Page 204 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

chief aggressively.
The village chief backtracked. He grumbled to himself, I shouldn’t have
crossed the line.
As he was thinking to himself, the village chief picked up pig manure and dog
poop. He intended to go home. The moment he turned around, he saw the black-
garbed queen standing right in the middle of the road. How had she changed into
a headless queen? The village chief wanted to detour around her. He veered left,
and the black-garbed headless person blocked the left side; he veered right, and

she blocked the right side.
“You’re really, you’re really active . . . ,” the village chief stammered. “We—
you and I—let’s dance!”
He didn’t know where his courage came from. He threw the basket of manure
to the roadside, and extended his rough hand to the queen. As soon as the
headless queen held his hand, the village chief felt that he was spinning like a
windmill. He heard himself shout, “Save me,” but where could he stop? He was
being continuously tossed into midair. He waved his arms in the air. Then he
heard someone say, “Now I see this old guy’s nature.”
At that, the village chief fell down. He sat in the mud, his butt sore from the
fall. The person who had just spoken asked, “Why did you stop dancing?”
The village chief asked if he had seen the queen.
“The queen?” The person stared. “I think that is Death!”
“Could be. I felt so good just now. Too bad she left.”
“If she hadn’t gone, could you be here? She’s not interested in you. You’re a
lousy dancer.”

The village chief picked up his basket and headed for home. He tried hard to
recall his dancing just now: he didn’t feel at all inferior and he was sure it had
been the queen.
“I danced with the queen today,” he told his wife as soon as he got home.
“My God. I saw this long ago. You’ve become another person,” his wife said.
“The queen played the role of Death; I played the role of Death’s son.”
“That’s so exciting,” his wife said.
He held his hand out to his wife, and the two of them began twirling like a
windmill. Oh, what happiness! While in midair, he thought of something and
became a little worried. “The manure, manure . . . ,” he kept saying. After he fell
to the ground, his wife asked him what he had muttered while he was dancing.
The village chief’s vision blurred, and he answered, “I left the manure outside

the door. Did you and the queen talk with each other last night?”
His wife pointed outside.
The village chief pushed the door open, and saw the crown on the ground.
“It isn’t appropriate, is it, to put the crown at the entrance to an ordinary