Page 32 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

city. It was so big, but it was uninhabited. The glass houses were empty, and the
people lived in the slums down there. How sad. I remembered the glass houses
next to each other. I decided that one day I would go up there and look around.
The master had said there were people up there. Some hid in wooden casks,
garbage cans, and dumpsters. When the sun set behind the mountain, they
emerged and raced out to the deserted streets and made a commotion.
I let my imagination run wild and like a thief hid myself here and there in the
house. Then I realized that no matter where I hid, I couldn’t escape that gaze. I
couldn’t figure it out: Why didn’t this old guy walk out of the frame? Had he
hidden himself behind the glass or had his family done this to him? In the inky
darkness late at night, the master and his wife embraced tightly in bed. Now and
then, they cried out softly, “Ghost!” Steeped in nightmares, they couldn’t

intervene in what I was doing. I could sleep in the rice barrel or in the big
cupboard. They had no idea. Naturally, if I shed hair in the rice, they grumbled
about it when they ate. They didn’t blame me; they were terrible at making
logical connections. Once I even slept in their big, wide bed. Hiding in a corner
against the wall, I listened to their conversation up close. One said, “You think
Dad can’t see us, don’t you?” The other said, “I can at least hide in my dreams,
can’t I?” It was odd. When they spoke, I looked at the wall again. The fiery gaze
had vanished. I was surprised and thought to myself, Have I entered these two
people’s dreams? But just then the woman shrieked, “Ghost!” And then the fiery
gaze shot across again. The man said, “Dad, oh Dad. Dad, oh Dad.” The husband
and wife burrowed under the quilt, which then stuck up like a hill. I was afraid
and slipped out of bed. I screwed up my courage and looked outside. Under the
dim streetlight, someone was squatting and slaughtering a white cat. The noise
made me retreat a few steps, and I quickly closed the door with my head. Oh!
Compared with the terror outside, the house was a refuge. The moonlight shone
in. The hill of the quilt was hazy. I remembered the pasture where my ancestors

lived. It was big: you couldn’t see across it. Back then, our clan members rushed
back and forth there. They were hiding from something, too, much like the two
people in this house. They often scuttled over to the pool in the center of the
pasture. They couldn’t swim, and the next day their corpses floated in the pool. I
was lost in memories, trying to figure out what my ancestors were hiding from.
One day the couple went out, and their son Woody got into big trouble—he
shattered the glass in the frame with his slingshot, and the shards of glass ruined
the old man’s face. Woody ran outside to hide. By nighttime, he still hadn’t
returned. The couple were silent about this. They threw the ruined frame, along
with the old man, into an old trunk and then paid no more attention to it. Every
day, I was troubled by a question: Was the old man still alive? I’d learned my
lesson earlier, so I didn’t dare open the trunk. The old man was no longer a