Page 116 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

“No.”

“Are you the manager here?”
“We manage ourselves. But you’re a different matter.”
As we spoke, he twisted around, and two gusts of evil wind blew toward me.
It seemed that everyone here was my superior. I had a tail which I couldn’t cast
off.
“Try swaying as I’m doing,” he said.
Imitating these shadows, I twisted a few times. God! I was almost done for. I
fell apart. The sky was no longer the sky, and the earth no longer the earth. My
body seemed to be turning into a worn-out fishing net suspended in the air. I felt
like throwing up, which was even worse; I was going to make a complete mess
of myself.
“Sway a few more times.” I heard his voice again.
But I couldn’t. This was harder to take than dying. I collapsed, my face on the
floor. The broth on the stove was bubbling. I heard him stoking the fire with an
iron hook. Evidently when a person was transformed into a shadow, he could
still do his work. It was clear that I wasn’t made of the same stuff. I will always

have a tail, but lamentably I’ll never be able to touch it. At this moment, I so
much wanted to be transformed into one of the Shadow People. I really admired
these guys who swayed to and fro. Even their sadness was sublime. If I died
some day and became a nut-brown strip hanging on the wall and thus didn’t
occupy any space, how wonderful that would be! I remembered that in my
childhood, when the southern snowflakes floated to the adobe wall of our home,
the wall’s color deepened and the snowflakes disappeared. The fire which heated
the house of course also warmed the adobe walls.
He slowly floated to the large bed over there, swayed elegantly a few times,
and then calmly dropped down onto the bed. A small green star twinkled briefly
in the dark and just as quickly disappeared.
“Did you see that just now? It was really bright!” I burst out with this, despite
my stomachache.

“It’s something inside us. Some folk say that we became Shadow People
precisely in order to see it.”
“When you saw it just now, were you happy?”
“Uh-huh. But it’s meaningless to answer questions like that.”
I was depressed. I felt it would be tough for me to go on staying here, but I
couldn’t go back either. It was out of the question for a shadow with a tail to live
among people at home. In my hometown, physical labor was the only work
available, and I would have to work every day there; I wouldn’t be able to live
the idle life as I was doing now. I had yearned for an idle life since I was a
young man. Finally it was being realized, but why was I still wavering between