Page 101 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

just . . . not . . . convinced . . .”

Because so many people were coming over, all I could do was hide the box
away, hoping to dispel their curiosity.
But visitors still showed up, sat at the table, looked down, and didn’t look at
the loft again. They didn’t say anything, either. They thought their manner
would signal that they knew all there was to know. I realized that as soon as they
left they would talk about me maliciously. Qin Yi was one of the visitors,
confirming for me that it was he who had spread the rumors. This evil was
gnawing at Father’s corpse all the time.
One day when I came home from work, my son complained to me that even
the kids at school had started talking about us. He couldn’t stand the looks he
was getting from others. His face filled with rage, he wanted me to open the box
and get it over with. “Isn’t it just a wooden box? Why did you hide it?” He said I
had hidden the box, yet he was the one who ran into trouble everywhere he went.
“They’re also gossiping about murder. It stresses me out,” my son said
indignantly.
I thought about the mistakes I’d made. But the root of all of these mistakes

stemmed from Father’s having given me a locked wooden box without a key.
Why on earth had he hated me so much?
My husband wearied of neighbors and relatives shuttling in and out of the
house. I often felt that he was surreptitiously observing me to see if I would give
in. One day, after hesitating for a long time, he finally said, “Rumei, let’s give it
up.”
“What’s this ‘us’? You’re talking about me. I’m telling you I don’t care what
you think about this matter. That’s right. You! And all the rest of you, too!” I
glared at my cousin. She was looking at the ceiling.
“Why are you so obstinate? We can break the box open and look inside. Isn’t
that the way to get to the bottom of this? What on earth are you afraid of?”
“No!” I shouted, and then dashed into the bedroom and shut the door.
I dragged the box out from under the bed and shook it next to my ear. The

contents seemed to be withered leaves, straw, or letters. When I shook it a few
more times, I thought it was none of these, but merely some broken bones or
small pebbles or wood chips. What was inside the box was really hard to
determine. Could Father have simply been playing a prank? What kind of person
did he think I was? The same as Qin Yi? Actually, what was the essential
difference between Qin Yi and me? The only difference was that up to now I
hadn’t smashed open the box. There must be someone who understood, and that
person was probably my cousin. Otherwise, why would she have said that it was
because of this that she had come to stay here? In the seven years since I put the
box in the loft, it hadn’t attracted any interest. That’s right: my cousin created