The murder of the young widow’s husband is a concealed crime that transforms her life: Mister Lebe arranges for a member of the Empty Hand to poison the musician, while the apparent symptoms of cholera disguise the killing. The revelation recasts the widow’s subsequent vulnerability as the consequence of deliberate violence and a wider structure of protection for the powerful.

The Visit Before the Murder

Mister Lebe came to the family’s house at almost eleven one night, claiming he was checking on the property. Although the couple had paid rent, the house belonged to him, and the young widow felt unable to refuse him entry. Her husband was away practicing angklung for a performance. During the visit, Mister Lebe pressed the lonely and unwelcome possibility of her keeping him company; she resisted, despite the leverage he held as landlord.

The encounter establishes the imbalance that later makes the killing consequential. Mister Lebe could enter the couple’s home and test the widow’s boundaries under the cover of property ownership. Her love for her husband, Iteung later explains, gave her no reason to betray him; the threat came from the landlord, not from any failing in the marriage.

Poison Disguised as Illness

The musician became ill after a party following a performance, vomiting and suffering diarrhea. Many people believed he had died of cholera. Iteung reveals that this explanation was false: he had been poisoned. The resemblance to an illness allowed the murder to pass as a natural death, and the young widow herself never learned that her husband had been killed.

Iteung identifies the chain of responsibility directly. Mister Lebe paid someone from the Empty Hand to carry out the killing. The evidence does not identify the hired person or describe the method of poisoning, but it makes clear that the death was arranged rather than accidental and that Mister Lebe was its instigator.

Aftermath and Significance

After her husband’s death, the widow had to live under Mister Lebe’s control as her landlord. He offered to waive her rent if she let him sleep in her room and keep him company. Later, he brought other men, and the threat of eviction left her unable to refuse them. When she became pregnant and asked him to take responsibility, he turned her out; she then told her story to Rani. The murder thus precedes a sequence of exploitation and displacement, while the widow remains unaware that the loss that made her vulnerable was itself engineered by Mister Lebe.

The account reaches the reader through Iteung’s disclosure to Ajo Kawir, not through the widow’s knowledge. That gap matters: what others take for a death from cholera is, in the telling, a paid killing protected by Mister Lebe’s local power. The revelation exposes both the violence behind the widow’s bereavement and the concealment that lets its consequences continue.