I Live in the Slums

by Can Xue

  Eventually I was surrounded. These little things that were as rigid as iron collided with me time and again. They rammed my stomach, my face, and my feet. I kept screaming hysterically. The more I screamed, the harder they hit me. I nearly fainted from the pain. Then that person arrived, and the little animals hid. He kicked my stomach and said, “He isn’t fit to live in this wilderness.” Why did the man call this place a “wilderness”? Plainly, it was a tunnel under the slums. If it were really a wilderness, why couldn’t one see the sky? Whatever. Why should I care? I could tell from his voice that he was the person who pushed me into the ground. I was too sore to move. I didn’t dare move, either. If I did, he would push down on my back again with his iron hands. “You can’t see,” he said. “This is an advantage for us. You can’t see us. Why do you need eyes in this sort of wilderness? Here you go—Enjoy your dinner”—a round thing rolled down my neck. I grabbed it and took a bite. It was so peppery that tears streamed down my face. It seemed like an onion, but not exactly like one. The person told me that this was what the man of the house where I had lived had sent to me. That bastard actually remembered me. Deep down, I hoped he would talk more about the man, but he became distracted again. Whistling, he stood up and left. I tried moving. All of a sudden, my pain vanished. Could it be because of this onion? I shed tears as I nibbled the onion. I felt completely satisfied. Oh, I had to do something: I would excavate! I dug quickly with my front legs, and before long I had dug out a hole. I kept digging until I was covered in mud. I hallucinated that I would dig something out. Each time I dug down, I felt that thing bounce under my claws. What was it? Come on, come out! Let me see what you are!

  Digging and digging—each time, I sensed that something wanted to emerge, but only mud came out. I had dug one hole, and the thing below still lured me on. If I could, I would wedge myself into the earth to bring it out. Just then, I remembered the little guy who was stuck in the hole he had made himself. I had misinterpreted his scream. Actually, he had screamed from pleasure, but I had thought he was distressed. What kind of precious magical land was it that could attract so many animals to dig here! Did digging eventually yield the thing they yearned for? And what were those people doing here? Hadn’t one of them handed me the food my old master sent? Perhaps a secret path led to the ground above. Oh, shit! One of those animals was digging next to me. Uh-oh, he had broken through my hole. He had come into my hole! This was a quiet guy. I touched him all over. I actually touched stiff wings on his back. I had never seen such a strange creature before. I pushed hard. I wanted to push him out, but he started snoring. He actually fell asleep in my hole. Since my hole and his were now connected, I took the opportunity to move over into his hole to take a look. Ah, this thing had dug a tunnel—a tunnel within the tunnel. Were all these guys doing the same thing? I didn’t dare go far. I sensed danger because I heard suspicious sounds in the tunnel. Maybe the noise was made by other little creatures digging somewhere nearby; maybe some things were lurking there. Who knew? I felt my way back to my hole and stayed there with this guy. I felt a little safer. Since falling down here, I had never felt safe. Although digging had lured me, I really didn’t want to go any deeper. I wasn’t an underground animal.

  It wasn’t bad at all to squat in this hole with this thing that was sound asleep. It was much better than staying out there being pushed and bumped back and forth. I looked up and saw the light again. That place seemed to have a door. The door opened, then closed. The hazy beam of light changed subtly. Deep down, I felt homesick. Lying on the clean stoves had been so comfortable, and never-ending adventure had filled the nights . . . Had the slums thrown me out? But wasn’t this also part of the slums? Those people just now—weren’t they in direct contact with the ones above? Just then a terrible odor interrupted me: the thing was farting! This was no ordinary odor—the fumes gave me a splitting headache. Utterly unnerved, I jumped out of the hole. I wished I could kill this thing for giving off such a toxic odor.

  He woke up. Fluttering his bizarre wings, he flew about two meters into the air. The fumes dissipated. I wanted to get away, but I either stepped on someone’s foot or was prodded hard by another one: they wouldn’t let me leave. That thing stopped for a while in midair and then fell into the hole with a thump. Anyhow, he had finished farting and seemed to have resumed sleeping. “Someone is really restless and can take wing in his sleep,” one person said at the side. This person fanned himself—and washed his feet in the wooden basin, just as my old master usually did in the past. “This is a flying squirrel. Sometimes it digs underground. Sometimes it flies. But it doesn’t fly more than three meters high, that’s all,” the person said while swooshing the foot-washing water. This man’s actions made me suspicious: What kind of place was this, anyway? Were there houses nearby? Pushed and squeezed by the little animals, I’d better jump back into my earthen hole. I felt a little drowsy and lay prone to rest on the flying squirrel’s back. Touching those thin but rigid wings, I wondered whether I would dream with him in midair if he flew again. I fell asleep. Before long, I heard my old master call me, “Rat! Hey, Rat! Fly up here fast! Do you see me?” I looked up and saw him in the light far away. I had no wings. How could he ask me to fly? I wasn’t yet wide awake when the flying squirrel beside me carried me up to midair. I lay prone on his back, feeling I had ascended to the edge of paradise. He was really strong! But we soon descended into the hole again. The flying squirrel had never awakened: he’d been snoring the whole time. What a lucky little thing. “Underneath the hole is another hole. Do you dare go down?” The speaker was the man washing his feet in the wooden basin. “Ha-ha. The world above is the world below.” His piercing voice made me very uncomfortable.

  All of a sudden, I remembered something from my childhood. Back then, I was close friends with a little girl in the family I stayed with. She took me swimming in the pond. Before going into the water, she would say very seriously, “You mustn’t go to the center because you might slide into a vortex.” I didn’t understand what she was saying. We would linger at the side of the pond, grabbing willow roots and smacking the water. The girl’s name was Lan. She’d say, “If you want to escape, I can help you.” I really disliked that kind of talk. Where would I escape to? I was quite comfortable on the stove in her home. And I was so afraid of the cold. I would freeze to death in the winter wilderness. Lan read my mind. She said, “You wouldn’t have to escape to another place. We can do it right here.” I thought this was nonsense. Remembering this, I sensed that she had known all along of the underground secrets of the slums. Maybe all the children in the slums were as precocious as she was. Those children had purposely fled from the houses to be frozen stiff outside, hadn’t they? What bizarre ideas entered their minds at midnight? Later on, the girl married someone from far away and left the slums. I didn’t know if that was considered “fleeing.” At home, she was a prim little child who was fearful all day long lest disaster befall her. Her dad often joked that she “had been born in the wrong place.” Now as I recalled her and her flight, I wondered if I was thought to have fled. Was this the place she hoped I would reach? It was warm here, and with no distinction between day and night you could sleep whenever you chose. You didn’t need to climb up on someone’s stove. You just needed to dig a hole and squat inside it so that others wouldn’t push you. And it was okay without light when your eyes adjusted to the dark.

  Damn, that man had poured his foot-washing water into my hole. I jumped out in time, but the flying squirrel was asleep in the slop. He didn’t care; he was still snoring. “He lives in his dreams,” the man said. I didn’t like to get muddy, especially with his foot-washing water. It was disgusting. How could the flying squirrel have been unaware of this? This foot-washing person must have been a sadist. I felt I’d better move a little way away from him. But when I started to leave, he chased me, shouting, “Where are you going? Where? Do you want to get yourself killed?” He spoke so fiercely that—once again—I didn’t dare move. I stood
next to a large rock. The little animals joined forces to push me, causing me to bump into the rock again and again. Later all my bones were about to splinter, and I lay motionless on the ground. That was when they stopped pushing me. I heard the flying squirrel fly again into the air above. The person said, “Look at him. He’s so calm. Is gracefulness learned? No, it’s innate.” The light—even farther away now—had blurred. The flying squirrel flew past in the dark. Maybe he was flying to another place. It must be great to have wings! I had touched him. His body was much like mine. The wings must have been a product of evolution. He slept and woke up whenever he wished, and he stayed or flew away whenever he wished. What a natural and unrestrained lifestyle this was! Now I understood what it meant to “live in one’s dream.” How had he become so privileged? Even if I evolved more, I probably couldn’t grow wings on my back. He was a different species. Then what was I? People called me “Rat,” but I wasn’t an ordinary rat. I was much larger. I was a maverick, a loner. I had only faint memories of my parents and wasn’t interested in the opposite sex, and so I wouldn’t have descendants. I was a thing that looked like a rat but wasn’t a rat. I was a pilgarlic who had sponged off others on stoves in the slums and had carelessly fallen into the tunnel under the slums.

  I resumed digging the hole. The moment I started, all my paws tingled with excitement. Keep at it, keep at it—something really wanted to come out. Someone next to me was also digging. He dug and dug and all of a sudden shouted “Oh, oh.” He must have dug far enough for the thing to emerge. I wanted to do that, too. I couldn’t stop. I turned toward the left and detoured away from the rock. My God—so many ants: I had struck an ants’ nest! Oh!! I jumped out of the hole and scratched and hit myself all over. I wished I could pull my ears off. Those little things had bored into my body by biting through my skin. This was much worse than death. As I was feeling desperate, I heard the person say coldly, “You really need to take a bath.” The water in his wooden foot-washing basin gurgled as he moved it. Despite my nausea, I jumped into the basin headfirst. He pushed me down with both hands and ordered me to swallow his foot-washing water. In a daze, I drank quite a lot of it. Then he poured me out along with the water, and shouted, “Go back to your digging!” He left. How could I still dig? I kept bumping into the ground with my head. I thought to myself, “It would be better to die! Better to die . . .” I rolled and rolled around on the ground. After a while, a sudden thought came to me, and gritting my teeth, I started digging again. This time, when I dug into the mud with my claws, I distinctly sensed the little things passing through my claws to return to the ground. I hadn’t been digging for very long when I began to relax. How could this be? How? I felt afraid of this land.

  I sat in my newly dug out hole, surrounded by the little animals that were rushing about. I buried my head deep in the ground. I was afraid they would bump into me. I didn’t dare dig again, for fear of getting mixed up with the death-ants again. As I squatted down there, I heard a rumbling sound coming from an even deeper spot. If I could concentrate, the sound was clear, but if I relaxed a little, it was inaudible. While listening, I remembered something that happened when I was sleeping in the blacksmith’s home. The little boy there was called “Neighbor Boy.” Neighbor Boy got up every day before daybreak. Without putting on a coat, he pushed open the gate and went out to stand on the street. The blacksmith and his wife shouted from their bed, “Boy, boy!” The hubbub made it seem as if he had committed suicide. But why didn’t they get out of bed? I walked to the door and saw Neighbor Boy standing there talking with someone. “Do you hear me? Do you hear?” he asked worriedly as he looked down, as if the other one were underground. He stamped his feet. Over here, his parents also stamped their feet in bed, “Boy, boy!” They were nearly crazy with worry. I didn’t know why I was thinking of Neighbor Boy. I was emotional, feeling that I wouldn’t see this family again. “You can’t hear me, but I can hear you,” a little girl (it seemed to be Lan) said. Where was she? Why did she seem to be underground? She had moved far away when she married, hadn’t she? “You can’t hear me, but I can hear you,” she repeated. Ah, she was indeed underground! I lay down and pressed my ear against the ground. I heard, not a rumbling sound, but Lan talking in the silver-bell voice of a child. Was Lan still a child? Hadn’t she married in a faraway village? The day she left as a bride, I’d seen her carrying her favorite little stool. Although the voice was like a silver bell, I couldn’t understand what she was saying because it wasn’t the local tongue. Bored with her jabber, I sat up and stopped listening. A wheelbarrow passed by, its wheel sounding like a child weeping. How odd that a wheelbarrow was underground. Had it always been there or had it fallen in from the hole? The wheelbarrow stopped beside me, and the person squatted down and handed me two biscuits almost as smelly as the flying squirrel’s farts. But once I had food, my stomach began rumbling with hunger. I hadn’t eaten for a long time. I wolfed the food down. The person began laughing and continued with his food deliveries. This place seemed to be a relatively orderly society. Then what was it like at the greater depth where Lan was?

  Finally, I calmed down and listened to the little girl Lan talk. When I lay down in the bottom of the hole and planted my ear against the ground, I could hear her voice. Now I heard her clearly. It wasn’t a rumbling sound, nor was it a child’s bell-like voice. Rather, it was the voice of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl. It was the Lan I knew so well, the girl who had taken me to play in the pond. Yet I still couldn’t say I understood her. I didn’t. I seemed to understand every word of that dialect, but when I put them together, I had no idea what she was saying. But now for some reason, I wanted to listen to her. Maybe I’d gained patience because of eating the smelly biscuits from the wheelbarrow, or maybe the voice brought back memories of the good times we’d enjoyed together. In any case, I lay on the ground absorbed in listening to her. How had she arrived where she was now? Although it was dark, if I looked up I could see a shaft of light from the opening to the hole. She must be in a world of total 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 dad. A person had arrived at such a deep underground, and yet could still hear everything her family members were doing above. What was that like? The women below grew quiet. Coo-coo-coo, like doves. Maybe they were going to sleep. All of a sudden, Lan said sternly, “You can’t go there!” Her loud voice startled me. And then it was quiet. I sat up. I heard busy sounds all around, and that person’s chiding. That person—he was chiding as he washed his feet. He was forever resentful of little animals for being too lazy.