Page 179 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

unable to see myself clearly. I conclude that I must look at my image through the
gardener’s eyes. I know that he sees a lot of things when he looks at me, but I
can’t figure out what. When I look at him (we plants use our bodies to see), his
fixed eyes embarrass me. Out of embarrassment, I can’t look at him very long,
and so I have no way of knowing what I look like in his eyes. The only thing I
know is: this person has seen through me all along. He’s the sort of strange
person who can see everything in his surroundings distinctly.
Oh, I’m so hollow! In this moment, my inner hollowness surprisingly caused

me to tremble. I trembled violently; even my roots were trembling deep in the
earth. What had I come in contact with? Something was down there! I couldn’t
be certain what it was: it was apparently something solid that didn’t move, and
yet it also seemed to be alive and movable. I felt that my roots were oriented.
Right, they spread in the direction of that thing . . . Did I touch it? No. I hadn’t
contacted it, but I was very sure it was down there. When my roots exerted
themselves to spread out and engendered this confidence, my hollow feeling
lightened a little. But I was still trembling because of the hollowness.
The Indian azalea was still muttering, “It’s really a black bear. Who can
imagine it?”
I found her words exciting, and I couldn’t help but say, “Hey!”
This time, my voice traveled to distant places. I noticed that the plants in the
garden were listening respectfully. They were no longer astonished. They
seemed to be concentrating, and my voice actually lingered a long time in
midair.
When the lingering sound vanished, the plants in the garden all began

whispering. They were saying “black bear.” Maybe they (and the gardener, too)
believed that I was the reincarnation of that savage black bear. But then why
were they so admiring? The gardener brandished his hoe in my direction. Did he
want to destroy me? No, he was helping me by loosening the soil! It was as if his
work were saying: the invisible nutrition in the air could reach my roots through
gaps in the earth.
Just then, I saw that walking plant, our garden’s wisteria. The wisteria didn’t
walk with his own feet, for he had no feet; he clung to the gardener’s back. He
went wherever the gardener went. This was so exciting! A dark color—nearly
black—arose on his body. His roots were swaying on the gardener’s back; mud
was still stuck on it. No matter how much I thought, I couldn’t figure out how he
had flown out of the ground and begun to cling to the gardener’s back. In

general, if we plants break away from the soil, the only path ahead is death. This
is probably why he hadn’t changed into a walking plant but instead clung to the
gardener’s back. He must have plotted this for a long time. Of all of us, he was
the one who was hoping the most to walk, judging by what he had said in the