Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

She had always been amazed that she didn’t have any parents, only a grandpa and grandma and auntie. But when she realized that her father and mother had disappeared one morning, she wasn’t angry, in fact quite the opposite, she was in awe.

“They are real adventurers,” she said to Ted Stammler.

“You read too many storybooks, child,” replied her grandfather.

“They must be religious. The Holy Bible tells of a mother who left her child on the banks of the Nile River.”

“That was different.”

“Yes, of course. I was left on a doorstep.”

Henri and Aneu were both Ted Stammler’s children. They had lived in the same house since they were infants, but no one had realized that they had fallen in love — truly a shameful scandal. Born from the womb of Marietje, Henri was two years older than Aneu, who was Ted’s child with a native concubine named Ma Iyang. Even though Ma Iyang lived in a different house guarded by two tough guys, Ted had decided to bring Aneu to live with them after she was born. At first Marietje put up a terrible fight but what could be done, after all most men had concubines and bastard children. She finally agreed to let the child live in their house and gave her the family name, to avoid any gossip at the club.

They grew up together, so they had plenty of time to fall in love. Henri was a pleasant youth, clever at hunting pigs with his borzoi dogs (sent straight from Russia), a good soccer player, swimmer, and dancer. Meanwhile Aneu grew into a beautiful young woman, playing the piano and singing in a sweet soprano. Ted and Marietje gave them permission to go to the night fairs and the dance hall, because now was their time to have fun, and maybe even find a good match. But that was the beginning of the whole catastrophe — after dancing until midnight and drinking a festive restaurant lemonade, they didn’t come home. Ted was worried and took two tough guys out to look for them at the night fair. They only found a carousel dark and still, a haunted house locked up tight, an empty dance hall, food stalls that were already closed, and some sleeping clerks sprawled out exhausted in front of their kiosks. There was no sign of the teenagers there, and so Ted resorted at last to questioning their young friends about their whereabouts. Someone said:

“Henri and Aneu went to the bay.”

There was nothing at the bay at night except for a few boarding houses. Ted searched them one by one and found the pair in a room, naked and taken by surprise. Ted didn’t say a word, and they never came home again. No one knew where they went after that. Maybe they lived in one of the boarding houses, surviving by working odd jobs, if not by borrowing money or taking charity from their friends. It’s also possible that they went into the forest and lived off fruit and boar meat. Someone else said they were in Batavia working for the train company. Ted and Marietje never knew their whereabouts or condition, and then one morning Ted found a baby in a basket outside his front door.

“And that baby was you,” said Ted. “They named you Dewi Ayu.”

“And then they made more babies on the Aurora … there might be baskets in front of all the houses in Europe,” said the girl.

“When she found out, your grandmother got hysterical. She ran from the house like a crazy person and couldn’t be caught, not even by horses and cars. We found her on the peak of the rocky hill, but she never came down. She flew away instead.”

“Grandma Marietje flew?” asked Dewi Ayu.

“No, Ma Iyang.”

The concubine, her other grandmother. According to her grandfather, if she sat on the back veranda and looked north, she would see two small rocky hills. The western hill was where Ma Iyang flew away and disappeared into the sky, and the locals had named the hill after her: Ma Iyang. It was impressive, but also kind of sad. Dewi Ayu often sat alone in the afternoons and gazed out at that hill, hoping to see her grandmother still floating there like a dragonfly. Only the war redirected her attention, and then Dewi Ayu began to sit more often in front of the radio listening to the reports from the front lines.

Even though the war was still far away, its effects could be felt in Halimunda. Along with a few other Dutchmen, Ted Stammler co-owned a cocoa bean and coconut plantation, the biggest one in the district. Thanks to the war, global trade was in ruins. Their income fell and it seemed their businesses were doomed. The families grew thrifty. Marietje only bought food from the peddlers who traveled from house to house. Hanneke curbed her habits of going to the movies and buying records. Even Mr. Willie, the Indo man who worked for them as a guard and mechanic had to cut down on the bullets for his gun and gas for the Colibri. Meanwhile, Dewi Ayu had to evacuate to the school dormitory.

That was how the Franciscan nuns tried to help during the war; they opened the doors of the dormitory at no charge. Now all of the lessons at school were filled with anxious stories about the war that was finally right in their own front yards. Dewi Ayu, who was impatient with the endless speeches, stood up and asked loudly:

“Rather than sitting here talking, why don’t we learn how to shoot rifles and cannons?”

The nuns expelled her for a week and it was only because there was a war on that her grandfather did not dole out any extra punishment. She returned to school just after the bomb fell on Pearl Harbor and Sister Maria, who usually taught history with a cheerful countenance, solemnly pronounced: “It’s time for America to intervene.”

They realized that the war was now very close, creeping like a lizard in the grass, slowly but surely covering the face of the earth with blood and bullet casings. Dewi Ayu’s suggestion now looked prophetic, but it turned out it wasn’t the German troops but the Japanese approaching. Like a tiger pissing on its expanding territory, the flag of the rising sun began to fly in the Philippines, and then all of a sudden it was flying in Singapore too.

At home, this caused bigger problems. Like all the adult men Ted Stammler, who wasn’t old yet, received a summons to enter mandatory military service. This was a much more difficult situation than merely trying to save money. Hanneke tearfully gave him some protective amulets and Dewi Ayu gave him some good advice: “Getting captured by your enemies is way better than getting shot to death.”

Ted went away without a soul knowing where he would be stationed, although most likely he would be sent to Sumatra to face the Japanese troops rapidly approaching Java. With the other men, mostly from plantation families, Ted left Halimunda and his family behind. “I swear on my life, he has never even shot a pig his aim is so off,” said Marietje through her tears when parting with him in the town square. She now took her husband’s place at the head of the household, looking so pitiful that her daughter and granddaughter tried to comfort her. Mr. Willie came almost every day — he hadn’t been called to war because he was an Indo who had never registered as a Dutch citizen, and plus he had a lame leg after being rammed by a wild pig.

“Stay calm, Grandma, Japanese eyes are too narrow to see Halimunda on the map,” said Dewi Ayu. Of course she was only trying to make Marietje feel better, but she didn’t even show the hint of a smile.

Dejection spread through the city. The night market closed, and no one visited the club. There were no dances and the plantation offices were guarded by a handful of frail old folks. People only met at the swimming pool to soak in silence. Around that time, all the Japanese people who had been living in Halimunda disappeared. Some of them had been farmers and some of them had been merchants, one had been a photographer, and a couple of others had even been acrobats in the circus, but when they all suddenly vanished, everyone realized that they had been living among enemy spies the entire time.