Page 58 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

attacking and pecked him all over until his feathers fell off. Blood gushed out
where they had pecked. It looked as if he would die at the hands of his buddies.
Just at this horrible moment, he flew swiftly upward. Spreading his wings, he
flew like a bird and then dropped down heavily. He set off a heatwave in the
house, and I was about to suffer a heatstroke. He struggled a few times on the
floor, then lay motionless. The other two crowded around and pecked at his
feathers, stripping him of one bunch after another. They worked brutally and
rapidly, and soon the little rooster was absolutely bald. While the roosters were
creating an uproar, my kin were sleeping, but one house mouse emerged. He was
exactly like one that I’d seen in another home in the past—also with a white spot
on his left hind leg. He exerted himself to bite the little rooster on the back and
ripped off a piece of flesh. He ate it right away. After eating one piece, he went
back to tear off another piece, turning the little rooster’s back into a large cavity.
By the light shooting in from the door, I could see the guts in the cavity. The
house mouse came over to me with the flesh in his mouth, and—showing off—

he chewed it. I smelled a strong rotten stench. Was it the odor of this flesh?
Hadn’t the little rooster just died? His flesh should have still been fresh,
shouldn’t it? Oh! The little featherless rooster actually stood up shakily! The
hole in his back was very conspicuous. He walked shakily over to me! The
house mouse—still with the flesh in his mouth—scurried into the hole. The little
rooster’s naked body was pale, and the blood on the crest congealed. He stared at
me with round eyes. I sensed that if he came a bit closer, I would be burned by
his thermal radiation. He jumped a few times, and some little marblelike balls
bounced out of the cavity in his back and dropped to the floor, igniting flames.
They soon burned up, leaving no trace. He jumped some more, and a few more
balls flew out. I watched idiotically. He jumped and jumped, not stopping until
his body was empty. Then he fell onto the floor. His thermal radiation vanished.

I walked over and poked him. God, all that was left was one layer of skin! Even
his bones were gone. As I considered looking more closely at this little pile of
dirt, the man on the bed spoke.
“He came here deliberately to exact revenge, and he died in my house. I can’t
stand dead things. I hate the sight of death. I was afraid of nightmares for quite a
while, and so I worked even harder at disinfecting the place.” With that, he got
out of bed and squatted next to the little rooster’s remains. Shifting it with tongs,
he muttered, “It’s the plague, isn’t it? The plague.” I thought to myself, He’s
been burned out. All that’s left is a little empty skin. How can it hold the plague?
Since this was the plague, why didn’t he throw it out immediately instead of
moving it with the tongs? Suddenly he turned to me, stared vengefully with his
triangular eyes, and scolded, “You! What are you looking at? This is nothing for
you—a snake—to see!” I was afraid he would stab me with the tongs, and so I
scurried under the bed. From there, I saw him drop the rooster skin into a bowl