Magical double

"My Lipstick Is Red, Darling”, from Eka Kurniawan’s new collection of short stories, Kitchen Curse, begins with a woman’s arrest at a brothel. She tells the police she is merely a housewife, not a prostitute, but her husband asks for a divorce when she finally gets home. The pages that follow delve into the husband’s perspective on how the couple met and fell in love — it turns out the woman had in fact been a prostitute in the past — and then switch to the wife’s view of the same events. On the one hand, Kurniawan is telling the story of a husband who becomes increasingly unfaithful, convinced his wife must be cheating because she continues to wear bright-red lipstick. On the other, he is narrating the experience of a woman who puts on make-up each day in order to win back the love of her wayward spouse, until she finally returns to the brothel, trying to catch her husband in the act.