Page 31 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

this bowl, but the blisters on my feet had broken and ulcerated. How could I
jump out? Sometimes I heard the man and woman of the house talking about me,
“Will the little thing die?” “No way. It’s a born survivor.” Were they hurting me
on purpose or didn’t they know what I was going through?
Despite all of my injuries, I gradually grew up. One day, their child
overturned the pottery bowl, and I fell out. I saw the bowl suspended on the edge
of the stovetop. On an impulse, I bumped the bowl with my head, and it fell
down and broke into several pieces. I looked at the room again and saw all those

strange things that I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know what they were. Not until
later did I figure them out. There was one thing I never understood until I finally
grew up. This was a framed portrait of an old man with a white beard hanging on
the wall. I thought it was a real person because the husband and wife talked to
the old man. When they went out, they said, “Dad, I’m leaving.” And when they
returned, they said, “Dad, I’m back.” If they had done something out there, they
would ask, “Dad, did I handle this right?” When they spoke, the frame rocked
and made a ding-dong sound as if answering them.
I recovered from my injuries soon, and before long I could jump down from
the stove. I jumped to the top of the table, stood on my hind legs, leaned on the
wall with my front legs, and tried hard to get close to that white-bearded old
man. All of a sudden, I was whacked on the back of my head, and I lost
consciousness.
I awakened at the side of the road, and so I knew there were streets outside
the house. It was such a large slum. I gradually recovered my memories of the
slums and the city up there. Before the day ended, I became familiar with the

entire slum, for I realized that each of its nooks and crannies had always been
stored in my memory. At night, I returned to the family’s stove to sleep. They
seemed to welcome me, even preparing food for me. The boy said, “He was out
all day and now he’s back.” But I wasn’t out for the day by choice. Someone had
placed me out there next to the road. Who? I glanced involuntarily at the old
man on the wall. Ah, in the lamplight his face was invisible. I saw only the two
flames shooting from his eyes. In my fear, I had shrieked and dashed to the door.
The master and his wife came out, caught me singlehandedly, and patted me on
the back. They said repeatedly, “Rat, oh Rat, calm down! Come back!” I stopped
struggling. I was shivering on the stove. I had concluded that it was the old man
on the wall who had clubbed me and caused me to faint, and then had thrown me
outside. Later the master had blocked the door and windows so that I couldn’t

open them. Now they went to sleep. So did I, but I felt a burning gaze fixed on
me. No matter what, I couldn’t fall asleep. Flames filled my mind. I forced my
gaze away from that wall and looked instead at a dark corner. I remembered the
city. It was so big, but it was uninhabited. The glass houses were empty, and the