Beauty Is a Wound (19 page)

SHODANCHO WAS MEDITATING,
buried in the hot sand with only his head poking out, when one of his men approached him. The soldier, Tino Sidiq, didn’t dare disturb him—in fact he wasn’t even sure if he
could
disturb him. Although Shodancho’s eyes were as wide open as those of a decapitated head, his soul was wandering in a realm of light, or at least that was how Shodancho often described his ecstatic experiences. “Meditation saves me from having to look at this rotten world,” he’d say and then continue, “or at least from having to look at your ugly face.”

After a while his eyes blinked and his body slowly began to move, which Tino Sidiq knew signalled the end of his meditation. Shodancho emerged from the sand in one elegant gesture, scattering some grains of sand before coming to sit next to the soldier like a bird alighting. His naked body was skinny due to his strict regimen of alternate-day
Daud
fasting, even though everyone knew he was not a religious person.

“Here are your clothes,” said Tino Sidiq, giving him his dark green uniform.

“Every outfit gives you a new clown role to play,” said Shodancho, putting on his uniform. “Now I am Shodancho, the pig hunter.”

Tino Sidiq knew that Shodancho didn’t like this role, but at the same time he had agreed to play it. A number of days before they had received a direct order from Major Sadrah, the military commander of the City of Halimunda, to emerge from the jungle and help the people exterminate pigs. Shodancho hated getting orders from That Idiot Sadrah, as he always called him. This message was filled with respect and praise: Sadrah said that only Shodancho knew Halimunda like the palm of his own hand, and therefore he was the only one the people trusted to help them hunt pigs.

“This is what happens when the world is without war, soldiers are reduced to hunting pigs,” Shodancho continued. “Sadrah is so stupid, he wouldn’t even recognize his own asshole.”

He was on the same jungle beach where so many years ago the Princess Rengganis had sought refuge after running away, a wide cape that was shaped like an elephant’s ear, surrounded by more shell-strewn beaches and steep ravines, with only a few sandy stretches. The area was almost completely unspoiled by humans, because ever since the colonial era it had been maintained as a forest preserve, with leopards and
ajak
. This was where Shodancho had been living for more than ten years, in a small hut just like the one he’d built during his guerrilla years. He had thirty-two soldiers under his command, and civilians sometimes came to help them, and all the men took turns riding into the city on a truck to take care of their needs, but not Shodancho. His longest journey in those ten years had only been as far as the caves, where he meditated, and he only returned to the hut to go fishing and cook for his soldiers and take care of the
ajak
he had domesticated. This peaceful life had been disturbed by Sadrah’s message. In the jungle there were no pigs, the animals only lived in the hills to the north of Halimunda, and so he would have to go down to the city. For him, to obey that order was to betray his devotion to solitude.

“This pitiful country,” he said. “Not even its soldiers know how to hunt pigs.”

He had last visited the city almost eleven years ago. The KNIL troops were to be disbanded, and he had gone to the city to oversee their departure. “Sayonara,” he’d said with disappointment. “I’m like a fisherman who waits patiently for his catch only to have someone else hand him a basket full of fish.” And then he’d returned to the jungle, along with his thirty-two faithful soldiers, and thus they began their boring duties that would continue for more than ten years. Keeping busy, they protected some smuggling trucks managed by a merchant he had met when they fought the Japanese together. Of course he himself never truly oversaw anything, because his thirty-two soldiers took care of everything. He was usually either out exploring the jungle looking for caves to meditate in, fishing for parrotfish, or practicing his combat moves. He could vanish all of a sudden, a guerrilla technique he had developed himself, and could reappear just as suddenly.

He had developed that technique back when he was still a real
shodancho
in the Halimunda
daidan
, when Japan’s Sixteenth Army still occupied the island of Java. He was twenty-years old when a brilliant idea suddenly flashed into his brain: rebellion. The first person he invited to join him was Sadrah, a
shodancho
in the same
daidan
, his friend since childhood. They’d began their military careers at the same time in the Seinendan, a youth regiment established by Japan. They’d gone to Bogor together for their military training after Peta was founded, and graduated as
shodancho
before returning to Halimunda, each to lead their own
shodan
. Now he hoped to invite his friend to rebel together as well.

“You are asking for the grave,” said Sadrah.

“Yes, the Japanese came from far far away just to bury me,” he said with a chuckle. “Now that’ll be a great story for my children and grandchildren.”

He was the youngest
shodancho
in Halimunda, and had the puniest physique. But only he had obtained the nickname Shodancho, and when the plans for rebellion were finally in place, he himself led the movement. There were eight
shodancho
, each with their own
budancho,
who said they would join, and two
chudancho
became the guerrilla advisors. The
daidancho
found out about the plan, but chose to stay out of it and washed his hands of the affair. “I am not a gravedigger,” he said, “especially not for my very own grave.”

“Oh, I’ll dig a grave for you, Daidancho,” said Shodancho, then saw him out of their secret meeting. Once he was gone, Shodancho said to the others: “He prefers to rot to death behind a desk.”

He unfolded a crude map of Halimunda, marking certain Japanese areas with the symbol for Kurawa’s troops, and their own with the symbol for Pandawa, reminding his men: “There is no Bhisma who cannot die and no Yudistira who cannot lie; everyone can die and everyone must fight to survive, even if by lying.” When he was little his grandfather had entertained him with tales of warriors from the Mahabharata, and he lived with such an exuberant passion for war that people often commented, “He should have been the commander of the Sixteenth Army.”

As it turned out, those secret meetings went on for six months before they were confident enough to carry out the rebellion. They counted their weapons and ammunition, reviewed their plans for escape if they failed, and identified their targets if they were able to capture Halimunda. Couriers were sent to get the much-needed support of other
daidan
. In early February everything was finally ready: the rebellion would be carried out on the fourteenth.

“Maybe I will never return,” Shodancho said when he said goodbye to his grandfather. “Or maybe I’ll come home a carcass.”

As the day of the rebellion approached, he gathered his pistol and ammunition, and double-checked that medicine had been distributed among everyone’s survival packs, in case they became fugitives. He contacted a merchant named Bendo, who he had helped smuggle teak, to prepare food supplies for the guerrillas. He also met directly with the regent, the mayor, and the chief of police, saying that on February 14 there would be a “war simulation exercise,” that all the Peta soldiers in Halimunda would be participating, and no one should disturb them, his code for rebellion. He was alert to the potential of a betrayal.

“Today,” he said at half past two on the day of the mutiny, “will be quite a busy day for the gravedigger.”

The mutiny began by shooting up the headquarters of the Kempeitai, the Japanese army, at Hotel Sakura. Thirty men were executed in the soccer field: twenty-one soldiers and Japanese civil servants, five mixed-blood Dutch Indonesians, and four Chinese collaborators. Their corpses were quickly dragged to the cemetery and tossed without ceremony in front of the gravedigger’s house.

The public was not at all supportive. They locked themselves inside their houses, certain that this was the beginning of an even worse terror: back-up Japanese troops would surely be sent to the city and would leave no survivors. However, the rebels exulted. They took down the Hinomaru, the Japanese flag, and put their own flag back up in its place. They circled the city in a truck, shouting out slogans of freedom and independence and singing songs of struggle. When dusk fell, they disappeared as if swallowed by the night. They knew that the Japanese would hear about the rebellion—maybe all of Java had already heard about it—and as soon as morning came the backup troops would have arrived.

“After all that has happened,” said Shodancho, “we must leave Halimunda until Japan is defeated.” Now they were true guerrillas.

They divided the rebel troops into three groups and split up. The first group, under the command of shodancho Bagong and his
chodancho
adviser, moved to the western territory to face the Japanese entering Halimunda from that direction. They would push into the no-man’s-land on the perimeter of the district, full of roving thieves. The second group, led by shodancho Sadrah and his
chodancho
adviser, moved to the dense jungles in the northern hills. The last group moved east, taking control of the river delta and, led by Shodancho, they readied themselves for a battle in the swamps and for attacks of malaria and dysentery. To the south, nature was already on their side in the form of the malicious South Seas. They all moved out before midnight, just as the
ajak
began to howl in the distance.

So it began. There was excitement and there was fear. Two soldiers started crying for their mothers, but when the commander threatened to send them home their bravery resurfaced and they swore they would win every battle or die trying. The troops moved into their designated positions, carrying the short-muzzled carbine pistols and Steyer rifles they had stolen from the KNIL, and a small cannon and an eight-millimeter mortar stolen from the
daidan
. Only the
shodancho
and
budancho
carried guns, while the enlisted men, who the Japanese called
giyukei
, carried bayonets or simple sharpened bamboo spears. Two scouts walked slightly ahead of the group while two more guarded the rear. With whatever weapons they had, they intended to win the battle against the most impressive troops in Asia, troops who had beaten Russia and China and chased out the French, the British, and the Dutch from their colonies, troops who were now making war against almost half the world, troops who had taught them how to hold their weapons properly.

“The hero always wins,” said Shodancho in encouragement. “Even though it always takes a while.”

On the first day of the guerrilla war, Shodancho’s group attacked a truck heading for the delta, where Bloedenkamp prison was located. They detonated a mortar right underneath the truck and the gas tank exploded, killing all the Japanese soldiers inside. A courier next reported that the western troops had engaged in open fighting with Japanese soldiers on the outskirts of the jungle, and after a fierce battle Bagong and his men had managed to slip away and it seemed as though the Japanese troops would not pursue them. The northern group attacked the Japanese all along the main road but then were ambushed by a large battalion. They received an order to return to the
daidan
, and so shodancho Sadrah and all his soldiers returned to the city in surrender.

“Even a donkey remembers to forget the way home,” said Shodancho. “He’s dumber than an ass.”

On the second day they were intercepted by Japanese troops and fought in skirmishes all along the riverbank. They were able to kill two Japanese soldiers, but they paid too high a price—five rebel soldiers perished, and then they were besieged. In an attempt to save themselves, they jumped into the river and became targets for enemy fire. After a rescue operation resulted in the death of another of their men, Shodancho and a number of his soldiers escaped.

He quickly changed his route and plans. They would return, but not to surrender, the greatest tactic his men had ever heard. To the south of the city there was a protected forest, and they walked in a circle through the mangrove swamps before climbing up the cliffs from a shell-strewn beach and entering the jungle. The Japanese and Peta soldiers chasing them were tricked, thinking they would continue east in order to reconnoiter with the rebels from other
daidan
, as they had originally planned. Shodancho had quickly calculated: the rebellion had failed. Japan had found them out, and the other
daidan
hadn’t helped, so the best plan was to escape into the forest closest to the city, and from there prepare for a
real
guerrilla war.

They hid in a cave for a number of days, because the fishermen could see them from their boats out on the ocean. A scout was sent to determine the condition of the western battalion, and of the city in general. He returned with bad news: the Japanese and Peta soldiers had ransacked the forest where the western battalion had been hiding. Bandits and thieves had been allowed to escape, but the rebels had been taken alive. With nothing left but bayonets and bamboo spears, the battalion did not surrender and so the sixty remaining soldiers, including Shodancho Bagong and his
chudancho
adviser, would be executed on the 24th of February in the yard in front of the
daidan
.

Shodancho came down off the mountain disguised as a skinny hobo covered in scabies, with his clothes in tatters. The disguise wasn’t too difficult to pull off, because after ten days as a guerrilla he was practically indistinguishable from an actual beggar. With his dirty stiff hair, he entered the city and not a soul recognized him. He walked along the pavement, his hands clutching a tin can with a stone inside, which he rattled softly. In front of the
daidan
headquarters, he stopped under a flame tree at the side of the road, and witnessed the execution. One by one the sixty men were shot, their corpses thrown into a truck and dumped in front of the gravedigger’s house.