Page 67 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

But my wife was going home, and I’d better stay close to her and get into the
nest.
Snuggling up to each other, we shivered at the door of our home. I heard her
heart thumping. How strange this was: her heart was in her chest, and yet I could

hear it; my heart was in my chest, and yet I couldn’t hear it at all! At this
moment, my vision was very clear; I saw no overlapping images. I saw that red-
orange work hat. It wasn’t an urchin just now. It was the school gardener. She
climbed up until she came face to face with us.
My wife inclined her head, as though flames were shooting from that person’s
eyes. She said to me, “This is truly surprising: I saw your mother in her eyes.”
Nothing happened. She clumsily and slowly descended, and our gaze
followed her into the distance. Why did she have to destroy our neighbors’ nest?
It had been abandoned long ago. Was she threatening us?
That night, my wife and I felt terribly lonely: we buried our heads in each
other’s wings, and we each sensed a deep cavity in the other’s body. But after
just a day passed, both of us felt stronger. We even went so far as to fly to the
playground and wait for her to appear, but the school gardener didn’t show up

again.

Okay, let me talk some more about those people. There were more and more
people, and they built houses along the little roads in front of and behind the
school. Originally, there had been only two thatched cottages here, which
seemed to belong to two school janitors. Now there were at least fifty houses
with tile roofs. The residents were people whose identities were unclear. They
didn’t like to talk, and their faces were expressionless. In the morning, each of
them went out carrying a bag; men and women dressed the same. I had stopped
over on their eaves and heard the din they made inside. They often came to

blows inside the house, sometimes even breaking the windows and frightening
me. But as soon as they went out, they turned taciturn and melancholy. I
wondered what kind of work they did. Were they under a lot of pressure?
My intuition told me that these people were hostile to us, and I said to my
wife, “You were right to tell me not to provoke those people.”
It didn’t occur to me that my wife would say, “These people aren’t the same
as the people from before. We should get in touch with them.”
I had always respected my wife; many of the things she said to me were
predictions which were realized later. Then how was I to understand what she
was saying now?
I perched on the tile roofs and watched them and eavesdropped on their
conversations, and when they flung the bags they were carrying onto the tables