Page 8 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

STORY OF THE SLUMS

Part One

I live in the slums. I didn’t settle firmly on one place to live. I could stay
anywhere as long as it had a stove. This area produces coal: all the homes used
coal to keep fires burning at night. I just lay in a corner of the kitchen stove to
keep warm. I was afraid of the cold at night.
At the bottom of the steps was a large expanse of lowlands. The slums were
in this low-lying land. It was torture for people to live here. Even children were
disturbed at night—so much that they couldn’t sleep. They would cry out in fear,
spring out of bed, and run out the door barefoot. They would run and run in these
confined alleys, because if they stopped, they’d be frozen stiff. Their parents had
to wait until daylight to go out and bring them back. These parents were all
skinny and very dark. One could see only the two whites of the eyes swiveling in

their faces. I observed that they seldom slept at night; they just lay in bed and
dozed. And even though they were only dozing, they dreamed a lot. Not only did
husband and wife converse in dreams, neighbors also conversed through the
flimsy walls woven of thin bamboo strips. From what I overheard, I was sure
they were dreaming. Sometimes they argued in dreams, or fought, but they
didn’t come into physical contact with each other. They brandished their fists in
the air.
I forgot to comment on the houses. The houses were rowhouses, attached to
one another. Was it out of fear that these people built their houses this way? As I
saw it, one could live in any of these homes and actually be living with
everyone. Each home had a main entrance, but there weren’t many windows in
the rooms inside, and the windows were small and dark. In the winter, I couldn’t

quite remember which homes had stoves and which didn’t. If I made a mistake
and entered a home without a stove, the children in that home would pull on my
feet and refuse to let me leave. I would struggle so hard to break loose that the
skin on my feet would be scraped. The families without stoves probably ate their
food raw, and that’s why they were so wild.
I got acquainted with the house mice during the daytime. During the day, the
houses were much lighter than at night. Hearing something gnawing bones, I
thought it was the cat. I jumped down from the hearth and ran over to have a