Beauty Is a Wound (36 page)

“Do you know how to play trump?”

“I often play trump with my friends at the bus terminal,” replied Maman Gendeng.

So they invited the salt-fish seller and the coolie back to play trump with them, and that was the beginning of their strange friendship at the card table. Many matters affecting the soldiers and the
preman
were taken care of quietly there by the two of them. They started a new routine of meeting at that same card table three times a week. It wasn’t a secret that they always tried to trick one another and always wanted to win, but the cost wasn’t too high, only a few coins difference whether they won or lost. Sometimes they played with the clothing seller’s husband, and sometimes with medicine peddlers, coolies,
becak
drivers, butchers, salt-fish sellers, or couriers—anyone they could find in the market who knew how to play trump.

But if Shodancho was there at the table then Maman Gendeng would be there, and vice versa. A strange friendship, it’s worth repeating, because in their hearts they didn’t like each other. Maman Gendeng still held a grudge against Shodancho for his effrontery in fucking the whore he loved, and Shodancho still held a grudge against the impudent man across the table from him for daring to threaten him in his very own office not caring a whit that he was the local military district chief and had even been appointed great commander by the president of the republic.

Their friendship made the people’s heads spin. They were thankful that all of the city’s problems could be solved so easily at the card table, but they were also pretty annoyed once they understood that there was a cunning conspiracy between the soldiers and the
preman
to enjoy the money extorted from the city folk. They also realized, along those same lines, that now they didn’t have anyone to whom they could complain. And don’t think they could ask the police for help, because all the police ever did was blow their whistles at busy intersections.

That was when the Communist Party became the only place they could go, and they turned, above all, to Comrade Kliwon. At this time those two—Comrade Kliwon and the Communist Party—had the best reputation in Halimunda.

Meanwhile, the friendship between Shodancho and Maman Gendeng continued. As time went on, the trump table was no longer only used to discuss fighting between soldiers and the
preman
or the fairest way to share their spoils—Shodancho also began to lament his problems as if unburdening the contents of his heart to an old friend. That was what they usually talked about, after they’d finished their card game and after the merchants in the market began closing up their kiosk doors and heading home. Sometimes they talked about Comrade Kliwon too. Shodancho still believed the man wasn’t a real communist, but was just avenging his beloved Alamanda. Maman Gendeng laughed, hearing of this drama (even though he actually already knew all about it) and he put forth the opinion that a man shouldn’t steal someone else’s sweetheart. That was why he’d been so hurt to hear that Shodancho had slept with Dewi Ayu. At that, Shodancho’s face turned red and his eyes welled up like a little kid who has lost his mother.

“I’m the loneliest fucking person in this tumultuous world,” he said. “I entered Japanese military training in the Seinendan troop when I was barely a teenager, before becoming a shodancho. I rebelled against them in a guerrilla war that lasted for months after they’d already surrendered. My life has been one war after another, including a war against pigs. I’m tired of all that.” Maman Gendeng gave Shodancho the handkerchief that Maya Dewi always slipped into his pants pocket, and Shodancho dried his eyes. “I want to live like other people. I want to love and be loved.”

“Your men love you very much,” said Maman Gendeng.

“But you know full well there is no way I can marry them.”

“Well, at least we both have beautiful wives now.”

“Yeah, but it’s my bad luck to marry a woman who loved another man first, with the kind of love that might never fade.”

“That could be true,” said Maman Gendeng. “I’ve seen Comrade Kliwon, in front of a group of fishermen. He is quite sympathetic and works hard to remedy the misfortunes of others. Sometimes I envy him. Sometimes I even think that he’s the only person in this city who looks toward the future with hope.”

“That’s what communists are like,” said Shodancho. “Pathetic people who don’t realize this world is destined to be the most rotten place imaginable. That’s the only reason God promised heaven, as a comfort to the wretched masses.”

They would get so caught up in their conversation that they wouldn’t notice day turning into night. Once they realized the time, they would quickly stand and give each other a hug and say see you later before heading home in opposite directions. Each to his own home and his own wife.
One day some bad luck came: Mirah and Sapri decided to stop working in Maman Gendeng’s house because all of a sudden they realized they were in love and now they wanted to get married and live in a village as farmers. Maman Gendeng was at a loss as to how he was going to get a new servant, and his wife was still just a snot-nosed kid. But it turned out differently than he expected. The first day without the servants, when he returned home after playing trump with Shodancho and it was already dark, he found dinner prepared.

“Who cooked all this?” he asked, confused.

“I did.”

That’s when he realized his wife’s extraordinary talent for homemaking. She didn’t just neatly iron and perfume his clothes, she also cooked all their food, and he found everything delicious and just to his liking. Dewi Ayu had been training her ever since she was a little girl, Maya Dewi explained. She was even an excellent baker, always trying out new recipes for cookies and cakes and sharing them with their neighbors. Maya Dewi had become the family ambassador, the one who maintained friendly relations with the neighbors, because Maman Gendeng could never hope to change his bad reputation. Those cookies and cakes brought the family a lot of good fortune, because the neighbors soon started ordering them for their sons’ circumcision celebrations, and the orders kept on coming. Maya Dewi made them in the afternoon after school and so, whatever happened, the family would never have to worry about their economic situation.

Maman Gendeng began to regret all the times he had gone to Mama Kalong’s whorehouse to sleep with his mother-in-law, when he had such an amazing wife. One evening, he returned to the brothel and met Dewi Ayu, who asked him with a chuckle, “Let me guess, you still haven’t touched your wife and want to sleep with your mother-in-law?”

“I just came to say that I will never touch you again.”

Now that surprised Dewi Ayu, and she asked him, “Why?”

“With a wife as wonderful as your youngest daughter, I don’t want any other woman ever again.”

And Maman Gendeng quickly left Dewi Ayu, longing for his wife who was waiting at home.

AFTER HE TOOK
the chopped-up pieces of almond tree firewood to Alamanda’s wedding, Comrade Kliwon gathered with his friends on the beach. Ever since he was little he had been quite fond of the ocean. He had lived among fishermen and went to sea just as often as the fishermen’s sons did. He had nearly drowned as many times as a farmer’s son accidentally cuts himself with his machete. He didn’t want to go back to the mushroom farm—it reminded him too much of Alamanda and he didn’t want to dwell on those bitter memories.

With two of his old friends, he built a small hut on the beach behind some pandan bushes. He would go night fishing with Karmin and Samiran and they’d split their catch with the guy whose boat they borrowed. At midday, after a short nap, he would study Marxist books and teach his two friends everything he learned. He often went to the Party headquarters on Jalan Belanda, and he struck up a correspondence with some communists in the capital. During his short time in Jakarta he had joined the Party school and made many new acquaintances there.

His pen pals sent him periodicals and magazines, and the Party sent their newspaper to his little hut. Books began to pile up in one corner, meaning he could study exactly what Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky and Chairman Mao had said, and he could read pamphlets written by locals like Semaun and Tan Malaka. A number of these writers, like Trotsky and Tan Malaka, were in fact sort of forbidden, but someone in the Party obtained their books especially for Kliwon.

He wasn’t truly a Party member yet, just a candidate. He studied all the material on his own, and diligently attended the political discussions the Party offered, appearing at the podium whenever the opportunity arose. He organized the fishermen and the plantation workers. Six months after Alamanda’s wedding, the chairmen at the Party headquarters decided that he was the best cadre in his region and he was accepted as a full member of the Communist Party. He was assigned his first task, which was to gather the remaining guerrillas from the revolutionary army, the majority of whom had been communists, the men who had fought in the war alongside Shodancho’s soldiers, scattered after the failed rebellion those many years ago. Now they were rejoining the Party with a romantic nostalgia for revolution.

The Fishermen’s Union was founded then, with Samiran and Karmin as its first members and Comrade Kliwon as its chairman. Within two weeks there were fifty-three members, and soon almost all of the fishermen had joined the Union. Every Sunday, when they didn’t have anything important to do, the fishermen would gather in the yard of the fish market, right next to the port. Comrade Kliwon would hand out Party propaganda and explain the threat that the large fishing vessels posed to their livelihood.

Now all the fishermen’s ceremonies were taken care of by the Union. Comrade Kliwon would give a short speech that quoted a few sentences from the
Manifesto
before a cow’s head would be tossed into the ocean as an offering to the queen of the South Seas. He also did this at the funerals for fishermen who died under the pounding waves, and when the fishermen held their blessing ceremonies, giving thanks for the good weather with a
sintren
performance.

All the folk songs had been replaced with the
Internationale
, and all the closing prayers were offered with, “Workers of the world, unite!”

“I’m like a missionary spreading a new religion,” said Comrade Kliwon, chuckling with his friends at the Party headquarters. “With the
Manifesto
as its holy book. That’s the most important task for communists or religion—gathering followers.”

Those were busy times for Comrade Kliwon. In addition to his organizing and his propaganda, he also began to teach in the Party school, offering political courses for new cadre. He still went to sea and took care of the Fishermen’s Union, and seemed to enjoy it, so when the Party offered him the chance to continue his studies in Moscow, he demurred and chose to stay in Halimunda.

The only time he could relax was in the morning when he got home from the sea. He’d sit in front of his hut reading three newspapers that prided themselves on arriving in Halimunda before breakfast. He read the
People’s Daily
, the Communist Party newspaper; the
Eastern Star
, which belonged to another party considered an “ally”; and a local Party newspaper published in Bandung. He read and drank his coffee before going off to bathe in the open air spring behind the hut, eating breakfast, and then sleeping until midday.

Once, in the middle of his morning routine he saw seven schoolgirls walking eastward on the sand. Comrade Kliwon glanced at them, but it was normal to see gangs of school kids bored with their studies playing hooky at the beach, so he didn’t make much of their presence and returned to his coffee and his newspapers. He hadn’t yet finished the lead article on the first page—to be continued on page eight—when he heard some commotion coming from those girls (there was no way it was coming from anywhere else because the beach was almost always deserted at nine in the morning). He heard them screaming shrilly—not the squeals of naughty kids, but cries of fear.

Comrade Kliwon set down his newspaper and walked toward the girls in the distance who were scattering, running back and forth, and all of a sudden one girl broke away from the group, chased by a dog. There were too many wild dogs in Halimunda, thought Comrade Kliwon, ever since Shodancho began breeding them.

He wanted to help the girl, but the girl was too far away and the dog was only ten feet behind her. When the girl saw him and realized he was witnessing her terror, she ran toward him with the dog in pursuit behind her, barking fiercely. Comrade Kliwon finally ran toward them, as the girl screamed in panic, “Help!” while her friends were shrieking far behind her.

Comrade Kliwon sped up his pace but what was extraordinary, and what he only realized after, was how fast the girl was going. Amid the screams and barks she was able to hold her distance from the dog’s ferocious muzzle, and as he drew closer, Comrade Kliwon could see for himself that the distance the girl had covered was twice as long as the distance that he himself had, despite the fact that he had run as hard as he could to reach her. He could see the terror on the girl’s face, and from a distance of five feet she leapt at him, grabbing tightly onto Comrade Kliwon just as the dog also leapt, thinking this was the perfect time to bite her. But Comrade Kliwon moved faster and right at that exact moment he struck the dog as hard as he could on its jaw, sending it flying back to howl for a moment before sprawling out motionless, with foam around its mouth. The dog had rabies, and he was dead.