I Live in the Slums

by Can Xue

  Each of them went back to his own home.

  It was daylight when Lu-er’s father awakened him.

  “Lu-er, didn’t you hear me call you yesterday in the rapeseed plot?”

  “No.”

  “At the time, I was standing in another place, and Ji aimed his spear at me. I shouted your name. I wanted you to stop him. You—you just stood there idiotically watching him go down in defeat. Still, that was okay. Just great. You should learn from Ji.”

  “Dad, were you the giant?”

  “What are you saying? You’ve heard too many stories of monsters.”

  Lu-er listlessly swept the chicken coop. Mama was drying beans in the sun. She was cursing him as she worked.

  Inwardly, Lu-er kept saying, Should I run away? Should I run away . . .

  By dinnertime, he still hadn’t run away. He hated himself because of this.

  Lu-er went to the cliff again. At first, he cut firewood around there. After bundling it with rattan, he felt he had to climb the cliff again. This time, he saw a strange thing. Plum, a girl from his village, was embroidering as she sat on the edge of the cliff. She was unattractive and plump, but grown-ups said she was by nature skilled in crafts, so Lu-er respected her quite a lot.

  “Plum! Plum!” Lu-er’s voice was shaking with fear.

  Plum didn’t answer. She sat there, cross-legged.

  Lu-er’s feet went out from under him and he sat on the ground. He crawled, doglike, over to her.

  “Plum, tell me, what’s down below?”

  “Three lambs.” She turned her head and spoke earnestly.

  “Don’t you get dizzy when you look across the way?”

  “No. When I embroider at home, I do get dizzy, but here I’m fine.”

  “That’s strange. I thought everyone was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the things across the way.”

  Plum laughed heartily. She placed her embroidery on the ground and stood up, facing the void next to the cliff, and somersaulted. Her soft little body gracefully unfolded in the air. Lu-er thought she was going to fall, but she came back as if ricocheting from an invisible wall, and stood steadily in front of him. Lu-er rubbed his eyes, as if he didn’t believe the reality before him. Plum rushed again at the void and flipped over, and once more she rebounded. Lu-er even heard a puff from the air: Was it the sound of Plum knocking against the invisible soft wall?

  “Oh, I have to go back and feed the pigs!”

  Picking up her embroidery, she ran off.

  Lu-er was trying to distinguish things in that vast expanse of white. What was inside? Nothing. When he stood up, his legs shook. Oh, he could do nothing. He climbed away from the cliff.

  When he got home, his dad told him to help him clean out the pigpen.

  As they stood in the manure pit, Lu-er heard his father talking to himself: “This is truly the best place to stay.”

  Father and son were busy for a long time. They stank.

  After taking baths and washing their hair, Dad sat on a stool smoking a cigarette, and Lu-er sat there worrying.

  “Hey, Lu-er, in a few more days, you’ll be thirteen, but your mama and I are already old. I’ve been wondering recently: Are you unhappy about having been born to us? Sometimes, your mama and I wonder if you want to leave and go far away. That’s a great idea, but what’s wrong with staying in this village? If you stay, you’ll appreciate it more and more.”

  “Dad, I haven’t thought about going far away.” Lu-er rolled his eyes in fear.

  “You haven’t thought of it yet, but sooner or later you will.”

  “I won’t leave. If I did, I would die. I want to stay here my whole life and be with you! Ji feels the same,” Lu-er said fervently. He blushed, a little ashamed of his ardor.

  Dad looked him up and down, not at all pleased.

  “Then do you think the village is a good place or not?”

  Lu-er bent his head and said despondently, “I don’t like to do housework, and I don’t like to farm.” All of a sudden, he raised his head. “Today I saw something strange! It was Plum giving a performance for me! I’d love to learn to do what she does. I wonder if I can.”

  “There’s nothing that Lu-er can’t learn.” Dad’s tone turned kindly.

  “Then you’ve seen her performance?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  So his parents had thought all along that he would leave the village sooner or later. This idea made Lu-er feel a little flustered—like the idea of the collapsing cliff. He couldn’t bear to think about this in detail. Plum! Plum! Such an exciting girl! He wanted to stay in the village. His dad said there was nothing he couldn’t learn. If he practiced every day, maybe he could learn to do what Plum did? God—the motion: even thinking of it made him dizzy.

  Because Lu-er had worked hard in the pigpen that day, Mama was kinder to him. After dinner she let him go out to play. Mama said to Dad, “This child wants to go outside all the time.”

  Before he knew it, he was walking to Plum’s home. Plum was leaning against the wall next to the main entrance of her home. She was doing handstands; she had probably been doing them for a long time. Lu-er stopped in his tracks and watched her. He watched for quite a while, and she was still leaning against the wall. Lu-er thought to himself, It must be really hard to learn a skill. Just then, the door opened, and Plum’s uncle emerged.

  “There’s no point in learning this,” her uncle said. “Plum is a girl. Sooner or later, she’ll get married, so right now she can learn whatever she wants. You’re a boy. Your father expects a lot of you. You have to work hard.”

  When the uncle walked away, Lu-er approached Plum. In the dusk, he could faintly make out the sweat on her forehead.

  She ordered Lu-er, “Move aside. You’re blocking my view.”

  Lu-er stood beside her; he couldn’t keep from asking, “Plum, what are you looking at?”

  Plum didn’t answer. Lu-er circled around to the back of the house. Every once in a while, he glanced at Plum: he wanted to see just how long she could keep this up.

  He waited until the sky was completely dark, and Plum was still clinging upside down to the wall. This girl was really a superwoman! Lu-er turned around: he felt discouraged. He walked out from behind the house and squatted next to her. He whispered, “How long can you keep this up?”

  “I sleep this way every night,” she said.

  This made Lu-er sweat all over. A sound reverberated in Lu-er’s head: he seemed to be hearing Plum berating him and telling him to leave. He stood up and left. He ran into Auntie Hua on the road. Auntie Hua droned on and on. He heard some of the words clearly: “Get going. Quickly. Something nice is waiting for you!”

  Auntie Hua was always in good spirits, always saying that something nice was waiting for him. She had told him this the last time, too, and after that he had gone to the rapeseed plot with Ji. He had witnessed Ji stab the human shadow in the sky with a spear. Maybe that was the “something nice” that Auntie Hua had spoken of. What other nice thing would be waiting for him today?

  Lu-er returned to his dark home and groped his way into bed. He had just closed his eyes and fallen asleep when a flash of snow-white lightning roused him. The lightning wasn’t followed by thunder. Just then, he heard his dad talking in his sleep in the next room, “Lu-er! Lu-er! Why haven’t you run away yet—I’m so disappointed in you! You’re good for nothing!” Then he heard both his dad and his mama grinding their teeth in their sleep, as if chewing something hard.

  He was scared. He coiled up into a ball, afraid to move, intending to go on sleeping, but his dad’s voice grew louder and louder, almost as if he were hysterical and wanted to kill him. He ran outside. When he closed the door on his way out, it caused a huge, earthshaking sound, as if the house were collapsing.

  He didn’t stop until he had run straight to the Co-op. Lu-er sat at the simple table under the awning and caught his breath. He didn’t know why his eyelids were stuck together. He bent o
ver the table; he wanted to sleep, but he still didn’t fall asleep. The Co-op door creaked. Two people walked out of the store talking. To his surprise, one was his father. His father and the shopkeeper were bargaining. Dad wanted to buy some cheap cigarettes; he wanted shopkeeper Gu to sell him two at a reduced price. The shopkeeper refused. He ridiculed Dad, saying that Dad was “a loach.” Why did he say Dad was a loach? Lu-er couldn’t figure that out. He was so sleepy, he’d better not think about anything anymore. Father and shopkeeper Gu walked off into the distance on the highway.

  At last, Lu-er was awakened by a persistent, whiny little noise. He stood up and looked all around: the Co-op door was standing open; inside it was very dark. Where had Dad and shopkeeper Gu gone? Though Lu-er was afraid others would suspect him of stealing, he had to enter the shop. But the shop was by no means deserted. A saleswoman sat before a kerosene lamp counting banknotes.

  “You’re a thief, aren’t you?” she asked, glancing at him.

  On the wall to the right, a huge human shadow was swaying, just like the one Lu-er had seen that night in the rapeseed plot. Lu-er broke into a cold sweat.

  “Get out of here. Now!” the woman reproached him.

  Lu-er crouched down and made his way into an empty space in the display case. He snuggled up there without moving. He heard the saleswoman walking back and forth in front of him. She seemed to be moving goods. He even smelled her pungent, foul sweat. Suddenly, she approached him and squatted down with him. She held his hand and said in a small, shaky voice, “Kid, I’m so afraid. It’s like this every night. He wants me to die.”

  “Who?”

  “How could you not have seen him? You did see him!”

  “The one on the wall—that one?”

  “Yes. Thump my head a few times so I won’t faint from fear.”

  Lu-er turned toward what he guessed was her head and slapped it. He felt his fist land on a ball of mushy mud. It made the back of his hand slippery. He shouted, “Aiya.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Where else could I be? Next to you. You little rascal, did you come here to get killed?”

  Her voice was low and constrained, filled with fury. She pounded on Lu-er’s shoulder with something made of stone. Lu-er cried out in pain.

  Lu-er crawled out the door. The door closed tightly. He had just struggled to stand up when the woman, who was carrying a basin of water, opened the door. She threw the water all over him until he was drenched. She kept howling, “Next time, I’ll chop your head off.”

  When he got home, Dad was also there. He stopped him, held a cigarette lighter up to his face, and said, “I’ve changed my mind about you.”

  Lu-er tossed and turned in bed for a long time. He was thinking of the “nice thing” that Auntie Hua had spoken of. Then, dazed, he fell asleep. He dreamed of running away from the village and running toward the rapeseed plot. Above him, that huge dark shadow was about to press down on him . . .

  Plum taught Lu-er how to do handstands, but Lu-er soon gave it up. When he was upside down against the wall, the atmosphere all around turned gloomy, like a gale brewing. The flying sand obscured his vision. The moment he left the wall, everything returned to normal. He tried this several times, always with the same result. He rubbed his eyes until they were red. “You’re really a loser,” Plum said to him. Lu-er felt, too, that he was really good for nothing. The sparks of hope in his heart were extinguished bit by bit.

  “What do you see when you’re upside down?” he asked Plum.

  “Me? I’ve never looked all around. Hunh.” She answered self-confidently, “I’ll be the best when I’m grown up, whether I’m married or not.”

  Plum’s words startled Lu-er. He felt ashamed of himself. He despaired. Compared to Plum or Ji, he was no more than garbage. There was no place for him. Where could he run off to—a piece of garbage like him? Lu-er sighed.

  “Lu-er, you don’t want to do handstands. You don’t concentrate well enough to learn this. Let’s go to my uncle’s home. There’s something in his home that you want to see.”

  “Really? That’s weird. How do you know what I want to see?”

  “Of course I know.”

  Plum’s uncle’s home was east of the rapeseed plot. It was a one-story adobe house, half of it buried in the ground. You had to take a flight of stairs down to get inside.

  After they came to a stop inside the large half-subterranean house, they saw no one there. But when Lu-er took a closer look, he realized the house wasn’t empty: people were lying under three large beds and were now sticking their heads out and looking at the two of them. Just then, Lu-er heard a huge clap of thunder. When they had come down just now, it was a clear day; it had changed so fast! Plum whispered in Lu-er’s ear, doing her best to keep her uncle’s three sons from hearing.

  “Lu-er, do you know why they don’t sleep on the bed? They’re afraid of being killed by thunder. The thunder in this rapeseed plot is awful: once it broke uncle and auntie’s bed in half, and they were thrown to the two sides. Uncle is an experienced old sparrow, and so is Auntie. They aren’t afraid of anything. But their sons are scared out of their wits—to the point where they can’t even work. They lie under the bed every day and wait for that thing to come crashing down. I always wonder if it was on purpose that Uncle and Auntie built their house in the middle of the rapeseed plot. You know, no one builds a house in this kind of place.”

  “We’re doing just fine! Don’t you dare gossip about us!” one of the guys under the bed reproached her.

  No sooner had he said this than a loud noise crushed and scattered everything on the ground—jars and vats, kerosene lamps, bowls and utensils. Lu-er felt that his own head had been crushed. Everything went black in front of him, and he fell to his knees. He heard Plum shout, “Look! Look! There’s a large hole in the roof!”

  As she shouted, Plum raced up the stairs and disappeared from there. Lu-er climbed up, thinking of fleeing, but someone pulled at his foot and he fell with a thump. It was Uncle’s son.

  “You coward!” he snapped. “Don’t move!”

  The ones under the bed emerged. They ordered Lu-er to close his eyes and stand motionless. Lu-er heard them climb the stairs one by one and go out. He opened his eyes and took a look: the stairs had disappeared. Maybe it was a movable staircase. Claps of thunder crashed down one after the other. Lu-er felt as if he were in hell. An inner voice kept saying, You’re going to die! You’re going to die . . . Involuntarily, he rolled under the bed. The roof tiles were continually being lifted off the house. Some of them fell to the ground. The room was getting lighter. Imagining Uncle’s sons running in the rapeseed plot, he couldn’t help but admire them. This was such a strong family! But why on earth had they wanted to live in such a place? All of a sudden, Lu-er felt exhausted: even his fear couldn’t stave off an attack of sleepiness. He was dazed.

  Several people picked him up. He wanted to break away from them, but he couldn’t.

  “Shall we throw him down there?”

  “Yes!”

  He was thrown onto a soft thing below.

  “Lu-er, did you try to kill me?”

  “Where are we, Dad?” he said feebly.

  “Where else could we be? You scamp—you actually went so far as to jump from the cliff. I’ve never been happy with you, but I never imagined . . .”

  His father’s voice grew fainter and fainter, farther and farther away. A cool breeze blew against his face, and birds were chirping all around. This was so comfortable. He sat up. He didn’t hurt at all. He looked up: the golden-yellow rapeseed plot was boundless, and bees busied themselves in the flowers. Where was Plum’s uncle’s home? He stood up and looked, but he didn’t see it.

  A path in front showed him the way home.

  HER OLD HOME

  She hadn’t wanted to give up her bungalow in the city. Twenty years ago, Zhou Yizhen had come down with a serious illness. The best thing to do was sell the house and move to an old apartm
ent building in the distant suburbs—the living quarters for workers at a tire factory. She said to her husband, Xu Sheng, “Be patient for another year or two, and then you’ll be free.”

  Xu Sheng glared and retorted, “Life and death are determined by destiny. We don’t get to make these big decisions.”

  Living in the tire factory quarters was hard on Zhou Yizhen. She couldn’t remember when she began to believe that she wouldn’t die after all. She contacted a nearby woolen mill, and knitted scarves and caps for it at home. After cooking, she sat on the balcony every day and knitted, and she became steadily healthier. The air in the suburbs was better than in the city, and fresh vegetables were available. Zhou Yizhen regained her health, and the nightmare in her memory gradually dimmed.

  Xu Sheng hadn’t mentioned their former home for years because he didn’t want to make her feel bad.

  Although the city wasn’t far away by bus, Zhou Yizhen had never gone back to see their old house. She wasn’t very sentimental, but after all she had lived there half her life, had gone to primary and middle school there, and had worked in a factory, married, and given birth to her daughter. That bungalow figured in so many of her memories. Although she’d been away for twenty years, she often still lived there in her dreams. She rarely dreamed of the tire factory quarters.

  Zhou Yizhen was planning to deliver her consignment to the mill Wednesday afternoon (she had knitted some baby shoes and would earn quite a lot for this) when the phone rang. It wasn’t her daughter Jing. The woman on the other end of the line asked Zhou Yizhen when she would come to see her old home, as if they had an appointment. Zhou Yizhen remembered her the moment she heard her voice. It was the woman who had bought their bungalow all those years ago.

  Her name was Zhu Mei, a single woman five or six years younger than she. Zhu Mei worked in a design institute. Zhou Yizhen remembered the evening she turned the house over to her. Zhu Mei kept standing in the shadows behind the half-open door, as though she didn’t want others to get a good look at her expression. So many years had passed, and yet Zhu Mei was still thinking about her. Zhou Yizhen felt nervous, but she couldn’t explain why. Zhou Yizhen said she hadn’t thought about going back to see her old home, but she was grateful to Zhu Mei. It seemed she’d done the right thing in selling the place to her.