Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

“There is no way I am going to stay alive when I know that all of my friends have been killed in a massacre,” he said in a heartbroken tone.

“There is no way I am going to die while many people are still enjoying their beautiful lives,” said Romeo dryly.

“But I am also still thinking of my wife. She will be so sad, especially since we have already lost our daughter.”

“I don’t care about my wife. She can still find lots of guys to have sex with who won’t care how ugly she is,” said Romeo. “But I still prefer to live.”

They arrived at a small hill with a cave that the Japanese had carved into one of its slopes for defense during the war. They both rested at the top of the hill, as Maman Gendeng continued to weigh his desire to put this life behind him against his reluctance to leave Maya Dewi all alone on this earth. He looked at that Japanese cave, so dark and humid, with its boxlike walls, looking more like a prison cell than a fort. But a place like that was quite fitting for meditation. Maman Gendeng wanted to meditate until he achieved liberation and left this earth in moksa , but he continued to think about his wife until he said finally:

“Whatever the case, sooner or later, death will come. And she is the strongest woman I know.”

He decided to meditate in the Japanese cave, and went inside. He ordered Romeo to stand guard at the top of the hill in case the soldiers had sniffed them out and chased them to that spot. “Come get me if those soldiers arrive,” he said.

“I will kill them dead before they even have the chance to arrive,” said Romeo.

“Your voice doesn’t sound that reassuring,” said Maman Gendeng, “but I trust you.”

Maman Gendeng went down into the cave, sat on the moist floor, and began to meditate. Not long after, he attained moksa : disappeared and dissolved into little orbs of light. He didn’t kill himself, but he left this world by shedding his body, abandoning all the material that shackled his soul, and now he was one with all light, sparkling like crystal and rising up toward the sky. But before he reached heaven he saw four soldiers pointing their weapons at that guy Romeo on top of the hill. He wanted to help the man by blurring the soldiers’ vision, but before he could, he heard Romeo say:

“Don’t kill me! I’ll tell you where Maman Gendeng is hiding.”

“Okay, tell us,” said one of the soldiers.

“He’s meditating in that Japanese cave.”

The four soldiers went down and searched the Japanese cave. But of course they weren’t going to find Mamang Gendeng. Romeo was going to take the opportunity to run away, but Maman Gendeng wasn’t going to let that happen and held him back, so that Romeo found himself running and yet unable to move from his spot.

“A traitor is always a traitor,” said Maman Gendeng, and Romeo, who couldn’t see him, could still hear his booming voice.

Maman Gendeng then transformed Romeo’s face into his own face, exactly at the moment those four furious soldiers returned.

“So finally we find you, Maman Gendeng,” they said, aiming their weapons at where he stood on the crest of the hill.

“I’m Romeo,” said the man, “not Maman Gendeng!”

But two shots of a rifle had already ended his life. One bullet in his head and another in his chest. It was that corpse Maya Dewi found, while Maman Gendeng rose up to heaven and visited her on the third day after he attained moksa .

THAT MIGHTY EVIL spirit was now overjoyed to see all its victories, to see all its rancor and hatred avenged, even though it had been forced to wait for so long.

“I have separated them from the people they love,” he said to Dewi Ayu, “just as he separated me from the person I loved.”

I have separated them from the people they love, just as he separated me from the person I loved , its voice echoed.

“But I loved you,” said Dewi Ayu, “with a love that came from deep in my guts.”

“Yes and so I ran from you, granddaughter of Stammler!”

Yes and so I ran from you, granddaughter of Stammler!

Dewi Ayu couldn’t believe how firmly that evil spirit’s longing for revenge had been rooted. He had always seemed just like an ordinary ghost. She had known that he had evil plans for some point in the future, but she had never imagined that he could do so much harm, never guessed how deeply his bitterness had been planted in his heart.

“Look at your children,” said that evil spirit, “they have now all become pathetic widows, and the fourth is a spinster who has never been married!”

Look at your children, they have now all become pathetic widows, and the fourth is a spinster who has never been married!

This was after the ghost had killed Shodancho in his guerrilla hut, the place where he used to hold dominion. When Shodancho appeared out of the blue early in the morning and squatted before the hearth, Dewi Ayu, who had been dead for years and even when she had been alive hadn’t had any contact with him for a very long time, had truly forgotten that he was her son-in-law. The man said that he had been combing the cities and the jungles for years, ever since he had massacred the city thugs, searching for his daughter’s stolen body. He was exhausted and had returned to the city a failure. He didn’t dare go home to his wife, Alamanda, so he had come to the house of his mother-in-law, Dewi Ayu.

“I didn’t have a character suitable to play the role of Shodancho’s killer,” said the evil spirit, “So I did it myself.”

I didn’t have a character suitable to play the role of Shodancho’s killer, so I did it myself .

“I knew from early on,” said Dewi Ayu, “that you were an amateur comedian.”

No, he didn’t really do it himself, not with his own hands. But indeed, no human being killed Shodancho. In the forlorn solitude of his old age, without the courage to face his wife, who had sent him away after he turned her younger sisters into widows, and having lost his beloved daughter, Shodancho frequently tried to make himself feel better by going to his guerrilla hut in the middle of the jungle on the cape. The hut was just as it had always been, not quite as sturdy as before, but still strong enough to carry him back to a comforting nostalgia.

He also tried to keep himself busy by once again raising wild ajak around the guerrilla hut. He was already quite old and feeble, but he still took the pups from their dens. Then one day, their mother came looking for them.

He was lying down on the rock that he used to eat on with his men, the same rock that Rengganis the Beautiful had lain the corpse of her baby on before throwing it to the dogs, when that female ajak came with her pack. This bitch didn’t wait too long when she saw her enemy in such a vulnerable state, lunging right for him and tearing into the muscle of his thigh. To repeat, Shodancho was now quite old, his reflexes were slow, and his resistance was weak. He hadn’t yet been able to fight back when other ajak began arriving, one pouncing on his arm and the other snatching at his calf. Gaping wounds opened up across his body and his old man’s blood flooded out over the rock. Shodancho was still able to twitch and kick this way and that, hoping to shake off those ajak , but his wounds were quite severe, and he exhausted himself. He began to quiet, looking up at the sky, realizing that his death was imminent and that it had come at the hands of the ajak he had cared for his entire life. He died with his body torn to shreds, eaten alive. Please do realize though, that in truth ajak are lazy creatures who usually only eat carrion. Shodancho is perhaps one of the only people to have ever been eaten alive. His death was destined to be just that tragic.