Page 26 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

darkness. Damn. What had she been thinking of when she went to that place to

get married? From her intonation, I guessed she was telling a story. Maybe it
was about the pond. As I listened, I recalled our friendship again. I felt I had
fallen in love with her.
I—a “rat”—had loved a girl?! I was stunned and hurriedly dismissed this idea. I
called out twice toward the deeper underground. My voice was thin, like a
child’s voice. I was unable, though, to speak as they did. When I shouted, I
merely intended to tell Lan that I had heard her and that I missed her. No sooner
had I stopped calling her than everything below turned chaotic: many voices
struggled to speak. It seemed they were all Lan’s voice, and yet it seemed they
weren’t—rather, it sounded more like a bunch of women with foreign accents
quarreling with each other. I took a deep breath and raised my voice. I shouted
again. Below, it immediately grew quiet. After a few moments of silence, even
more voices rose, louder and louder.
“Rat has a future in his work,” the person went on. “After he learns our ways,
he’ll be able to shoulder certain responsibilities. He’s come here to learn.”
He walked around next to me. I felt that he was talking to himself. Why?

What was he saying? I understood his dialect, but not what he meant. I shifted
my attention to him. Had he fallen down here? Or had he always been here?
“From the shout he made, I knew I could place my hopes on him. Since he
had gotten in touch with those down there, I was sure he would shout like this a
few times every day. The air and meals here are good for him.”
He said I had gotten in touch with “those” down there. Then should I continue
digging down? Was someone using me, and if so why? It was even noisier
below; even the mud under my feet was vibrating a little. For some reason, I
didn’t want to dig the earth separating me from those women. I was a little
afraid. In my mind, I said, Lan, oh Lan, we’re together again. Thinking this, I
felt comforted. Each time the noisy struggle stopped, I heard Lan say, “You
can’t hear me, but I can hear you.” This was all I could understand, but why did
Lan want to say this? She didn’t seem to be talking to me. Maybe she was

talking with someone underground. The flying squirrel flew over. I heard his
wings flapping—Oh! He was so free. Lan was imprisoned below. Yet when I
heard her talking, I didn’t think she was a bit upset. Instead, she seemed proud. I
recalled again that she had talked with me in the past about escaping. Maybe
there were two kinds of escape—one was to escape to the city center or run off
to another province and disappear in a boundless distant place. The other kind
was like Lan’s method—to escape below. Had she slid down from the vortex in
the pond? Back then, her dad had laughed at her for “being born in the wrong
place.” Maybe he had told her to come down. Lan was probably talking with her