Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

For a dowry Comrade Kliwon gave Adinda a ring that he had bought when he was in Jakarta, paid for with his earnings as a roving photographer, that in all honesty he had intended for Alamanda. Adinda knew the backstory to that dowry, but she wasn’t the jealous girl her sister Alamanda used to accuse her of being. She even displayed it with a genuine pride. They spent their honeymoon in a hotel on the gulf that Dewi Ayu had arranged for them.

Dewi Ayu even bought the newlyweds a house in the same complex where Shodancho lived, just one house apart. Meanwhile Comrade Kliwon bought a plot of land and began to till the earth all by himself. He made a pond at the far end of the field, and sprinkled it with tadpoles, giving them chaff and cassava and papaya leaves every morning. In the paddies he planted rice just like everyone else. Adinda had a lot to learn to live as a farmer’s wife, because she had never even so much as touched rice-paddy mud, but of course she was deeply content.

Comrade Kliwon would leave very early in the morning to go, just like any farmer, to his fields. He checked on the water drainage, plucked weeds, gave the fish food, and planted nuts and beans. Adinda took care of all the household duties, and by the time midday was approaching, after all those tasks were done, she would follow him to the fields carrying a basked filled with breakfast. They would eat together in the little open-air hut that Comrade Kliwon had built at the edge of the rice field, and when they went home the basket would be filled with young cassava leaves and sweet potatoes.

In January, Adinda took herself to the hospital to confirm that she was indeed pregnant. Everyone who knew them shared in their joy. Alamanda was the first to offer congratulations. At that time she herself was pregnant, and Nurul Aini had not yet been born. She arrived when the couple was relaxing on their veranda, looking out at the beautifully blooming flowers that Adinda had planted. They were both a bit surprised by her arrival, because even though they were neighbors, Alamanda had never stopped by to say hello and vice versa.

Comrade Kliwon became slightly embarrassed, but Adinda immediately embraced her older sister and they kissed each other’s cheeks.

“What did the doctor say?” asked Alamanda.

“He said, if it’s a girl I hope she doesn’t become a whore like her grandmother, or if it’s a boy, a communist like his father.”

Alamanda laughed.

“And what did the doctor say about your stomach?” asked Adinda.

“You know, my stomach has already fooled us twice, so I can’t be certain.”

“Alamanda,” Comrade Kliwon said suddenly, making both women turn to look in his direction. They found him staring at Alamanda’s stomach. Alamanda’s face drained of color, remembering how Comrade Kliwon had twice said that her stomach was only filled with air and wind, like an empty pot. “I swear that this is not an empty pot like it was before,” he proclaimed.

Alamanda looked at him, wanting to hear him repeat his words, and Comrade Kliwon nodded reassuringly. “It’s a beautiful little girl, maybe even more beautiful than her mother, perfect, with jet-black hair, and piercing eyes that she got from her father. She will be born twelve days before my child. You can name her Nurul Aini just like her older sisters, but believe you me that she will live to grow up into a young woman.”

“Dear God, if it is as the Comrade said, I will give her the name Nurul Aini,” said Shodancho that evening. He and Alamanda began to understand that their two previous children were lost not because of a curse, but because of the absence of love. But just as she had promised when she begged for Comrade Kliwon’s life, Alamanda had given her sincere and true love to Shodancho, and that love had now born fruit, and it now seemed that love could give them what they wanted.

Meanwhile Comrade Kliwon, who realized that his responsibility was growing along with the little one in his wife’s stomach, began to think about work other than in the fields and rice paddies. When he had still been leading the Communist Party, he had gathered books for the children who were in Sunday school to read in addition to the Party literature. Most of the books had been destroyed, burned by Shodancho’s men and the anti-communists who had set fire to their headquarters. But Shodancho had saved the martial arts novels and some pulp fiction clean of communist ideology, and brought them to the military headquarters for himself and his soldiers. One day not long after Alamanda’s visit, Shodancho returned two cardboard boxes full of those books. Now Comrade Kliwon began his first small business, opening a small library in front of his house. Its customers were mostly schoolchildren, but it gave Adinda something to do and made them all quite happy.

Then, finally, Nurul Aini was born. Shodancho was impressed when Maman Gendeng said, “Congratulations, Shodancho, I hope the cousins will become good friends.”

That was an honest-to-goodness original idea, to let those two children grow up in friendship as a way to placate the secret hostility that had began so long ago between their fathers. Shodancho agreed, saying they should enroll those two girls, Rengganis the Beautiful and Nurul Aini, in the same kindergarten once the time had come.

And then, influenced by that idea, when Adinda finally gave birth to her son twelve days after the birth of Nurul Aini as Comrade Kliwon had predicted, Shodancho echoed Maman Gendeng’s sentiment of peace and hope in slightly different words: “Congratulations, Comrade, I hope that unlike us, your child and my child can be good friends — perhaps even a love match.”

His father named the boy Krisan. And maybe he had indeed been destined for Nurul Aini, but life always has something else to say: Rengganis the Beautiful came between them.

IN THE YEAR 1976 Halimunda was filled with rancor, with vengeful ghosts trapped in limbo and unable to rest. All the city folk could feel it, as could the two Dutch tourists who had just disembarked from their train. They appeared to be a husband and wife in their seventies. Even at such an age, the man was still able to shoulder a huge backpack crammed full of stuff, while his wife carried a small bag and an umbrella. As they descended from the station platform, they jerked back at the soupy air, thick with a rancid stench and full of shadows that flickered with a reddish glow.

“It’s like entering a haunted house,” the wife commented, shaking her head.

“No,” said her husband, “it’s like there was a massacre in this city.”

The becak rickshaw driver who took them to their hotel told them about the ghosts. They are very powerful, he said, so pray that they don’t overturn this becak in the middle of the street. “Do things like that happen often?” asked the husband. “It’s incredibly rare that it doesn’t happen,” replied the driver. He told them about a car that had crashed through the street divider and gone flying into the ocean. The passengers all died and everyone in the city believed this was the work of ghosts who couldn’t rest. He also told them about the huge market fire two years before — everyone was sure those ghosts must have started it.

“How many ghosts are there?” asked the wife.

“You know, Madam, there has never been anyone fool enough to try to count how many.”

They then learned that a number of years ago more than a thousand communists had died in that city in a most terrifying massacre. Even though they hated those communists, people said there had never been a more horrific slaughter in their city, and hopefully there never would be another ever again. Yes, more than a thousand people died. Most of them were buried in a mass grave in the Budi Dharma public cemetery. The others had been left to rot on the side of the road, until those who couldn’t stand it anymore finally buried them, but even then it was more like burying some shit after defecating in the banana orchard.