Arid Dreams Read online

  Still, I had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that a beautiful young couple was greater than the sum of their parts. Kanda and Wonchai enhanced one another, each looking even better than before. Outside of our group of friends, who knew too much about Wonchai’s character, people all lavished praise on the pair. Whenever I heard these compliments, I fled to my group of friends. I grumbled to them about how the others didn’t have a clue and how their remarks were so irritating. Oh, how superficial appearance is, and how superficial these people’s opinions.

  That damned gorgeous couple lasted longer than expected. But the honeymoon period eventually came to an end. Even though Wonchai claimed he would marry Kanda, he kept drumming up excuses to postpone the engagement. We began to suspect that he was falling for someone new. The little changes weren’t hard to notice. He often disappeared, he was cagey, but his face had a glow about it, and he was uncharacteristically upbeat. Kanda started being unable to locate her boyfriend, and my friends and I had to cover up for his absences. No, I didn’t do it to help a friend, not at all. I did it for her sake, to keep her happy, as I didn’t want to see her down; I did it for the sake of her steadfast heart, which had never harbored any misgivings about her lover. But ultimately, I did it for the sake of her luminous beauty, which only increased with each passing day.

  All of that faded into the background as we grew apart, but later on my friends and I took renewed interest in Kanda’s well-being. This time was different, however; the impulse behind our concern for her was humanitarian. I wished her well and pitied her deeply. We protected her as if she were a delicate flower. In fact, by that time my three friends all had girlfriends poised to be their future wives. I was the only one who had never had a steady relationship. Because Kanda had won us over, we swooped in to protect her like brothers looking out for their little sister.

  We cornered Wonchai for a series of interrogations. Each time he swore that Kanda was the woman he was going to marry. As for the other girls, they were just little pleasures. When urged to quit womanizing, he was visibly annoyed that his friends were overstepping their bounds. We had no choice but to back off. And so we continued to conceal it from Kanda.

  True, we were all worried about her, but the others could only spare so much time since they had girlfriends. I was the only single one left. As a result, I was more upset by Kanda’s predicament than the rest. It bothered me so much that I decided to try to expose Wonchai, even though we had spent years covering up for him. I didn’t tell anyone about my plan because I knew my friends wouldn’t approve. The opportunity presented itself one day when I successfully split away, covertly waited for Kanda at her workplace, and took her to dinner alone.

  Walking side by side with her into the restaurant—I’ll never forget that moment. I still get worked up just thinking about it. In that instant I was giddy, wondering what it would be like if we, these two people now walking next to each other, were in love. It would be pure bliss, and everything would fall into place. Kanda would no longer be taken advantage of by a guy whose only redeeming quality was his looks. I liked how the wait-staff peered at us. I liked how the other diners turned to look at us and then whispered. I wanted the whole world to get an eyeful of us together.

  Kanda was truly beautiful. Like I said, she was the kind of woman I had always dreamed of. Being with that handsome bastard for three years hadn’t tarnished her beauty one bit. Strangely, she was exponentially more beautiful. Because of her loveliness, when we sat facing each other, I was speechless. I suddenly realized: If finding out about Wonchai’s infidelities caused her to suffer, would the sadness or distress affect her beauty? According to my observations, that tended to be the case with women. The more I considered the idea, the more flustered I became. I could only stare at Kanda’s face, awestruck by her beauty. Then the answer dawned on me. Kanda wasn’t like other girls. She had proven time and time again that she was different. So I became convinced that her beauty played by different rules. Nothing in the world could fracture or destroy it. Even with the passing of time, her beauty would merely adapt to her age. Therefore, I made a decision.

  After preparing her for the blow, prompting her to steady herself and stay strong, I divulged to her in detail Wonchai’s skirt-chasing ways, his trysts, and his putting off their marriage. When I finished, I waited for her reaction. But, nothing. She was unmoved and silent, as if she had been listening to a story about someone else entirely. I was the one who got worked up, worried she didn’t believe me.

  Kanda smiled graciously. She said softly, measuring her words, that she had known for a long time what I had just told her. In fact, she knew even more than what I had reported, and she didn’t see it as a problem. I was dumbstruck. Her thinking was beyond comprehension. Not only that, she said she had already prepared herself for this sort of thing—that women tend to have methods at their disposal that men couldn’t imagine. Indeed, it was beyond my imagination and comprehension. The outcome of our conversation depressed me. A beloved man’s betrayal was no longer a problem nowadays? And she even bragged about having a method for dealing with it. Was she being smart or profoundly stupid? Or was the willingness to be stupid part of her plan? What was it all for? To keep a worthless man? Huh. I still didn’t want to believe that a beautiful woman like Kanda could fall prey to a man like Wonchai that she would submit her body and soul to him.

  “I don’t agree with you at all,” I told her, letting my tone and facial expression say the same. I asked, Didn’t she know she was beautiful? Her beauty should be pursued and respected. Men should submit to her because of it. Kanda cracked up as she listened. I grew red-faced with anger. Too furious to hold my words back, I told her to stop laughing. I told her, since we’d gotten to know her, my friends and I had all come to deeply care for her and truly had her interests at heart. Our discovery that our friend was doing her wrong only made us more concerned. We constantly thought about how we could help. But the fact that she was utterly unperturbed made a mockery of our goodwill.

  My words had an immediate effect. Kanda was stunned, her pretty face visibly saddened. A moment later, she uttered the appropriate line, “And what should I do?” Able to smile then, I started to comfort her.

  Because she had been loyal all along, she was entitled to feel self-righteous. She shouldn’t look the other way and be willing to tolerate a punishment not of her own making. Because of this, and the hints I’d been dropping, each time Wonchai disappeared without an explanation after that, Kanda tracked him down and dragged him back. The couple fought more and more viciously, and within a few months, they were history.

  I was the only one left to take Kanda out afterward to help her lick her wounds. One night at a hotel by the beach, I invited myself into her room. She fully acquiesced. I was in a paradise like no other that night.

  That was ten years ago. Now let me explain how she has been, and how I have been, since we got married.

  Just a few days after our wedding, I woke up in the morning and rolled over toward her, intending to wake her up by planting a kiss on her eyelid. But I was stopped in my tracks—I stared, petrified, at her eyebrows. They were so peculiar: the thin little black arches contained not a single eyebrow hair. Astonished, I ogled for a long while: How long had they been this way? Why hadn’t I noticed? I inspected the other parts of her face—eyes, nose, mouth—and I was relieved that nothing else was out of order. Without makeup, her face was washed out, drawing attention to the hairless, coal-black eyebrows. Growing more and more distressed, I slowly moved away from her and laid my head on the pillow, trying to console myself, trying to make myself stop focusing on such a trivial matter. Still, I couldn’t help but glance at the protrusive black eyebrows again and again.

  Frankly, I’d never trusted Kanda from the start. Her beauty could catch the interest of other men, and I didn’t want to have any problems in our marriage. She quit her job without a fight; her professional life came to an end and she became a homemaker. Our relationship was fine
, but I came to realize that it had been a mistake to have Kanda quit working. Since she didn’t have to leave the house, she practically never applied makeup anymore. I got to see her dressed up only occasionally, when we went out. But matters became worse the more she got used to not wearing makeup. It tormented me. All you could see on her face were the hovering black eyebrows. Even after I’d had several months to grow accustomed to them, I just couldn’t let it go. When we talked, I didn’t dare look her in the eye—I couldn’t control myself: whenever I looked at her face, my damn eyes went straight to her eyebrows.

  People tend to get what they fear most. My beautiful Kanda had vanished. I was living with a stranger, an unfamiliar face: a woman who made no effort to take care of herself, who ran herself ragged with housework, who was always sweaty, her face oily. Her hair was haphazardly pulled back and clipped to the middle of her head with something or other. It was like that every day. Oh, how unfair it was. Oh, Kanda! I’d loved her since the first time I’d laid eyes on her, loved her unfailingly, loved her tenderly. Even though I wasn’t the first man in her life, I never quibbled. When I finally snagged her, it was as though I’d been cheated. I’d obviously been cheated!

  After keeping it bottled up for two years, I decided to say something. We were watching TV. I had been preparing for the encounter since early evening, but nothing came out of my mouth until after ten p.m. Unsure whether what I was going to demand from Kanda was my due right or something overblown that might be the object of her scorn and ridicule, I began to doubt myself. Because of this, I swapped my tough stance for a tease. A comedy was on. I chose a moment when she was laughing loudly to suddenly crane over and stare at her face, assuming a puzzled expression. “Hmm, why are your eyebrows like that?” I exclaimed, as if I had never seen the eyebrow-shaped tattoos before. I was hoping she’d be embarrassed in response, so I readied myself to comfort her, to counsel her that the tattoos wouldn’t look so bad if she only made herself up prettily like she used to. But the next second, Kanda, trying to stifle a laugh, replied, “What? Did you really just notice? They’ve been like that for ages!” I laughed softly, to show that I didn’t think too much of the matter. We continued to watch the movie. Even though I was losing hope, I brought up the eyebrows again, keeping my tone as light as possible: “But why are they like that? And since when?” The movie had hit an uninteresting stretch, so Kanda related in full how she had gone and had a doctor permanently remove her eyebrow hairs and put tattoos in their place. This had happened three years before she met my friends and me. I listened with my eyes fixed on the TV. Eventually, I feigned laughter, supposedly at something on screen, but it was really to make her stop talking. I was so humiliated that she had no shame about her lack of eyebrow hairs.

  That was eight years ago. I endured the situation for another three years. Then we got into a massive fight, and I think I must have brutally criticized her about how she was letting herself go.

  What happened was, we were going to a friend’s wedding, and I had gotten this idea into my head that if I took her to a party where people were going to be dressed to impress, she wouldn’t let herself be upstaged. As I was waiting for her to get ready, I reminisced about the day she and I had stepped into that restaurant together, how everyone had been staring at us. I wanted the old Kanda back; I wanted to have the marvelous Kanda on my arm and parade past the other wedding guests, who would all have their eyes on us. But when Kanda came out of the room, my dreams were shattered. She was dressed like my mother! Her face was powdered but not made-up, and her jet-black eyebrows were bolder than ever. I had meticulously tucked in my shirt, but as soon as I saw her, I stood up and yanked the tails out from under my waistband.

  During our fight, I even brought up Wonchai. I was furious and used some strong language, saying that she was a woman with no brain, infatuated with a man who had nothing going for him but his looks, that not even his womanizing bothered her. Even though she knew she’d been betrayed, she still wanted to make herself look more and more beautiful for him. Me, the man who was faithful to her and only her, she repaid me by looking increasingly shabby. Why was that? At first Kanda just stared at me, bewildered. When she realized that I had a problem with her appearance, then she blew up. She lectured me like I was a child, saying how foolish I was to fixate on looks. I lashed back, arguing that no, she didn’t get it, I wasn’t making the demand because I was a fool, but because of how well I knew her. I knew her better than anyone else in the world because no one else observed her, noticed things about her, and watched her every move. She was the sort of woman who cared about beauty, so much so that during all those years my friends and I were constantly spending time with her, no one ever saw her face without makeup. But she changed after we got married. Why was that? “Why? Why? Why?” I screamed in her face, badgering her for an answer.

  Nodding her head in quick succession, Kanda looked like she had an answer ready. She glared at me silently for some time, and then sighed. In the end, all I could do was keep my mouth shut.

  We both dropped the subject and never mentioned it again. That was five years ago. These days I don’t know whether or not she’s let it go. Last night was the first time in ten years that I had to sleep alone because Kanda was away visiting relatives in the provinces. Maybe because I wasn’t used to it, or who knows why, but I couldn’t sleep all night. My damn mind kept dredging up old problems, making them return to haunt me. Close to dawn, exhausted from trying to chase away my own thoughts, I settled on one line of inquiry: the expression on Kanda’s face five years ago. What was it that she was going to say but didn’t? What were the words that were on the tip of her tongue that night? I clung tightly to this question as I waited for her to return.

  It’s three in the afternoon on Sunday. As I wait for Kanda to arrive, I’m resolute, as focused as someone meditating. A quarter past, she lugs her things into the house, giving me a withered smile. She sets her stuff down and gets some water from the refrigerator. I sit quietly, sternly following her with my gaze. She notices my silence as she puts her glass down. Yes, it’s time.

  “Kanda, have a seat. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  She sits down, looking alarmed.

  “Do you remember that time we fought, five years ago?” She nods. “The time we were going to somebody’s wedding and you looked so frumpy, I couldn’t stand it, so we had a huge blowout fight?”

  “I remember. Why?”

  “Yeah, that time. We argued, and I said, you’re the kind of person who cares about her appearance, and then after you married me, you changed. With other women, it might be par for the course, but with you I don’t buy it. To me, it’s clearly a calculated move on your part. Why is that, Kanda? I asked you this five years ago, and you were about to answer, and then you changed your mind. Now tell me. What was it you meant to say that day?”

  Kanda closes her eyes, letting out a deep sigh, and then sinks back in her chair.

  “Listen, Kanda. We’re not going to fight like we did that time. I just want to know the answer, and that will be the end of it. This is the last time.”

  “Gleur, I just don’t understand how you’re still hung up on this. The fact that we’ve been together just fine until now already proves that this isn’t important.” She sighs again. “What does it matter whether I was pretty or not before? I’m thirty-eight, and you’re forty. We’re already old! Why don’t you worry about other things, like buying a plot of land for a house, or why we still don’t have children?”

  “Why are you bringing up other things? I just want an answer, and that’s it. I promise. Once you answer me, I’ll end this discussion immediately.”

  “What if you’re so upset by my answer that you won’t end the discussion?”

  Hit with those words, I feel my face and body flush. There, she let it slip. The all-important reason does exist. “What is it, Kanda? Tell me what it is.”

  She sighs deeply. “No, I can’t. I shouldn’t.”
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br />   “Tell me, Kanda.” I start to raise my voice. “Why is it that with me you let yourself go and wear those awful clothes? And why is it that with Wonchai you always managed to look good? Tell me now. You’ve already tortured me for ten years!”

  “Why do you have to bring Wonchai into this? He’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Nothing? Then you should be able to tell me why you always looked so beautiful when you were with him. Don’t think I don’t notice the difference. You looked your best back then, despite how terribly he treated you, starting from the moment that he … he … forced himself on you. Once he had you locked down as his girlfriend, he got tired of you in no time and left you for someone else. In that situation, you looked more beautiful than ever. But with me—”

  “What are you saying, Gleur? You’re painting quite a picture. Who forced himself on me? Nobody ever said it was anything but consensual. Why are you still deluding yourself?”

  “What about the fact that he left you for other women?”

  “Actually, he didn’t leave me. He was a womanizer; I already knew that about him. The fact that he’d have something on the side was to be expected. The real reason we broke up was … was you.”

  I feel my heart jerk, like a fish being pounded on the head. Listen—listen to what she’s saying. I helped her all this time, only to be stung by her words. The way she’s talking, anybody who hears her would think the same. “You still have feelings for him, don’t you, Kanda?” I said. “Oh, Kanda, you really had me fooled. I thought you were different from other women, but you’re just one of those pretty faces with nothing behind it. You and that empty shell of a man deserve each other. Then why are you with me, Kanda?”