Page 85 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

under the streetlight. The face of that ghostlike woman was whiter than plaster.
He felt that the end of the world was upon him and began running for his life. At
last he exited the alley. He turned once, and then again, and looked back: no one
was following him. Only then did he slow his steps.

The two mountain folk stood at the junction of the old and new parts of the
city waiting for him.
“We waited here to say good-bye to you. It’ll be light soon,” the two said in
unison, as if they had memorized their lines.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” Ayuan waved at them.

Ayuan was sleeping in a work shed. Today was his day off. At dawn, a male
voice whispered in his ear, “This place was excavated in 1963. A large group of
prisoners bubbled up from the darkness underground.”
Ayuan sat up abruptly and shouted, “Is it the swamp? Is it the swamp?”

Strong light forced him to close his eyes. No one replied.
After getting dressed, he went outside, dragging his feet. He walked out of the
work site and reached a small street, where he bought two sesame biscuits. Then
he returned to the shed to wash his face and brush his teeth.
He had no sooner eaten the biscuits than he saw the two little mountain
people peering into the work shed.
“Can you take me to the place that was excavated?” Ayuan asked.
“Are you talking of what happened in 1963? That place is now the largest
hotel in this city,” the older one said.
“The Milky Way Hotel? I would never have imagined that. Does it have a
basement?”
“Yes, but it was locked up long ago. In the past, something awful occurred

there. Come along with us, will you? Don’t keep pestering us with questions;
that’s useless. Do you really think we’d lie to you?”
And so Ayuan went with them again. He was reluctant to give up his
innermost wish.
“I want to go somewhere I’ve never been. Not a place like the Milky Way
Hotel. Too many people are there. I want to go to a remote place that has no
people, such as an abandoned factory. Can we find such a place in the city?
Actually, I used to be quite familiar with the old section of the city, but now I
don’t recognize some of the places . . .”
Ayuan rattled on and on. The other two paid no attention to him.
After a while, Ayuan realized that the three of them had been circling around
the same two lanes, one of which led to the shantytown where he had stayed
earlier. Looking into the distance, he saw that half the sheds had been