Beauty Is a Wound (4 page)

Aside from all these marvels, she was still an unfortunate, ugly, and pathetic little girl. Rosinah often caught her standing behind the window curtain, peeking out at people in the street, or gazing at her when she had to go out to buy something, as if asking to be invited along. Of course Rosinah would have been happy to take her along, but the little girl herself would protest, saying in her pitiful voice, “No, it’s better I don’t come, because people will lose their appetites for the rest of their lives.”

She would go out in the early morning when people had not yet awoken except for the vegetable sellers hurrying to market, or the farmers hurrying to the fields, or the fishermen hurrying home, walking or gliding by on their bicycles, but those people wouldn’t see her in the dimness of the dawn. That was the time when she could get to know the world, with bats who went home to their nests, with sparrows who alighted on the buds of the almond trees, with chickens who cockadoodledooed loudly, with butterflies who hatched from caterpillars and flew to perch on hibiscus petals, with kittens who stretched out on their mats, with the aromas that wafted from neighbors’ kitchens, with the clamor of engines being revved in the distance, with the sound of a radio sermon coming from somewhere, and above all with Venus incandescent in the east, all of which she would enjoy while sitting on her swing that hung from the branch of a starfruit tree. Rosinah didn’t even know that the small gleam that glowed so brightly was called Venus, but Beauty knew it very well, as well as she had come to know the astrological portents of all the constellations in the sky.

As soon as day dawned, she would vanish inside the house, like the head of a turtle shying from those who disturb it, because schoolchildren always stopped in front of the fence gate, hoping to see her, staring at the door and the windows in their curiosity. The old folks had already told them the scary tales about terrifying Beauty, who lived in that house, ready to cut off their heads at the slightest disobedience, ready to gobble them alive for any whiny complaint: all these stories haunted them, and yet at the same time heightened their desire to meet her and determine whether such a frightening specter truly did exist. But they never met her, because Rosinah would quickly appear brandishing the handle of an upside-down broom, and they would run away screaming insults at the mute young woman. In truth, it wasn’t only children who would stop in front of the fence gate hoping to see Beauty, because the women who passed by in
becak
rickshaws would also turn their heads for a moment, as would the people leaving for work and the shepherds leading their sheep.

But Beauty did go out at night, when children were forbidden to leave their houses and parents were busy taking care of their children, and the only people out were the fishermen hurrying to the sea, carrying oars and nets on their backs. She would sit on a chair on the veranda, kept company by a cup of coffee. When Rosinah would ask what she was doing late at night on the veranda, Beauty would reply just as she had to her mother, “Waiting for my prince to come, to release me from the curse of this hideous face.”

“You poor girl,” said her mother that night, the first night they met. “You really should dance for joy at such a blessing. Let’s go inside.”

Dewi Ayu once again experienced graciousness à la Rosinah, wherein the mute girl had almost instantly prepared warm water in her old bathtub, complete with sulfur and a pumice stone and pieces of sandalwood and betel leaves that made her appear refreshed at the dinner table. Rosinah and Beauty gaped at her ravenous appetite, eating as if she was making up for the years upon years that had gone by without food. She finished two whole tuna fish, including their bones and spines, and a bowl of soup and two plates of rice. Her beverage was a clear broth with bits of birds’ nests floating in it. She ate faster than the two women accompanying her. After finishing the food, her stomach gurgled continuously, and after emitting a rumbling sound out of her asshole, the kind of fart that can’t be held in, she asked while wiping her mouth with a napkin:

“So, how long have I been dead?”

“Twenty-one years,” said Beauty.

“I’m sorry, that was way too long,” she said regretfully, “but there are no alarm clocks in the grave.”

“Don’t forget to bring one the next time,” said Beauty attentively, then added, “and don’t forget a mosquito net.”

Dewi Ayu ignored Beauty’s words, which were said in a small shrill lilting soprano, and continued, “It must be confusing that I rose again after twenty-one years, because even that long-hair who died on the cross was only dead for three days before he rose again.”

“It
is
very confusing,” said Beauty. “Next time, do send a telegram before you come.”

Somehow, Dewi Ayu just couldn’t ignore that voice. After thinking about it for a while, she began to sense a tone of hostility in the young girl’s comments. She looked in her direction, but the hideous girl just gave her a smile, as if to imply that she was merely reminding her not to act so carelessly. Dewi Ayu looked at Rosinah, as if hoping for a clue, but even the mute woman just smiled, seemingly without any double meaning at all.

“Just like that, Rosinah, you are already forty. In just a little while longer you’ll be old and wrinkled.” While saying that, Dewi Ayu laughed softly, trying to lighten the dinner table atmosphere.

“Like a frog,” said Rosinah with sign language.

“Like a komodo,” joked Dewi Ayu.

They both looked at Beauty, waiting for her to say something, and they didn’t have to wait long.

“Like me,” she said. Short and dreadful.

For a number of days, Dewi Ayu, busy with the visits of old friends who wanted to hear stories about the world of the dead, could ignore the presence of the annoying monster in her house. Even the
kyai
, who years ago had led her funeral with reluctance and looked at her with the disgust a young girl feels for earthworms, came to visit her with the virtuous manners of the pious in front of a saint, and with sincerity said that her rising again was like a miracle, and surely no one would be granted such a miracle if she wasn’t pure.

“Of course I am pure,” said Dewi Ayu lightly. “Because not a single person has touched me for twenty-one years.”

“What does it feel like to be dead?” asked Kyai Jahro.

“Actually, it’s pretty fun. That’s the main reason why, out of everyone who dies, not one person chooses to come back to life again.”

“But you came back to life,” said the
kyai
.

“I came back just so I could tell you that.”

That would be really good for the Friday midday sermon, and the
kyai
left with a radiant face. He didn’t need to feel embarrassed about visiting Dewi Ayu (even though many years ago he had shouted that it was a sin to visit that prostitute’s house and that you could roast in hell from just opening her gate), because as the woman had said, she was no longer a prostitute after twenty-one years of not being touched by a soul, and you’d better believe it that now and forever nobody would ever want to touch her again.

Who suffered the most from all the fuss over this old woman come back to life was none other than Beauty, who had to lock herself in her room. Luckily, no one ever stayed longer than a few minutes, because the visitors would soon sense an awful terror coming from behind Beauty’s closed bedroom door. With a strange nauseating smell, an evil wind, black and heinous, would sweep past them, sliding out from under the door and through the keyhole, with a penetrating chill that reached the very marrow of their bones. Most people had never seen Beauty, except for when she was a little baby and the midwife had circled the village looking for a wet nurse. But the idea of her was enough to make the hair on the napes of their necks stand up and their whole bodies tremble as they gazed at the monster’s door, when the evil aroma carried by the wind reached their noses and the sound of silence clamored in their ears. That was when their mouths would let out some nonsense small talk, and forgetting their desire to hear whatever amazing things Dewi Ayu had to say, they’d quickly stand up after forcing down half a glass of bitter tea and excuse themselves to go home and tell their story.

“However strong your curiosity about Dewi Ayu who rose from the dead,” they would say to anyone who asked after their terror-filled visit, “I advise you not to go into her house.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll be scared half to death.”

When people no longer came to visit, Dewi Ayu began to notice Beauty’s peculiarities, aside from her habit of sitting on the veranda waiting for a handsome prince and predicting her fate by the stars. In the middle of the night, she heard a scuffle coming from Beauty’s bedroom, which made her climb down from her own bed and walk in the darkness and stand in front of the girl’s door apprehensively, growing more and more confused by the sounds emerging from that hideous young girl. She was still standing there when Rosinah appeared with a flashlight, passing it over her mistress’s face.

“I know these sounds,” said Dewi Ayu in a half whisper to Rosinah, “from the rooms of the whorehouse.”

Rosinah nodded in agreement.

“It’s the sound of people making love,” Dewi Ayu continued.

Rosinah nodded again.

“The question is, who is she making love to, or rather, who would want to make love to her?”

Rosinah shook her head. She wasn’t making love to anyone. Or, she was making love to someone, but you would never know who it was, because you wouldn’t
see
anyone.

Dewi Ayu stood there in awe of the mute girl’s equanimity, which reminded her of the time of her own insanity when it was only that girl who understood her. They sat together in the kitchen that night, in front of the same old stove, heating up some water for a cup of coffee and waiting for it to boil. Illuminated only by the glowing flame that licked the edges of the dry burnt kindling made of broken cocoa twigs and palm tree branches and the fibers of coconut rinds, they chatted just as they often used to do.

“Did you teach her how?” asked Dewi Ayu.

“How to what?” asked Rosinah, just the shape of her mouth without a sound.

“Masturbate.”

Rosinah shook her head. Beauty isn’t masturbating, she is making love to someone but you just won’t know who.

“Why not?”

Because I don’t know either. Rosinah shook her head.

She told Dewi Ayu about all the miraculous events, how when Beauty was still little the girl could speak without anybody teaching her how, and how she even began reading and writing when she was six years old and how, in the end, Rosinah didn’t teach her a thing, because the girl had already been able to do things that Rosinah herself couldn’t yet do. Embroidery at the age of nine, sewing at the age of eleven, and don’t even ask, she could cook whatever food you wanted.

“Someone must have taught her,” said Dewi Ayu in confusion.

“But no one comes to this house,” Rosinah signed.

“I don’t care how he came, or how he came without you or me knowing. But he must have come and taught her everything, even how to make love.”

“Yes, it’s true, he comes and they make love.”

“This house is haunted.”

Rosinah had never believed that the house was haunted, but Dewi Ayu had her reasons. Still, that was another matter, and Dewi Ayu didn’t want to say anything about all that to Rosinah, at least not that evening. She stood up and quickly went back to bed, forgetting about the boiling water and the cup of coffee.

In the following days, the old woman tried to spy on the ugly young girl, to discover the most sensible explanation for all of these miracles, because she didn’t want to believe a ghost was responsible, even if a ghost was truly present in the house.

One morning, she and Rosinah found an ancient man sitting in front of the blazing stove, shivering from the cold in the morning air. He looked like a guerrilla, with hair that was going every which way, matted and tied back with a wilted yellow leaf. The impression was reinforced by his face, sunken as if he had been starving for years, and by his dark clothing, covered in mud stains and dried blood. There was even a small dagger swinging on his hip, tied to his leather belt. He was wearing shoes like the ones the Gurkha forces wore during the war, way too big for his feet.

“Who are you?” asked Dewi Ayu.

“Call me Shodancho,” said the old man. “I’m freezing, let me spend a moment in front of your stove.”

Rosinah tried to size him up rationally. Maybe in the past he really had led a
shodan
, maybe he had been in a battalion in Halimunda and rebelled against the Japanese before running away into the forest. Maybe he had been trapped there for years, not knowing that Holland and Japan were already long gone and we now had a republic with our own flag and our own national anthem. Rosinah gave him some breakfast with a tender gaze and a show of respect that was just a little bit excessive.

But Dewi Ayu looked at him with some suspicion, wondering whether he was the prince her daughter waited for every evening, and whether it could be him who had taught her how to make love. But the man looked like he was more than seventy years old and should’ve been impotent for years, and with that Dewi Ayu’s unpleasant thoughts began to fade. She even invited him to live in the house, because there was still an empty room, and the man appeared to have lost all connection to the outside world.