Page 151 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

“Lu-er, didn’t you hear me call you yesterday in the rapeseed plot?”
“No.”
“At the time, I was standing in another place, and Ji aimed his spear at me. I
shouted your name. I wanted you to stop him. You—you just stood there
idiotically watching him go down in defeat. Still, that was okay. Just great. You
should learn from Ji.”
“Dad, were you the giant?”
“What are you saying? You’ve heard too many stories of monsters.”
Lu-er listlessly swept the chicken coop. Mama was drying beans in the sun.

She was cursing him as she worked.
Inwardly, Lu-er kept saying, Should I run away? Should I run away . . .
By dinnertime, he still hadn’t run away. He hated himself because of this.

Lu-er went to the cliff again. At first, he cut firewood around there. After
bundling it with rattan, he felt he had to climb the cliff again. This time, he saw a
strange thing. Plum, a girl from his village, was embroidering as she sat on the

edge of the cliff. She was unattractive and plump, but grown-ups said she was by
nature skilled in crafts, so Lu-er respected her quite a lot.
“Plum! Plum!” Lu-er’s voice was shaking with fear.
Plum didn’t answer. She sat there, cross-legged.
Lu-er’s feet went out from under him and he sat on the ground. He crawled,
doglike, over to her.
“Plum, tell me, what’s down below?”
“Three lambs.” She turned her head and spoke earnestly.
“Don’t you get dizzy when you look across the way?”
“No. When I embroider at home, I do get dizzy, but here I’m fine.”
“That’s strange. I thought everyone was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of the things across the way.”
Plum laughed heartily. She placed her embroidery on the ground and stood
up, facing the void next to the cliff, and somersaulted. Her soft little body
gracefully unfolded in the air. Lu-er thought she was going to fall, but she came

back as if ricocheting from an invisible wall, and stood steadily in front of him.
Lu-er rubbed his eyes, as if he didn’t believe the reality before him. Plum rushed
again at the void and flipped over, and once more she rebounded. Lu-er even
heard a puff from the air: Was it the sound of Plum knocking against the
invisible soft wall?
“Oh, I have to go back and feed the pigs!”
Picking up her embroidery, she ran off.