Beauty Is a Wound (47 page)

He wracked his brains looking for a way to break into another business. By that time, Halimunda had become a beach resort. In truth the city had been a favored location since the colonial era because of the two beautiful bays formed by the jungle cape, but in the early years of the new government the city started promoting itself as a beach resort. There were new hotels tucked into a number of side streets, and new souvenir kiosks. Simple food stalls had turned into seafood restaurants, and the ruts in the road had been patched with new asphalt. The tourists arrived from every far-flung place, both domestic and abroad, and most of them came to swim at that beautiful beach. The western bay was their favorite spot, while the eastern bay became the port and the fish market. Comrade Kliwon thought hard about what the tourists who came to swim most needed, and tried to combine that with what he might be able to do. He found his answer.

“I’m going to make swim trunks,” he said to Adinda.

That idea seemed silly, even to Adinda. But he didn’t care. Comrade Kliwon bought a Singer sewing machine. He wanted to sell his shorts as cheaply as possible, because the tourists would probably only use them for swimming a few days before throwing them away. For that, he had to find the cheapest possible cloth. And for that, he went to ask his mother.

“Flour and rice sacks,” said Mina. “I usually use them to line pant pockets.”

Comrade Kliwon first studied bleaching techniques so that the merchant stamp could be erased from the sacks, and then he had plain fabric ready to be cut into the pattern of a pair of shorts. In truth, his shorts were not all that different from the shorts that farmers wore in the fields, but he distinguished them by silk-screening images onto the fabric before sewing the swim trunks. He designed these images himself, with the skill of a mediocre painter—brightly colored fish that he didn’t even know the name for, or coconut trees whose leaves curved randomly against the background of an orange-colored setting sun. And at the bottom every image, he wrote the word “Halimunda” in big letters. If they wanted to, the tourists could then bring them home as a souvenir to remind them of the city.

He distributed the shorts to the simple bamboo and tarp kiosks lining the beach and it turned out the tourists liked those shorts. Maybe because they were cheap, maybe because of the interesting designs, but definitely because they needed them to go swimming. The kiosks asked for more shorts, and Comrade Kliwon had to work harder. Adinda could sew a little, but she usually just helped out with the bookkeeping, because she had to take care of little Krisan. When it seemed that there were too many orders to fill, Comrade Kliwon would throw some of the work his mother’s way. Within a month, Mina was also overwhelmed and he bought three new sewing machines and hired three seamstresses and a silk-screen printer while still making all of the patterns and designs himself. Business was great, and he found that he didn’t mind that he had become a small-time capitalist.

Perhaps he was forgetting his past, but in any case Comrade Kliwon enjoyed his pleasant days, with his work that was going well, his beautiful wife, and his healthy baby boy. Competitors of course began to spring up, especially the Chinese and Padang workers from overseas, but Comrade Kliwon’s shorts were still the favorite shorts in Halimunda, and he was the latest business success.

But that happy life was soon destroyed by the mayor’s plan. Comrade Kliwon returned to being
that
Comrade Kliwon, the
old
Comrade Kliwon.

Halimunda was thriving as a beach resort and the greedy mayor began to hope that he could sell the land along the coast to developers to build big hotels and restaurants and bars and discos and casinos and maybe even brothels better than Mama Kalong’s. Most of that land belonged to the fishermen. Along the beach that abutted the street there was some more land that had no official deed holder, but that was filled with the humble souvenir kiosks. At first the local government approached the fishermen, asking politely if they would sell the land, and they gently tried to persuade the kiosk owners to move their kiosks to the new art market that would soon be built. But most of the fishermen refused to move off their ancestral land—their families had lived there for generations. They would never move inland, because they needed to smell the salty sea air. The kiosk owners didn’t want to move either, because the promised art market would be located too far from the bustling beach.

And so, the soldiers came, backed up by the
preman
, to intimidate the people. But don’t think that the fishermen scared easily—they faced death every night, out on the open ocean—and seeing the fishermen’s resolve, the kiosk owners held out too. After intimidation failed, there came force and coercion. The land between the ocean and the street was not unclaimed territory but in fact belonged to the state, said the mayor who came to the beach and gave a speech, and the bulldozers would soon come to knock down all the kiosks.

Comrade Kliwon couldn’t have such a thing happen before his eyes without turning back into the
old
Comrade Kliwon, though in fact no one knew whether he was acting out of solidarity or because his own business was being threatened. He organized a mass demonstration of fishermen and kiosk owners and many others sympathetic to their fate, the biggest demonstration since the collapse of the Communist Party. They blocked the roads against the bulldozers sent to flatten their flimsy kiosks until finally the army came. Comrade Kliwon still stood, leading at the front.

Intelligence agents sent to sniff out any communists amid the crowd of dissidents quickly recognized Comrade Kliwon. Reports were cross-checked, and it was soon confirmed that that man was truly an
authentic
communist. At the urging of the generals, Shodancho had to arrest Comrade Kliwon, and he laid into him, asking why he was doing such a foolish thing.

“I’m a communist, and any communist would do the same,” said Comrade Kliwon.

He was finally sent to Bloedenkamp and found that some of his old friends were still being held there indefinitely. They were surprised that Kliwon wasn’t dead, and even more surprised that he had come to Bloedenkamp after all this time. He was comforted to see so many people that he knew there, even though they were all living in heartbreaking conditions—starving, naked, and without any visitors. Their days were filled with interrogations and torture at the hands of the soldiers and guards. Given Comrade Kliwon’s reputation, he experienced the same thing, doled out in an even more harsh and sadistic manner.

“Trust me, he’ll survive,” said Shodancho, calming his furious wife. “And even if he does die, communists always come back to life as ghosts, as you and I know very well.”

“Tell that to Adinda and his child,” said Alamanda.

Not long after that, the entire group of communist political prisoners at Bloedenkamp was moved to Buru Island. All of them, without exception. Nobody knew what would happen to them there. Maybe it was a kind of Boven-Digoel from colonial times, or maybe it was like a Nazi concentration camp. All of the prisoners anticipated excruciating forced labor and even more horrific punishments than the ones they’d already experienced. Comrade Kliwon wasn’t able to say goodbye to his mother, his wife, or his child. He only said goodbye to Shodancho, who managed to visit him for a moment before the military ship carried all the prisoners to an island far out in the easternmost reaches of the Indonesian archipelago.

“I will look after your wife and child,” Shodancho told him.

“And look, now he has been sent to Buru Island,” said Alamanda when he got home,“where they will order him to chop wood and starve him to death.”

“Think about it, he brought all of this chaos upon himself. A communist is always a communist, hotheaded and violent. I’m not the president, who can pardon someone, and I’m not a commander in chief, I’m just the shodancho of one small military command headquarters.”

“And you still haven’t gone and said as much to Adinda and her child.”

So Shodancho finally went to see Adinda and said that he wholeheartedly regretted what had happened but he was powerless to prevent Comrade Kliwon from being sent first to Bloedenkamp, and then to Buru Island. This was a complicated political case.

“At the very least, tell me, Shodancho, how long will he be held there?”

“I don’t know,” replied Shodancho. “Maybe until there is another coup.”

So Krisan never truly knew his father, because when Comrade Kliwon was sent to Bloedenkamp, and then Buru Island, he was still just a baby. He only knew about Comrade Kliwon through what his mother told him, or through Alamanda and Shodancho’s stories. In 1979 his father returned, part of the last group of Buru Island prisoners to be sent home. Adinda was overjoyed at the man’s return, but Krisan couldn’t share in her happiness. By then the boy was already thirteen years old and felt like his father was a stranger who had suddenly moved into their house.

He paid very close attention to the man, especially when sitting across from him at the dining table. The figure he saw was way skinnier than the one in the old photographs that his mother had shown him. Before his face had been clean shaven, but now he’d let his mustache and sideburns and beard grow, and waves of long hair covered his neck. Krisan was quite surprised that the first thing his father looked for when he arrived was his threadbare cap still lying in the cupboard, its color so faded it was no longer clear whether it was black, brown, or grey. He patted it, but he never put it on and always returned it to its place inside the cupboard.

Comrade Kliwon didn’t speak much after returning from exile. Krisan wondered whether it was really true that the man had once been an eloquent speaker at giant rallies. Maybe he talked more to his mother when night fell and they were lying together in bed, but he didn’t talk to Krisan very much. He just said, “How are you, my son?” Or, “How old are you now?” He asked these questions over and over so frequently that Krisan was afraid his father had lost his senses. Maybe he was already senile, even though he wasn’t yet fifty years old. He didn’t know how old his father was. Maybe forty. But he looked old, frail, and forlorn, and he always dressed in tatters. It depressed Krisan.

Maybe Comrade Kliwon felt strange, too, because just as Krisan was studying him, he would often gaze at his son for a long time, as if he wanted to know what he was thinking.

For a number of days Comrade Kliwon didn’t leave the house, and no one came to visit him because he had arrived surreptitiously and Adinda and Krisan hadn’t told anyone. They wanted to protect the man’s peace, and let him remain undiscovered until he was ready. Not even Shodancho or his wife knew yet. Nor did Mina.

“What is it like there?” Krisan asked once at dinner. “At Buru Island.”

“The best food there is what you would usually find in the toilet,” he replied.

With that, the atmosphere grew uncomfortable. Adinda gave Krisan a sign, and after that there’d been no discussion at all. Comrade Kliwon never wanted to say anything about Buru Island, and Adinda and Krisan no longer dared ask any questions.

Without any conversation, and without ever leaving the house, Comrade Kliwon seemed to grow even more gloomy. Maybe he felt alienated from the place he had left behind for so many years, or maybe he could sense the many communist ghosts in the city and they made him sad. Once someone knocked on the door and Krisan opened it. In front of him stood a man in shabby clothes, with a bullet wound in his chest and a steady stream of blood pouring out of it. Krisan almost screamed, but his father appeared and said:

“How are you, Karmin?”

“Terrible, Comrade,” replied the wounded man, “I’m dead.”

White in the face, Krisan shrunk backward and pressed himself against the wall. After getting a bucket full of water and a washcloth, Comrade Kliwon approached the ghost and cleaned his wound, with loving care and attention, until the blood stopped flowing.

“Can I offer you a cup of coffee?” asked Comrade Kliwon. “Though there’s no newspaper.”

They drank coffee together while Krisan looked on, incredulous that his father could be so close with such a terrifying ghost. They talked about the lost years, laughing quietly. When the coffee was finished, the ghost took his leave.

“Where are you going?” asked Comrade Kliwon.

“To the place of the dead.”

When the ghost disappeared, Krisan dropped to the floor.

Every time another communist ghost visited, Comrade Kliwon grew more forlorn. Maybe he was sad for them, or maybe it was something else. Krisan, who’d already lost out on thirteen years of knowing his father, was jealous of the ghosts. He wanted his father talk to him instead, but he didn’t dare ask him anything after the incident at the dining table.

One day Comrade Kliwon asked Adinda, “How is Shodancho?”

“He’s practically insane because of all those communist ghosts.”

“I want to pay him a visit.”

“You should,” said Adinda. “Maybe it will be good for you.”

It was a warm afternoon, with a gentle wind blowing from the hills. He went on foot and a number of neighbors caught sight of him, stunned that the man had returned. Shodancho’s house was visible from his house, so it only took him a minute to reach the front door. Alamanda was the one who opened it and, just like the neighbors, she was flabbergasted.

“You are not a ghost, are you?” was what Alamanda asked.

“Well, I am a terrifying creature if you are afraid of living communists.”

“So you have come home.”

“They sent me home.”

“Come in.”

Comrade Kliwon sat on a chair in the front room while Alamanda went to bring him a drink. When she returned, Comrade Kliwon asked after Shodancho.

“He either went to some far-off corner of the city to shoot communist ghosts,” said Alamanda, “or he’s playing cards at the market.”

After that they didn’t say anything else. Comrade Kliwon wondered about Nurul Aini, but Alamanda was gazing at him so gently, with a look of pity or something else, and he wasn’t sure when or where, but he had seen that look before, and it made him forget all about the little girl. Maybe Ai had gone to play somewhere, or maybe she was at Rengganis the Beautiful’s house, but that didn’t matter now, all he wanted to do was gaze back into the eyes of the woman before him, eyes that he had come to know so well so many years ago.