Page 68 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

conversations, and when they flung the bags they were carrying onto the tables
at outdoor bars, I went so far as to fly over right away and rummage in their
bags. But my cleverness in such trivial matters didn’t do any good: I didn’t

discover anything, and I had no idea what I should do to “get in touch with
them.”
I noticed that the way my wife treated these people was neither servile nor
overbearing. She often went to the ditches near their homes to grab insects to eat.
Sometimes she perched on their doors and watched cockfights.
“Their passion for life went up a notch today,” she reported excitedly to me.
But as I saw it, they didn’t have any passion for life. They merely had a kind
of unusual pastime: to shut the door and fight (maybe it was a quarrel; I couldn’t
get a good look at what was going on inside). What did my wife mean by their
passion?
“You’re really getting old. Didn’t you notice that they’re consuming more
and more kerosene in their oil lamps?”
“What oil lamps?”

“The ones that light their homes at night.”
Measuring the level of passion for life by the consumption of oil in the
lamps? All at once, I got it. My wife was remarkable! Just think: these glum
people were exhausted from working all day in the city. After eating and
cleaning up, they lay down and went to sleep: that certainly didn’t count as
feeling passionate about life. But now, they lit the oil lamps at home and
engaged in all kinds of activities (I don’t know exactly what activities). Sure
enough, this was a huge change!
To verify this, my wife and I furtively flew over to the rooftops and squatted
there. We heard explosive sounds ringing out of every house. Sometimes, bullets
even flew out of their windows and whizzed in the air. Hearing all this, my wife
and I were both frightened and excited. We wanted to fly away, and yet we also
wanted to stay here longer . . . oh, what exciting nights those were! Wine bottles
dropping and breaking! Oh, the odd cries unlike human sounds!
After we returned home, my wife said, “We’re really lucky.” I remember that
when she said this, we were distinctly aware that a huge monster had climbed

our tree, and our nest was shaking violently. This had never happened before.
My wife and I were thinking the same thing: this was revenge for our having
eavesdropped on their indoor activities. In that moment, we could have flown
away, but for some reason we didn’t move. We trembled in the nest, hoping that
the thing would descend quickly.
Later, something happened. We passed out, but we didn’t die. We were
shaken out of the nest and fell to the ground. What kind of fierce beast was this?
“It’s the school gardener,” my wife said.