The researcher, the head of the laboratory at the Institute of High Molecular Chemistry, during the experiment burned his face with liquid oxygen, which made his whole face scarred. The wounds do not heal in any way, and he always walks with a bandaged face. He reflects on the fact that the absence of skin on the face, which is nothing more than a shell, fenced him off from society. He feels that he has lost his face and notices that the face plays a much more important role in life than he expected: even Bach's soothing music now seems to him not a balm, but a lump of clay. "Is a disfigured person capable of influencing the perception of music?" He laments. The hero ponders whether he has lost something else with his face. He recalls how, as a child, he pulled off and threw into the fire the older sister's false hair, which seemed to him something obscene, immoral, and now the bandages became like his false face, devoid of expression and personality.

The hero is trying to restore physical closeness with his wife, who broke off after an accident, but does it too abruptly, too rudely, and the wife pushes him away. His relationship with people was broken: passers-by politely look away from his face, colleagues diligently pretend that nothing happened, the children begin to cry when they look at him. The hero wants to make a mask that would replace his face, restore his connection with people. First of all, he meets with K. - a scientist involved in the manufacture of artificial organs. K. shows him an artificial finger, but his face is another matter. According to K., this is not only a cosmetic problem, but also a problem related to the prevention of mental illness.

K. during the war was a military doctor and saw that the wounded were primarily worried not about whether they would live and whether their body would function normally, but about whether their original appearance would be preserved. One soldier who had a disfigured face committed suicide just before being discharged from the hospital. This convinced K. that "a serious external wound to the face, like a decal, is imprinted in the form of mental trauma."

K. is ready to tackle the face of the hero and is confident that he can offer him something better than bandages. But the hero refuses. He buys an artificial finger and is in a hurry to leave quickly. At night, putting the artificial finger on the table, like a candle, the hero ponders his conversation with K. If the face is a path between people, it means that losing the face forever walled up the hero in solitary confinement, and then the idea of ​​a mask is similar to a plan to escape from prison, where the card posed the existence of man. The hero is really looking for a way to people. But the face is not the only path. The hero’s scientific works on rheology were read by people who never saw him, therefore, scientific works also connect people with each other. The hero is trying to understand why the artificial finger looks so repulsive. It is probably a matter of skin sensation. To reproduce the smallest details of the skin, one must use someone else's face.

The hero meets with a school friend - a specialist in the field of paleontology. He explains to the hero that even an experienced specialist can recreate only the general arrangement of muscles - because if the skeleton gave an accurate idea of ​​the external appearance of a person, plastic surgery would be impossible.

The hero is considering which face suits him. He is looking for material for a smooth epithelium, for the keratin layer of the epidermis, for the inner layers of the skin. The hero makes a mold of his face from antimony - this is the inner surface of the future mask. Now he needs to choose the type of face for the outer surface of the mask, which is not so easy.The inability to share your grief with anyone begins to turn the hero into a monster. If Carlyle’s statement that the priest makes a cassock is true, then perhaps the fact that the face of the monster creates the heart of the monster is also true.

The hero begins to love the darkness. He goes to the cinema to stay in the dark, accidentally gets to the exhibition of masks of the “No” theater. It seems to him that the features of their faces are mobile, but he understands that this is an optical illusion: in fact, it is not the mask that changes, but the light incident on it. Masks do not have their own expression, but the one who looks at them sees a certain expression on them, each - his own. It all depends on the viewer, on his choice.

The hero has an idea to choose the type of person from the position of a close person - his wife. The hero tells his wife that in the movie the audience, as it were, rents faces from the actors and puts them on, and if the faces of the actors do not like, then the film is not interesting to watch. The wife replies that she loves films where there are no actors - documentaries. The hero is annoyed that she always gives in to him. Returning to his thoughts about the type of face, he comes to the conclusion that, from the point of view of his wife, the “inharmonious, extrovert type” suits him. The face of a strong-willed, active person. The hero, on the one hand, seeks to restore the path connecting him with his wife, on the other hand, seeks revenge on her. He feels like a hunter, whose arrow is constantly directed at his wife.

After much work, the mask is finally ready. To hide the line of its connection with the face, the hero makes the mask a beard. He doesn't like beards - it looks pretentious, but he has no choice. The hero puts on a mask, but his own face seems to him inanimate. Probably the fact is that the mask is motionless and therefore devoid of expression. The hero decides to rent a room in house S and there "accustom the mask to wrinkles", give it expression.

The hero first goes into the street in a mask. His goal is to get used to the mask, so he does not care where to go. He enters the tobacco shop. The saleswoman does not pay much attention to him, he is the same for her as the others. The next day, the hero asks the manager to hand over the next room to his younger brother in order to be able to come and go in a mask, without attracting attention. Unfortunately, the room is already rented out. Then the hero says that his brother will come and relax from time to time in his room. The hero meets the manager’s daughter in the courtyard, who cried when she first saw his bandaged face. The girl is mentally retarded, and the hero speaks to her. “We play secrets,” the girl tells him. The hero is amazed at how exactly this random phrase corresponds to what is happening to him. He promises the girl to buy a new toy. The mask begins to appear to the hero as an evil spirit.

Remains one day before the end of his fictional business trip. He needs to get comfortable with the mask. He goes to the store, buys the promised toy for the girl. The shopkeeper shows him a wind gun. The hero does not want to buy him, but the mask prevails over him, and he buys a weapon. The hero feels the mask as something almost separate from himself, almost hostile. He wants to come to his wife in a mask disguised as a stranger and seduce her. Approaching his house, the hero, not recognized by the neighbors, draws in his imagination a meeting of his wife with a mask. The mask, which should have become an intermediary between him and his wife, causes the hero's jealousy. The hero feels that an abyss lies between him and his mask. Peering through the window of his house, the hero sees many bandages hanging from the ceiling with ribbons: waiting for his return, his wife washed the old bandages with which he wrapped his face. The hero feels that he loves his wife very much.

The next day, at four o'clock, the hero comes in a mask to a bus stop to meet his wife returning from a lecture on applied art. When she gets off the bus, the hero speaks to her. He invites her to drink coffee, then dine.She calmly allows the mask to seduce her, says that her husband is on a business trip, a few hours after meeting she goes with the hero to the hotel and surrenders to him. The hero feels a sense of defeat. He does not understand his wife.

The next day, wrapping his face in bandages, the hero pretends to be returning from a weekly business trip. First, he goes to work to calm down and get used to his appearance in bandages. At home, his wife meets him as if nothing had happened. He is amazed - he is so desperately fighting the split between the face and the mask, while his wife calmly withstood the bifurcation, which was completely unexpected for her, and did not experience a shadow of shame or remorse. After dinner, the hero, citing an unfinished experiment, leaves home. After some time, he calls his wife on behalf of the mask. She says that her husband returned, but soon left, and adds: "He is very sorry."

The hero is bewildered, he can not unravel his wife. Approaching his shelter in house S, the hero meets a girl. The hero in confusion pretends that he does not understand what is being discussed: after all, when he promised the girl a toy, he was in a mask. But the girl tells him:

“Don't worry, we play secrets.” The hero sees that his mask cannot even deceive a demented girl, but reassures herself that a girl, like a dog, trusts not intuition, but intuition, which is why it is more difficult to deceive than an adult thinking person. The hero gives the girl a toy.

Wearing a mask, he goes on a date with his own wife. Having returned, he begins to write notes in order to destroy the triangle he created. He can not merge with the mask in any way, therefore he perceives the mask’s connection with his wife as treason, as a betrayal. This goes on for almost two months. The hero’s wife meets with a mask, and the hero writes notes designed to explain everything to his wife. Having finished the notes, the hero tells his wife how to get to his shelter in S. The wife comes there and finds three notebooks, where the hero described all his thoughts and feelings - the contents of these notebooks are the text of the novel. In conclusion, the hero writes to his wife where his mask lies, and says that she can do anything with her.

On the blank pages of the last notebook, the hero makes notes for himself. He describes how he sat at home and waited while his wife in house S reads notebooks with his notes. He hopes that exposing the mask will hurt his wife, making her ashamed. After all, she also injured the hero with her “treason”, which means they are even. He believes that any decision is better than a similar love triangle. Without waiting for his wife, the hero hurries to the house S. There is no wife there. The mask is still in the closet. On the table, he discovers a letter from his wife. She writes that from the first minute she guessed everything. But he, who at first sought to recover himself with the help of a mask, at some point began to look at the mask as an invisible hat, but not in order to hide from others, but in order to escape from himself. The mask became his other face. The wife writes that the mask was not bad, he just did not know how to handle it: in the end, the mask did not change anything. The wife accuses the hero of not wanting to know anyone but himself, and considers his behavior a mockery of her.

After reading his wife’s letter, the hero is trying to understand at what point he made a mistake. Two remarks of his wife hurt him the most: firstly, the admission that, having exposed the true essence of the mask, she continued to pretend that he had managed to deceive her; secondly, he rebuked that, despite a lot of excuses, he backed them up with not one real action, he only had enough that these notes, which, in essence, make him look like a snake clutching its own tail. The hero feels that the mask was not so much a mask as something close to a new, real face.

He decides to give the mask another chance. Wearing a mask and taking a wind gun, the hero feels that his mood immediately changes.Before, he felt that he was already forty years old, but now he feels that he is only forty years old. The inherent self-confidence of the mask makes itself felt. The hero is trying to find his wife, but to no avail. From an obedient, weak, blinded by jealousy, the mask turns into a wild beast, capable of anything. Hearing the tapping of heels, the hero hides around the corner and releases the pistol fuse. He himself does not know what he will do - this will be decided in the last moment, when the woman is at a distance of a shot. He hates people. The steps are getting closer. His last words: “I can never write again. Apparently, writing is necessary only when nothing happens. ”