Beauty Is a Wound (56 page)

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.

“The power of some evil spirit is protecting her,” he said to himself.

“She will die in a few days time,” said Maya Dewi, weeping. “She’s not going to know what she can eat on such a journey, and she didn’t bring any money, not even one penny.”

“I don’t see any reason that she should die,” said Maman Gendeng, trying to comfort his wife. “If she gets too hungry, she can eat the baby.”

The members of the search party began to return one by one without any success. No one had seen a trace of her, not even one clue. “There’s no way she was taken up into the heavens, body and soul,” said Maman Gendeng. “She can’t have reached
moksa,
because she has never even tried practicing meditation.” So the search parties went out again, tracking her bush by bush, looking in the city alleyways and the slums, but they still didn’t find her. Maya Dewi tried visiting each of her daughter’s girlfriends from school, but only Ai and Krisan had been her close playmates. Maya Dewi was a nervous wreck, and regretted that she hadn’t stayed by her daughter’s side the night she disappeared.

After the new year, the city grew even more crowded with tourists. A number of people drowned, as announced by the workers, and Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi examined every corpse, one by one. Most of them were tourists who had disobeyed the signs indicating where it was forbidden to swim, but finally they found her. She was immediately recognizable, since not even the seawater could ravage her beauty. Although no one knew how long ago she had drowned before the waves carried her to shore, Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi were immediately informed about the discovery. She was lying on her back with her clothes almost completely disintegrated. Her face was still that alluring face, with her hair floating on the surface of the water, played with by waves. They quickly realized that her stomach wasn’t bloated, like most people who drown, and there were blackish bruises on her neck. Someone had killed her before throwing her into the ocean. Maya Dewi broke out into wracking sobs.

“Whatever has happened, she must be buried,” said Maman Gendeng, holding back his fury, “and then we will find that bastard murderer.”

“There’s no way a dog strangled her,” said Maya Dewi, leaning against her husband’s shoulder, practically unconscious.

Maman Gendeng carried Rengganis the Beautiful’s corpse home himself, found at the farthest point of Halimunda beach almost one month after she had disappeared from her home. Maya Dewi followed behind, with swollen eyes and unstoppable tears, and sympathetic onlookers trailed behind.

That afternoon, after all the funerary rituals had been performed, Rengganis the Beautiful’s casket cut across the city toward the Budi Dharma cemetery. Kinkin, who almost fainted when he discovered the burial that day would be that of the girl he loved, joined his father in digging her grave, lost in an inconsolable grief. He even helped lower the body, with Maman Gendeng and Kamino. And after Maman Gendeng scattered the first handful of earth on top of her burial shroud, Kinkin joined him in covering up the grave of his beloved, lovingly placing her wooden grave marker in the dirt.

“I will find out who killed her,” said Kinkin with a voice full of hate, “and I will avenge her death.”

“Do it,” said Maman Gendeng, “and if you catch him, I will let you kill him.”

That night the two met at Rengganis the Beautiful’s grave. Kinkin called her spirit while Maman Gendeng looked on. The game of
jailangkung
was begun, but the spirit of Rengganis the Beautiful did not appear. Kinkin tried to call another spirit, to ask who had killed the girl, but none of them knew the answer, just as before they hadn’t known where she had run to.

“We can’t do it,” said Kinkin giving up and ending the
jailangkung
session. “A mighty evil spirit has been thwarting all my efforts from the beginning.”

“If it’s necessary, I will meditate myself into the spirit world in order to combat it in the afterlife,” said Maman Gendeng. “I still want to know who killed her.”

That was when he and his wife began to lie to themselves by imagining that Rengganis the Beautiful was still alive. They prepared a seat for her at breakfast and dinner, and dished out a portion of food for her, even though Maya Dewi just had to throw it out after. Meanwhile the police dug up Rengganis the Beautiful’s grave to conduct an investigation before burying her again. Maman Gendeng tried to believe the police would find her killer, but for a week, and then a month, there was no explanation, not even one clue. They did interrogate lots of people though: everyone was called to the police station and questioned, Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi each went five times, and other people just as many, but everything seemed to take them farther away from the discovery of Rengganis the Beautiful’s killer. The whole thing was exhausting, and Maman Gendeng no longer trusted the police. He rebuked the last cop who came to his house to conduct an investigation.

“You are never going to find the killer in this house,” he said annoyed, “and you were stupid to have ever thought that you would.”

At that moment, as if receiving a divine revelation, the
preman
understood very clearly what he had to do.

“If no one knows who killed her,” he said full of certainty, “then that must mean the entire city is responsible for her death.”

On the following Monday, with about thirty of his men, he took action. It was brutal, and the people of the city would remember it as a horrifying time. The men began by going to the police station, destroying whatever they found there, and challenging any policemen who tried to stop them. Maman Gendeng brought the visit to a close by burning the place down, to vent some of his rage over their incompetence.

The city was stunned. The smoke rose high into the sky and even the fire brigade was unable to put out the blaze. No one dared to come to watch that station burn the way they usually did with other fires, once they heard that Maman Gendeng and his scoundrel friends were in the throes of an uncontrollable rage. The people stayed quiet, passing the news by word of mouth, while trembling to imagine what that terrifying man might do next.

Despite the fact that Maman Gendeng was now an old man who had already lived more than a half century, everyone knew that his strength wasn’t the least bit diminished. And now he had lost his beloved daughter in the most bitter way possible: someone had murdered her and thrown her corpse into the ocean, and he didn’t know who. He regretted that he hadn’t done something as soon as the girl had said that she had been raped by a dog in the school bathroom. Why hadn’t he looked for that dog from the very start, or why hadn’t he butchered all the city dogs just as that kid Kinkin had tried in his quite amateur way?

“
Mijn hond is weggelopen
,” he said. My dog ran away. But it wasn’t clear what he meant by that.

After burning down the police station, he found his first dog, a stray dog scavenging through the trash, and he captured and killed it, twisting the dog’s neck until it broke and the animal sprawled out dead.

“What’s the use of me having power if I can’t even protect my own daughter from a dog?” he said. “Let’s kill every dog in this city.”

His thugs began to spread out in large groups, carrying their deadly weapons. A number of them carried pellet guns, others had machetes and unsheathed swords.

“I’m going to do it, even if it brings me no peace,” Maman Gendeng said with a sigh.

“Can’t you just make another child?” That was Romeo’s stupid question.

“Even if I have ten other kids, someone has already killed this one and because of that there is no way I can rest.” His eyes stared down the cobblestone alleyways hoping to find another dog, and he added sadly, “She was only seventeen years old.”

“Shodancho’s child is also dead,” said Romeo.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

And so the most horrifying dog massacre began, almost like the massacre of communists that had taken place eighteen years before. Who knows what would have happened if Shodancho had found out, because those dogs were the crossbreeds of the
ajak
that he had trained, but he was away searching for his daughter’s body. The thugs easily slashed open the dogs that were roaming in the streets, hacking them to pieces as if they were going to turn them into satay meat. Their heads were hung at street corners with blood still dripping from the napes of their necks, like a warning to all other dogs to steer clear of that city. After the strays were killed, the thugs began to eye pet dogs, knocking down house fences and killing the dogs in their cages, powerless against their killers. They also went into houses, smashing windows and attacking the pets lying peacefully in their dog beds, killing them where they lay and then throwing them into kitchen woks.

People protested, but Maman Gendeng didn’t care. “If it is true that a dog raped my daughter,” he said, “then dogs have truly inherited the evil ways of men.” He even ordered his underlings to destroy all dog owners’ property.