Page 183 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

the tombs. She didn’t like going to that kind of place. Every spring on the grave-
sweeping holiday, she avoided going there with her parents. She was afraid.
Now she was fourteen years old, so naturally she was no longer afraid. Still, for
some reason she had never gone.
She walked through two villages and came to a third. The tombs were a
kilometer and a half past the third village. This village was called Mosquito
Village. The name reminded her of the mosquitoes buzzing everywhere in the
summer. No one was in the village. The door to each home was closed. Not even
a dog showed up. Taking a closer look, she saw a layer of snow on the flagstones
in front of each house. Was this village uninhabited? Or was everyone hiding

inside and not coming out? Stifled sounds came from some houses. Dogs. They
were suffering terribly.
A dark-faced boy who looked like a leopard was fishing in a hollow at one
end of the village. Thick ice had formed on that hollow.
“Where are you heading?” he asked fiercely as he raised his unruly eyebrows.
“I’m going to look at the tombs.”
“You’ll die. You’ll never come back from there. You’ll freeze to death.”
“Blah-blah-blah. How could that be?”
“This summer, Qibao went by himself and never came out. At least three
people have to go in together, so that if something happens, someone can come
back to report it.”
“Are there zombies out there?”
“Bah! No, not that kind of thing. You’re still going, aren’t you?”
His expression became earnest, as if he was afraid that Daisy would give up
her plan.
And so Daisy walked into that endless expanse of white. At first she could

still hear the muffled whimpers of dogs. And then all was silent.
Looking down, she saw her footsteps in the snow. Then, a little scared, she
turned around and looked again. She saw that in fact she hadn’t left any
footprints in the snow. Daisy stood there indecisively. She wanted to go back to
Mosquito Village, but Mosquito Village had disappeared and she couldn’t
remember how to get there. Luckily, the snow had stopped, and the sky was
clean and fresh. The tombs in the distance were like packages of white steamed
bread. There was no end to them! How could so many people be buried here?
Did outsiders also choose this place for their graves? Daisy recalled what the
boy had said: she was afraid of going in and being unable to get out. She also
feared freezing to death. She thought the boy had purposely made her come here.
Oh, what an evil boy!
She finally reached the tombs. All of them were exactly alike. Which one was

her brother’s? She stopped thinking about it. Silence was everywhere. She would