Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

“It’s because you ravaged her body without permission, Shodancho,” replied Dewi Ayu, whose life experience led her to understand what had happened without anyone having to say it. “But don’t think you are a lucky man just because you won this battle.”

Alamanda was left alone in her room, and for the first time she felt tears begin to wet her cheeks, as everything seemed to go black and then she truly lost consciousness.

WHEN ALAMANDA REGAINED consciousness the next day, the first thing she thought of was Kliwon and immediately she knew that everything was over for her and her sweetheart.

At that time, Alamanda felt she was a cursed woman; maybe she didn’t regret what she had done, and maybe she accepted what had happened to her because of it, but she still felt cursed. She wanted to write a letter to her sweetheart to arrive right after the letter with the photographs, telling him what had happened, except not the part about how she been out of control and toyed with a man who should not be toyed with and also not the part about how Shodancho had raped her. She would only tell him that she had slept with Shodancho. She was ashamed of herself, but the only thing she truly regretted was that she was going to lose her beloved and despite the fact that she knew Kliwon would have her in any condition, she absolutely did not want to see him. She still loved him, but she would lie and say that she had fallen in love with Shodancho. She would say she was leaving her old lover to marry her new flame. And she would ask his forgiveness. She wrote the letter that very afternoon, and put it in the post box just as soon as she had slid it into a stamped envelope.

Now she had to reckon with Shodancho, get her revenge, and think about what she could do to satisfy her rage short of stabbing him with a stiletto knife. So, after she put the letter to Kliwon in the mail, she went to the military headquarters, receiving an uncharacteristic salute from the soldier standing guard in the monkey cage at the gate, and just as Maman Gendeng had once done upon his arrival, she went straight into Shodancho’s office without knocking first. Shodancho was sitting behind his desk gazing at two photos of Alamanda that he held in his hand, with the eight other photos spread out across the table. When Alamanda barged in, he was taken off guard and tried to hide the photographs, but Alamanda gestured for him not to bother. Then the girl stood before Shodancho with one hand pressed against the table and the other shoved against her hip.

“So now I know what you men were up to during your guerrilla war,” she said, as Shodancho stared at her with the look of a lovesick sinner. “And now you have to marry me, even though I will never love you. If you don’t, I will kill myself right after I tell everyone in this city what you did to me.”

“I will marry you, Alamanda.”

“Fine. You will have to arrange for the celebration by yourself.” Then she left without another word.

Within one week’s time their marriage was a hot topic of discussion that came up whenever people met and talked, as they speculated about it, solemnly mulled it over, and joked about it too. Still, the citizens of Halimunda had become accustomed to just about anything, so they were not too surprised by the news. Some of them even said with an air of authority that Alamanda and Shodancho were the most well-matched couple that any human being on the face of this earth could ever imagine: a beautiful girl who was the daughter of a most well-respected prostitute married to an ex-rebel who had once been a great commander, there was nothing more fitting than that. Others said that Shodancho was in fact even more suitable than that rabble-rouser Kliwon, and Alamanda wasn’t too stupid to realize it.

But Kliwon had many friends in that city: they were the fishermen, because when he had lived there Kliwon had gone to sea with them and helped them haul nets to shore, receiving one plastic bag full of the fish they had caught as payment, and he had helped them fix their leaky boats and their cranky outboard motors when he worked in the boat shop; they were the farm laborers, because many farmers on the outskirts of the city worked land belonging to others, just as Kliwon had done, and they had been on the sidelines when he had entertained his friends, talking about all kinds of things that sprung from his brilliant brain, things they had never known about or could have ever conceived; and they were the young girls who had fallen in love with him, or were still in love with him, and even though Kliwon had abandoned each of them when he went to find another girl, they held no grudge and loved him just as much as ever; they were those who had been his childhood playmates, his companions in swimming and bird-hunting, and in searching for firewood and grasses that could be sold to rich men, back when they were all still small; and all of them were upset that Alamanda had abandoned their friend to marry Shodancho. But they had no business getting mixed up in Alamanda’s affairs and what’s more, the issue of whether or not his heart was broken was only and completely Kliwon’s own private business.

And so the news about the wedding celebration, that people were saying would be the most festive celebration that had ever occurred in the past or would ever occur in future of the city, quickly spread from one far-flung locale to another, all throughout the terrain of Halimunda’s scattered villages. It was assured that the celebration would be enlivened by seven groups of dalang , master puppeteers who would perform the entire Mahabharata over the course of seven nights, and that every single inhabitant of the city would be invited to attend, and the people said the food to be served would be enough to feed the entire city for seven generations. There would also be performances of sintren, kuda lumping trance dancing, orkes melayu , films projected onto a screen, and of course, pig fighting.

Finally this news reached Kliwon, along with the letter that Alamanda had sent him. One day before the wedding, when the tents had already been set up in front of Dewi Ayu’s house and Alamanda was primping and pampering and preparing her body with the help of a number of wedding planners, Kliwon returned home to Halimunda on the train with an anger smouldering throughout his entire body, not just because this was the first time he had ever been hurt or abandoned by a woman, but because he truly loved Alamanda with his whole heart.

In front of the station, the place where they had last met and kissed, Kliwon chopped down the almond tree as a crowd looked on. They didn’t dare get in his way, partly because they saw his eyes blazing furiously in their sockets but mostly because he was carrying a machete, and so even the policemen who happened to be in the area didn’t dare forbid him from chopping down that tree, which had originally been intended as a shade tree for people to rest under. When the tree collapsed, the crowd only moved back a couple of paces to protect themselves from being hit by the falling branches and twigs, all the while wondering why the man was taking out all of his passion and rage on a little almond tree that had never done anything wrong.

Meanwhile, Kliwon didn’t seem bothered by the people gathered outside the front of the station watching him, and he began to hack off the twigs and branches and to tear off the tree’s leaves until they blocked the whole path leading to the platform, and when the wind blew the leaves whirled about like a creepy tornado, but even the street sweepers didn’t dare get in his way, they just looked at him trying to determine whether or not he had gone completely insane.