Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

And it was true. When parents threatened to withdraw their children unless the school got rid of Edi Idiot, the principal, who was powerless to refuse, finally expelled the kid, only to arrive one morning to find that all the windows and the door to the school had been smashed, all the legs of the desks and chairs broken, and the flagpole toppled over.

That was how Edi, just twelve years old, was running wild in the streets. He went to stores and demanded money from the owners, and if they didn’t give it to him, well then their shop windows would be smashed. He went to the whorehouse and didn’t pay, or watched movies without buying a ticket, and if someone had a problem with that he’d fight, and he always won.

To handle the kid, some shop owners finally hired a preman and Edi Idiot went up against him in a fight to the death. Edi Idiot went back to jail, but he started a melee in the prison, destroying all the cells and beating up the guards, and was quickly freed. Back on the streets he killed two or three other people who tried to fight him, but the police were no longer interested in trying to lock him up.

So he set up his regular post in the corner of the bus terminal, with a mahogany rocking chair left behind by the Japanese as his throne. He gathered followers one by one. He won some over by beating them in fights, but most joined voluntarily. They collected a “tax” from the shop owners, all the buses that entered the terminal and even those that didn’t, all the kiosks in the market, all the fishing boats, all the brothels and beer gardens, all the ice and coconut oil factories, and even all the becak rickshaws and horse-drawn carriages.

Edi Idiot and his minions terrorized the city. Their posse would do whatever they wanted, drunk or sober: steal chickens, break windows, bother the girls whether they were walking alone or under the watchful eyes of their entire family, and even steal the sandals outside the mosque. The old folks’ caged turtledoves, their fighting cocks, and their clothes hanging out on the line to dry also frequently disappeared.

Appearing at any moment to loot and pillage, the posse also became a serious bother to upstanding young men, taking their guitars, and in countless shakedowns forcing them to hand over their shoes while they were out taking a walk. Plus, don’t even ask how many packs of cigarettes they demanded in the course of a day. Any protest only led to more fighting. It became even clearer that the posse could not be defeated, especially if Edi Idiot brought down his own fist. Most annoying of all was the attitude of the police, who treated this as little more than children’s naughtiness.

“He’ll surely die,” someone said in an effort to make himself feel better, “because no matter what, he lives with Makojah.”

“Yeah but the problem is when he will die.”

His death didn’t come for three more years. Instead, Makojah died first, without warning one morning while taking a shit in her bathroom. Edi Idiot himself discovered her. He awoke at nine o’clock and didn’t find his breakfast waiting for him as usual. He looked everywhere, but he couldn’t find that old maid anywhere, and then he became suspicious of the closed bathroom door. He tried to open it. It was locked from the inside. He broke it down and found her still squatting on the toilet, naked, with no life force left in her at all.

“Mama, are you dead?” asked Edi Idiot.

Makojah did not respond.

Edi Idiot touched Makojah’s forehead with the tip of his finger, and her body immediately toppled over backwards.

Her death was joyful news for the city folk: most still owed her money. None of the neighbors wanted to take care of her body, so Edi Idiot himself carried her corpse to the house of the gravedigger, Kamino. At that time Kamino was still single, because no woman was willing to live in the middle of the graveyard with him, so the two men had to tend to Makojah’s corpse all by themselves before a kyai who took pity on them arrived. The kyai ordered the corpse to be bathed, and then he said the last rites along with the gravedigger while Edi Idiot waited uncomfortably. Thus, Makojah, who was so well known by everyone in the city, and was always ready and available to help them in their time of need, was buried with only three people to witness her corpse being put into the ground.

Makojah didn’t leave Edi Idiot any inheritance except the house and yard where they had been living all this time. No one knew where all the money she made from the interest on her loans went. Edi Idiot himself couldn’t have cared less about the money, but the people of the city cared because they felt like it rightfully belonged to them. So for years afterward, people kept hunting for Makojah’s money. It was said that she’d had an underground vault, so some people tried to dig a tunnel from a neighbor’s house. They didn’t find anything, but one of the diggers died from inhaling sulfurous smoke and they closed that tunnel right back up.

The people’s joy didn’t last long. They thought that now that Makojah had died, Edi Idiot would turn into a good kid, or at least make himself scarce for a couple of months to mourn. But it didn’t turn out that way. Instead, he brought some girls home with him to sleep with, while their fathers went looking for them near and far and then gave up the search. He demanded food from any open kitchen, sitting down at the table and devouring whatever was there, before the cook could sample her own cuisine. And this isn’t even counting the murders and bus stick-ups.

When Shodancho came down from his guerrilla post in the jungle, many of the city folk hoped that he wouldn’t just take care of the pigs, but that he would also take care of all the preman in the city. But Shodancho declined.

“They are like turds,” said Shodancho, “the more you stir them, the more they stink.” He didn’t explain any further, but the people quickly understood: if Edi Idiot and his posse were messed with, they would only become an even bigger bother to the city.

That was a time when many people in Halimunda sat on their verandas with exhausted faces. The occasional mischievous visitor might ask, “What are you guys doing?” And they would reply:

“Waiting for Edi Idiot’s coffin to pass by.”

Their prayers were never answered. Not because Edi Idiot didn’t die, but because he didn’t have a funeral, and he was never buried. He drowned, and his body was eaten by a pair of sharks.

Yes, a stranger arrived one morning, Maman Gendeng, and killed Edi after a legendary brawl that lasted seven days and seven nights. At first nobody believed that the hardheaded kid was truly dead, but then it was like they were awaking from a bad dream: Edi Idiot was mortal, just like anybody else. The city folk were incredibly thankful to that stranger, and Maman Gendeng was quickly accepted as one of their own.

To celebrate, the people threw a party, unrivaled by any celebration before or after. Even the 23rd of September celebration of Halimunda’s independence had never been as festive. There was a night fair that lasted for an entire month, with a travelling circus full of elephants, tigers, lions, monkeys, snakes, little girl contortionists, and of course midget clowns. In every corner of the city people could enjoy sintren and kuda lumping trance performances for free. The young men and women went out together to enjoy their romances, without being afraid that Edi Idiot’s posse would bother them. The chickens roamed about freely again in people’s yards and kitchen doors were no longer locked up tight.

So when Maman Gendeng pronounced that no one except he himself could sleep with the whore Dewi Ayu, the people weren’t all that upset, although clearly it was a huge loss. They thought it was an appropriate enough tribute to be given to the hero who had killed Edi Idiot, Makojah’s infuriating son.