Iteung’s killing of Good Budi is a return to an earlier violence and a decisive act of revenge. After finding him at an empty house, she answers his claim on her and her child with a lethal attack, then reports herself to the police rather than fleeing. The scene ends not with escape or denial but with Iteung’s voluntary surrender, and she later maintains that she does not regret what she did.

Background and Encounter

Good Budi is guarding an empty house once owned by an ex-government official when Iteung appears inside. He does not know how she entered. His greeting is familiar and possessive, and he immediately asks whose child she is carrying, suggesting that it might be his or belong to Ajo Kawir, whom he insults. Iteung answers plainly that the child is not his.

The Killing

Iteung recognizes that Good Budi has gone soft and is no longer difficult for her to overpower. She beats him, then prevents him from escaping by throwing him into a corner and continuing the attack. She pulls him by the hair and slams his head against the wall; afterward, he lies still and blood spreads across the floor. The reversal is stark: Good Budi’s question attempts to reassert an old claim, but Iteung controls the encounter and determines its outcome.

Surrender and Aftermath

Iteung leaves the house and approaches a policeman at a security post with her hands covered in blood. She tells him that she has killed someone and holds out her wrists to be handcuffed. The policeman freezes before fumbling for his cuffs; Iteung does not resist being taken into custody. Her actions make the killing an acknowledged crime rather than a concealed one.

After spending years in prison, Iteung says that she feels amazing to be released and does not regret killing Good Budi, even though the act cost her years in a cell. Her response preserves the moral force of the event in her own terms: imprisonment is its consequence, but it has not changed her judgment of the killing.

Prior Context and Narrative Recurrence

Iteung’s killing of Good Budi belongs to a history in which violence is not confined to a single encounter. Earlier, Iteung had entered the Kalimasada Silat Academy to learn how to fight. The academy had been founded by Kyai Abdul Kadir, a veteran of the twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels, as an effort to give former child guerrillas martial instruction, religious teaching, and practical means of earning a living. After his death, his son removed the religious classes and the instruction in skills such as sewing, cultivation, and managing loans; the school became an ordinary fighting academy, attended by people seeking effectiveness and courage. That history places Iteung’s acquired capacity within an institution whose original rehabilitative purpose had narrowed, against a wider landscape where soldiers used former fighters and sometimes turned on them.

The book also shows violence returning through memory and silence. When Ajo Kawir was asked how his impotence began, Gecko concealed the fact that two policemen had raped Scarlet Blush, saying that they did not know what had happened. Later, after leaving Iteung, Ajo Kawir sat on a night bus and heard again in his mind the sound of the Tiger’s skull cracking under a wooden crutch, mingled with Iteung’s sobs. Those earlier episodes do not explain the immediate mechanics of Good Budi’s death, but they establish a recurring pattern: violent acts persist in what characters cannot or will not say, and in the memories that return after a confrontation has ended.

Good Budi’s death also reverses his former position in Iteung’s life. He had once been involved in the coercive violence that shaped her history; when he meets her again, he speaks as though her pregnancy might give him a claim over her child. Iteung rejects that claim, identifies his weakness, and kills him. She subsequently accepts the legal consequence, spending years in prison, but later says she does not regret the killing. The event therefore connects personal revenge to the book’s broader recurrence of violence, while distinguishing Iteung’s deliberate surrender from the concealment and disputed accounts surrounding other deaths.

Prior Context and Narrative Recurrence

Historical and Narrative Context

Iteung’s killing of Good Budi takes place against a background in which fighting is both an acquired skill and part of a wider system of political violence. The Kalimasada Silat Academy was founded by Kyai Abdul Kadir, a veteran of the twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels. He established it to gather former guerrillas, many of whom had joined as children, and offer not only self-defense and religious instruction but practical ways to earn a living. After his death, his son dropped the religious classes and the lessons in sewing, cultivation, and managing loans. The academy became a conventional martial-arts school for students seeking to fight effectively and discover courage. The change from rehabilitation to combat training provides context for Iteung’s capacity without, by itself, explaining her decision to kill Good Budi.

The surrounding order also blurs the line between military force and criminal violence. Some former guerrillas became robbers or market extortionists, while soldiers who had once fought them could provide armed protection, use their manpower to maintain or disrupt the peace, and eventually turn against them. Soldiers also organized human fights at an arena, bringing combatants from places where military operations were underway. This account places individual violence in a landscape where force is organized, exploited, and repeatedly made public; Iteung’s later acceptance of arrest distinguishes her response from a system that treats former fighters as expendable.

The novel links violence to both silence and involuntary memory. When Iwan Angsa asked how Ajo Kawir’s impotence began, Gecko concealed the rape of Scarlet Blush by two policemen and insisted that they did not know what had happened. Later, after leaving Iteung, Ajo Kawir sat on a night bus and heard in his mind the sound of the Tiger’s skull breaking under a wooden crutch, overlapping with his wife’s sobs. These episodes do not establish the circumstances of Good Budi’s death, but they show how violence persists beyond its immediate scene: it can be withheld from speech or return in memory. Against that pattern, Iteung’s direct admission to the policeman and her later refusal to regret the killing make her response unusually explicit, even as the years she spends in prison remain its lasting consequence.