Page 98 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

As soon as I went inside, I heard laughter from her and my son. I had to
acknowledge that although she had never married, she was a genius at enjoying
children—much better than I. Was this why I was jealous of her? But it wasn’t
pure jealousy; other factors were mixed in with it.
My cousin and my son had installed a new light switch. They’d been laughing
just now because they’d succeeded. Of course this was much more convenient,
but I had forbidden my son to handle electrical wires. He was too young and

didn’t understand the basic guidelines. When I looked inside the room, I was
startled: they had taken the wooden box down from the loft and placed it on the
chair so they could stand on it to work on the light switch. In stepping on the
box, they’d left several footprints on it. I rushed over and took the box down,
and staring at my cousin I spat out the words slowly through clenched teeth:
“This—is—the—exact—same—wooden—box—you’ve—talked—about—so
—often. It’s been up there all along.” I pointed to the loft.
“Really?” my cousin laughed. “Then how about opening it?”
“I don’t have the key. Father forgot to give it to me,” I said, disheartened.
“And you forgot to tell him you needed it, didn’t you?” Her tone softened.
With the tip of her toe, she moved the wooden box; as she did so, its contents
made a suspicious sound. Mimicking her, my son also pushed it with his foot.

The two of them pushed it back and forth. Their actions were so disgusting that I
was sorry I couldn’t slap them.
I bent down and picked up the box, took it back to the loft, and wrapped it in
cloth. As I was doing this, neither my cousin nor my son looked at me. They had
begun a game of chess. I was superfluous.
“Didn’t you say you came here because of the box?” I reminded my cousin.
“Didn’t you say there’s a sin hidden in the box?”
With her eyes fixed on the chessboard, she said, “Did I? Maybe I did.”
“It’s been up there all along. I see that you haven’t bothered to glance at it.”
“I don’t need to. I’ve known it was there all along, and I’ve known that you
didn’t have the key. Hey, did your father have a particular reason for not giving
you the key?”
“No. I’m sure he simply forgot.”
I don’t know why, but even though I had wrapped the box in cloth, from then
on all of us—my husband, my son, my cousin, and I—kept unconsciously
casting our eyes at it. This situation made me uncomfortable. Often, when we

were talking with one another, we suddenly fell silent as we looked
simultaneously at that cloth package. My cousin was always the first to avert her
eyes, and then she would titter. And I would blush from indignation.
In order to prove my cousin’s thoughts groundless, I started searching for the
key Father had left. It had to be somewhere; it couldn’t have been cremated with