Page 50 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

Part Five

I climbed this simply constructed blockhouse: as far as the eye could see, the
rows of thatched slum houses were quietly bending their heads in the mist. I
knew their humility was feigned. All these houses harbored sinister intentions.
But I had to live in them. I was a son of this mystical land. Sure, it was gloomy
here, but I was used to it. I had grown up here. Now in the midst of dreariness, I
meditated constantly. I couldn’t get a good look at the inside of the thatched
huts. They were too dark inside. Their design had totally ignored the way eyes
function. Once when I moved into a house, I thought only two people lived
there. Later, I found out there were twelve! I cowered in a corner of the stove:
the fire came close to lapping at my skin and hair. They never stopped cooking

because they had twelve stomachs to feed. With only one room, they slept
anywhere. Two of them even slept under the bed. At midnight, I couldn’t locate
any of them. They had disappeared. I stood on the stove and ran my eyes over
the empty home. I wondered why I couldn’t keep up with these people’s train of
thought.
Once, I had moved into a house where I thought the family was small and
simple. I was happy because I’d be able to get a good night’s sleep. But at
midnight, an earthquake almost jolted me from the stove to the floor! By
grabbing the iron hook from which bacon hung on the wall, I managed—just
barely—to keep my footing. I looked back: seven or eight people were
breakdancing wildly. They seemed drunk. They were being flung from one wall
to another. They resembled each other, so they must be from this family. Then
where were they in the daytime? Some rooms were actually deserted; they just

pretended to be inhabited—a garbage can and a broom at the entrance, and the
door closed but not locked. I pushed against the door, entered, jumped up to the
stove, and slept in the corner. I awakened at midnight and still saw no one. I
jumped down and looked for something to eat, but found nothing. The house
smelled of mold. Evidently it had been unoccupied for ages. I slunk around in
the darkness, a little fearful. Just then, I heard a sigh. The sound came from the
ceiling. The woman who had sighed didn’t seem to be in pain. Probably she was
simply tired. But the sound was incessant, and I couldn’t stand it. My chest was
about to explode, and so I dashed out and wandered all night in the cold. Sure,
most of the time I blended into the landlords’ lives. I hated them, because they
always closed in on me, and yet, and yet, I was curious about their lives—those
lives that I usually found incomprehensible. In the end, my relations with them
deteriorated each time, and I left in search of another home to live in. It upset me
to think of this. When was this blockhouse built? My impression was that