Page 66 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

disappeared.
“But I was watching the school gardener the whole time!”
“You’re really set in your ways,” my wife reproached me.
My wife didn’t tell me what she had guessed, but I thought she knew what
was going on. Sure enough, three days later, as we were at the door to our nest
watching the sun set, she said, “There are all kinds of ways to play the game.
You have a one-track mind.”
I didn’t utter a word. She was right: in fact, I wasn’t good at considering all
angles. I couldn’t imagine where my mother might have gone. I had perched
here for ages. Crossing over to the other side of the school enclosure would be
out of our domain. If we saw a confused guy fly to the west side of the
department store, we would be almost frightened to death. Of course, no one
would try such foolish things except for one crazy bird. Sure enough, he had

never returned. But Mama hadn’t gone crazy; she was always clear-headed. Still,
my wife was quite good at predictions, but she wouldn’t repeat them to anyone.
A few days later, one of our neighbors in the next tree went missing. That was
a stretch of scary days: after three months, only ten birds in our clan were left—
and that included our two children. That’s when my eyesight began blurring.
Time after time, I saw overlapping images everywhere. Even when I looked at
my children, I didn’t see two of them but six of them. Only when I looked at my
wife did I see just one image. As for the neighbors, they became a large flock of
countless things. And so I still felt surrounded by an enormous clan. My wife
was happy that I felt this way; she didn’t want me to feel downcast because of
loneliness.
But one noon, they all disappeared, leaving only my wife
and me. I stood on a branch of the poplar and saw a lot of children and some
adults running around, all grasping long bamboo poles and shouting. Even I—a
magpie who was not very nimble—could sense disaster coming. My wife
laughed grimly. Not seeming to mind in the least, she was pecking at a hole on

the branch, as though investigating whether something was escaping from the
inside. Suddenly, I began to suspect that I was seeing a hallucination produced
by my double vision. When I asked my wife about this, she calmly answered,
“That’s it. It’s a hallucination. However, an urchin is climbing the tree; he’s
destroying our neighbor’s home. He’s efficient with his tools.”
The whole tree was swaying, and I didn’t dare go over to watch. I said to my
wife, “Let’s fly away.”
“No.” She said resolutely, “We’ll go home.”
“Why go home now? He probably intends to smash our home, too. We have
no way to defend ourselves from humans.”
But my wife was going home, and I’d better stay close to her and get into the