Beauty Is a Wound (44 page)

That was his son. Born in a grave, premature, but seemingly quite healthy. The little one was a blessing in Kamino’s time of sorrow, like a love token sent from his sweetheart. He raised that child himself, doted on him, and gave him the name Kinkin.

On the morning of the day he was supposed to be put to death, Comrade Kliwon was found battered and bruised in the field behind the military headquarters by Adinda, who had come to find out whether he was dead. As Adinda had hoped he would be, he was wearing the clean and proper clothes that she had sent for him (though now they were decorated with blood splatters), because at half-past four that morning he had calmly bathed, and then had sized himself up in front of a mirror, hoping that the angel of death would like how he looked.

“Are you afraid, Comrade?” asked one of the guards a moment before the time for his execution arrived.

“It’s only soldiers who are filled with fear,” said Comrade Kliwon. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t need any weapons.”

At the stroke of five o’clock a group of soldiers came to get him, soldiers who were pissed off because their mission to shoot him dead had been canceled at Shodancho’s orders. And their anger boiled all the hotter to see the man’s calm demeanor in facing death.

“I can walk to my grave by myself,” said Comrade Kliwon.

“Please permit us to go through the trouble of taking you there,” they answered, hauling him across the floor with his legs dragging outstretched behind. The soldiers kicked him as they pulled him down the corridor, without giving him the chance to utter even one word in protest. Then they threw him in the middle of the small field where he was supposed to have been executed and a spotlight illuminated the grass, which made Comrade Kliwon, who was trying to get up, blink. His body hurt everywhere from being kicked the whole way. Even facing death, he still hoped that he had no broken bones.

He stood, feeling blood dripping down his back as he walked, staggering a little toward the wall where he would have to stand to be shot. But those soldiers hit him with ferocious and practiced blows, kicked him again with their boots, and struck him with the butts of their rifles.

“You will never kill me this way,” said Comrade Kliwon.

One more kick and he lost consciousness. That stopped all the torture. The soldiers just rolled him over with the toes of their boots. No one dared hit him again in his unconscious state, afraid that he would die. Shodancho had permitted them to torture him, but not to kill him, and so they dragged his unconscious body to a yard outside headquarters. If he died torn to shreds by dogs, that wasn’t their responsibility.

When he came to, Comrade Kliwon found himself in a hospital bed, with his stiff body wrapped in bandages crisscrossing everywhere. Next to him, Adinda sat waiting, her face so lovely with such a heartfelt smile, overjoyed to see him conscious and alive.

“This young lady dragged you to the main street before bringing you here in a
becak
. You were unconscious for two days and two nights, and she’s been waiting here the whole time,” said the doctor standing next to him.

Comrade Kliwon murmured an inaudible thank you—even his mouth was wrapped in a bandage—but Adinda could see from the look in his eyes that he was saying it, and she nodded, saying that she hoped he would get well as soon as possible.

This was the man who had led so many strikes, who had led more than a thousand communists in Halimunda, and he had lost it all: his friends, and even his own hometown, which was moving toward a new world, a world without communists.

He lay in isolation for a week, Adinda by his side and Mina checking in on him every morning. Sometimes, as he was still floating in and out of consciousness, he deliriously called out the names of his friends, but of course almost all of them were dead, and maybe had all already gone to hell. Other times he asked about his newspapers, still convinced that all this chaos had begun with their failure to appear. If his delirium began to intensify, Adinda quickly put a cold compress on his forehead burning up with fever, and he’d slip back into sleep.

“Do I need to recommend he be taken to the mental hospital?” the doctor asked Adinda.

“That won’t be necessary,” Adinda replied. “He is in fact remarkably sane, what’s crazy is the world he’ll be facing.”

After leaving the hospital, physically already more or less recovered, Comrade Kliwon returned to Mina’s house. He became antisocial, taking on his mother’s work sewing clothes and avoiding interaction with other people. He lost touch with the reality of his city, his sunken eyes gazing down at the movement of the needle. Even when there were no customers, he would sew something else, from handkerchiefs to pillowcases, and when there was no more big pieces of cloth he began to collect torn fabric remnants and turned them into patchwork.

Because he didn’t want to speak to anyone, and never left the house anymore, people began to act like he wasn’t even there, ignoring him, and sometimes someone would mutter, “It would have been better if he’d been truly put to death.”

“It’s like you died without being executed,” said Adinda, who tried a number of times to bring him back to life. “Maybe you
should
be sent to a mental hospital.” He didn’t respond, and the girl gave up hope of ever getting him back again.

But one morning he came out from the house neatly dressed, surprising his mother as he went through the doorway and walked toward the street. Hearing the news that
the
Comrade Kliwon had once again showed his face in the city, the people immediately filled the streets as fast as a flood. They watched him traverse Jalan Pramuka, Jalan Rengganis, Jalan Kidang, Jalan Belanda, Jalan Merdeka, and many other streets, just as they had watched him being brought to prison surrounded by soldiers. And just as he had walked then, he went on his way with an extraordinary indifference. He thought of those growing number of onlookers crowding around him as a carnival he was cutting through.

“Might I ask where you are going?” someone said.

“To the end of the road.”

That was the first sentence he had uttered since emerging from the hospital, and for the people who heard him it was as sensational as if an orangutan had spoken. Many of them were thinking he would head for the old Party headquarters, which was now just a heap of debris, and would proclaim the return of the Communist Party. Others guessed that he would commit suicide by throwing himself into the sea. But nobody was really sure, so they continued to follow him like an honest-to-God circus convoy.

People were riveted when, as he passed through the city square, he suddenly plucked a rose and serenely inhaled its aroma, making the girls practically keel over. After one month of caging himself in his house, he looked plumper than when he’d been leading the Communist Party, and when they saw him smell that rose, they glimpsed a hint of the old glint in his eye that had made so many women lovesick. Each woman began to hope that he was heading for her house in a spirit of reconciliation or nostalgia or whatever you wanted to call it, to relive a love story that had once blossomed, or that hadn’t yet had the chance to blossom.

“Might I ask who that flower is for, Comrade?” asked a young girl, her lips quivering.

“For a dog.”

And he threw the rose to a feral dog who just happened to be passing by.

Many women grew even more heartbroken when it turned out that he was going to see Adinda, now twenty years old, with all the beauty she’d inherited from her mother. Dewi Ayu, who was surprised at Comrade Kliwon’s appearance, invited the man in, while the hundreds of curious people huddled in her front yard, squeezed together at the windowpanes to eavesdrop and find out what was going to happen. Even Shodancho and Alamanda, who hadn’t seen Dewi Ayu for five years, came and squeezed in with the others, for a moment forgetting their warm and passionate honeymoon. People were wondering whether he had come for Adinda or Dewi Ayu—apparently he was still the same man who had always been so popular, and everyone was waiting for whatever drama he would star in next. He had already played the role of the man most beloved in the city, and also the most despised.

“Good afternoon, Madam,” said Comrade Kliwon.

“Good afternoon. I’ve been wondering why you weren’t executed,” said Dewi Ayu.

“Because they knew that death would bring me too much pleasure.”

Dewi Ayu chuckled at his irony.

“Would you like a cup of coffee made by my daughter, Comrade? I’ve heard you two have grown quite close in recent years.”

“Which daughter, Madam?”

“There’s only one left: Adinda.”

“Yes, thank you Madam. I have come to ask for her hand.”

A thunderous uproar rose from the people gathered there, shocked by that proposal, and of course now the girls were even more heartbroken. Even Alamanda was brought to tears to hear it, feeling touched as if she herself had just been proposed to but also jealous that her younger sister had received such a blessing. Adinda, who had been eavesdropping from behind the wall, was more surprised than anyone to hear Comrade Kliwon’s sudden proposal. She had been carrying two cups of coffee on a tray, but was brought to a halt behind that wall, lucky that the glasses didn’t crash to the floor.

She stayed there, confused in her joy and surprise. Dewi Ayu, whose bitter life had accustomed her to keeping herself under control, smiled with sweet composure.

“Well, I will have to ask my daughter how she feels.”

Then Dewi Ayu went to the back. Adinda was too shy to show her face, especially because of the crowd of people surrounding the house. But she nodded to her mother, full of certainty. Dewi Ayu returned to Comrade Kliwon and sat in front of him, bringing the tray.

“She nodded,” she told Comrade Kliwon, and continued with a chuckle, “so you are going to be my son-in-law. The only son-in-law who has never slept with me.”

“Well at one point I did want to, Madam,” he said with a small shy look.

“I guessed as much.”

Comrade Kliwon finally married Adinda at the end of the month of November of that year in a festive wedding celebration, everything paid for by Dewi Ayu. They slaughtered two fat cows, four goats, and hundreds of chickens; there was who-knows-how-many kilos of rice, potatoes, beans, noodles, and eggs. At first, Comrade Kliwon had hoped to have the simplest and most modest wedding possible since he didn’t have very much money, just the small savings he’d tucked away from his fishing days. But Dewi Ayu wanted a festive wedding because Adinda was her last remaining child.

For a dowry Comrade Kliwon gave Adinda a ring that he had bought when he was in Jakarta, paid for with his earnings as a roving photographer, that in all honesty he had intended for Alamanda. Adinda knew the backstory to that dowry, but she wasn’t the jealous girl her sister Alamanda used to accuse her of being. She even displayed it with a genuine pride. They spent their honeymoon in a hotel on the gulf that Dewi Ayu had arranged for them.

Dewi Ayu even bought the newlyweds a house in the same complex where Shodancho lived, just one house apart. Meanwhile Comrade Kliwon bought a plot of land and began to till the earth all by himself. He made a pond at the far end of the field, and sprinkled it with tadpoles, giving them chaff and cassava and papaya leaves every morning. In the paddies he planted rice just like everyone else. Adinda had a lot to learn to live as a farmer’s wife, because she had never even so much as touched rice-paddy mud, but of course she was deeply content.

Comrade Kliwon would leave very early in the morning to go, just like any farmer, to his fields. He checked on the water drainage, plucked weeds, gave the fish food, and planted nuts and beans. Adinda took care of all the household duties, and by the time midday was approaching, after all those tasks were done, she would follow him to the fields carrying a basked filled with breakfast. They would eat together in the little open-air hut that Comrade Kliwon had built at the edge of the rice field, and when they went home the basket would be filled with young cassava leaves and sweet potatoes.

In January, Adinda took herself to the hospital to confirm that she was indeed pregnant. Everyone who knew them shared in their joy. Alamanda was the first to offer congratulations. At that time she herself was pregnant, and Nurul Aini had not yet been born. She arrived when the couple was relaxing on their veranda, looking out at the beautifully blooming flowers that Adinda had planted. They were both a bit surprised by her arrival, because even though they were neighbors, Alamanda had never stopped by to say hello and vice versa.

Comrade Kliwon became slightly embarrassed, but Adinda immediately embraced her older sister and they kissed each other’s cheeks.

“What did the doctor say?” asked Alamanda.

“He said, if it’s a girl I hope she doesn’t become a whore like her grandmother, or if it’s a boy, a communist like his father.”

Alamanda laughed.

“And what did the doctor say about your stomach?” asked Adinda.

“You know, my stomach has already fooled us twice, so I can’t be certain.”

“Alamanda,” Comrade Kliwon said suddenly, making both women turn to look in his direction. They found him staring at Alamanda’s stomach. Alamanda’s face drained of color, remembering how Comrade Kliwon had twice said that her stomach was only filled with air and wind, like an empty pot. “I swear that this is not an empty pot like it was before,” he proclaimed.

Alamanda looked at him, wanting to hear him repeat his words, and Comrade Kliwon nodded reassuringly. “It’s a beautiful little girl, maybe even more beautiful than her mother, perfect, with jet-black hair, and piercing eyes that she got from her father. She will be born twelve days before my child. You can name her Nurul Aini just like her older sisters, but believe you me that she will live to grow up into a young woman.”

“Dear God, if it is as the Comrade said, I will give her the name Nurul Aini,” said Shodancho that evening. He and Alamanda began to understand that their two previous children were lost not because of a curse, but because of the absence of love. But just as she had promised when she begged for Comrade Kliwon’s life, Alamanda had given her sincere and true love to Shodancho, and that love had now born fruit, and it now seemed that love could give them what they wanted.