Beauty Is a Wound Read Online Free PDF

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