Page 40 - I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

to fall asleep, the brothers returned. The younger one screamed like a pig being
slaughtered. I craned my neck and saw that his right foot had been punctured by
a bamboo stick. His older brother was looking on, his two blood-red eyes staring
at each other, his fists clenched. Damn, there was no way to go on sleeping. This
younger brother whose face was frighteningly pale looked as if he would faint
from the pain. But he was still shouting, “Ricky! Ricky! I can’t die like this!”
Why was he shouting for me? Did I have something to do with his injury? Did I
make him walk barefoot all the time? I slipped out of the cardboard box and over
to the middle of the room. The younger brother was brandishing his hands like
crazy, as if fighting with someone invisible. His wide-open eyes—like a dead
fish—weren’t looking at anything. Could he be about to die? His older brother
hung his head. From behind, he seemed a little sorrowful. I edged closer to him.

Without looking, he kicked me—kicked me back under the bed. Huh? Didn’t
either of them welcome me? But why did the younger brother shout my name?
He shouted again, “Ricky, I’m going to take you along with me!” With that, he
extended his hand as if to pull out the bamboo stick. Did he think I was the
bamboo stick? Was he out of his mind? Oh, he really did pull it out! The
bamboo stick was dripping with blood! He fell from the chair onto the floor,
with his head pointed backward and his arms crossed in front of his chest. I
didn’t know if he was dead or not. I quietly climbed out from under the bed and
sniffed the bamboo stick on the floor. Oh, what was this? Under my very nose,
the bamboo stick jumped twice and turned into a soft, succulent thing. The long
sticky thing had a small eye in it. That was a shameless round eye, definitely
from my race. No wonder the younger brother had called that thing “Ricky” just
now. I looked again at his foot. The wound had disappeared. “You—eat that
thing,” the older brother said to me. I looked at him—his eyes had turned into
one! That oval eye was in the center of the space between his eyebrows. But it
still had two pupils. My image was reflected in both pupils. I was really scared. I

placed my head on the floor right away and waited to be hit. But the older
brother didn’t attack me. He just put the thing in front of my nose and coaxed
me, “Ricky, eat this. Nothing will happen if you do.” I tried to bite the thing
from the end where the eye was, but that eyeball popped right out and slid down
my throat. And so in my confusion, I did eat it. I didn’t have time to chew it. I
sensed that it stopped in my stomach, and I tasted something salty. Was it the
younger brother’s blood? I felt squeamish and just squatted in the corner
gasping. I wanted to throw up. The older brother said, “Ricky, it’ll be okay after
a while. Don’t worry.” Was it the eye that had given off the salty flavor? My
God. In the pasture, if you looked closely you could see that kind of eye hidden
under stalks of grass. That was an eye just like the ones my parents had. They
were everywhere, everywhere—I was a little dizzy. I shut my eyes, wanting to