Page 49 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

me. But he’d eaten his fill and was weary of eating. He didn’t even smell me, but
withdrew and stayed there watching me. The more I saw of him, the more I felt
he was like the already dead mouse. Could he be his twin brother? That one also
had a white spot on his left leg . . . How could this be merely coincidental? I
remembered again that the old woman had just said I would die. Was I still
going to die now? How would I die? I was facing this mouse. Before long, his
swollen stomach flattened. He had a really good digestive system. When he
looked at me again with starvation in his eyes, an idea came to me. I showed him
my meaty chest, hoping he would take another bite. He looked me up and down,
but didn’t bite. Once, I thought he was going to, but he just licked my hair, as if
vacillating. In the end, he abandoned the idea again. After another cunning
glance at me, he squeezed into the hole at the foot of the wall. I was

disappointed! A kind of odd disappointment. What on earth did I want? Did I
want to become him? He had a clear-cut objective in life, as well as his own
home (that hole). He had never been like me—wandering around and choosing
homes at random. Mouse—oh mouse, why didn’t you eat me? I, I didn’t know
what I should do with my body. To me, this body was now superfluous.
In the corner of the room, I licked the hole he’d bitten in my butt. The hole
wasn’t bleeding nor did it hurt. Could the mouse’s saliva be a narcotic? I did my
best to recall how I felt the moment he bit me, and I could only vaguely
remember that it felt like being pecked by a bird. Maybe even this feeling wasn’t
real. Maybe I wasn’t aware at all when he gnawed at my butt. Look, the mouse
had come out again. He stared greedily at me with his shiny eyes, but he stood at
the opening to the hole with no intention of coming over. When I walked a bit
closer to him, he retreated a little into the hole. I was crestfallen. I gradually

realized my real status in the slums.

The slums were my home, and also the hardest place for me to understand.
Generally speaking, I didn’t make a deliberate effort to understand it. Destiny
drove me from one place to another. I’d been underground, I’d been to the city,
and I’d lived in all kinds of homes in the slums. There were often crises in my
life: the threat of death was ongoing, but I was still alive. Could this be because
my ancestors were living in the depths of my memory and protecting me? Oh—
that boundless pasture, that eagle disappearing into the vast qi, those kin who lay

on their stomachs in the underbrush! Thinking of them, I felt I knew everything
and was capable of anything. But this was in my memory. The reality was
absolutely different. In reality, I knew almost nothing, though I had experienced
so much . . .