Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

Wearing that wedding gown, she was more beautiful than ever. Her beauty shone, even in that dim chamber, enthralling the young ladies-in-waiting spying on her, who wondered what she was about to do. With graceful steps, Princess Rengganis approached the window, stood for a moment, and let out an anxious breath. Her vow had been taken and her will would be done. Her hands were shaking violently as she touched the shutter, and suddenly she was weeping, caught somewhere in between a deep sadness and an overflowing joy. With a light touch of her fingertips she opened the window latch. The shutter creaked open. She said: “Whoever is there, marry me.”

“It’s too bad I wasn’t there,” said Maman Gendeng to another fisherman on another morning. “Tell me, how far away am I from Halimunda?”

“Not far.”

Many people had already said “not far,” and those words now brought him no comfort because he never seemed to arrive. He voyaged on, stopping at every fisherman’s encampment and every port to ask: Is this Halimunda? Oh no, keep going east, they’d say. Everyone said the same thing, and it was making him lose confidence. All of a sudden he felt that the whole thing was one big conspiracy and everyone was lying to him and Halimunda was nothing more than an invention. He decided that if he asked one more time and the person said that he had to keep going east, he would punch him in the face to stop the dumb jokes and conniving.

Just then he saw a fishing port and a row of fishermen’s encampments. He quickly turned toward land, saying a small goodbye to the pair of sharks who had kept him company all the while and with whom he had developed an unusual friendship. He trembled with fatigue and defeat, losing hope that he would ever meet the amazing Princess Rengganis. He disembarked and met a fisherman who was pulling a net along the beach. His fists were clenched as he asked, “Is this Halimunda?”

“Yeah, this is Halimunda.”

That fisherman was a lucky guy because if Maman Gendeng, whose own teacher had called him the ultimate fighter, had unleashed all of his anger the man would never have been able to stave him off. But Maman Gendeng was truly overjoyed after his long journey, Halimunda was not just some phony-baloney; he had finally arrived, was smelling its fishy air, and was talking to one of its inhabitants. He dropped his knees to the ground he was so full of gratitude, while the fisherman looked at him perplexed.

“Everything looks so beautiful here,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” said the fisherman getting ready to leave, “even the shit here comes out looking pretty.” But Maman Gendeng detained him.

“Where can I meet Rengganis?” he asked.

“Which Rengganis? Tons of ladies go by that name. Even streets and rivers are named Rengganis.”

“The Princess Rengganis, of course.”

“She died hundreds of years ago.”

“What did you say?”

“I said she died hundreds of years ago.”

Everything abruptly came to an end. This can’t be true, Maman Gendeng told himself. But that did not soothe him, and his anger erupted ferociously. He threatened the poor fisherman, screaming that he was a liar. A number of other fishermen came with wooden oars in their hands to help, and Maman Gendeng destroyed those oars and left their owners sprawled out unconscious on the wet sand. Then three men, preman, tough guys, approached him. They ordered him to leave, the beach was their turf. Maman Gendeng didn’t leave, and instead attacked them mercilessly, overpowering all three at once and laying them out, flat and half-dead, on top of the bodies of the fishermen.

That was the chaotic morning when Maman Gendeng arrived in Halimunda and caused such an uproar. Those five fishermen and three preman thugs were his first victims. His next was an old veteran who came with a rifle and shot him from a distance. He didn’t know that the stranger was impervious to bullets. When he realized it he ran, but Maman Gendeng chased him down, snatched the veteran’s rifle and shot him in the calf, making him fall down in the street.

“Who else wants to fight?” he demanded.

He had to punish at least some of the people in that city, who had tricked him with a centuries-old story. There were a few more bouts that day and he won them all, and no one left on the beach wanted to challenge him. But by now he was starting to look worn out. With a pale face, he went to a food stall and the owner served him whatever he had. The people even plied him with arak palm wine, hoping he would get drunk and not cause any more trouble. Full and spent, Maman Gendeng grew sleepy. He stumbled back to the beach and stretched out on his boat, which he’d pulled up on the sand. He mulled over the whole journey and all of his disappointment, and before falling asleep he said clearly and distinctly, “If I have a daughter, I will name her Rengganis.” Then he slept.

It’s true that Princess Rengganis had died many years before, but only after she got married and retreated into seclusion in Halimunda. When she’d opened the window, closed for so many years, the warm rays of the morning sun burst into the room, so that for a moment she was blinded. It was as if the universe had paused to witness this awesome beauty return to the world from a shuttered darkness. The birds stopped twittering, the wind stopped blowing, and the princess stood there like a painting, with the window around her like a picture frame. It took a while for her eyes to adjust, but then she began to look around. Her gaze was nervous and her cheeks blushed red, because she was about to meet the person who would become her lover. But there was no one as far as the eye could see, no one except a dog who was looking back over his shoulder in her direction after hearing the sound of the window creaking open. The princess was stunned for a moment but, remember, she never went back on her word, so from the bottom of her heart she promised she would marry that dog.

No one would accept such a marriage, so the two snuck away to a foggy forest at the edge of the South Seas. It was the princess herself who named it Halimunda, The Land of Fog. They lived there for many years, and of course had children. Most of the people who lived in Halimunda believed they were the descendants of the princess and that dog, whose name nobody ever knew. Even the princess herself seemed not to know, and she never gave him a nickname either. When she saw him that first time from the window, all she knew was that she had to quickly descend to meet her groom, not caring what people would say. “Because,” she stated, “a dog could not care less whether I am beautiful or not.”

Word of Maman Gendeng’s arrival in Halimunda spread quickly. After his brief nap, he had decided to make his home in that city and join the descendants of Princess Rengganis. He was happy with the lively fishing encampments, which reminded him of the old days, with the drinking stalls and taverns that lined the length of the beach, the stores along Jalan Merdeka, and of course, Mama Kalong’s whorehouse, the best in the city.

He found himself there on the recommendation of some random passerby. He thought to himself that if he wanted to live in that city, he would have to control it, and the best way to do that was to go start with the whorehouse. He entered the tavern and the old woman herself, who had already heard about the reputation he had built since landing on the beach, was waiting there with a number of her whores and preman . Mama Kalong herself served him a glass of beer, and after draining it he stood in the middle of the tavern and asked who was the strongest man in the city. A number of preman working as whorehouse bodyguards were annoyed by that question, and the umpteenth fight broke out in the tavern yard. Maman Gendeng disregarded their machetes, sickles, and leftover samurai swords, and it didn’t take him long to turn the men black and blue.