Vengeance and Retribution

Vengeance and retribution are presented as both a demand for justice and a proposed cure for Ajo Kawir’s long silence and impotence. The two policemen’s past assault on Scarlet Blush gives revenge a concrete target, but Uncle Bunny’s appeal turns it into something more: he believes Ajo must personally kill them for his Bird to rise again. Ajo instead chooses peace, leaving Iteung to decide whether the wrong will remain unanswered.

The photographs and the proposal

Lying down, Iteung studies two photographs of the policemen, which Uncle Bunny has given her. He tells her that he has found the men and already informed Ajo, but that prison and the change in Ajo have left her husband unwilling to kill them—or anyone else. Revenge, in this account, is not merely a way to punish the assailants. Uncle Bunny ties it to Ajo’s lost capacity for sexual arousal, treating the Bird’s return as a possible consequence of his settling the score.

Uncle Bunny says he could have the policemen killed by someone else, but rejects that solution. He insists that Ajo is the one who should bear the grudge and deliver the revenge. When Iteung asks whether Ajo’s Bird will truly awaken, Uncle Bunny answers with certainty, then allows for the possibility that it might not: even without that result, he says, Ajo would at least have obtained revenge, and Uncle Bunny could die in peace. The proposal therefore carries two expectations at once—restoration for Ajo and relief for the older man—without any guarantee that violence can provide either.

Ajo’s refusal and Iteung’s choice

Iteung asks Uncle Bunny what she should do. He tells her to convince Ajo to kill the policemen, but she answers that Ajo will not agree because he has chosen a peaceful path. The photographs thus mark a divide between the old logic of retribution and the changed man Uncle Bunny hopes to redirect. Ajo’s refusal is not presented as ignorance of the past: the men are described as his old friends, and their assault on Scarlet Blush is the history that gives the demand its force. His unwillingness to kill them makes peace a consequential choice, not the absence of a grievance.

Iteung’s own account of violence supplies a sharp contrast. The narration describes her as a middle-aged woman who has killed seven men and who appears at peace with what she has done. She says she chose to remain in prison rather than live outside while suffering over what she had failed to do. Her words frame action as a matter of necessity and conviction, even when the chosen action costs freedom. That outlook helps explain why Uncle Bunny approaches her, but it does not make her decision simply his to command: she knows that Ajo will not carry out the proposed revenge himself.

The killings as delegated revenge

The revenge eventually takes place without Ajo. Scarface realizes that the woman confronting him knows about his past and the night he assaulted Scarlet Blush, though he does not know what connects her to the woman he harmed. Iteung tells him she is acting for her husband, who should have come to take revenge but would not dirty his hands with the man’s blood. She then kills Scarface. The distinction between personal vengeance and delegated vengeance is explicit: Iteung does not claim that Ajo has changed his mind; she acts in his name because he refuses to act.

The Clove Smoker is also killed. He is found dead in his kitchen, and a gardener reports seeing a woman enter and overhearing her speak. Later, Iteung tells Ajo plainly that she killed the two policemen, whom she calls his old friends. His response is anger, not an expression of gratitude or approval. The outcome therefore fulfills the demand for retribution while preserving the conflict between the spouses’ choices: she has done what Ajo would not, and the act cannot be mistaken for his return to violence.

Revenge, peace, and the awakened Bird

The aftermath holds together an unresolved contrast. Uncle Bunny has treated killing the policemen as a possible means of restoring Ajo’s Bird, while Ajo’s peaceful path rejects the violence required by that prescription. Iteung carries out the revenge, but the evidence does not show that Ajo himself kills, or that he accepts Uncle Bunny’s reasoning. His anger when he learns of the deaths makes the difference between vengeance done for someone and vengeance chosen by that person matter.

The following morning, Ajo wakes and notices that the space beside him is empty. He then realizes he has an erection and examines the Bird in wonder as it grows firmer in his hand. The sequence places Iteung’s confession immediately before this bodily change, echoing Uncle Bunny’s prediction, but it does not state that the killings caused the awakening. That uncertainty is central to the motif: revenge is proposed as a cure, carried out by someone other than the person meant to be cured, and followed by a change whose meaning remains open. The Bird’s return may seem to answer the old promise, but Ajo’s awakening does not erase his refusal or settle whether retribution has restored him, altered him, or merely arrived alongside a change already under way.