Page 173 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

After being moved here and planted along with everyone else, I didn’t change
my soaring ambitions. I hoped that I would become the legendary towering tree,
a big tree that could invite the stars to dream among my branches. In the nursery
where I previously lived, there was an old willow tree like this. His branches and
leaves fluttered in midair, covering the entire nursery. The workers in the
nursery said they’d never seen such a large tree. They called it the “king of

trees.” Back then, whenever I looked up, I saw him. I modeled my future plans
after him. I believed he was my future. The gardener smashed my hopes. At first,
he placed me in the barren sandy ground, thus slowing my maturation. Luckily,
he was still watering me. While he was doing this, I didn’t grow terribly slowly.
Probably it was my longing for growth that helped. After leaving the nursery, I
concentrated more on the speed of my maturation. Later, he abruptly stopped
watering me: there wasn’t even a transition.
I still remember the first night of hardships. Because of the hopes I harbored,
every moment and every second turned into torment. I thought he would
remember this during the night and give me some water. A terrible thirst thrust
me into a state between sleep and wakefulness. A person came and went. This
person wore a long gown with huge pockets. Each of the two pockets held a

bottle of water. When he moved, the bottled water gurgled. Was this the
gardener? I could never be sure. The second night wasn’t much better. The
infinite quiet caused me to think even more about water. I almost went crazy.
The moonlight made me jumpy, as if I had seen a ghost. The other plants in the
garden were sound asleep. I was the only one who was awake. For some reason,
I felt I wouldn’t die, and the idea that I wouldn’t die terrified me. When I was
young, the king of trees told me a story about a tree that walked. I recalled this
story, and so I tried to shift my root—the one on my left. I immediately fainted
from the pain. When I awakened, it was light.
After those two pivotal nights, my restlessness gradually subsided, and I was
kind of resigned to destiny. This didn’t mean that I gave up trying hard to change
my circumstances. It was to say, rather, that I did not again entrust my hopes for
the future to the gardener’s mercy. I believed that he would not treat me
mercifully. He was impassive as he went past me, and his head drooped. His
body language said that he felt it was no longer necessary to help me. I should
support myself and rely on my own struggle to go on living. Was this possible?

We plants could not live without water, and we couldn’t obtain water from the
air, either. We could only rely on irrigation. Of course I wanted to become the
legendary tree that walked. I tried that three times, each time failing shamefully.
How should I struggle? I became confused, as if a hammer were incessantly
pounding on me. I saw the gardener carrying clean water from the little river and
watering those who were grateful to him (they all worshipped him), while my