Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

Then, as if being lassoed by a powerful longing, the two moved closer and held each other tightly, even tighter than Adinda had held Comrade Kliwon after being chased by a dog so long ago. And without knowing who started it, they were kissing, with kisses hotter than the ones Alamanda and Comrade Kliwon shared under the almond tree, and then the two fell onto the bed.

“Ai,” Krisan said finally, “do you know that I love you?”

Ai replied with a captivating smile, which made Krisan all the more head over heels intoxicated with love, and he kissed her again. Not long after that they’d stripped off their clothes with the urgency of uncontrollable adolescent lust — making love more wildly than Alamanda and Shodancho had on the morning they didn’t execute Comrade Kliwon, more wildly than Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi had after waiting five years — dedicating the entire night to the game of love, which they played with the shining enthusiasm and the extraordinary spirit of inquiry that only a pair of teenage kids can have.

Afterward, Ai put on her all-white clothes, jumped back out through the window, and waved her hand.

“I have to go home,” she said, “… go home… go home.”

That last part was already growing hazy when Krisan was rocked by a jolting shock in his groin and awoke without Ai. His bedroom window was closed tight. It had only been a dream. It wasn’t his first wet dream, but it was certainly the most beautiful, and the first one with Ai, which made him ecstatically happy.

When the rays of the sun could be seen dimly breaking through the window lattice, he opened it and looked out at the back veranda of Shodancho’s house. There were hordes of people milling about, even his own mother was there. Something snapped in his heart. He jumped through the window and, without even washing his face or putting on his shoes, he ran toward Shodancho’s house and broke through the crowd. He entered the room where Ai had been lying, and saw Alamanda sitting atop her bed weeping. At seeing Krisan appear, Alamanda quickly stood and hugged the boy without ceasing her weeping, tearing at her hair, and before Krisan asked what had happened, Alamanda said:

“Your sweetheart is gone.”

Now, after he had dug up her grave and brought her body to his house, Krisan cried beside her body, remembering the dream. Perhaps he was grieving the fact that up until her death he had never actually professed his love to her. Or maybe he was crying because he was touched that before she left, the girl had taken the time to come to him, if only in a dream. The girl had come to hear his words of love, had come to give him her virginity, had come to make love to him, before she went home to never come again. Maybe he was crying at all his loss and longing, half-dead with suffering, because no matter how beautiful a corpse is, it can never be the same as a living girl.

A second confession: it was Krisan who murdered Rengganis the Beautiful and threw her body into the ocean.

One week after Krisan dug up Ai’s grave, someone knocked softly on the shutter of his bedroom window. Krisan got up and opened the window and there stood Rengganis the Beautiful, looking bedraggled. Her hair was disheveled and her clothes were wet, but none of that could mask her amazing beauty. Even Krisan admitted it, Rengganis the Beautiful was indeed prettier than Ai, just as Ai herself had always said.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?” asked Krisan.

“I’m freezing.”

“You idiot, that’s obvious.”

Krisan leaned out over the sill hoping that nobody had seen them, and yanked on Rengganis the Beautiful’s hand to help her jump in through the window. She looked as if she had fallen into a muddy ditch or something, and clearly she was also starving.

“Change your clothes,” said Krisan while checking that his bedroom door was locked.

Rengganis the Beautiful opened Krisan’s wardrobe, taking out a t-shirt and jeans and a pair of Krisan’s underwear. Then, in front of that boy, without embarrassment, she took off all her clothes, piece by piece, until nothing was left. Her body, glittering wet in the lamp light, made Krisan practically choke. He sat cross-legged on his bed, that kid, erect, but even though he wanted to ravage the girl standing in front of him, so fuckable and so spectacular, he didn’t move. He was still on his bed while Rengganis the Beautiful, in her marvelous nonchalance, dried her body with a small towel that she found hanging on the back of the door.

Her breasts were as perfect as a full-grown woman’s and Krisan looked at them for quite a while, imagining that he was caressing them, kissing them, and teasing their nipples with a naughty touch. There was a beautiful curve leading from her breasts to her hips, as if drawn with a compass, perfectly symmetrical on the left and right. And in the middle of her crotch, behind the luxurious thicket of her hair, there was something slightly protuberant, like the fruit of a young coconut, but certainly soft. Krisan got even harder, wanted all the more to jump up and drag that girl cousin onto his bed and ravage her. But he didn’t do it. Not with Ai’s corpse underneath his bed.

The torture slowly came to an end. Rengganis the Beautiful put on Krisan’s underwear, not caring that it was men’s underwear. Then she put on his jeans, and her breasts quickly disappeared behind his t-shirt. But Krisan stayed hard because he could still see the outline of her nipples through that t-shirt.

“How do I look, Dog?” asked Rengganis the Beautiful.

“Don’t call me Dog, my name is Krisan.”

“Okay, Krisan,” and Rengganis the Beautiful sat at the edge of the bed next to the boy. “I’m hungry.”

Krisan went to the kitchen and got a plate of rice, with cooked spinach and a piece of fried fish. That was all he found in the cupboard. He brought it to the girl with a glass of water, and the girl ate it ravenously, and when she was finished she asked for more. Krisan went back to the kitchen, taking another similar portion of food, and the girl ate it with the same voraciousness, as if she had never been taught proper manners. Krisan was thankful that after that second portion the girl didn’t ask for any more, because the next morning his mother would not have believed him if he said that he’d eaten three entire portions during the night.

“And now,” said Krisan, as Rengganis the Beautiful began to dry her hair, “where is your baby?”

“It got eaten by an ajak and died.”

“Shit!” said Krisan. “But thank God. Tell me what happened.”

Rengganis the Beautiful told him. The night she left her house with the baby she headed for the guerrilla hut that Shodancho had built in the middle of the jungle. For a long time the place had been a secret clubhouse for Rengganis the Beautiful, Ai, and Krisan. They had heard about that hut, searched for it, found it, and visited it on fun little excursions. That night Rengganis the Beautiful went there with her baby, knowing that it was the best possible hideout, and that even Ai herself would never guess she’d gone there. The baby was really fussy, she said, and she tried to nurse, but it still fussed. It wasn’t wearing anything, that baby, swaddled only in a blanket and warmed only by its mother’s embrace.

Normally the guerrilla hut could be reached in an eight-hour walk. But Rengganis the Beautiful took a whole day and a night. She got a little lost, wandering here and there, and was walking very slowly, carrying the baby, and had stupidly forgot to bring any provisions. So they arrived at the guerrilla hut already quite famished.

“There was nothing to eat there,” said Rengganis the Beautiful.

Anyhow, she was a city kid, and didn’t know what there was in the jungle that might be edible, but after a while she was forced to scavenge for whatever she could find. Some walnuts had fallen from the trees, and amazed by their hard shell, she broke them open with a rock, sampling the insides. When it turned out they tasted pretty good, she gathered lots of walnuts and that was what she had for dinner the first night. Drinking wasn’t too much of a problem, because a little stream with clear water flowed next to the guerrilla hut.