I Live in the Slums

by Can Xue

  Carpenter Wen passed by, a steelyard in his hand. He said to the old man, “I’m weighing this. I have to weigh it.” He pretended to grab something from the air with his left hand, and then placed that “thing” in the tray of his steelyard. It was strange: the steelyard was like a seesaw, rising high on one side. What could be so heavy? The gossamer? But the tray of the steelyard held nothing. The old man looked closely as he finished weighing it, and said, “Oh, this has to be weighed.” Frowning, Carpenter Wen said, “I’ve been weighing things ever since the flood started last night. I’m exhausted.” Just then, I saw the two brothers standing across the street. They seemed to be staring at Carpenter Wen, but I knew their eyes could look only at each other. “What’s this?” the old man asked Carpenter Wen as he pointed to the gossamer in the sky. “It’s the thing I weighed,” Wen said, his eyes shining. He raised the steelyard, grabbed something from the air, and placed it in the steelyard’s tray. When he finished, he turned it over and weighed a new one. He was gasping for breath. The old man watched anxiously, his head following the movements. He prattled on, “Then we don’t have to be afraid of floods anymore, do we?” As he spoke, he drooled and his hands shook. He seemed to have one foot in the grave. Nearsighted, he moved closer and closer, trying to get a good look at the steelyard. He was getting in the way of Wen’s work. Wen shoved him indignantly, and he fell to the ground.

  Just then, the old woman who had hidden in the wardrobe came out. She sat at the entrance, smiling—revealing her toothless mouth. She’d been crying just now. What had made her so happy? “I, I, I . . . ,” she said with her sunken mouth. Carpenter Wen dropped the steelyard with a thud; his forehead was covered with sweat. As if waking from a dream, the old man asked him, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” “Even weighing this four or five times in a row, it weighed nothing at all. Could this mean . . .” He held his head dejectedly as if it would explode. “This happens often. Often.” The old man did his best to console him. But he snarled and ran off holding his head. He didn’t even take his steelyard. The old man picked it up. He wanted to imitate Wen and weigh mirages plucked from the air. The old woman was exhilarated. But whatever they did, they couldn’t catch any weight. Time after time, the steelyard swung down. They worked hard for a long time but had nothing to show for it. They had to give up. While this was going on, the two brothers kept watching.

  The old couple stood watching the sky: the gossamer was thickening, and soon it congealed into large drops of water dripping down. I retreated to the house to escape the rain. Why weren’t these two old people afraid of the rain? Across the street, the brothers shouted, “Flood! Flood . . .” Their voices gradually faded into the distance. The old woman looked up, as though swallowing the falling rain. What the old man did was even more straightforward: he simply lay down on the ground, letting the rainwater splash silt on his face. He closed his eyes and slept. I looked around a little in their home, hoping to find a bite to eat. This home was strange: it didn’t have even a stick of furniture. Had it been dashed away by the flood? Or had there never been any? If so, did they sleep on the floor? There was a jar on the stove. I climbed up and took a look. What I saw scared me so much I nearly fell. My heart pounded for a long time. That large jar was full of the red scorpions that I’d seen before. When I recalled the one that wouldn’t die, I had goose bumps all over. Ah, they’d been raising these things at home. I saw two of them climb up the edge of the jar trying to get out. On another side of the stove was a willow basket: inside was the bacon that was so delicious. But now I didn’t dare go over and eat it. The old woman came in. “Rat, did you find some food?” she asked. How’d she know? Then she waved her hand and “hissed” twice, and the two scorpions went down. She took meat out of the basket, cut it, and put it in a dish. She sat down and chewed the bacon slowly in her toothless mouth. She’d forgotten I was hungry. I pulled her trouser leg with my mouth, but she remained indifferent—absorbed in her meditation. Desperate, I bit her leg and swallowed down a mouthful of her flesh. Oh! I’d become a house mouse! I was so ashamed. She moved and leaned against the wall, muttering, “I—I’m in so much pain . . .” I had bitten very deep—close to the bone, but I’d drawn no blood. Her flesh was a little sour; it tasted pretty good. In a daze, I looked at the wound; I wanted to take another bite. But the old man came in. He grabbed a wooden stick and hit me. I thought my spine was broken. I lay on my stomach in the middle of the room, unable to move. “Leave him here to die!” the old woman screamed. Then, supporting each other, the two exited. They locked the door from the outside.

  Except for my eyeballs, which could still turn, my whole body was paralyzed. Was I going to die? She’d left me there to die. Did this mean that I still had to wait a while before I actually died? I lay on my stomach on the floor and thought and thought. I thought of that pasture, where an eagle circled overhead every day. I’d been accustomed to that scene. But one day, she flew so high that even though I had great eyesight, I could only look on helplessly as she disappeared into the blue sky. At that time, the whole pastureland was ebullient: all of my species emerged from their hiding places. They ran wildly all over the pastureland: everything was chaotic. The eagle never appeared again. Just then, I saw the house mouse. Hadn’t he died? I’d seen with my own eyes that his head was separated from his body. Maybe he was a brother of the dead one. God, even his expression was the same! I grew quite emotional, though I didn’t know exactly why. He approached me and smelled my butt. How strange: it was like a bird pecking at my butt, and the tickling revived me. Then I saw the bloody mess in his mouth. Ah, he was eating me. I grew so excited that my paralysis vanished. I turned and looked at my butt: he had bitten a hole in it. Although I was in pain, the tickling that had revived me was a lot better than the paralysis I had just experienced. I approached him, hoping he would take another bite out of me. But he’d eaten his fill and was weary of eating. He didn’t even smell me, but withdrew and stayed there watching me. The more I saw of him, the more I felt he was like the already dead mouse. Could he be his twin brother? That one also had a white spot on his left leg . . . How could this be merely coincidental? I remembered again that the old woman had just said I would die. Was I still going to die now? How would I die? I was facing this mouse. Before long, his swollen stomach flattened. He had a really good digestive system. When he looked at me again with starvation in his eyes, an idea came to me. I showed him my meaty chest, hoping he would take another bite. He looked me up and down, but didn’t bite. Once, I thought he was going to, but he just licked my hair, as if vacillating. In the end, he abandoned the idea again. After another cunning glance at me, he squeezed into the hole at the foot of the wall. I was disappointed! A kind of odd disappointment. What on earth did I want? Did I want to become him? He had a clear-cut objective in life, as well as his own home (that hole). He had never been like me—wandering around and choosing homes at random. Mouse—oh mouse, why didn’t you eat me? I, I didn’t know what I should do with my body. To me, this body was now superfluous.

  In the corner of the room, I licked the hole he’d bitten in my butt. The hole wasn’t bleeding nor did it hurt. Could the mouse’s saliva be a narcotic? I did my best to recall how I felt the moment he bit me, and I could only vaguely remember that it felt like being pecked by a bird. Maybe even this feeling wasn’t real. Maybe I wasn’t aware at all when he gnawed at my butt. Look, the mouse had come out again. He stared greedily at me with his shiny eyes, but he stood at the opening to the hole with no intention of coming over. When I walked a bit closer to him, he retreated a little into the hole. I was crestfallen. I gradually realized my real status in the slums.

  The slums were my home, and also the hardest place for me to understand. Generally speaking, I didn’t make a deliberate effort to understand it. Destiny drove me from one place to another. I’d been underground, I’d been to the city, and I’d lived in all kinds of homes in the slums. There were often crises in my life: the threat of death was ongoing, b
ut I was still alive. Could this be because my ancestors were living in the depths of my memory and protecting me? Oh—that boundless pasture, that eagle disappearing into the vast qi, those kin who lay on their stomachs in the underbrush! Thinking of them, I felt I knew everything and was capable of anything. But this was in my memory. The reality was absolutely different. In reality, I knew almost nothing, though I had experienced so much . . .

  Part Five

  I climbed this simply constructed blockhouse: as far as the eye could see, the rows of thatched slum houses were quietly bending their heads in the mist. I knew their humility was feigned. All these houses harbored sinister intentions. But I had to live in them. I was a son of this mystical land. Sure, it was gloomy here, but I was used to it. I had grown up here. Now in the midst of dreariness, I meditated constantly. I couldn’t get a good look at the inside of the thatched huts. They were too dark inside. Their design had totally ignored the way eyes function. Once when I moved into a house, I thought only two people lived there. Later, I found out there were twelve! I cowered in a corner of the stove: the fire came close to lapping at my skin and hair. They never stopped cooking because they had twelve stomachs to feed. With only one room, they slept anywhere. Two of them even slept under the bed. At midnight, I couldn’t locate any of them. They had disappeared. I stood on the stove and ran my eyes over the empty home. I wondered why I couldn’t keep up with these people’s train of thought.

  Once, I had moved into a house where I thought the family was small and simple. I was happy because I’d be able to get a good night’s sleep. But at midnight, an earthquake almost jolted me from the stove to the floor! By grabbing the iron hook from which bacon hung on the wall, I managed—just barely—to keep my footing. I looked back: seven or eight people were breakdancing wildly. They seemed drunk. They were being flung from one wall to another. They resembled each other, so they must be from this family. Then where were they in the daytime? Some rooms were actually deserted; they just pretended to be inhabited—a garbage can and a broom at the entrance, and the door closed but not locked. I pushed against the door, entered, jumped up to the stove, and slept in the corner. I awakened at midnight and still saw no one. I jumped down and looked for something to eat, but found nothing. The house smelled of mold. Evidently it had been unoccupied for ages. I slunk around in the darkness, a little fearful. Just then, I heard a sigh. The sound came from the ceiling. The woman who had sighed didn’t seem to be in pain. Probably she was simply tired. But the sound was incessant, and I couldn’t stand it. My chest was about to explode, and so I dashed out and wandered all night in the cold. Sure, most of the time I blended into the landlords’ lives. I hated them, because they always closed in on me, and yet, and yet, I was curious about their lives—those lives that I usually found incomprehensible. In the end, my relations with them deteriorated each time, and I left in search of another home to live in. It upset me to think of this. When was this blockhouse built? My impression was that although conspiracies riddled the slums, no major disturbance had occurred. So what was the point of building this blockhouse? To resist outside enemies? City people certainly wouldn’t come to these lowlands. People here and in the city had nothing to do with each other. I couldn’t imagine where any enemies would come from.

  It was getting dark. I ran down from the blockhouse that had gradually turned ice-cold. Another one of my species was running in front of me. He had a somewhat longer body than mine, and a bigger skull, too. A spot of white hair was growing on his left hind leg, somewhat resembling the two house mice I knew so well. But he wasn’t a house mouse! He ran to the small pond and jumped in. My God! I certainly wouldn’t jump into the icy water! At first he was still visible. He swam and swam, then disappeared. Clearly, he had dived deep. I stared blankly for a while at the edge of the pond. I thought of what had happened early this morning: the woman of the house had thrown me out. She disliked my dirtying the stove in her home. That wasn’t true, though. I ate and slept on the stove every day and so I couldn’t avoid leaving a little trace of my presence, could I? But she couldn’t put up with it! She was obsessed with hygiene. When she had nothing to do, she swept and dusted. This made absolutely no sense. I had never known any other slum dweller who did that. Such a simple, crude house. Even if it was spotless, it looked no different from any other houses here. But this woman (I knew the others called her Auntie Shrimp) never gave me a break. If I tracked in a little dirt, she brandished a broom and swore at me for a long time. At mealtime, she wouldn’t tolerate my dropping a single grain of rice or a sliver of vegetable onto the stove. She scrubbed my fur viciously with a brush every day, not stopping until I screamed. As for her, she spent a lot of time taking baths in the wooden basin. Whenever she had time, she heated water and bathed and washed her hair, as if she wanted to scrub away a layer of skin. Auntie Shrimp loved to talk at midnight. Maybe she was talking in her sleep. She always called me “the little mouse.” She tossed and turned in that wide bed and talked incessantly: “The little mouse doesn’t care about hygiene. This is dangerous. There’s pestilence all around. If you don’t want to get sick, you have to be strict about hygiene. My parents told me this secret. The year they went north and left me behind, they urged me to clean up every day. I was a sensible girl . . .”

  Early one morning, she stood up in bed and shouted, “Mouse, did you take a bath today? Something smells rotten!” She got out of bed and scrubbed me with the brush. It hurt so much that I screamed. I had always slept on the stove, but one day all of a sudden that displeased her. She said I had turned the stove into something unlike a stove. She said if this continued, she and I would both come down with the plague. With this, she threw out the jar that I slept in. Broken-hearted, I was going to jump down from the stove, and then I glimpsed the murderous intent on her face. Oh—was she going to kill me? Her face was flushed; she held a kitchen knife in her hand. I thought that the moment I jumped down from the stove, she would chop me into pieces. And so I hesitated and retreated to a corner of the stove, making room for her to clean the stove. But she didn’t do that. She kept saying, “Aren’t you coming down? You aren’t coming down?” As she spoke, she brandished the knife and pressed the back of the knife against me. I had to risk my life and jump down. She twirled the knife and chopped. Luckily, I dodged out of the way in time, and she chopped the muddy floor. The door was open, so I rushed out. Behind me, she shouted abuse, saying that if she saw any trace of me, she would kill me. How had my relationship with her evolved to this point? At first, when I drifted to her home, she had been so genial! She not only fed me well, she also arranged for me to sleep in a jar, saying this would keep the flames from lapping at my hair. But before long I experienced her mysophobia. At the time, I didn’t think it was a serious problem. One day, she suggested cutting off my claws (because they were filthy). That’s when I began to be on guard. What kind of woman was she? I started avoiding her. Luckily, it was all talk and no action. And so I kept my claws.

  She cleaned the house so thoroughly that it created endless trouble for her. For example, she had to brush the soles of her shoes whenever she entered the house. She covered the windows and doors with heavy cloth. The inside of the house became as dark as a basement. She used much more water than other people did to clean vegetables, wash dishes, and take baths. She was forever going to the well to fetch water. She was always busy. I didn’t know how she made a living. Perhaps her parents had left her some money. She wasn’t much interested in men. She merely stood in the doorway, idiotically watching a particular man’s silhouette, but she never brought a man home. She was probably afraid outsiders would make her house dirty. But then how had she taken a liking to me in the first place, and even let me in? I was even dirtier than those men, wasn’t I? And I rarely bathed with water. When I first arrived, she combed my hair with an old comb. After combing my messy hair, she threw the comb into the garbage. With some satisfaction, she pronounced me “very clean.” Now, remembering this, I thought
she was sort of deceiving herself. But she persisted in thinking that she could do anything. She was a conceited woman. From that day on, she brushed me every day. It hurt a lot. But at least I was much cleaner than before. I used to get along well with her, even though I despised her constant cleaning. Still, as long as I stayed inside the jar on top of the stove, there was no big problem. Who could have guessed that her mysophobia would worsen?

  One day, she actually found a metal brush to brush my fur. I was bruised all over from her brushing, and I screamed the way pigs do when being butchered. When she let go, I ran off and cowered under the eaves of another home. I was still bleeding from my back. After the sun set, I couldn’t stand the cold, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to endure the night and would die outside. A young girl with a pointed face noticed me. She squatted and looked me over under the dim streetlight. Dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, she was also shivering from the cold. “King Rat,” she said, “you mustn’t stay here. If you do, you’ll die because it’ll freeze tonight. Are you imitating those children? They’ve been doing this for years. As soon as they learned to walk, they went outside to sleep. That’s the way they’ve lived for a long time. Go on home, King Rat. If you don’t, you’ll die.” And so I walked back slowly. Finally I was limping with almost every step. I was cold and in pain, almost losing consciousness. When I got home, it was probably close to midnight. The light was still on, though Auntie Shrimp was in bed snoring. I climbed on top of the pile of firewood next to the stove and squatted down to rest. Then, probably because of my loud groans, Auntie Shrimp woke up. She got out of bed and looked at me by the light of the kerosene lamp. Before long, she set the lamp down, turned, took a jar of balm from the cupboard, and smeared it gently on my wounds. “Mouse, why didn’t you tell me I was hurting you when I combed your hair?” she rebuked me. This confused me greatly. What was illusion? What was reality? Did I know this woman at all? Anyhow, the balm helped. I could finally breathe, and then I fell asleep on the woodpile.