Beauty Is a Wound (31 page)

He had already tried to convince his wife to loosen up with her accursed hardheadedness, but then without ever surrendering or taking off her iron undies, Alamanda decided that she should sleep apart from Shodancho, like a couple waiting for the courts to finalize their divorce. This meant that Shodancho had to sleep alone, hugging his pillow and rolling about in a state of forlorn arousal. Alamanda said to him once—who knows, maybe out of pity or just because she wanted to show her magnanimity—“If you absolutely must spew the contents of your balls, feel free to visit a prostitute. I wouldn’t be angry, in fact I would be happy for you.”

But Shodancho refused to do what his wife advised. Not because he thought he could overcome his desire, and not because he wasn’t interested in whores, but because he wanted to show her how deeply faithful he was, how selfless his love was for her, and he hoped that after a while his wife’s heart would yield to his sweet and blameless manner.

But Alamanda showed no sign of giving in, and only took off her iron underwear during those brief moments when she was inside the locked bathroom in order to pee and wash herself, and after that she continued to clamp them up tight along with her secret mantra, which was safely hidden away inside her mouth wherever she went.

Shodancho hoped that his wife would carelessly say the mantra out loud and he would overhear it, but he waited in vain because she never even murmured it in her sleep. The only thing Shodancho could do now was surrender to his fate, and accept the fact that he would never again make love to a woman, forever confined to his emergency sessions with his pillow in his lonely bed. Other times, when he couldn’t take the crazy game any longer, he would scurry to the bathroom and discharge the contents of his balls into the toilet.

During those days, he tried to distract himself by once again focusing on the smuggling business he had been running for years with his friend Bendo. Now they had acquired a large fishing vessel, their one legal operation. He also returned to his old hobby of breeding and domesticating wild dogs. After one year had passed, the dogs could help the farmers chase away trespassing pigs. But that whole year had passed without the newlyweds ever making love, and people started to gossip. They had the audacity to swear, full of certainty, that Shodancho and Alamanda had not had intercourse even once, which was proven by the fact that Alamanda still showed no signs of being pregnant.

A number of kids began to speculate that if Shodancho wasn’t impotent then maybe he was sterile, and a number of others dared to say that he had been castrated by the Japanese during the war. That crazy story spread from the mouth of one kid to the ears of another and was soon overheard by some adults who believed it and spread the word even further.

No one thought to make any other speculations, like the couple’s hasty marriage had not at all been based on love, because despite their secret bedroom woes, the pair always presented a congenial public face, looking just like a husband and wife who truly cared for each other. They attended parties together, and were often seen taking afternoon walks hand in hand and going to the movies on Saturday nights. It was easy for people to misunderstand when seeing the harmony of a couple like that. Alamanda always looked cheerful and Shodancho always doted on her, so the only reason why one year had passed and Alamanda wasn’t pregnant yet
had
to be that either one or both of them was sterile. “It’s such a shame, their wedding seemed so perfect,” someone said finally.

The only person who didn’t feel the slightest bit upset by all the gossip was Alamanda. As if she couldn’t care less about the whole matter, or as if it amused her, when not accompanying Shodancho to ceremonies she spent her free time reading novels. It was in fact these books that had taught Alamanda how to play the role of a happy wife for the public. She didn’t do so just to preserve her husband’s image but also to preserve her own, because she didn’t want anyone to know that she was married to a man she didn’t love. She didn’t want anyone to pity her.

Apparently Shodancho’s were the last ears to hear the distasteful gossip about his impotence and potential castration, which had started in the mouths of those nosey little kids and had gone so far the kids had stopped playing war, under the mistaken assumption that soldiers were likely to be castrated. When he finally heard, Shodancho was completely distraught, stewing in a mix of humiliation and anger and helplessness. Outside the bedroom business with his wife he thought their marriage was going pretty well. Alamanda presented herself as the cordial wife she ought to be and so he didn’t totally care that she was faking it. But he couldn’t just keep shooting the seeds of their babies into the toilet forever, and it finally dawned on him that one whole year had passed and he still had not been able to break that fucking pair of iron underwear.

So one night, after many months of sleeping in separate beds, Shodancho entered the room where Alamanda slept and found his wife putting on her pajamas. He closed the door and locked it, then approached Alamanda who eyed him suspiciously while feeling for her crotch to ensure that her iron protection was still locked and set. Shodancho then said to his wife, “Make love to me, darling.” His voice sounded miserable.

Alamanda shook her head and turned her back on him to get into bed. Shodancho grabbed her from behind and ripped her pajamas open. Before Alamanda could react, Shodancho had already pushed her down onto the bed, taken off his own clothes and quickly jumped on top of her. Alamanda resisted, pushing his body away with all her power, but Shodancho was holding her tightly, kissing her wildly, and squeezing her breasts, full of desire. “You are raping me, Shodancho!” screamed Alamanda, trying to roll away. But Shodancho kept after her, exploring and squeezing every region of her body. “Shodancho, you accursed satan, you devil, you asshole, try to rape me and your spear will break against my iron shield!” Alamanda said finally, no longer resisting and letting Shodancho fondle her in vain.

Now Shodancho could move more freely, fooling himself into thinking that he was really making love to his wife, until his weapon hurled sperm across the surface of the metal slab protecting her vagina. Shodancho rolled onto his side out of breath, drops of sweat decorating his entire body. He was completely silent for a moment as Alamanda enjoyed his foolishness, happy in her victory and her revenge. He glared over at her crotch in fury, his legs in excruciating pain after repeatedly colliding with the iron. Grimacing, he sat on the edge of the bed, and began to cry the pitiful tears of a pathetic and brokenhearted man, and he said, “No matter how many times I do this to you, you will never get pregnant. Your cunt and your womb are cursed.” He got up, got dressed, and left his wife’s room.

But Alamanda was wrong when she figured that Shodancho would give up and submit to the punishment that she had prepared for him. One day when she was in the carefully locked bathroom, completely naked with her iron underwear resting on the edge of the tub, something slammed against the door with tremendous force and Shodancho stampeded in through the gaping hole. Before Alamanda could even reach for her iron underwear, Shodancho was already clutching them in his grasp. She screamed like a wounded tigress, but Shodancho threw her over his shoulder just as he had carried her powerless body through the jungle where he fought his guerrilla war. He brought Alamanda out from the bathroom as she thrashed about pummeling his back. Two servants spied on this scene through a crack in the kitchen door, their bodies trembling in fear.

Shodancho brought Alamanda to his own room, the room that he had hoped would be their room, and threw her onto the bed before turning to lock the door. “You are cursed, Shodancho,” said Alamanda, standing on the bed and shrinking back toward the wall. “How dare you rape your own wife!”

Shodancho didn’t reply, just took off his clothes and faced Alamanda with the look of a horny dog. Seeing him like that, her instinct told her she was in danger and Alamanda squeezed herself even closer against the wall, but Shodancho quickly caught her, threw her down onto the bed, and then threw himself down on top of her.

Minute by minute they stayed locked in battle, the battle of a man who needs release for his lust and a woman who claws and screams to protect herself from a love that she in no way wants to consummate. Alamanda closed her thighs tightly, but Shodancho forcefully broke through her last defense with his mighty knee, and whatever was going to happen happened. Shodancho raped his own wife, until the end of the exhausting battle, when Alamanda sobbed, “Fuck you, you raping satan!” and fainted. Shodancho ended up with two scratches on his face and Alamanda with an extraordinary pain in her crotch.

She didn’t know how long she lay there unconscious, but when she came to, she found herself still lying on her back naked. Her hands and feet were tied to the four corners of the bed. Alamanda pulled at the ropes binding her, but they were tied so tightly that whatever she did only made her wrists and ankles hurt all the more.

“Devil rapist, what have you done?” she asked angrily when she saw Shodancho standing beside the bed completely dressed. “If you are looking for a hole to stick your dick in, every cow and goat has one.”

For the first time since he had kidnapped her from the bathroom, Shodancho smiled and said, “Now I can have sex with you whenever I want!” Hearing that, Alamanda hurled insults and spouted curses, still struggling against the cords as Shodancho left her.

That day Shodancho found a repairman to fix the destroyed bathroom door and threw Alamanda’s iron underwear into the well. With a fearsome look he threatened the two servants never to tell anyone what they had seen. Meanwhile Alamanda grew weak after trying so hard to free herself, and wept continuously with piteous cries. Shodancho returned again and again to the room where Alamanda was held captive, making love to his wife as if they were real newlyweds, about once every two and a half hours without tiring. He was as delighted as a child with a new toy, and the longer this went on, the less Alamanda’s resistance meant anything.

“Even if I died,” Alamanda said in defeat, “believe me, this man would continue to fuck my grave.”

So the whole day long Alamanda was tied up on top of the bed, raped over and over again. Then in the afternoon Shodancho came bringing a tub filled with warm water and a wet washcloth and he caressed his wife’s body as tenderly and carefully as if he was handling an expensive and fragile ceramic vase. After that he had sex with her again, and then he bathed her again, and this went on for quite a while. Alamanda’s heart was unmoved by Shodancho’s gentle ministrations, and when he brought her some lunch, she closed her mouth up tight, and when Shodancho forced open her mouth and crammed rice inside, she spit it right out so that it splattered all over his face. “Eat, because I won’t enjoy making love to a corpse,” said Shodancho. Alamanda snapped, “It’s way less enjoyable for me to make love to a living human being the likes of you.”

This is crazy
, thought Shodancho as he continued to cajole her. Alamanda refused to eat until she was released from her bondage and her iron underwear was returned to her, but Shodancho refused to honor that request. Trying to make himself feel better, Shodancho told himself that Alamanda’s resolve would reach its limit. After being plagued by the painful twisting of her empty stomach all night long, by the next morning she would probably be ready to accept food.

Thinking this, Shodancho returned his wife’s lunch to the kitchen and ate alone at the dining table. When afternoon came, he sat on the veranda enjoying the evening breeze and the turtledoves that had been given to them as a wedding present. The birds hopped up and down inside their cages, which hung from the ceiling. He also enjoyed the shining lamps and the clove cigarette that he sucked on with great pleasure, thinking back over his victorious day. Finally he knew what it felt like to make love to his wife, because even though he had raped Alamanda once before, that had been before they were married.

Usually he sat with Alamanda on the front terrace on afternoons like this. Many had noticed the habit, so when people passed by and greeted him, “Good afternoon, Shodancho,” they also asked, “Where is the Lady of the house?” Shodancho replied good afternoon and explained that his wife wasn’t feeling well and was lying down in bed. That made him miss Alamanda, so that when there was still a little bit of his cigarette left unsmoked, he threw the butt into the yard and went to see his wife.

He found her tied up flat on her back just as she had been the whole day, but it appeared she had fallen asleep. Whether Shodancho then momentarily changed into a good husband only God himself knows, because he covered his wife with a blanket to ward off the cold air and mosquitos, except it turned out that in the end he couldn’t make it through the night without raping her again, twice: first at eleven-forty and then again at three in the morning, before the first cock had crowed.

Morning finally came and Shodancho reappeared in the room where his wife was still sprawled underneath a blanket with her hands and feet still tied to each corner of the bed. For breakfast he brought her some fried rice with a sunny-side up egg on top, some sliced tomato on the side, and a tall glass of chocolate milk. Alamanda awoke and stared dejectedly in his direction, with a mixture of nausea and hatred. “Here, let me feed you,” said Shodancho with genuine friendliness, continuing with the sincere smile of a husband for his wife, “Making love always builds up a good appetite.”

Alamanda returned his smile, not with her usual charming grin but with a disgusted and contemptuous sneer. She looked at Shodancho as if she was looking at the devil incarnate she had imagined ever since she was a little girl. He didn’t have any horns or tusks, and his eyes were just a little bit red from not having gotten enough sleep, but she was still positive her husband was the devil.

“Go to hell and take your fucking breakfast with you,” said Alamanda.

“Come on, sweetheart, you will die if you don’t eat,” said Shodancho.