Beauty Is a Wound (53 page)

Normally the guerrilla hut could be reached in an eight-hour walk. But Rengganis the Beautiful took a whole day and a night. She got a little lost, wandering here and there, and was walking very slowly, carrying the baby, and had stupidly forgot to bring any provisions. So they arrived at the guerrilla hut already quite famished.

“There was nothing to eat there,” said Rengganis the Beautiful.

Anyhow, she was a city kid, and didn’t know what there was in the jungle that might be edible, but after a while she was forced to scavenge for whatever she could find. Some walnuts had fallen from the trees, and amazed by their hard shell, she broke them open with a rock, sampling the insides. When it turned out they tasted pretty good, she gathered lots of walnuts and that was what she had for dinner the first night. Drinking wasn’t too much of a problem, because a little stream with clear water flowed next to the guerrilla hut.

The big problem was the baby. It kept on fussing. For the entire journey she had stuffed its mouth with the corner of its blanket, so that they wouldn’t be discovered. She had avoided public streets and instead ran under the cover of the shadows of trees, cutting through the banana orchards and cassava fields. Even then she still had to be very careful because lots of farmers roamed about at night to check on their land, and there were watchmen, and people out hunting eels and grasshoppers. The blanket worked pretty well to muffle the baby’s cries, but also almost killed it. When she entered the jungle on the promontory, she finally dared to take out the gag, thinking that no one else would be wandering there in the middle of the night, and ran into the thicket with that baby wailing on and on.

In the guerrilla hut the baby still fussed, even though its mother had at last nursed it, but then, in its final days, it refused to nurse. It had urinated and the swaddling blanket was wet, but Rengganis the Beautiful had no other blanket, so she just turned it a little bit so the wet parts were on the outside. But the baby still cried, with a voice that grew weaker and weaker as time passed. Only then did Rengganis the Beautiful realize the baby was sick with fever. A hot air came rising off its body, and yet it shivered. She didn’t know what should be done, so she just watched that baby suffer.

“Then on the third day it died,” she said.

And she still didn’t know what she should do. After unwrapping it from the blanket, she brought the baby out of the guerrilla hut, placing it on a rock that many years ago had been used by Shodancho and his men as a dining table, and for the entire day she just looked at her baby’s corpse, unable to think. It was already afternoon by the time she had the idea of throwing it into the ocean, but just then a pack of
ajak
came and encircled her and her baby, summoned by the smell of the corpse. Rengganis the Beautiful looked at those
ajak
, and saw how eager they were to get at that baby’s body, so she hurled the infant in their direction. They immediately fought over it, and then one dragged the baby deep into the forest, as the others trailed behind.

“You’re more gruesome than Satan,” said Krisan, shuddering.

“But that was easier than digging a grave.”

They both fell silent, maybe both imagining how those dogs must have torn apart that little poor baby’s corpse. Krisan didn’t know what Maman Gendeng would do if he knew this was his grandchild’s fate. Maybe he would go crazy and burn the entire city down, killing all the
ajak
and most probably killing all the people too. But now it would be pointless to search for its remains. Those
ajak
probably hadn’t left anything behind, because even its little bones were still tender enough to eat. Krisan almost puked imagining a dog swallowing the baby’s head whole.

“And you didn’t come,” said Rengganis the Beautiful, looking at Krisan with an expression torn between anger and disappointment. “I waited until yesterday afternoon, eating nothing but those hard nuts.”

“I couldn’t come.”

“You’re mean.”

“I couldn’t come,” said Krisan, gesturing to Rengganis the Beautiful not to talk so loud, worried that his mother and grandmother would catch them. “Because Ai got sick and then she died.”

“What?”

“Ai got sick and then she died.”

“That’s impossible.”

Krisan jumped up from the bed, groped for the corpse beneath his bed, dragged it out and showed it to Rengganis the Beautiful. Ai’s body was now lying on the floor wrapped in a burial shroud, still in the same condition as the first time Krisan had held her—so fresh, and so pretty.

“She’s just sleeping,” said Rengganis the Beautiful, coming down off the bed to inspect Ai’s face. She tried to rouse Ai. “Get up!” She shook her, forced the corpse’s eyes open, pinched her nose, and finally she sat with her own sobs, weeping over the death of the girl who had been her closest friend her entire life, who had been there whenever she needed her. Rengganis the Beautiful suddenly regretted not including Ai in her plans to run away, not inviting her to the guerrilla hut. She would have been even more distraught if she had known the girl had died from grief and worry over her disappearance. Meanwhile Krisan stayed completely still, mostly worried that the Beautiful’s ever-louder sobs would wake his mother and grandmother, until finally the girl asked:

“Why is she here?”

“I dug up her grave,” said Krisan.

“Why did you dig up her grave?”

He didn’t know what to say to her. He just looked at the girl silently, a little bit embarrassed, before a glorious idea appeared in his mind right at the moment he most needed it. “So that she could watch us get married.”

That explanation seemed to please Rengganis the Beautiful.

“And when are we getting married?”

The question annoyed Krisan. He sat at the edge of the bed and glanced at Rengganis the Beautiful, peered down at the face of Ai’s corpse below him, stared at the clothes hanging on the back of the door, considered the piles of his martial arts novels, examined his pillow, and then looked back. The girl was gazing at him expectantly.

“Tonight,” said Krisan.

“Where?”

“I’m thinking about that right now.”

And when the idea appeared, he immediately told Rengganis the Beautiful. They quickly removed the burial shroud wrapped around Ai’s body and gave her some clothes from Krisan’s closet, men’s clothes like the Beautiful was wearing—men’s underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt. Once the corpse looked just like an ordinary casually dressed girl who happened to be lying down, Krisan opened his bedroom door, checking his mother and his grandmother’s rooms to make sure they were still asleep. He quietly walked his minibike out through the back door, without making a sound. Then he went back and heaved Ai’s corpse onto his shoulder, walking out of the room followed by Rengganis the Beautiful, and locking the bedroom door. They tiptoed through the kitchen to the backyard. Rengganis the Beautiful rode on the back behind Ai’s corpse, which she hugged as tightly as she could, and Krisan sat in front. With one push of the pedal the bike had left the backyard and was speeding toward the ocean, in the middle of the night, underneath the street lamps.

They were lucky that not many people saw them. Even if one or two people were passing by, they weren’t that suspicious to see a seventeen-year-old guy with two young girls riding on the back of his bike, thinking the three were coming home late from a party.

Krisan stopped at a concrete seawall marking the division between the ocean and the shore. It was almost dawn, and he could see that some boats had already docked. A pinkish color was beginning to appear in the eastern sky. A very auspicious time, he thought.

“Wait here, I’m going to steal a boat,” said Krisan.

Still embracing Ai’s corpse so that it didn’t collapse, Rengganis the Beautiful sat against the wall, next to the bike, waiting for Krisan.

The kid reappeared, rowing someone’s boat. Or maybe it didn’t belong to anyone anymore, because it was in really bad shape, even though it didn’t have any holes in it. Krisan slid up close against the seawall where Rengganis the Beautiful was waiting. “Throw me the corpse,” he said. Rengganis the Beautiful threw Ai’s body into the hull of the boat, making it rock back and forth a bit, and now the corpse was lying there. Rengganis the Beautiful jumped to one end of the boat and sat down, while at the other end Krisan began to row away from the beach, toward the open ocean, the place where he had promised to marry her.

Krisan tried not to cross paths with the fishing boats that were returning to the beach, and didn’t worry about the larger vessels that were farther out. Morning was breaking behind Ma Iyang Hill, its rays like strong straight lines that penetrated the surface of the ocean, glittering with phosphorescence. The reddish color on the horizon began to fade; seagulls, and swallows, began to fly overhead. The light made it easier for Krisan to see where the fishing boats were going, and he could turn if he thought they were going to pass by too close.

For a long time he rowed in widening circles, looking for a quiet area of the ocean, that he thought no other ship would visit. Then he found it, in a dark blue part of the water. He knew for certain that the spot would be very deep, and that was why it was deserted, because there weren’t a lot of fish in such a place. Of course neither Rengganis the Beautiful nor Krisan knew that many years ago Comrade Kliwon had kidnapped Alamanda and had brought her to this very same spot.

Morning came in all its perfection.

“So when are we going to get married?”

“Don’t rush, soak up the sun for a moment first,” replied Krisan.

Krisan lay down at his end of that boat, looking at the sky. Rengganis the Beautiful tried to do the same at the other end. Krisan’s forehead was wrinkled and his face looked gloomy, not at all enjoying the perfectly clear day. Meanwhile Rengganis the Beautiful was growing restless, waiting for their wedding. Finally she sat up again, now truly impatient, and asked:

“How are we to be married?”

“I’m making it a surprise.”

Krisan approached the girl, stepping over Ai’s corpse.

“Turn around,” he said.

Rengganis the Beautiful turned around, looking out at the horizon, her back to Krisan. She waited until she saw Krisan’s hands making a fast circle, and before she realized what was happening, she was being strangled. A handkerchief was wound around her neck and Krisan’s hands were tightly pulling its corners. Rengganis the Beautiful struggled to get free, her legs kicked everywhere, and her hands tried to pry that handkerchief loose. But Krisan was way stronger. They fought for about five minutes, before Rengganis the Beautiful lost the fight and lay sprawled out on the bottom of the boat, dead, right next to the corpse of her cousin.

Krisan looked down at her, and his eyes welled over. His breath came in ragged gasps and wheezes. With his hands shaking violently, he lifted Rengganis the Beautiful’s body and heaved it into the ocean, letting her sink. Then he cried at the gunwale, crying like sentimental teenage girls cry, crying like newborn babies cry, crying with a deluge of heartbroken tears. And in between sobs he spoke aloud, although there was no one there to hear him.

“I killed you,” he said, sobbing again, “because I only loved Ai.” He cried for a full half an hour after that.

A third confession: it was Krisan who raped Rengganis the Beautiful in the school bathroom and didn’t take responsibility for what he had done.

This is the hardest part of the story to tell, but it is the truth.

One day, when he and Ai were visiting Rengganis the Beautiful’s house after school, he was sitting on the sofa reading an old magazine. The two girls were upstairs in Rengganis the Beautiful’s room. But all of a sudden he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Krisan put down the magazine, and Rengganis the Beautiful appeared before him, wearing nothing but a bra and underwear. He might have seen her like that before, he might have even seen her totally naked, but that was when they were still little kids. Now they were both fifteen, and Krisan had been having wet dreams for quite some time.

Just like most men, Krisan was in awe of Rengganis the Beautiful’s body, which was both beautiful and provocative. Delicious, that was the only word for it. He often imagined her firm round breasts and her softly curving waist, and now he could see almost everything. The bra that she was wearing didn’t really cover all of her breasts, so Krisan could appreciate their gleam, and her low-cut panties that covered a small soft mound. It made his dick come alive, and turn hard as steel. He had to grope at his pants to adjust it, because it was slanting up and getting pinched. Meanwhile, Rengganis the Beautiful didn’t seem to mind that Krisan was there and looking in her direction, in fact she seemed pleased that that boy was looking at her. She came down the stairs with perfectly calm steps, approached the ironing table, picked out some clothes, and put them on, and that lustful moment passed, but Krisan never forgot it.

There are two kinds of women that a man can love: the first kind of woman he loves in order to dote upon and cherish her, and the second kind he loves in order to fuck. Krisan felt he now had both kinds: Ai was the first kind of girl, and Rengganis was the second. He wanted to marry Ai, but he always dreamed of one day having sex with Rengganis the Beautiful, despite the fact that he had never succeeded in declaring his love to Ai and he had no idea how to have sex with Rengganis the Beautiful without getting in terrible trouble.

When the three were small they had a nice hideout: the field that Comrade Kliwon had bought. Shodancho built them a tree house on a branch of an old banyan tree at the edge of the orchard. Their mothers and fathers never worried about the three of them roaming about in the fields, because they could all watch out for one another. They played together, just as they had always done since before the tree house, and just as they continued to do long after. But in the days when they were going to the tree house all the time, the game they played most often was the wedding game. Rengganis the Beautiful always wanted to be the bride, and because Krisan was the only boy, he always played the groom. Ai would play the same roles every time too: the witness, the village headman, and the invited guest. They always enjoyed this game, even though Krisan felt forced into playing his role; he really wanted to be the groom for Ai.