Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

Secretly he tried talking to Shodancho again, but their discussions floundered on Alamanda and just like the fishermen, Comrade Kliwon finally thought to himself that indeed there was no other choice but to burn down those fucking ships. After all, the Russian Revolution might never have happened if Lenin hadn’t ordered Stalin to rob a bank.

Shodancho had stationed a large number of soldiers on the decks of his ships, however, so it wasn’t easy for the fishermen to carry out their plan. An exhausting six whole months passed, with the Fishermen’s Union’s secret meetings always coming to a dead end when they couldn’t figure out exactly how they would do it, and the fishermen grew poorer and angrier every day.

In the past, when Comrade Kliwon was confronted with problems that made his head feel like it was about to explode, women had been his refuge. But now his only female companion was Alamanda’s younger sister Adinda, whom he’d known for a year. So, as if he had no other choice, he left his hut and the men still discussing their difficulties and headed for Dewi Ayu’s house like a pathetic refugee, exhausted by the endless revolutionary struggle. He wanted to share his feelings, his desires, but the Party had emphasized that the issue must not be discussed with anyone and so he passed a boring hour on the porch with Adinda, exchanging small talk that brought no relief to his worn-out spirit, and when he went home he collapsed in a chair outside his hut, looking out at the dusky sky over the ocean.

“Someone should put a pistol to your forehead,” Adinda had said before he went home. “So that you’re forced to think about yourself for a moment.”

It was the same dusky sky he always saw, but that evening it felt different. It used to remind him of that beautiful evening he spent next to Alamanda in the sand, but that evening the cold sky was silent and sad, like a mirror for his arid and parched heart. Smoking his clove cigarette, he wondered whether the revolution could ever truly happen, whether it was possible for human beings not to oppress one another.

Long ago he had heard an imam in the mosque talk about heaven, about rivers of milk that flowed at your feet, about beautiful ever-available virgin nymphs, about everything being there for the taking and nothing forbidden. All of that seemed so beautiful, really too beautiful to be believed. He didn’t need anything as grandiose as all that — it would be enough for him if everyone got the same amount of rice. Or maybe that wish was really the most grandiose wish of all.

Thinking like this always made him nostalgic for his past, before he knew that he needed revolution. He had always been a poor man, but he used to have a much simpler way of dealing with rich men: stealing whatever they had in their gardens, seducing their women, and letting them pay for the food he ate and the movies he watched at the theater, or accepting the invitations to their parties and drinking their beer for free, none of which required the Party or propaganda or the Communist Manifesto . He felt exhausted just looking out at the shining red dusk because his thoughts couldn’t rest, and sinking even deeper into his chair before he knew it he had fallen asleep. That was how he was in the six months leading up to the burning of the ships, until he was awoken in his chair one night by a number of fishermen.

For two weeks now the soldiers hadn’t been guarding the fishing vessels. Apparently they had grown bored. The ship captains, thinking that the fishermen had just been making empty threats, had decided to send the soldiers home so they wouldn’t have to keep feeding them and supplying them with cigarettes and beer. The ship captains began going out to sea without any protection, and were only guarded by a few armed soldiers when they docked and lowered their catch. The Fishermen’s Union’s plan was to attack the ships in the middle of the night during a new moon — the very night they woke Comrade Kliwon, the night they had all been waiting for, the night that would settle the score.

“Wake up, Comrade,” said one of his friends, “the revolution doesn’t happen in your sleep.”

And led by Comrade Kliwon himself, who’d shaken off his drowsiness and steeled himself, thirty small skiffs moved out under a clear sky studded with stars. That night was a turning point for Comrade Kliwon, the night he began to believe that a revolutionary had to have a cold and immovable heart, a stubborn boldness born of conviction. The dim porthole lights of the big ships were visible in the darkness, but the skiffs weren’t equipped with any lights — the fishermen steered by instinct, knowing the ocean as well as they knew the villages where they were born. “Think of this as storming the Bastille,” said their leader to himself, to give himself courage, “for the sake of the cursed and wretched masses.”

The large ships were operating at slight distances from one another. Each small skiff had three to five fishermen, with ten skiffs aiming for each of the three ships. They moved slowly, like thirty slithering field snakes eyeing three ignorant mice. Through the flickering light from the ships they could see the laborers hauling up the nets and dumping the catch into the hull.

After leading the ten boats to the middle vessel, once he thought the other two ships were also surrounded, Comrade Kliwon blew the whistle shrilly, and the deckhands stopped their work in surprise. That surprise hadn’t yet subsided when they realized that now thirty boatfuls of men were lighting torches. Spots of light suddenly encircled the ships like floating fireflies.

Comrade Kliwon called loudly to the men on the deck above, “My friends, jump down and swim to our boats, this ship is about to be burned!”

Even though the ship’s captain shouted angry orders for his workers to fight back, he was the first one to leap down in panic and swim for the nearest skiff. He upbraided the fishermen, before someone clocked him and he sprawled out unconscious. Meanwhile the deckhands competed to see who could jump into the sea and swim to the boats the fastest, and the fishermen began cheering joyfully and someone even began to sing the Internationale— it was their most glorious celebration.

Plastic bags filled with gasoline sailed through the air to plunge down onto the ships’ empty deck, and then torches began to fly ready to lick the gasoline. Three bonfires now shone awesomely in the middle of the ocean as the skiffs swiftly retreated, and when the three ships exploded in tremendous bursts, the fishermen whooped, shouting, “Long live the Fishermen’s Union! Long live the Communist Party! Workers of the world, unite!”

Shodancho heard that the leader of the riot was Comrade Kliwon, that there had been no casualties, and that the three ships had been destroyed.

Hearing that report, Shodancho simply exhaled, thinking that he could get new fishing vessels with tighter security. He didn’t appear angry, which could only be explained by the fact that Alamanda was six months pregnant. He was thankful their single episode of lovemaking had born fruit. He didn’t want to be bothered by anything except preparing for the birth of a replacement Nurul Aini. He brought his wife to a bigger hospital in the provincial capital twice, to double check that there was a baby in her stomach, and paid powerful wizards to protect his child from any kind of curse.

But when Alamanda was nine months pregnant the second baby suddenly vanished from her stomach, just like the first. Shodancho exploded in an uncontrollable rage, grabbed his pistol, and stormed outside, charging back and forth wildly. People ran frantically out of his way, thinking he had gone insane as he screamed that Comrade Kliwon’s curse had robbed him of his children, making them disappear before they could even be born. When Shodancho had finally had enough of shooting everything in sight, he ran toward the beach with one goal: to find Comrade Kliwon and kill him, and no one dared stand in his way.