Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

But Alamanda was wrong when she figured that Shodancho would give up and submit to the punishment that she had prepared for him. One day when she was in the carefully locked bathroom, completely naked with her iron underwear resting on the edge of the tub, something slammed against the door with tremendous force and Shodancho stampeded in through the gaping hole. Before Alamanda could even reach for her iron underwear, Shodancho was already clutching them in his grasp. She screamed like a wounded tigress, but Shodancho threw her over his shoulder just as he had carried her powerless body through the jungle where he fought his guerrilla war. He brought Alamanda out from the bathroom as she thrashed about pummeling his back. Two servants spied on this scene through a crack in the kitchen door, their bodies trembling in fear.

Shodancho brought Alamanda to his own room, the room that he had hoped would be their room, and threw her onto the bed before turning to lock the door. “You are cursed, Shodancho,” said Alamanda, standing on the bed and shrinking back toward the wall. “How dare you rape your own wife!”

Shodancho didn’t reply, just took off his clothes and faced Alamanda with the look of a horny dog. Seeing him like that, her instinct told her she was in danger and Alamanda squeezed herself even closer against the wall, but Shodancho quickly caught her, threw her down onto the bed, and then threw himself down on top of her.

Minute by minute they stayed locked in battle, the battle of a man who needs release for his lust and a woman who claws and screams to protect herself from a love that she in no way wants to consummate. Alamanda closed her thighs tightly, but Shodancho forcefully broke through her last defense with his mighty knee, and whatever was going to happen happened. Shodancho raped his own wife, until the end of the exhausting battle, when Alamanda sobbed, “Fuck you, you raping satan!” and fainted. Shodancho ended up with two scratches on his face and Alamanda with an extraordinary pain in her crotch.

She didn’t know how long she lay there unconscious, but when she came to, she found herself still lying on her back naked. Her hands and feet were tied to the four corners of the bed. Alamanda pulled at the ropes binding her, but they were tied so tightly that whatever she did only made her wrists and ankles hurt all the more.

“Devil rapist, what have you done?” she asked angrily when she saw Shodancho standing beside the bed completely dressed. “If you are looking for a hole to stick your dick in, every cow and goat has one.”

For the first time since he had kidnapped her from the bathroom, Shodancho smiled and said, “Now I can have sex with you whenever I want!” Hearing that, Alamanda hurled insults and spouted curses, still struggling against the cords as Shodancho left her.

That day Shodancho found a repairman to fix the destroyed bathroom door and threw Alamanda’s iron underwear into the well. With a fearsome look he threatened the two servants never to tell anyone what they had seen. Meanwhile Alamanda grew weak after trying so hard to free herself, and wept continuously with piteous cries. Shodancho returned again and again to the room where Alamanda was held captive, making love to his wife as if they were real newlyweds, about once every two and a half hours without tiring. He was as delighted as a child with a new toy, and the longer this went on, the less Alamanda’s resistance meant anything.

“Even if I died,” Alamanda said in defeat, “believe me, this man would continue to fuck my grave.”

So the whole day long Alamanda was tied up on top of the bed, raped over and over again. Then in the afternoon Shodancho came bringing a tub filled with warm water and a wet washcloth and he caressed his wife’s body as tenderly and carefully as if he was handling an expensive and fragile ceramic vase. After that he had sex with her again, and then he bathed her again, and this went on for quite a while. Alamanda’s heart was unmoved by Shodancho’s gentle ministrations, and when he brought her some lunch, she closed her mouth up tight, and when Shodancho forced open her mouth and crammed rice inside, she spit it right out so that it splattered all over his face. “Eat, because I won’t enjoy making love to a corpse,” said Shodancho. Alamanda snapped, “It’s way less enjoyable for me to make love to a living human being the likes of you.”

This is crazy , thought Shodancho as he continued to cajole her. Alamanda refused to eat until she was released from her bondage and her iron underwear was returned to her, but Shodancho refused to honor that request. Trying to make himself feel better, Shodancho told himself that Alamanda’s resolve would reach its limit. After being plagued by the painful twisting of her empty stomach all night long, by the next morning she would probably be ready to accept food.

Thinking this, Shodancho returned his wife’s lunch to the kitchen and ate alone at the dining table. When afternoon came, he sat on the veranda enjoying the evening breeze and the turtledoves that had been given to them as a wedding present. The birds hopped up and down inside their cages, which hung from the ceiling. He also enjoyed the shining lamps and the clove cigarette that he sucked on with great pleasure, thinking back over his victorious day. Finally he knew what it felt like to make love to his wife, because even though he had raped Alamanda once before, that had been before they were married.

Usually he sat with Alamanda on the front terrace on afternoons like this. Many had noticed the habit, so when people passed by and greeted him, “Good afternoon, Shodancho,” they also asked, “Where is the Lady of the house?” Shodancho replied good afternoon and explained that his wife wasn’t feeling well and was lying down in bed. That made him miss Alamanda, so that when there was still a little bit of his cigarette left unsmoked, he threw the butt into the yard and went to see his wife.

He found her tied up flat on her back just as she had been the whole day, but it appeared she had fallen asleep. Whether Shodancho then momentarily changed into a good husband only God himself knows, because he covered his wife with a blanket to ward off the cold air and mosquitos, except it turned out that in the end he couldn’t make it through the night without raping her again, twice: first at eleven-forty and then again at three in the morning, before the first cock had crowed.

Morning finally came and Shodancho reappeared in the room where his wife was still sprawled underneath a blanket with her hands and feet still tied to each corner of the bed. For breakfast he brought her some fried rice with a sunny-side up egg on top, some sliced tomato on the side, and a tall glass of chocolate milk. Alamanda awoke and stared dejectedly in his direction, with a mixture of nausea and hatred. “Here, let me feed you,” said Shodancho with genuine friendliness, continuing with the sincere smile of a husband for his wife, “Making love always builds up a good appetite.”

Alamanda returned his smile, not with her usual charming grin but with a disgusted and contemptuous sneer. She looked at Shodancho as if she was looking at the devil incarnate she had imagined ever since she was a little girl. He didn’t have any horns or tusks, and his eyes were just a little bit red from not having gotten enough sleep, but she was still positive her husband was the devil.

“Go to hell and take your fucking breakfast with you,” said Alamanda.

“Come on, sweetheart, you will die if you don’t eat,” said Shodancho.

“Yes, I think that would be best.”

And that was what started to happen: Alamanda developed a fever in the afternoon, with a deathly pale face and a climbing temperature and the shivers. Shodancho did not rape her even one more time that day, perhaps because he was exhausted, or because he was finally satisfied, or maybe to improve his relationship with his wife so that he could convince her to eat. Alamanda was now completely refusing everything, not just rice, she wouldn’t even drink, and that was what finally made her fall ill, growing delirious but still hurling curses.