Free The Face of Another by Kōbō Abe

anassailant. And so, as long as there exist such violable things—breakable, crushable, burnable objects, or objects that can bleed and die—the monster can only go on endlessly assaulting them. Basically, there is nothing new in the behavior of monsters, for the monster himself is nothing more than an invention of his victims
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    No, I hadn’t screamed, though I thought I had already begun to. Help! Stop looking at me that way! If I’m to be forever stared at like that, I really will end up a monster! At length, unable to stand it, I brushed aside the forest of humanity and, as if taking shelter in some cave, rushed headlong into a nearby movie house, a “market place of darkness”—the only safe place for a monster.
    I do not remember what movie was playing. I took an aisle seat in the balcony. The artificial darkness with its lingering warmth crept about me like a muffler. I gradually began to recover my composure, like a mole that has gone to ground. The movie house was an endless tunnel. I imagined that my seat was some speeding vehicle. I dashed along, cutting through the darkness. If I could fly at this speed, I couldn’t be followed by people. I’d give them the slip. I would arrive before them in the world of eternal night. And I’d call myself the king of the land where there are only drops of mist and phosphorescent animalcules and starlight. I took secret pleasure in such fancies, which were like children’s scribblings in public places. It was as if I were secretly eating something. It would not do to ridicule it, no matter how tiny a piece of darkness it was. Considered on a universal scale, this very darkness was an essential element that occupied a greater part of the actual world.
    Suddenly the seats in the row in front of me began to shake unnaturally. The suppressed, cynical laugh of a woman roseto me from out of the darkness immediately in front and to the side. A man shushed her, and the shaking stopped. Perhaps no one else noticed, for the music at full volume made the hall tremble, and the spectators were few. Although it was none of my business, I drew a long sigh of relief. I stared fixedly in the direction of the voices, unable to take my eyes away, try as I might. The screen brightened, and the outlines of two people were distinctly revealed. The fringe of the girl’s hair, turned under in back, in the fashion of a child’s, fell over the collar of her white mohair coat, and a man’s head was lying on her shoulder. But both of them were completely enveloped from the shoulders down in a man’s black overcoat. However were they interlaced together beneath it?
    The conspicuous thing was the white nape of the woman’s neck. The white area seemed to melt into the coat collar, which was the same white, and yet it also seemed to come floating out of it. Actually, the woman may have been moving up and down, but it may well have been that my own eyes were giddy and unfocused. However, the man’s form was even more equivocal. The position of his head was such that he seemed to be looking straight at the woman—if he could move his left arm, which was pressed against her, around under her armpit, he would be able to reach her buttocks, I suppose—her free right shoulder dipped sharply down. They could be doing anything. I concentrated my gaze on the right shoulder until my eyes watered. But it was like a picture drawn in India ink on a blackboard. If the shoulder appeared to be undulating, it was because I wanted it to be so; and if it seemed to be doing it rhythmically, it was definitely because I wished it. In short I was apparently infatuated with my own eagerness.
    Suddenly the woman gave a loud laugh. I started as if I had been slapped and was seized by the illusion that it was I who was responsible for the unexpected outburst. But actually itwas not the woman who had laughed but the loud-speaker behind the screen. An exciting, voluptuous scene was being enacted on the screen, as if in