ignorance I was desperately pawing the air, clutching at this little question for support and trying to find some clue to their thoughts, some indication that they did not suspect my disgrace.

"A sodomite's a sodomite. Didn't you know? It's a
danshokuka."

"Oh . . but I never heard Proust was that way."I could tell that my voice was quivering. To have looked offended would have been the same as giving my companions proof positive. I was ashamed of being able to maintain such a disgraceful outward show of equanimity. It was obvious that my friend had smelled out my secret. Somehow it seemed to me that he was doing all he could to avoid looking at my face.

My cursed visitors finally left at eleven o'clock, and I shut myself up for a sleepless night in my room. I cried sobbingly until at last those visions reeking with blood came to comfort me. And then I surrendered myself to them, to those deplorably brutal visions, my most intimate friends.

Some diversion was essential. I began dropping in frequently at the gatherings that took place at the house of an old friend, knowing that they would leave nothing in my mind but the memory of idle conversation and a blank aftertaste. I went there because the people of smart society who came to those parties, unlike my classmates, seemed surprisingly friendly and easy to know. They included several stylishly affected young ladies, a famous soprano, a budding lady pianist, and various young wives who had only recently married. There would be dancing, a little drinking, and the playing of silly games, including a slightly erotic form of tag. Sometimes the parties would last until dawn.In the early hours of the morning we would often find ourselves falling asleep as we danced. Then to keep awake we would play a game, scattering cushions about the floor and dancing around them in a circle until the phonograph was suddenly stopped. At this signal we would sit down on the pillows two by two, and whoever failed to find a seat would have to do a stunt. Great excitement was created by the dancers' throwing themselves down in heaps upon the cushions. As the game progressed, being repeated many times, even the women seemed to become careless of their appearance.

Perhaps it was because she was a little intoxicated, but I remember how I once saw the prettiest of the girls laughing excitedly, not noticing that in the confusion of failing to a cushion her skirt had been pulled up far above her thighs. The flesh of her thighs gleamed whitely. If this had happened a short time before, I probably would have imitated the way other young men shy away from their own desire in such a situation, and using all my skill at playing a part that was never forgotten a single moment, would have instantly averted my eyes. But since that certain day I had changed. Without the slightest feeling of shame—that is, without the slightest shame at my innate shamelessness—I stared at those white thighs as calmly as though I were examining some piece of inanimate matter.

Suddenly I was struck by the astringent pain that comes from staring too long at something. The pain proclaimed: You're not human. You're a being who is incapable of social intercourse. You're nothing but a creature, non-human and somehow strangely pathetic.

Fortunately, the time for preparing for the civil-service examinations was at hand and I had to devote all my energies to dry-as-dust studying for them. This automatically enabled me, both physically and mentally, to keep more tormenting matters at a distance. But even this distraction was effective for only a short time at the beginning.

The sense of failure which that night had aroused in me gradually returned, spreading into every corner of my life. I became depressed. For days on end I would be unable to turn my hand to anything. The need to prove to myself that I had some sort of potency seemed to become more urgent each day. It seemed that I could not go on living without some such proof. And yet nowhere could I discover a clue to the realization of my inherent perversity. There was no opportunity here for satisfying my abnormal desires, not even in their mildest form.

Spring came, and a frantic nervousness was built up behind my facade of tranquillity. It seemed as though the season itself bore me a grudge, expressing its hostility in its dust-laden winds. If an automobile almost grazed me, I would mentally berate it in a loud voice, saying: "Well, why don't you go on and run over me!"

I delighted in the strenuous study and Spartan existence I had imposed upon myself. At odd moments in my studying I would go out for a walk, and often I became aware that people were looking questioningly at my bloodshot eyes. Even when an observer might have thought I was heaping very diligent day on diligent day, actually I was only learning the gnawing fatigue of sloppiness, dissipation, utterly rotten laziness, and a way of life that knew no tomorrow. But then one afternoon toward the end of spring I was on a streetcar and suddenly felt a pure throbbing of the heart that seemed to take my breath.

It was because, looking between the standing passengers, I had caught a glimpse of Sonoko sitting on the opposite side of the car. There beneath her childlike eyebrows I could see her eyes, sincere and modest, with their indescribably profound gentleness. I was on the point of getting to my feet when one of the passengers let go his strap and began moving toward the exit. Then the girl's face became entirely visible. It was not Sonoko.