Page 29 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

before, and so was the furniture. The child was sitting under the table playing
with a top. The spinning top was buzzing loudly. This made me uptight. So it
couldn’t be night, because everyone was going about regular daily activities. But
it was dark, and the lamp had been lit. How could they see? The child stopped
the metal top with one hand and said to me, “Rat—oh, Rat, why have you come
to my home? Dad has gone out to the back to dig a grave. He’ll be back soon.
Let’s spin the top together. As long as the top doesn’t stop, Dad won’t kill you.”
With all his strength he started the top spinning again, and it spun at lightning
speed. The buzzing gave me a splitting headache. That person came in, set the

hoe down, and looked in both directions. He was probably looking for me. I
heard him take my empty bowl from the stove and wash it. He was cursing
something. Next to me, the child said, “Dad is very afraid of tops.” He let the top
stop and asked me to try it. I had barely gotten the hang of it when it began
spinning—it even left the floor. The child said, “You’re really good at this.”
But I still couldn’t stand the sound made by the spinning top. I even tried to
run away several times, but after running two steps I went back under the table,
because the child shouted at me, “Do you want to die!!” It was weird: his voice
sounded the same as the voice of the man washing his feet in the wooden basin
of water. Then the child put the top in his pocket and said, “I have to make
things harder for Dad.” He asked me to sleep under the table with him. The
master came in and stood in the middle of the room nervously stamping his feet.
He shouted, “Tusheng! Tusheng!” He was calling his son. Couldn’t he see that
we were under the table? “Tusheng!!” he began snarling, and all of a sudden he
bumped into the wall. The dry cow pies pasted onto the bamboo wall fell to the
floor. Tusheng hugged me tightly because he was snickering and his whole body

was shaking. I was shaking, too, but it was because I was afraid of Tusheng. If
this kid could handle his father like this, wouldn’t it have been an easy matter for
him to kill me if he wanted to? The master’s face was bleeding. He climbed up
from the floor and dejectedly went back to the stove and continued tidying up
the dishes. He was really afraid of his son.
Tusheng wanted me to sleep under the table with him after this. “We can play
with the top whenever we want to.” He took the top out of his pocket and told
me to polish it with my face. Each time I did that, I heard a roar in my head and
saw stars. Although this was hard on me, I was in a much better mood. “Okay,
okay now,” Tusheng said. “From now on, our domain is under this table. Don’t
go back to the stove.” When he said this, I thought of his dad. His dad was a nice
person, quite kind to me. I actually doubted that he wanted to poison me. I
wanted to express my remorse to the master. I heard him crying. Maybe he

thought his son was lost. Tusheng didn’t let me take a step. He said that when his
dad cried, one shouldn’t bother him. I heard a noise at the door, and someone