Page 62 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

OUR HUMAN NEIGHBORS

I’m a middle-aged male magpie who lives in the suburbs. Some tall poplars
stand next to the primary school, and my home is set up in one of them.

Originally my parents, brothers, and sisters, as well as my grandparents, lived
here, but now they’ve all disappeared.
Let me tell you about my nest. Sturdy, beautiful, and symmetrical, my nest is
something to be proud of. It’s practical and stable, with an ingenious opening.
It’s particularly cozy inside. The outer layer is made of mud and grass, and the
inner layer is made of fur and feathers. This dark, soft home gives us great
happiness. Back then, my wife and I pulled together and worked hard to build
this unusual nest. I fancied a certain attractive willow twig. It would serve as the
best possible roof beam. Sure, it was heavy, but I was young, and I picked it up
all at once in my beak. But just before I could fly to the sky with it, an urchin ran
up and pounced on me with an iron-tipped bamboo pole. He hit me hard in the
back. My beak relaxed its grip, and the twig fell to the ground. Even now, I can’t
figure out why he wanted it. And after he picked it up, he broke it in half and
fiercely stuck the two parts into the mud. I was injured and had to stop working
on the nest for the next ten days. During that time, my wife kept nagging me:
“Don’t irritate those people, don’t irritate those people . . .” I was so ashamed.

After that, I didn’t dare look for stuff near the primary school. I went over to a
hill and carried wood materials back. It was a long way away, and sometimes
this took a whole day. I would carry a load for a while and then rest a while. I
admired my wife: she could always find suitable materials in our neighborhood.
She was much more efficient than I. The main thing was that she had never
provoked those people; I don’t know how she had managed this.
In the end, we did finish the nest before winter. At that time, twenty-one
magpie nests were built in these poplars, like babies born to the trees. I had
compared all of them to ours. I felt that the nest my wife and I had built was the
most impressive and its design the most ingenious. It was also much cozier than
the others. Maybe we were congenitally different from the others and had a kind
of innate skill? But my wife never thought of it in this way. For some reason,

although our nest was well fortified, I felt uneasy, worried that people would
shoot us. When I crouched there at night, I was afraid that some schoolboy
would quietly climb the tree and smash our nest with a tool. I couldn’t help
feeling anxious; this was a consequence of my injury. Still, it turned out okay;