Page 118 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

transform myself into a shadow. When it pounded past, my ribs hurt a little,
because I was terrified of death. Yet they didn’t hurt too much.
I hadn’t died yet. I felt my ribs: they were fine. But hadn’t I seen the iron
front of the truck crushing me? Now none of those shadows on the wall above
made a sound.
The truck kept going back and forth for a long time, and I became rather used
to it. Nonetheless, it was unquestionably a truck—I even touched it with my
hand. Then I must be the issue. Was I still a human being? If I was, how could I
have been repeatedly crushed and yet still be okay? If I had already turned into a

shadow, why did my ribs hurt?
The truck drove ahead into the dark tunnel. I stood stuck to the wall, not
knowing what to do. The other vehicles in this carport looked like junk,
abandoned years ago. But it was hard to say whether the truck that struck me
was also a piece of junk. Someone was driving it. I had made eye contact, and he
looked like a robot. But he had a real hand, a man’s hairy hand. He had even
reached out and touched my face as he passed. The hand was icy cold. I
shivered.
“I want to leave.” I couldn’t stop myself from saying this to the people above
me.
It was a long time before someone asked, “How is that possible?”
Following the wall, I made my way toward the exit. I heard them talking
about me behind my back, but I couldn’t hear their exact words. Each time I
moved, the air made a puh sound, as though I’d broken a layer of membrane. I
would soon reach the exit. The sunshine dazzled me, and I hadn’t yet decided
what to do. Should I actually go out? Just now, hadn’t someone said it was

impossible? As I wavered, the large truck drove up again. This time, it bumped
into me and sent me flying. Slowly, I landed in a dark spot—perhaps the
innermost part of the carport. I fell onto the ground, but I was unhurt. Maybe
that’s because I had already transformed into a shadow. The cement floor was a
little damp from humidity. The odor of gasoline was less pungent now; perhaps I
had grown accustomed to it. The large truck had disappeared. It was as though it
had driven up especially to bump into me.
“There’s no broth here. How do you live?” I asked loudly.
No one answered. They must have thought I was very vulgar. I had really
begun longing for the broth in that old house. You could never forget the food
once you had tasted it. At that moment, the large stove and the cook were
magnified in my imagination. I thought that life in the old house was the life of
my ideals. Like that other person, I could stick to the wall of the stove and go to

the stove whenever I wanted to drink the broth.
I wasn’t a bit hungry, so why did I keep thinking about the broth?