Beauty Is a Wound Read Online Free

her flesh at the market.”
    “I’m not really sure that anyone would want to eat her flesh,” said Dewi Ayu.
    The old man refused to give up and after a while he started to resemble a little kid who can’t hold in his pee any longer. It wasn’t that Dewi Ayu didn’t want to be kind and give the old man a few beautiful hours atop her mattress, but she was truly confused by this strange transaction, and over and over again she looked back and forth from the old man to the mute child, until the girl finally asked for a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote:
    “Go ahead and sleep with him, any minute now he is going to die.”
    So she slept with the old man, not because she agreed to the deal, but because of the child’s suggestion that he was about to expire. They wrestled on the bed while the mute girl sat on a chair outside the bedroom door, clutching a small bag filled with her clothes that had just a moment ago been carried by her father, waiting. As it turned out, Dewi Ayu didn’t need that much time, and she admitted that truly she didn’t feel much, just a little tickle in the middle of her crotch. “It was like a dragonfly scratching at my bellybutton,” said the prostitute. The man attacked her fiercely, with almost no small talk, like a battalion of Dutch soldiers approaching with a mission to destroy, moving freely and forgetting his rheumatism. His haste quickly bore fruit when he let out a brief groan and his body spasmed; at first Dewi Ayu thought it was the spasm of a man spewing the contents of his balls, but it turned out it was more than that—the old man also spewed his soul. He died sprawled out in her embrace with his lance still wet and outstretched.
    They buried him quietly in the same corner of the cemetery where later Dewi Ayu would also be buried. Even though she never cared for her mistress’s grave, Rosinah always took the opportunity to visit her father’s grave at the end of every fasting month, weeding the grass and praying without conviction. Dewi Ayu brought the mute young girl home, not as payment for the sad evening, but because the mute no longer had a father or mother or anybody else she could call family. At least, Dewi Ayu thought at the time, she could keep her company at home, search for lice in her hair every afternoon, and keep watch over the place when she went to the whorehouse.
    Rosinah did not at all find the lively house that she had expected, but a simple home that was quiet and still. There were cream-colored walls that looked like they had not been painted for years, dusty mirrors, and moldy curtains. Even the kitchen looked like it was never used except to make an occasional pot of coffee. The only rooms that looked well taken care of were the bathroom, with its large Japanese-style bathtub, and the bedroom belonging to the lady of the house. In her first few days at the house, Rosinah proved herself to be a young girl worthy to be kept on. While Dewi Ayu took her afternoon nap, Rosinah painted the walls, cleaned the floors, scrubbed the window panes with some sawdust that she got from a woodcutter, changed the curtains, and started to organize the yard, which was soon filled with all kinds of flowers. When afternoon came, Dewi Ayu awoke and for the first time in a long time encountered the aroma of herbs and spices coming from the kitchen, and they ate dinner together before Dewi Ayu had to go out. Rosinah was not in the least bit disturbed by the ramshackle house that needed so much tending, but she was intrigued by the fact that only the two of them lived there. At that time Dewi Ayu had yet to learn the sign language of the mute girl, so Rosinah wrote again.
    “You said you had three children?”
    “That’s right,” said Dewi Ayu. “They left as soon as they learned how to unbutton a man’s fly.”
    Rosinah immediately remembered that comment when a number of years later Dewi Ayu said that she didn’t want to get pregnant again (despite the fact that