Page 75 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

for it behind the wooden window frame, but found no trace of it. He thought to
himself, Could they have died together? Where had the cicada’s head gone?
The cicadas’ chorus rose again. The young cantor’s voice was jerky and
faltering. He sang hesitantly for a short while and then stopped, and the whole
chorus slumped into silence. Then this unusually prolonged silence was broken
abruptly by an enthusiastic chorus like the surf. It had never been silent before.

Was this silence an awakening? All the cicadas turned their gaze toward that
high branch. A grotesque old cicada stood in that familiar place. Everyone saw
the gigantic head and the disproportionately small body. It was he: he had
struggled to come back. He had grown another body and was concentrating on
developing that body. His fellow cicadas knew that if he put his mind to it, he
would succeed.
Then what was the significance of his body breaking apart? Maybe in those
split seconds, he was demonstrating this to his opponent, and letting the sense of
ultimate emptiness deflate its arrogance? Or the opposite: Was he regarding the
spider as his witness, and would he reveal to it the secret of rebirth? Some young
cicadas inspected below the spiderweb. They were thinking to themselves that
no matter what kind of fight it was, it veiled a frightening suicidal instinct. They

thought it was heroic and moving, and they also found it quite stimulating.
The old cicada didn’t have time to complete growing his new body before the
season changed. He squatted unmoving on the branch all day long. He dreamed
of tender leaves, of flower petals, of the tadpoles in the ditches and the water
lilies in the mountain ponds. Since he had lost his amplifier, he had no way to
communicate his ardor to the other cicadas, but in the last days before the chill
of autumn, he sensed an unusual happiness every day. He could see whatever he
wanted to see. Without even turning his head, he saw the newly arrived pair of
magpies cavorting in the small garden. Sometimes, he would also think of the
spider, and when he did, his new little legs would exude some poisonous juices,
and he would weakly call out. He was murmuring, “Who is the spider? Isn’t it
simply me . . . ?”
He became cemented to that branch.
The autumn wind destroyed the spiderweb and blew away the old cicada’s
remains. At last the sweltering heat subsided. The lonely poplar leaves took on a
nostalgic yellow color. Now only the magpies and sparrows were still singing.

They sang brokenly, off and on, artlessly, forgettably. What those old poplars
remembered was the majestic, splendid chorus. Sometimes when the chilly wind
blew in, they couldn’t help humming a little, but—startled by their own voices—
they returned to their silence and their daydreaming. The youth with the
slingshot passed by under the poplars, his expression complicated by his bizarre
thoughts.