Beauty Is a Wound (42 page)

But Comrade Kliwon did not react. Incredibly, he didn’t seem to care, and that really got under Shodancho’s skin. Lying in his cot, this living corpse looked full of authority, full of self-satisfaction as if he was dying as a martyr, full of wonder at the life that he had chosen and would never regret, even though it had brought him to this unfortunate end. There was a huge gulf between them, between a man with the authority to order executions, and a man counting the hours until his death. The first made uneasy by his power, the second made calm by his fate.

In fact, Comrade Kliwon was not thinking about Shodancho at all, instead swept away by nostalgia back to all of his memories of the city he would soon be leaving. How exhausting revolution was, he thought to himself, and the one thing that made him happy was that
I can leave this all behind without having to become a reactionary or a counterrevolutionary
.

So Comrade Kliwon felt like he should thank whoever had carried out the coup. Because the following day he was going to die and would leave all this exhausting business behind. He wasn’t too worried about his mother, she was strong and could take care of herself, and that made him all the more ready to die, even happy. A little smile played across his lips, which made Shodancho all the more annoyed.

“You are going to be collected at ten to five, and at five o’clock sharp your execution will begin. So tell me your last request,” Shodancho ordered.

“This is my last request: Workers of the world, unite!” replied Comrade Kliwon.

Shodancho left and the door slammed shut.

LOTS OF PEOPLE
get married in the months of the rainy season. Crowds of villagers attend ceremony after ceremony for weeks on end and the golden
janur kuning
poles marking the houses holding wedding parties stick out of fences at almost every single intersection, arching over the street to dangle their festive decorations. Meanwhile, those men who aren’t married yet go off to the whorehouse, lovers meet more often to get it on in secret, long-married couples seem to relive their honeymoons in the months of the rainy season, and God creates many tiny little embryos.

Even during the massacre of the communists, people still made love whenever they had the chance, especially during the heavier downpours. But this kind of thing, at least for the moment, was not happening with Shodancho and Alamanda. Nor was it happening with Maman Gendeng and Maya Dewi, who were still acting out the same drama they’d been acting out ever since their wedding night almost five years ago.

But one thing was making Maman Gendeng very happy: he now had what could be called a home, something he’d long dreamed about, ever since he first fell in love with Nasiah and saw the girl’s glowing love for her sweetheart. For years he had fantasized about a loving gaze like hers, about a family and a house—years full of despair doubting he would ever have anything even close to his dream, mostly because everyone thought of him as a troublemaking scoundrel.

Now when he came home from the bus terminal, after hanging out and chatting the whole afternoon, or playing cards with Shodancho, his wife would be waiting for him at the dining table and would hasten to prepare his bath. He spent every night floating in an indescribable joy and now felt quite civilized, because he had clean clothes just like his neighbors, ate at a dining room table just like his neighbors, and slept on a mattress covered by a blanket, just like his neighbors.

As well as completing her household tasks and doing her homework, Maya Dewi diligently took care of her husband. Just as he had promised Dewi Ayu, Maman Gendeng never touched another woman, even though he hadn’t touched his own wife yet either. Year after year passed, and the little girl began to grow into an adolescent. She was already much taller, her body had filled out and her breasts were developing perfectly. But Maman Gendeng still saw her as the same little schoolgirl she had always been. He kept her company, smoked his cigarettes while she did her homework, and he tucked her in at night, but they never even slept in the same bed.

He was carrying out a truly amazing feat of sexual abstinence. When his lust appeared from time to time, he would conduct some experiments in the bathroom to try to calm himself down and, with regards to this issue, Shodancho was the best friend Maman Gendeng could have had. Even though their backgrounds were so different, fate had united them in a deepening friendship and Shodancho didn’t just bemoan the possibility that his wife might still love Comrade Kliwon, he also began to discuss all his family problems with his most trustworthy friend.

After they’d played trump, and the other players had made themselves scarce, and any city issues had all been taken care of, they usually began to discuss their personal problems. And then they no longer seemed like friends, but more like a pair of brothers moaning and sighing to one another. One day, Shodancho spoke frankly about Alamanda’s iron underwear.

“And the key to unlock them is a mantra that nobody except my wife knows.”

“But I heard she was pregnant?”

Then, Shodancho suddenly burst into tears, sobbing, “She’s been pregnant twice. I named both those babies Nurul Aini, but they both vanished from her womb!”

“There’s no woman who can get pregnant without getting fucked, unless you believe in the Virgin Mary.”

Shodancho gasped for breath and explained, “Well, I raped her when she was careless with that crotch protector.”

Maman Gendeng comforted him by saying that even he himself hadn’t yet touched his wife. “And I vowed, Shodancho, that I would never go to the whorehouse again, so I only entertain myself in the bathroom. It’s pretty effective for relieving crankiness and preventing tantrums. You really do have to routinely purge the contents of your balls.”

“But I already do stuff like that,” complained Shodancho.

They then agreed that the key to their happy marriages would be found in time, even though it seemed to move so slowly, and in their patient acceptance. Maman Gendeng would have to live in anticipation until his wife was old enough to be made love to. “I don’t know when that will be, Shodancho. And really what you need is time too, isn’t it, time to grovel, because sooner or later, with enough persistence, a woman can be brought round.” At least that was what the wise men who had been with many women always said. “So, if you are patient, your patience will bear fruit. Just like drops of water can wear away a hole in a rock, your wife will finally let go of her stubbornness and maybe even begin to fall in love with you. You won’t need to cajole or convince or seduce her into opening her crotch protector, because one night she’ll open it for you herself. Believe that this will happen, Shodancho, because there is no woman—or man—who can stay stubborn to the death.”

These strange and wise words from Maman Gendeng, who he partly and secretly hated still, truly comforted Shodancho so that for just a moment he could stop obsessing about how delicious it would be to sleep with his own wife (although he still couldn’t forget that one persistently sweet memory of when he raped her in the guerrilla hut).

Unlike Shodancho, Maman Gendeng had absolutely no thought of raping his own wife. Maybe if he asked, Maya Dewi would take off her clothes and lie down on the bed and wait for him to spring upon her naked. But no, he couldn’t treat that young girl, whose eyes were still so innocent, so cruelly. Sweet youngest daughter, that was what he used to call Maya Dewi back when he was still Dewi Ayu’s lover. He thought the most important task for a husband was to ensure his wife’s happiness, and let her learn for herself how to become a good partner. “And look how proud I am of my little wife,” he always said to his friends. “At twelve years old when I married her she was already good at cooking and sewing and straightening up and flower arranging. Now, as soon as she gets home from school she is even busier fulfilling all her cookie orders.”

The baking business was so successful that Maya Dewi had hired two employees: two young orphan girls, each about twelve years old, whom she had taken in. They kept busy all day with the dough and the oven and the cookie decorating.

But school and business never made her negligent of her husband, and that was what made Maman Gendeng so very happy. But he still didn’t touch her—he didn’t want to plunder the happiness of her childhood, because even though she’d lived with the most famous whore in the city, maybe she herself had never thought about having sex or anything of that nature. And, especially after he heard what had happened to Shodancho’s first two children, he felt sure that it wasn’t right to force a woman in any way. Even if that woman was your wife.

And Maman Gendeng grew very proud of his own patience, for years not making love to anyone, except his own hand in the bathroom. His physical contact with his wife was limited to a kiss on her forehead before she went to sleep or when she was leaving for school, and sometimes they sat with their arms around each other at the movie theater, and he would carry her to bed if she fell asleep on the sofa. He had never even seen her naked. He held out with the mysterious patience of a man who’d been a warrior nomad, watching one season turn into the next with a peaceful anticipation.

Then one day when she was almost seventeen years old, Maya Dewi surprised Maman Gendeng by saying, “I am going to quit school.” She gave her reason quite firmly, saying she wanted to take better care of her house and her husband.

Even though Maman Gendeng could have protested that up until now he and his house had been taken care of quite well, in fact probably way better than any other husband in the entire city, considering how many husbands ran away to Mama Kalong’s whorehouse, Maman Gendeng accepted whatever his wife had decided—he saw the unshakable conviction in her eyes.

Later that night, Maman Gendeng went into his wife’s room to kiss her good night and tuck her in just as usual. He found her lying naked on the bed, on pink sheets, under a dimly glowing lamp, smiling at him, with the fragrance of roses wafting about. Maya Dewi said:

“My darling, I am your wife and I am now grown up enough to receive you in this bed. Hold me and make love to me tonight. This will be the most beautiful night that we will ever experience, our first night together, the night we have been waiting five years for.”

She was truly gorgeous, having inherited her mother’s beauty, with her hair spread out on the pillow, her pert breasts and her lovely strong hips. Maman Gendeng lost his breath for a moment. Swear to God he had never realized that his five-year wait would reward him with such an extraordinary blessing, as if he had traveled a long way and finally found the most precious jewel in the world.

Then, as if pushed by an invisible force, he approached her, reaching out to explore his wife’s body with caresses so gentle she arched and twisted with whispering sighs. With an unhurried calm forged by years of anticipation, Maman Gendeng climbed up on the bed and affectionately sniffed his wife’s forehead before covering her cheeks and her lips in long smoldering kisses. Maya Dewi took off the man’s clothes with such delicate gestures that he didn’t immediately realize that now they both were naked.

They melted into a glorious wedding night that went on for weeks. Like a pair of true newlyweds they almost never left the house, making love from nightfall until morning and then from morning until afternoon. They only left their bed to eat and drink and go to the bathroom and breath in the fresh air. They were still in the middle of their extraordinary honeymoon in the early days of that rainy and bloody October in Halimunda, so they had no idea what had come to pass.

Alamanda was the last person to hear the news of Comrade Kliwon’s capture and the plans for his execution at five in the morning. That news was carried by the wind that blew in through the window as she was lying in her room waiting for her husband to come home. She almost never left the house ever since Shodancho had become so preoccupied with the early October business that was so sudden and so strange. Alamanda shivered to think that the man she still secretly loved would die at dawn, maybe in front of a firing squad, maybe hung, maybe drowned, or maybe pitted against
ajak
.

She sat on the edge of her bed wrapped in a blanket, her eyes glued to the wall clock, watching the minute hand move slowly but surely toward the moment her old lover’s life would end, on the orders of her husband. Maybe even Shodancho himself would carry out the execution. Feeling isolated and alienated and all alone, she began to weep, suddenly yearning for a man’s embrace. She was abandoned by the man she’d married to his preoccupation with all the recent mayhem, and powerless to help the man she would have far preferred to have in her bed.

She wasn’t the only one unwilling to accept Comrade Kliwon’s execution: to her and many other people it didn’t matter that he had burned three of her husband’s fishing ships and thrown teenagers in jail for being obsessed with rock and roll—that man
was
Halimunda and vice versa. He had built a positive image for the city, supplanting its old reputation as a den of prostitutes, bandits, and old guerrillas.