Page 74 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

so no one responded. A young female cicada fell into the web; the old bachelor
heard her brief, distinct moans, and fell into a trance for days: What did her
moans really mean? Sometimes, he thought it was suffering; sometimes, he
thought it was not only suffering but also a certain kind of extreme excitement.
Could the female cicada have sought her own destruction? He felt numb all over.
He saw the leering youth approach. He dodged, and the pellet whizzed past him.
When he’d encountered this in the past, he’d been calm. But this time he

agonized.
Why was he drawn to the slingshot? Had he felt this temptation in the past or
had it come upon him just now? He tried to call out. Once, twice, three times—
his voice was stiff and dry. Not one person noticed this. Even the youth with the
slingshot was only briefly distracted, and then he walked away indifferently. The
old bachelor was ashamed. In order to understand the temptation, he stopped
singing for three days and let himself drift. He slept and awakened, awakened
and slept, and he always heard the call of the toad that the youth had killed. Its
calls were shockingly loud. Each time he opened his eyes, he saw dazzling light
flashing between heaven and earth. It made him dizzy, and he had to close his
eyes. Ah. How could the toad be so strong? When he closed his eyes, he even
saw the old toad approach him, as if it wanted to pass on to him a mysterious

affection. Its protruding eyes seemed extremely eager. When he opened his eyes,
the toad had vanished.
It was raining. Still dazed, the bachelor didn’t hear the thunder, nor was he
aware of the heavy rain falling on him. He didn’t know how much time had
passed when the southeast wind carried the indistinct sounds of the old toad and
his fellow cicadas’ singing. It was strange, he thought, that the two different
songs could harmonize. It was even stranger when he considered that it hadn’t
stopped raining, so where were they singing? As he listened more attentively, he
thought the singing was coming from between deep layers of clouds. When he
looked through the curtain of rain, he saw that the old spider on the wooden
window frame was also absorbed in looking at the rain. He seemed to see
himself in the old spider’s manner.

The remains under the spiderweb attracted the residents of the complex. The old
bachelor’s remains were quite unusual. Although they had already broken into
four pieces, if you reassembled the pieces, it was still a complete cicada—and
his body was twice the size of ordinary cicadas. But his head had vanished. What
sort of fierce fight had taken place?
The spider had vanished, too. The youth had seen the spider, and he looked
for it behind the wooden window frame, but found no trace of it. He thought to