Page 24 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

product of evolution. He slept and woke up whenever he wished, and he stayed
or flew away whenever he wished. What a natural and unrestrained lifestyle this
was! Now I understood what it meant to “live in one’s dream.” How had he
become so privileged? Even if I evolved more, I probably couldn’t grow wings
on my back. He was a different species. Then what was I? People called me
“Rat,” but I wasn’t an ordinary rat. I was much larger. I was a maverick, a loner.
I had only faint memories of my parents and wasn’t interested in the opposite
sex, and so I wouldn’t have descendants. I was a thing that looked like a rat but
wasn’t a rat. I was a pilgarlic who had sponged off others on stoves in the slums
and had carelessly fallen into the tunnel under the slums.
I resumed digging the hole. The moment I started, all my paws tingled with
excitement. Keep at it, keep at it—something really wanted to come out.
Someone next to me was also digging. He dug and dug and all of a sudden

shouted “Oh, oh.” He must have dug far enough for the thing to emerge. I
wanted to do that, too. I couldn’t stop. I turned toward the left and detoured
away from the rock. My God—so many ants: I had struck an ants’ nest! Oh!! I
jumped out of the hole and scratched and hit myself all over. I wished I could
pull my ears off. Those little things had bored into my body by biting through
my skin. This was much worse than death. As I was feeling desperate, I heard
the person say coldly, “You really need to take a bath.” The water in his wooden
foot-washing basin gurgled as he moved it. Despite my nausea, I jumped into the
basin headfirst. He pushed me down with both hands and ordered me to swallow
his foot-washing water. In a daze, I drank quite a lot of it. Then he poured me
out along with the water, and shouted, “Go back to your digging!” He left. How
could I still dig? I kept bumping into the ground with my head. I thought to
myself, “It would be better to die! Better to die . . .” I rolled and rolled around on
the ground. After a while, a sudden thought came to me, and gritting my teeth, I
started digging again. This time, when I dug into the mud with my claws, I
distinctly sensed the little things passing through my claws to return to the

ground. I hadn’t been digging for very long when I began to relax. How could
this be? How? I felt afraid of this land.
I sat in my newly dug out hole, surrounded by the little animals that were
rushing about. I buried my head deep in the ground. I was afraid they would
bump into me. I didn’t dare dig again, for fear of getting mixed up with the
death-ants again. As I squatted down there, I heard a rumbling sound coming
from an even deeper spot. If I could concentrate, the sound was clear, but if I
relaxed a little, it was inaudible. While listening, I remembered something that
happened when I was sleeping in the blacksmith’s home. The little boy there was
called “Neighbor Boy.” Neighbor Boy got up every day before daybreak.
Without putting on a coat, he pushed open the gate and went out to stand on the