Page 83 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

The footsteps continued down. Ayuan had to take another look. He saw a
black bear paw. The bear paw stopped where it was and didn’t move.
Cold sweat ran down Ayuan’s back. He didn’t dare breathe.
The bride looked contemptuous and sneered. She wasn’t the least bit afraid.
Ayuan felt really ashamed. To cover up his cowardice, he asked her again,
“What’s upstairs?”
“The swamp,” she said.
“Oh! Can we go up there?”
“When it’s dark. But in any case, you can’t leave now, so just be patient.”
Before long, it was dark, and Ayuan could see nothing. Then he realized that
the bride was no longer beside him. He had no idea whether she had gone
upstairs or slipped out of the corridor. But the bear was now going up and down
the stairs, making a ghastly noise.

Leaving the stairs, Ayuan reached the gloomy corridor. A faint light shone at
the far end of the corridor, but from where he stood he could see only a glimmer
of light. He wanted to move toward it, and he also wanted to go upstairs to see
the swamp. He couldn’t make up his mind.
Someone in a certain room asked, “Who is it? Who’s there?”
“Me. Ayuan.”
“Are you the dealer who buys kraits?”
“No. I’m a mason.”
“Get out of here. The great escape is about to start. Don’t block the road!”
Ayuan stood pressed against the wall, hoping that his corporeal self would
disappear.
The bride returned. As the two of them stood in the dark against the wall, the
bride softly recounted her story.

Originally, she was to have married after another week, but one day the
bridegroom had insisted on taking her to a park in the suburbs.
At the artificial lake, a large fish was hanging around in the shallow water
next to the shore. It began raining, and the two of them slid down the bank. Only
after they were in the lake did they find out that it wasn’t shallow but instead
was very deep, and the water was filled with aquatic plants. The bridegroom
dragged her down. Entangled in the aquatic plants, she couldn’t move; she could
only sink farther. But she kicked off the plants, broke away from her
bridegroom, and clambered up to the bank.
“It was spooky. You can’t imagine such temptation.”
“It doesn’t matter. What happened, happened,” Ayuan comforted her.
“What?”
“What I mean is that you’re still alive. In the future—”
“Didn’t you understand my story? What you mean is certainly not what I