Page 46 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

me by this name. I glanced out: the mist had broken up. Even though the houses
were submerged, the lights were still on. I could see people’s shadows wavering
on the windows. What kind of flood was this? Someone came outside and
brushed his teeth in front of the house. The swaying ripples distorted his shadow.
“Ricky! Ricky!” The sound came from underwater. Soon it would be light. What
time was it?
“Ricky, come down! Come down! Now!” The voice underwater grew
impatient. I leaned over and slid down, landing at the neighbors’ doorway. How
strange: I had gotten a good look at it just now and I’d felt the water, yet now it
turned out to be a huge transparent membrane covering the entire slum. It was
light now, and the sun was out. But the sunlight couldn’t penetrate the
membrane. The neighbors’ door was open, and I ran inside. Lying on the floor
were the old man and his wife, rolling their eyes and spitting up water. Had it

really flooded? Where had the water gone? The old couple used to raise large,
gray edible pigeons out in back. The pigeons were very ugly, but their voices
were dreamlike. When dozens of them cooed at once, even pedestrians became
drowsy. When the old couple walked by the door, they seemed to be dreaming.
Generally the old man held his wife’s hand and walked a little in front of her. He
felt his way along blindly with the other hand. Dragged ahead by him, the old
woman grumbled, “Can’t you walk a little slower? Can’t you?” The floor of the
house was dry, with no trace of a flood. I just sensed a kind of fine gossamer
floating in front of me. I accidentally inhaled it and sneezed a lot. I approached
the old woman and nuzzled her cheek with my nose. She woke up and shouted,
“Honey! We aren’t dead! We didn’t die!” At first she sat up, and then—tottering
—she stood and walked over to open the wardrobe and shut herself inside. I
heard her crying inside. The old man also sat up and shouted loudly, “Why
didn’t we die? Why? Were you talking nonsense? Huh?” When he couldn’t find
his wife in the room, he went out. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked into
the distance. He kept watching, as if waiting for something to happen. I slid over

to the door, too, and looked out: I saw the transparent gossamer that I’d noticed
earlier. In the distance, it turned into waves. Was this a flood? No. I didn’t sense
that I was in water. Then why had these old people blacked out on the ground?
They had also been spitting up water just now, as though their stomachs were
full of water.
Carpenter Wen passed by, a steelyard in his hand. He said to the old man,
“I’m weighing this. I have to weigh it.” He pretended to grab something from the
air with his left hand, and then placed that “thing” in the tray of his steelyard. It
was strange: the steelyard was like a seesaw, rising high on one side. What could
be so heavy? The gossamer? But the tray of the steelyard held nothing. The old
man looked closely as he finished weighing it, and said, “Oh, this has to be