The idea came to him all of a sudden, as a burst of light in his brain. He spoke of hosting something inside his body, something other than guts and entrails. It poured out and steered him, encouraging him to kill. That thing was so strong, he told the police, he didn’t need a weapon of any kind. He held Anwar Sadat tight. The man was startled and struggled, but the pressure holding his arms was intense. Margio yanked his head back by the hair and held it immobile. He sank his teeth into the left side of Anwar Sadat’s neck, like a man roughly kissing the skin below his lover’s ear, complete with grunts and passionate warmth. The victim was too confounded to make any sense of what was happening. Nevertheless, the piercing pain and the shock to his chest forced Anwar Sadat to squirm, kicking over a chair. The sound of it hitting the floor and Anwar Sadat’s brief yelp woke Maesa Dewi, who got up and asked from her room, “Papa, what was that?”
Anwar Sadat could reply only with a dying yowl. Margio replied with one deadly bite, gnawing and ripping out a lump of flesh, making a gaping hole in the man’s neck. Delicate veins and tendons hung from the torn flesh, and the blood spurted. The tasteless piece of meat rested in Margio’s mouth until he abruptly spat it on the floor, where it squirmed here and there. Anwar Sadat began to fly, his throat making unearthly sounds, while Margio’s face was painted with gushing blood.
“Papa, what was that?” Maesa Dewi asked again.
Anwar Sadat was fluttering his wings, carried away by unconsciousness. Margio still held him tight, keeping him from falling. As soon as he heard Maesa Dewi’s high-pitched anxious voice, the rustle of a blanket, the creaking of a bed, and the sound of feet on the floor, Margio sank his teeth once more into the dark red wet hollow, a second kiss more lethal than the first, and driven by a vast desire. He clenched his jaws more tightly, tore off another lump of flesh, and spat it out. He kept at it, biting repeatedly, as though driven by an unfathomable hunger, making the hole deeper and messier, bubbles and waves of blood freely spattering the floor.
He nearly chewed off the head, gnawing at Anwar Sadat’s neck until the trachea was visible, a flash of ivory before the flooding red. The bedroom door partly opened, and Maesa Dewi stood there in white satin pajamas with a peony motif and one cheek marked by lines left from the folds of her pillow. Her half-awake eyes quickly widened and her slender hand jerked up, fingers covering her open mouth, unable to make a sound.
The scene was forever burned into Maesa Dewi’s retinas, there for years, unexpunged for decades, an image more brutal than any horror film. She saw the half-severed neck; even the throats of cows slaughtered for the Festival of Sacrifice never looked that ghastly. There were clods of flesh scattered all over the floor, like spilled spaghetti sauce. The white tiled floor with its streaks of red blood resembled the national flag. And still standing there was Margio, his face a mask of gore, nearly unrecognizable, while his hands and shirt were just as repulsive. For a moment they exchanged a glance at the strangest threshold of conscience, in a state where both comprehended the hideousness of what had happened.
Maesa Dewi registered a strange and pungent odor, like garlic, floating thick in the air in gray clouds, hovering around her tresses and tumbling around her shoulders, so intense that it made her light-headed. Other confused sensations came over her: a stale sour taste, the clamor of insects humming, a churning in her bowels. Maesa Dewi saw a bright but unrecognizable blur, radiating a glare that made her squint, pushing her back until her head knocked against the door, which propped her up for a moment before she sank to the floor. Her body slumped, not in the way of someone sleeping peacefully, but more like a princess swiftly turned to stone. She even forgot how to scream, and forgot where she was. All the bits and pieces of what had just happened created a racket that woke her child, who now sat up with a wide-open mouth, crying, peeing, calling his mother the only way he could. Maesa Dewi slept on, collapsed on the floor and without a blanket.
Margio loosened his grip, stepped away from Anwar Sadat, and found a handful of the man’s hair slipping through his fingers. The body danced for a moment, without rhythm, before slithering and crashing to the floor. Margio looked at him, watching carefully, until he was certain the man was dead. Had the severing of his jugular not introduced Anwar Sadat to the Angel of Death, the crack of his head on the floor would have completed the formalities. There he lay, with his navel exposed under the ABC jewelry store undershirt, like a helpless old man after a vicious ajak attack. This is how Ma Soma and others would find him.
Margio was fascinated by his masterpiece, which was more thrilling to the soul than one of Raden Saleh’s cheap reproductions that hung above the television set. A whirlwind spun in his head. He couldn’t remember the way to the door, and fumbled about as the world suddenly became dark. Like Anwar Sadat, he danced for a while, twisting about but never falling, before steering himself toward the rear of the sofa, leaving a trail of red footprints. Margio dragged himself out, crawling inch by inch, and collapsed on the side porch.
The taste in his mouth forced the memory of the carnage upon him, and his primal instinct told him to walk away. Margio got to his feet, not exactly upright, and stumbled toward the starfruit tree, where he spat out the last bit of Anwar Sadat’s neck. He saw it hit the ground, the size of a piece of tofu, and the sight of it sent the entire contents of his stomach surging, assaulting his throat with a bitter, sour taste. Leaning against the tree, the boy vomited the noodles he had for breakfast. It was some time before the turmoil in his bowels came to an end. He was still gagging though there was nothing left to throw up. He left the starfruit tree, guided by the loud noises of the gamblers and the whistles on the pigeons’ tails.
That was when Ma Soma emerged from the surau and saw him lurching unsteadily, smeared with blood. Alarmed, he almost ran after him, but then froze at the trail of red footprints the length of the yard from the house. He saw the overflowing puddle on the doorstep, and his feet pushed him to go forward, where he caught sight of the corpse lying solemnly in wait. His mind was nothing but a void until a voice inside him whispered in explanation. He lifted Maesa Dewi onto the couch, and grabbed a batik cloth to cover Anwar Sadat’s corpse. Someone else, at the side of the soccer field, saw Margio and shouted:
“My God, someone’s beaten Margio to a pulp.”
The hubbub stopped and heads turned. Margio walked toward them, bringing cars to a halt, making motorbikes skid to a halt. People stared at him as if he were a premature ghost, out in the daylight. The birds became still, and the children stopped playing. Time was bound to a stake. They circled him, keeping their distance, as if he were likely to explode. They were struck dumb until one of them, Agung Yuda, got hold of a single clear question.
“Who beat you up?”
Margio stood there, unresponsive and uncomprehending. He recognized the faces around him, and at the same time he didn’t. Agung Yuda, whose dumb head couldn’t wrap itself around the likeliest explanation, approached and sniffed him to make sure it was real blood and not wall paint. Once he had convinced himself this was a face no longer sweet or polite, but tragic, he found a simple explanation, one he realized was actually smart when it dawned on him, and he blurted out an important declaration:
“He’s not hurt.” That was a fact.
The night tumbled upon them, buoying the stars and hanging up a severed moon. The lamps in the front yards and along the streets were coming on, and the flying foxes were no longer visible, for the darkness enveloped their black bodies. Joni Simbolon dragged Margio off to the subdistrict military headquarters. This always happened before a suspect was sent to the police station. It provided the soldiers with some much-needed fun in a republic no longer at war. They locked him up in a cell, put him in a black uniform that smelled of mothballs and wooden cupboards, and let him curl up on a mattress facing a cup of warm milk he did not drink and a plate of rice and tuna he did not touch.