Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan

Author:Eka Kurniawan [Kurniawan, Eka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2015-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

ONCE UPON A time, the citizens of Halimunda were thrown into an uproar by the discovery of a baby, found lying in a garbage heap. It was a boy and he was still alive even though he was being dragged back and forth by dogs, so people knew he would grow up to be a strong man. For days they tried to find his mother, but she never came forward, so they couldn’t begin to guess who his father might be.

The baby was cared for by an old spinster named Makojah, the most hated granny in the city, and yet the old lady everyone most depended on. She made her living by loaning money, because that was the only thing she could do. She couldn’t farm, because no one would sell her any land and all she had was the tiny patch of earth she had inherited and on which she lived, and she couldn’t work because nobody would give her a job. She couldn’t even get a husband for as long as she lived, even though she had proposed to about sixteen men. Her life was lonely and full of misery, but she got her revenge by pretending to be charitable and loaning those city folk who had fallen into poverty money and then asphyxiating them with her high interest rates.

So, to repeat, everybody hated her, especially those drowning in their never-ending debt. Everyone avoided her, shunned her, and considered her worse than a demonic sinner. But if a hard-pressed time came and they had tried everything else to no avail, they would come knocking on her door, because they knew that just behind it temporary assistance could be found. Makojah knew all their polite bowing was just a charade, and their fake smiles masked their real plea, but she didn’t care—it was all part of her business.

People sometimes wondered where all the money she collected went, because she never seemed to get any richer. Her house was just as it had always been, except for the occasional paint job or small repairs. She didn’t live extravagantly, she didn’t have any relatives, and they never saw her go to the bank to deposit the money she wrung out of them, so they began to think the old spinster must be stashing their money under her mattress. So one night, in a stealth operation, four men came to her house to rob her. Her neighbors, who knew all about it, watched from behind their curtains. Makojah calmly looked on as they searched every corner of her house. No matter where the thieves looked, they didn’t find the money—there was nothing underneath her mattress, nothing in her stove, and nothing in the water jug. Her wardrobe held only clothes, and all her kitchen cupboard had inside it was a plate of rice and some carrot soup. Giving up, the four masked thieves called off their search and approached Makojah, who was still just standing there in her bedroom doorway.

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