Page 206 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

result of the argument would guide him in his actions. His life would be
unbearably dull if he missed even a day of this kind of argument. When people
asked him where he and the queen argued, he led a bunch of people into the
kitchen, and, pointing at the iron pot of congee, he said, “This is she. We always
argue in the kitchen.” At first, everyone looked blank, and then they sort of
understood. They gave him a thumbs-up and said, “You’re a lucky man.”
The queen knew that she had a huge group of supporters whom she would
never see. They had all kinds of disabilities, but they were strongly determined.
Her relationship with them was indirect. “Sometimes indirect influence is
greater,” she proclaimed in the palace. The moment she made this proclamation,

she recalled Woman Jiao. Jiao had only one leg; she would turn eighty-five next
year. She had lived alone all her life in the house next to the tofu workshop.
People said that she used to be good at making tofu, but now she was old and
infirm and could no longer do that. One day, when the queen was returning from
the market, the throngs lining the street to welcome her included the one-legged
Woman Jiao. The queen had seen her out of the corner of her eye much earlier:
the old woman had stood on tiptoe in order to be seen. She wanted to get the
queen’s attention. The queen was greeting many people, but she didn’t speak
with Jiao. When she passed by the old woman, the queen glanced at her sharply
and then immediately looked away. But in this lightning-quick exchange, the
two women formed a long-term friendship. After this, the queen now and then
heard fragmentary news of Woman Jiao from analyzing the local atmosphere.
For instance, she knew that the old woman had resumed working in the tofu
workshop. This gratifying news allowed the queen to see the contours of the
palace in the village.
“Grandma Jiao, did you see the queen at night?” asked the little girl Binghua.

“Yes. At the time, the village sky was really bright!”
“Is the queen pretty?”
“I never got a good look at her.”
Grandma Jiao had never seen the queen clearly—she had cataracts. What she
had seen was a moon with many defects. Since she had cataracts, how had she
been able to use her gaze to forge an exchange with the queen on the road?
When Binghua asked her this, Grandma Jiao answered a little testily, “It was an
out-of-body experience.”

The young guy who had previously rushed impetuously into the queen’s home
was Yueyue. His situation was the same as Woman Jiao’s. The queen valued his
courage, and she kept nurturing him in secret. She believed that he would play a
pivotal role in Wang Village in the future. Since the first time that Yueyue had