Eka Kurniawan - Beauty is a Wound

But that happiness was disturbed one peaceful day that should have passed without incident. Moyang opened her kiosk but didn’t sell anything, instead just waited for Maman Gendeng, who hadn’t showed up there yet. When he did finally appear, looking practically dapper — a new look his friends had grown familiar with since his wedding — Moyang approached him straightaway and sobbed before him. Cries like that were the cries of an abandoned wife, so Maman Gendeng assumed that Romeo had left Moyang. But Maman Gendeng wasn’t convinced of the woman’s love or faithfulness toward Romeo, so he asked her:

“What’s going on?”

“Romeo left.”

“I thought you didn’t really love him that much.”

After wiping away her tears with the edge of her shirt, revealing her stomach with its many rolls of fat, she said, “The problem is, he left with all your jars of money.”

There was no way that Romeo would try to escape through the bus terminal, and that early in the morning no train would have left the city yet. So he’d probably run into the jungle, or someone must have helped him escape in some kind of vehicle. Whatever had happened, Maman Gendeng was furious and intended to catch him, dead or alive. So he gathered every last one of his men, and he ordered them to spread out in every direction, even to neighboring cities, and to touch base with the local thugs there. No one was allowed to return before Romeo was caught, unless he wanted a beating. So all the preman in the city left, and Halimunda was the most peaceful it had ever been. Only Maman Gendeng stayed behind, restless with fury. He had long dreamed of a peaceful family life, of being able to survive on honest money. He wanted a family just like other families and he had been saving his money to make this beautiful dream come true. He would buy something, maybe a fishing boat, and he would become a fisherman. Or a truck, and he would become a vegetable hauler. Or a few hectares of land, and he would become a farmer. He hadn’t even decided what he wanted to buy yet, and now someone had stolen all that money. He was truly enraged. For three days he waited impatiently, not explaining anything to his wife, who was dumfounded by his anxiety, and becoming an extraordinary grump at the bus terminal, so that all the conductors and bus drivers avoided him as best they could.

But on the fourth day, two of his men brought Romeo back. He had been found in a small and distant city, at the edge of the massive jungle to the west of Halimunda, where the most violent guerrilla warfare had once taken place. Luckily, Maman Gendeng’s money was still safe — less only what it cost to buy a mug of tuak alcohol, a lemonade, and a pack of cigarettes. His two men had caught Romeo before he had the chance to buy anything else, but Maman Gendeng’s rage was a whole other issue.

By the time he arrived, Romeo had already been beaten black and blue by Maman Gendeng’s men, but Maman Gendeng was so irate that he beat him again, while people gathered around them in a circle as if they were watching a cockfight. Romeo howled pitifully, begging for mercy and swearing that he would never do such a horrible thing again, but experience had taught Maman Gendeng to never trust a traitor. More and more people gathered. The ones closest to the action in front sat down and the ones furthest in the back were standing, unable to do anything except watch the brutality. Even the policemen who were patrolling back and forth in front of the terminal closed their eyes and stayed at their posts.

The carrion-eating buzzards began to circle as the smell of the man’s imminent death began to rise and disperse, carried by the ocean wind. But Romeo wasn’t dead yet; not because he was all that strong, but because Maman Gendeng was purposefully drawing it out, making his death really torturous, as a valuable lesson to everyone that this was the fate of a traitor. And he really felt sorry for those carrion-eating buzzards, not because the victim’s death was so long in coming as he knocked out his teeth slowly, broke two or three of his fingers, tore off his fingernails, stripped him naked and started to pluck out his pubic hairs one by one, and adorned his entire body, which was already battered and bruised, with the butts of still-lit cigarettes — no, he felt sorry for those buzzards because he didn’t plan to share any of his happiness with them. He wasn’t going to give the corpse away, instead intending to burn him alive as the final manifestation of his fury.

But just when he was preparing the gas and the cigarette lighter, suddenly that hideous woman burst into the middle of the crowd and stood before him. Moyang begged for mercy for her husband, saying that if Maman Gendeng let him live, she promised to take care of him and turn him into a trustworthy man.

“Please give me this chance, my friend,” said Moyang, “because whatever else he may be, he is my husband.”

Maman Gendeng was deeply moved and suddenly his heart melted. He threw the can of gasoline into the garbage and announced to everyone present that he was giving that man his second chance, but there would be no such second chance for any other man who might try to betray him. And that was how Romeo, who was married to Moyang, did not become food for the fire or the buzzards, and instead lived to become the best friend and most faithful follower of all of Maman Gendeng’s men. Meanwhile Maman Gendeng gave all his money to Maya Dewi, who soon after turned it into the startup money for her cookie business.

“That’s the man you buried,” said Maman Gendeng, “Romeo.”

Of course Maya Dewi didn’t know anything about that.

She hadn’t known about Romeo or the specifics of any of her husband’s troubles at the terminal — all her trouble started when Rengganis the Beautiful ran away from home with the baby she had just given birth to, “to marry a dog.”

It was early December, a month of often unpredictable weather, and the city was full of tourists spending the end of the year holidays there, so it was easy to get lost in the crowds. At this time of year the city became quite hectic and people stopped paying close attention to one another, because business was bustling. The souvenir kiosks were still going strong, ever since Comrade Kliwon had protected them from eviction. There were always lots of lost kids, lost old folks, and young women who disappeared in the middle of the bustling throng, and so workers stuck missing-person posters up everywhere and also made announcements though loudspeakers that reverberated along the length of the beach.

But Rengganis the Beautiful was not lost like that. Tourists who disappeared were only temporarily lost, and after a moment of inquiry would surely be reunited with their group. Rengganis the Beautiful had run away from home and her entire family was looking for her. Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi asked everywhere, and their men spread out just as they had before when they were looking for Romeo, but they didn’t find the girl. Shodancho — who was especially worried about his daughter, Ai, who had fallen sick with a spiking fever at the loss of Rengganis the Beautiful — deployed rescue parties to look for her, but he forgot about the guerrilla hut, because he had never realized the children knew about it.

The search continued, day and night, while the preparations for the wedding that had been planned were halted, the decorations taken down, and all the rented furniture returned. That kid Kinkin became slightly insane because of what had happened, and went out all alone to search in every corner, carrying his rifle and killing all the dogs he met along the way. He asked the spirits of the dead about it with his jailangkung , but not one of them knew where she was.