Page 44 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

away from him. I turned around and went back to my home, intending to get a
good nap. But the door was latched from the inside. Who had done that? I had to
squat outside and wait. The brothers soon returned. When they realized the door
was latched, they climbed up to the window, but something attacked them from
inside. Covering their eyes, the two fell to the ground. Before long, the door

opened, and an old white-haired woman came out carrying a paper bag. She
unwrapped it in the doorway, and I saw inside it. It was arsenic. I recognized it,
because when I was young, people in that family often added a small amount of
arsenic to my bowl. She left to go to another house.
When I entered the home, I noticed the house mouse lying, bloodstained, on
the floor, its head separated from its body, and a kitchen knife next to it. Had the
old woman done this? How could the house mouse have died here? Hadn’t he
just now gone across the street? Oh, right, it was the tunnel. He had dug out a
very long tunnel. He had come through the tunnel and died here. His stomach—
filled with the blood he had drunk—was still distended. What had happened in
this room? Let’s imagine: 1) The old woman had set down a certain kind of bait,
and the house mouse had been lured out of the hole. The old woman had caught
him and cut his head off. 2) Or the house mouse, acting on his natural instincts,
had bitten the old woman in the leg, and she had chopped off his head. 3) Or,
after eating the bait the old woman had put down, he had decided to commit
suicide, and the old woman had held out the knife for him to bump into, he had

collided forcefully with the knife blade, and his head had been separated from
his body. We don’t have to go on imagining: there are many possibilities, but for
now it’s impossible to know exactly how it happened. Why was there such a
bizarre stench in the house? I found the source of the odor, and it was indeed that
house mouse. How could he have rotted so soon after dying? But it was true.
Yellow pus oozed from his stomach. Tiny gray insects squirmed in the wound on
his neck. Maybe even before he died, his body had been rotten, yet I hadn’t
noticed. I picked him up with tongs, intending to throw him out, but the moment
the tongs made contact with him, his flesh fell off and his bones shattered. So
scary! I was scared out of my wits! He turned into a pool of slush; only his gray
hair hadn’t vaporized. I freaked out, threw the tongs down, and hid on the stove.
I was frantic. I glanced subconsciously at the window: ah, both the brothers’
faces were there, and each face had only one eye—that kind of eye with two

pupils! The two pupils were still watching nothing but each other. Suddenly, I
realized that these weren’t the two brothers. Who were they then? Had they
come to catch me? I slid down the stove and hid in the firewood. I supposed they
couldn’t see me now, and I fell asleep peacefully.
Indeed, they were not the two brothers, but they bore a slight resemblance to
them. These two one-eyed young people now lived in this home in place of the