Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

“You point that pistol like a coward.”

“It’s a bad habit, please forgive me Miss,” said Shodancho. “I really just want to ask, may I marry your oldest daughter, Alamanda?”

Dewi Ayu sneered disdainfully. She first reminded him that his harsh treatment of her certainly didn’t help his chances, but then said rationally: “Alamanda is in charge of her own brain and her own body, so why don’t you just ask her whether she wants to marry you or not.” To herself she thought, this skinny soldier is so pathetic, proposing like this .

“Everyone in the city knows that she has already disappointed many men, and I’m afraid the same thing will happen to me.”

Dewi Ayu knew young men and old geezers were crazy for Alamanda. They’d all tried to win her love and never won anything because, as her mother well knew, Alamanda only loved one man. He had gone and she was waiting for his return.

“You still have to ask Alamanda,” said Dewi Ayu. “If it turns out she wants to marry you, I’ll throw you both a fantastic party. But if it turns out she doesn’t, I suggest you commit suicide.”

In the orange grove, an owl hooted, and swept down to snatch a gopher. Dewi Ayu tried to stall for time, hoping that her thug would come at last and the two men could settle the affair. Shodancho approached her, stroked her chin that was as smooth as wax, and asked, “And what exactly do you suggest I do now, Madam?”

“Find another girl,” Dewi Ayu advised. There were many beautiful young women in this city, all the descendants of Princess Rengganis and her infamous beauty. Still he didn’t leave, roughly pushing Dewi Ayu into the bedroom, pulling off her clothes instead. He fucked that whore with urgency and after his dick spewed, he rested for a moment and then left without saying another word.

Dewi Ayu lay there, unable to believe what had just happened. It wasn’t just that someone had slept with her after Maman Gendeng had explicitly forbidden it; it was also that this was the first time she had ever been taken so rudely. Men in Halimunda treated her better than they treated their own wives. She looked at her gown that had lost two buttons in being ripped open, and prayed that Shodancho would get struck by lightning. Her anger steadily increased as she thought about how he had only slept with her as if she was just a hunk of flesh, as if that man had been fucking a toilet hole for a few short minutes, as if the entire city wasn’t in awe of her. The whole thing was enough to make her curse and even cry a little bit, and she hurried home.

Maman Gendeng heard the news as soon as the new day came. He didn’t know Shodancho, but he knew where to find him. From the bus terminal where he lived he marched to the Halimunda military command headquarters. At the entrance gate, from inside the “monkey cage,” a security guard stopped him. Maman Gendeng said that he wanted to see Shodancho. The soldier did not have a real weapon, just a dagger and a bludgeon, and he knew he could never fight the man, so he just saluted and pointed to a door and Maman Gendeng pushed past.

In jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt that showed off the dragon tattoo on his right bicep from his guerrilla days, Maman Gendeng barged right into Shodancho’s office without knocking. The commandant was in the middle of a radio conference with central command, and looked up, surprised. When he recognized the fighter from the beach standing there so cocky and presumptuous, he abruptly ended his discussion and rose to his feet with a fury contained in the fierce glint of his eye. Before Shodancho could say anything Maman Gendeng beat him to it: “Listen up! No one can sleep with Dewi Ayu except me, and if you dare return to her bed, I will show you no mercy.”

Shodancho was infuriated to be threatened like this: here, in his own office. He asked whether the guy knew that he could be hung, executed by the state, if Shodancho so much as said the word. What’s more, he knew that Dewi Ayu was a whore, so if the problem was that he had slept with a whore without paying, then he would pay her more than anyone had ever paid her before. Enraged by the high and mighty demeanor of the thug standing before him, Shodancho grabbed his pistol from his waist, released the safety and aimed at that man as if to say I am not afraid of your threats and you’d better move your feet unless you want to get shot.

“Well then,” said the preman, “it seems as though you don’t know who I am.”

Shodancho didn’t really intend to shoot, he just wanted to scare the guy. But when he saw Maman Gendeng was brandishing a dagger, he had no choice but to pull the trigger. As the pistol blasted, he saw Maman Gendeng lurch backward but then realized with a shock that the man suffered not a single wound. The bullet was spinning on the floor.

Shodancho was sure that he hadn’t been even slightly off target, and his shock grew greater when he saw Maman Gendeng smiling in his direction.

“Listen up, Shodancho. I took out this dagger not to attack you, but to show that I am not afraid of you. I am invincible. Your bullets can’t hurt me, and neither can this blade,” said Maman Gendeng, plunging the dagger into his own stomach with full force. The blade broke and its tip rattled to the floor without even a scratch. He grabbed the bullet and the piece of the dagger from the floor and, holding them in the palm of his hand, showed them to Shodancho.

Shodancho, who was now standing still as a statue with his pistol dangling from his limp and powerless hand and his face the color of pale ash, had heard of people like this; but this was the first time he had ever seen one with his own eyes.

Before leaving, Maman Gendeng said, “For the last time, Shodancho, don’t touch Dewi Ayu. If you do, I won’t just tear this place to pieces — I’ll kill you.”

SHODANCHO WAS MEDITATING, buried in the hot sand with only his head poking out, when one of his men approached him. The soldier, Tino Sidiq, didn’t dare disturb him — in fact he wasn’t even sure if he could disturb him. Although Shodancho’s eyes were as wide open as those of a decapitated head, his soul was wandering in a realm of light, or at least that was how Shodancho often described his ecstatic experiences. “Meditation saves me from having to look at this rotten world,” he’d say and then continue, “or at least from having to look at your ugly face.”

After a while his eyes blinked and his body slowly began to move, which Tino Sidiq knew signalled the end of his meditation. Shodancho emerged from the sand in one elegant gesture, scattering some grains of sand before coming to sit next to the soldier like a bird alighting. His naked body was skinny due to his strict regimen of alternate-day Daud fasting, even though everyone knew he was not a religious person.

“Here are your clothes,” said Tino Sidiq, giving him his dark green uniform.

“Every outfit gives you a new clown role to play,” said Shodancho, putting on his uniform. “Now I am Shodancho, the pig hunter.”

Tino Sidiq knew that Shodancho didn’t like this role, but at the same time he had agreed to play it. A number of days before they had received a direct order from Major Sadrah, the military commander of the City of Halimunda, to emerge from the jungle and help the people exterminate pigs. Shodancho hated getting orders from That Idiot Sadrah, as he always called him. This message was filled with respect and praise: Sadrah said that only Shodancho knew Halimunda like the palm of his own hand, and therefore he was the only one the people trusted to help them hunt pigs.