Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

“One flew away, the other drowned.”

“What happened, Miss?” asked Mr. Willie.

“Oh, I’m just remembering my grandmothers,” she said.

“You have to do something, Miss, the servants are confused. Aren’t you the head of this family now?”

She nodded. That evening as the sun went down she ordered Mr. Willie to gather all the household servants: the cooks, the maids, the garden staff, and the security guards. She told them that now she was the sole mistress of the household. All her orders must be carried out, and no one could refuse. She wasn’t going to whip anyone, but if Ted Stammler came home, he would whip all dissidents, and throw them in the cages with the ajak . Her first order did not seem to bother anyone at all, but did surprise and confuse them:

“Tonight, someone has to kidnap an old man named Ma Gedik from the settlements in the swamp,” she said. “Because tomorrow morning I am going to marry him.”

“Don’t joke around, Miss,” said Mr. Willie.

“Go ahead and laugh if you think I’m joking.”

“But the priest has disappeared and the church has been bombed to pieces!”

“There is still the village headman.”

“Miss, you’re not a Muslim are you?”

“No, but I haven’t been Catholic either, not for quite a long time.”

That was the beginning of Dewi Ayu’s marriage to Ma Gedik. A pitiful old man marrying a beautiful young girl: the news quickly spread to every corner of the city — even the arriving Japanese heard the gossip. Meanwhile those Dutch who had not been able to escape sent letters via their servants asking whether the story was true, and some began to resurrect the shameful scandal of her mother and father.

“What will happen if I don’t marry you?” asked Ma Gedik finally, a short while after the headman arrived.

“You’ll be supper for the ajak .”

“Then let them have me.”

“And Ma Iyang Hill will be flattened.”

With that terrifying threat, he helplessly married Dewi Ayu around nine o’clock that morning, just as the Japanese soldiers began the ceremony marking their occupation of the city. No one was invited to celebrate their marriage except the servants and the security guards. Mr. Willie served as witness and the whole time Ma Gedik trembled and stammered and couldn’t say his vows properly. He finally collapsed, unconscious, and the headman formalized their union.

“The poor man,” said Dewi Ayu. “He would have been my grandfather, if Ted had not made Ma Iyang his concubine.”

When Ma Gedik regained consciousness later that afternoon, he found himself Dewi Ayu’s husband without understanding how it had happened, gaping at her as if she were a she-devil. He refused to touch her, shrieking whenever she forced herself near him, and hurling whatever he could grab at her. When Dewi Ayu relented, he curled up in the corner of the room shivering and crying like a baby in its cradle. Dewi Ayu waited patiently, sitting not far from him, still in her wedding clothes. Once in a while she would try to coax him to approach her and caress her, and even make love to her, since she was now his wife. But whenever Ma Gedik began to scream again, she would stop her seduction, and return to sitting there quietly, flashing him a smile now and then in her patient efforts.

“Why are you afraid of me? I just want you to touch me, and of course sleep with me, because you are my husband.”

Ma Gedik didn’t respond.

“Think about it, let’s say we are married and you don’t sleep with me,” she continued. “I will never get pregnant and everyone will say that your dick doesn’t work anymore.”

“You are a she-devil seductress,” stammered Ma Gedik finally.

“I’m a beautiful temptress,” Dewi Ayu added.

“You are not a virgin.”

“Of course that’s not true!” said Dewi Ayu, a little hurt. “Sleep with me and you will know that you’re wrong.”

“You’re not a virgin, and you’re pregnant, and you want to make me into the black sheep.”

“That’s not true.”

Their debate continued until the middle of the night, and then until the early morning, and neither of them changed their mind. When the new day came and the light streamed into their bridal chamber, Dewi Ayu was exhausted by the man’s electrifying screams and gave up on approaching him. She took off all of her clothes, her wedding dress and her tiara, and threw them on top of the bed. Stark naked, she stood in front of the still hysterical old man, and said loudly in his ear:

“Do it, and you’ll know that I’m a virgin!”

“I swear to Satan, I am not going to do it, because I know you are not a virgin!”

Then Dewi Ayu inserted her middle finger into her vagina, deep inside, right in front of Ma Gedik’s nose. The girl whimpered a little at the pain, and trembled every time her finger moved in between her legs, until she pulled it out and showed it to Ma Gedik. A drop of blood hovered on her fingertip, which she then smeared in a straight line from the tip of Ma Gedik’s forehead to the edge of his quivering chin.

“Well I guess you’re right,” said Dewi Ayu. “Now I am no longer a virgin.”

She left to bathe and after that she slept atop her wedding bed, as if she didn’t care about the old man who was still shivering in the corner of the room. She hadn’t had any rest for a whole day and night, and so she slept quite soundly, not responding when the servants tried to rouse her for lunch. She awoke in the afternoon and without bothering about Ma Gedik went right to the table, eating with gusto, and with no conversation as the servants looked on, waiting for her orders. When she returned to her room, she realized that the old man was gone. She looked for him in the bathroom, in the yard, and in the kitchen, but she didn’t find him. Dewi Ayu finally asked one of the guards in front of the house.

“He ran away screaming like he’d seen the devil, Miss.”

“You didn’t catch him?”

“He was running so fast, just like Ma Iyang ran sixteen years ago,” replied the guard. “But Mr. Willie chased him with the car.”

“And was he caught?”

“No.”

She ran to the stable and joined the chase on horseback. Dewi Ayu guessed, although she was slightly mistaken, that the man had run toward the peak of the rocky hill where Ma Iyang had flown down and was lost in the fog. It turned out Ma Gedik had not run to that hill, but to another hill located to the east. After questioning some people on the side of the road, they picked up some Colibri tire tracks, which led them to the foot of that hill. Dewi Ayu found Mr. Willie sitting on the back bumper of the car, looking like he couldn’t drive up any farther.

“He’s singing on the hilltop,” said Mr. Willie.

Dewi Ayu looked up and saw Ma Gedik, standing on a boulder and singing like an opera star on stage. She could hear him faintly, but she didn’t know that it was the same song that he had sung years ago on the last day of his sixteen year wait for Ma Iyang.

“He’s definitely going to jump, just like his beloved,” continued Mr. Willie. “And he’ll fly up into the sky and disappear behind the fog.”

“No,” said Dewi Ayu, “He will crash on the rocks and be banged up like a pile of chopped beef.”

And that was what happened: right as he finished his song Ma Gedik jumped into the open air. He appeared to fly, overjoyed, as no one had seen him be for many years. His arms flapped like the wings of a bird, but they couldn’t make his body fly any higher, and down he plummeted with ever-increasing speed. Even though he knew what was waiting at the end, he still smiled and whooped, full of excitement. He crashed onto the rocks, and his body was hacked to abysmal bits, exactly as Dewi Ayu had predicted.