The Storyteller Read online

  That, anyway, is what I have learned.

  Tasurinchi, the blind one, the one who lives by the Cashiriari, is well. Though he can see almost nothing most of the time, he can still work his fields. He’s walking. He says he sees more in his trance now than before he went blind. What happened to him was a good thing, perhaps. He thinks so. He’s managing things so his blindness bothers him and his family as little as possible. His youngest son, who was crawling last time I came to visit him, has gone. A viper bit him in the leg. When they noticed, Tasurinchi prepared a brew and did what he could to save him, but a long time had gone by. He changed color, turned as black as huito dye, and went.

  But his mother and father had the joy of seeing him once again.

  This is how it came about.

  They went to the seripigari and told him they were very unhappy because of the child’s going. They said to him: “Find out what’s become of him, which of the worlds he’s in. And ask him to come visit us, even if it’s just one time.” That’s what the seripigari did. In the trance, his soul, guided by a saankarite, traveled to the river of pure souls, the Meshiareni. There he found the child. The saankarites had bathed him, he had grown, he had a house, and soon he would have a wife as well. Telling him how sad his mother and father still were, the seripigari persuaded him to come back to this earth to visit them one last time. He promised he would, and he did.

  Tasurinchi, the blind one, said that a young man dressed in a new cushma suddenly appeared in the house by the Cashiriari. They all recognized him even though he was no longer a child but a young man. Tasurinchi, the blind one, knew it was his son because of the pleasant odor he gave off. He sat down among them and tasted a mouthful of cassava and a few drops of masato. He told them about his journey, from the time his soul escaped from his body through the top of his head. It was dark, but he recognized the entrance to the cavern leading down to the river of dead souls. He cast himself into the Kamabiría and floated on the dense waters without sinking. He didn’t have to move his hands or his feet. The current, silvery as a spiderweb, bore him slowly along. Around him, other souls were also journeying on the Kamabiría, that wide river along whose banks rise cliffs steeper than those of the Gran Pongo, perhaps. At last he arrived at the place where the waters divide, dragging over their precipice of rapids and whirlpools those who descend to the Gamaironi to suffer. The current itself sorted the souls out. With relief, the son of Tasurinchi the blind one felt the waters bearing him away from the falls; he was happy, knowing that he would continue journeying along the Kamabiría with those who were going to rise, by way of the river Meshiareni, to the world above, the world of the sun, Inkite. He still had a long way to go to reach it. He had to make his way past the end of this world, the Ostiake, into which all rivers flow. It is a swampy region, full of monsters. Kashiri, the moon, sometimes goes there to plot his mischief.

  They waited till the sky was free of clouds and the stars were reflected brightly in the water. Then Tasurinchi’s son and his traveling companions could ascend the Meshiareni, which is a stairway of bright stars, to Inkite. The saankarites received them with a feast. He ate a sweet-tasting fruit that made him grow and they showed him the house where he would live. And now, on his return, they would have a wife waiting for him. He was happy, it seems, in the world above. He didn’t remember being bitten by the viper.

  “Don’t you miss anything on this earth?” his kinfolk asked him. Yes. Something. The bliss he felt when his mother suckled him. The blind one from the Cashiriari told me that, asking permission to do so, the youth went to his mother, opened her cushma, and very gently sucked her breasts, the way he used to as a newborn babe. Did her milk come? Who knows? But he was filled with bliss, perhaps. He said goodbye to them, pleased and satisfied.

  The two younger sisters of Tasurinchi’s wife have also gone. Punarunas who appeared round about the Cashiriari carried her off and kept her for many moons, making her cook and using her as a woman. It was the time when she ought to have been pure, with her hair cut short, not eating, not talking to anyone, her husband not touching her. Tasurinchi said he did not shame her for what had happened to her. But she was tormented by the fate that had befallen her. “I don’t deserve to be spoken to now,” she said. “I don’t even know whether I deserve to live.” She slowly walked down to the shore of the river just as night was falling, made her bed of branches, and plunged a chambira thorn into herself. “She was so sad I suspected she’d do that,” Tasurinchi, the blind one, told me. They wrapped her in two cushmas so the vultures wouldn’t peck at her, and instead of casting her adrift in a canoe on the river or burying her, they suspended her from a treetop. A wise thing to do, for her bones are licked by the sun’s rays morning and evening. Tasurinchi showed me where, and I was amazed. “That high! How did you get way up there?” “I may not be able to see, but you don’t need eyes to climb a tree, only legs and arms, and mine are still strong.”

  The other sister of the wife of Tasurinchi, the blind one by the Cashiriari, fell down a ravine coming back from the cassava patch. Tasurinchi had sent her to check the traps he puts around the farm, which the agoutis always fall into, he says. The morning went by and she didn’t come back. They went out to look for her and found her at the bottom of the ravine. She’d rolled down; perhaps she’d slipped, perhaps the ground gave way beneath her feet. But that surprised me. It’s not a deep ravine. Anyone could jump or roll to the bottom without killing himself. She died before, perhaps, and her empty body, without a soul, rolled down to the bottom of the ravine. Tasurinchi, the Cashiriari blind one, says: “We always thought that girl would go without any explanation.” She spent her life humming songs that nobody had ever heard. She had strange trances, she spoke of unknown places, and apparently animals would tell her secrets when there was nobody around to hear them. According to Tasurinchi, those are sure signs that someone will go soon. “Now that those two have gone, there’s more food to share around. Aren’t we lucky?” he joked.

  He has taught his littlest sons to hunt. He makes them practice all day long because of what might happen to him. He asked them to show me what they had learned. It’s quite true, they can already handle a bow and a knife, even the ones who are just beginning to walk. They’re good at making traps and fishing as well. “As you can see, they won’t run short of food,” Tasurinchi said to me. I like the spirit he shows. He’s a man who never loses heart. I stayed with him for several days, going with him to set out his fishhooks and lay his traps, and I helped him clear his field of weeds. He worked bent double, pulling them out as though his eyes could see. We also went to a lake where there are súngaro fish, but we didn’t catch anything. He never tired of listening to me. He made me repeat the same stories. “That way, once you’ve gone, I can tell myself all over again what you’re telling me now,” he said.

  “What a miserable life it must be for those who don’t have people who talk, as we do,” he mused. “Thanks to the things you tell us, it’s as though what happened before happens again, many times.” One of his daughters had fallen asleep as I spoke. He woke her with one shake, saying: “Listen, child! Don’t waste these stories. Know the wickedness of Kientibakori. Learn the evils his kamagarinis have done us and can still do us.”

  We now know many things about Kientibakori that those who came before didn’t know. We know he has many intestines, like inkiro the tadpole. We know he hates us Machiguengas. He has tried many times to destroy us. We know he breathed out all the badness there is, from the Mashcos to the evil. Sharp rocks, dark clouds, rain, mud, the rainbow—he breathed them out. And lice, fleas, chiggers, poisonous snakes and vipers, mice and toads. He breathed out flies, gnats, mosquitoes, bats and vampires, ants and turkey buzzards. He breathed out the plants that burn the skin and those that can’t be eaten; and the red earth that’s good for making pots but not for growing cassava. This I learned by the river Shivankoreni, from the mouth of the seripigari. The one who knows the most about the things and the beings
breathed out by Kientibakori, perhaps.

  The time he was closest to destroying us was that time. It was no longer the time of abundance, nor was it that of the tree-bleeding. After the first and before the second, it seems. A kamagarini disguised as a man appeared and said to the men who walk: “The one who really needs help is not the sun. But rather Kashiri, the moon, who is the father of the sun.” He gave them his reasons, which set them to thinking. Wasn’t the sun so strong it made people’s eyes water if they dared look at it directly without blinking? So what help did it need? The old story about its falling and then rising again was a trick. Kashiri, on the other hand, with his faint, gentle light was always fighting against the darkness, under difficult conditions. If the moon weren’t there at night, watching in the sky, the darkness would be total, a thick blackness: men would fall down the precipice, would step on vipers, wouldn’t be able to find their canoes or go out to plant cassava or hunt. They’d be prisoners in just one place, and the Mashcos could surround them, shoot them down with arrows, cut off their heads, and steal their souls. If the sun fell altogether, it would be night, perhaps. But as long as there was the moon it would never be entirely night, just half darkness, and life would go on, perhaps. So shouldn’t men help Kashiri instead? Wasn’t this to their advantage? If they did, the light of the moon would be brighter and night would be less dark, a half light, good to walk by.

  The one who said those things appeared to be a man but he was a kamagarini. One of the ones that Kientibakori breathed out to go about this world sowing misfortune. The ones before did not recognize him. Even though he arrived in the midst of a great storm, the way little devils always arrive in the villages. The ones before didn’t understand that, perhaps. If someone appears as the lord of thunder is roaring and rain is falling in torrents, it’s not a man, it’s a kamagarini. We know now. They hadn’t learned that yet. They allowed themselves to be persuaded. And, changing their habits, they started doing by night what they had done by day before and by day what they had done by night. Thinking that Kashiri, the moon, would be brighter that way.

  Once the eye of the sun appeared in the sky, they took refuge beneath their roofs, saying to each other: “It’s time to rest.” “It’s time to light the fires.” “It’s time to sit and listen to the one who talks.” That’s what they did: they rested while the sun shone, or they gathered around to listen to the storyteller till darkness began to fall. Then, shaking off their drowsiness, they said: “The time has come to live.” They traveled by night, they hunted by night, they built their dwellings by night, they cleared the forest and cleaned the weeds and the underbrush from the cassava fields by night. They got used to this new way of life. To the point that they could no longer bear being out of doors in the daylight. The heat of the sun burned their skin and the fire of its eye blinded them. Rubbing themselves, they said: “We cannot see. How terrible this light is. We hate it.” On the other hand, their eyes had grown used to the dark and they could see in the night the way you and I can see in the daytime. They said: “It’s quite true. Kashiri, the moon, is grateful to us for the help we give him.” They started calling themselves not men of the earth, as before, or men who walk, or men who talk. But men of darkness.

  Everything was going very well, perhaps. They seemed happy, perhaps. Life went on without anything happening. They felt at peace. Those who went came back, and one way or another, there was always enough food. “We were wise to do what we did,” they said. But they were mistaken, it seems. They had lost wisdom. They were all turning into kamagarinis, but they didn’t know it. Until certain things started happening to them. One fine day Tasurinchi woke up covered with fish scales, with a tail where his feet had been. He looked like an enormous carachama. Yes, the fish that lives in water and on land, the fish that swims and walks. Dragging himself painfully along, he took refuge in the pond, muttering mournfully that he couldn’t bear life on land because he missed the water. A few moons later, when he woke up, wings had sprouted where Tasurinchi’s arms used to be. He gave a little hop, and they saw him take off and disappear above the trees, beating his wings like a hummingbird. A snout and tusks grew on Tasurinchi, and his sons, not recognizing him, shouted excitedly: “A sajino! Let’s eat it!” When he tried to tell them who he was, all he could do was snort and grunt. He had to make his escape trotting clumsily on his four stumpy legs he hardly knew how to use, pursued by a hungry horde aiming arrows and stones at him. “Let’s catch it, let’s chase it down!” they said.

  The earth was running short of men. Some had turned into birds, some into fish, others into tortoises or spiders, and went to live the life of little kamagarini devils. “What is happening to us? What misfortunes are these?” the ones who survived asked themselves, bewildered. They were helpless with fear and blind, but they didn’t know it. Once again, wisdom had been lost. “We are about to disappear,” they moaned. They were sad, perhaps. And then, amid all the confusion, the Mashcos fell upon them and there was a great massacre. They cut off the heads of many and carried off their women. It seemed that there would be no end to the catastrophes. And then it all of a sudden occurred to one of them, in his despair: “Let’s go visit Tasurinchi.”

  He was a seripigari, old by then, who lived by the river Timpía, behind a waterfall. He listened to them but said nothing. He went with them to the place where they lived. His eyes gummy with sleep, he contemplated the hopelessness and disorder that reigned in the world. He fasted for several moons, silent, concentrating, meditating. He prepared the brews for the trance. He pounded green tobacco in a mortar, pressed the leaves through a sieve, poured water on them, and put the pot on to boil till the brew thickened and bubbled. He pounded the roots of ayahuasca, pressed out the dark juice, boiled it, and let it cool. They put out the fire and covered the hut all around with plantain leaves so it would be totally dark inside. The seripigari breathed smoke on them one by one, all of them; he chanted and they answered him, chanting. Then he swallowed his brews, still chanting. They waited, breathless. He went on waving his bundle of leaves and chanting. They didn’t understand what he was saying. At last, when he’d become a spirit, they saw his shadow climb up the center pole of the hut and disappear through the roof, out the very same place the devil goes when carrying off souls. Not long after, he came back. He had the same body as before, but it was no longer him; it was a saankarite. He scolded them furiously. He reminded them of what they had been, of what they had done, all the many sacrifices since they had started walking. How could they have allowed themselves to be taken in by the tricks of their immemorial enemy? How could they have betrayed the sun for Kashiri, the moon? By changing their way of life they had upset the order of the world, disoriented the souls of those who had gone. In the darkness they were living in, the souls were unable to recognize them, didn’t know whether or not they were the right ones. That’s why the misfortunes occurred, perhaps. The spirits of those who went and came back, confused by the change, went away again. They wandered in the forest, orphaned, moaning in the wind. The kamagarini got inside bodies that had been abandoned, that had lost the support of their souls, and corrupted them; that was why they sprouted feathers, scales, claws, snouts, spurs. But there was still time. Degeneration and impurity had been brought upon them by a devil living among them, dressed as a man. They went out to hunt him down, determined to kill him. But the kamagarini had fled to the depths of the forest. At last they understood. Ashamed, they went back to doing as they had done before, until the world, life, became what they really were and should be. Sorrowful, repenting, they started walking. Shouldn’t each one do what he was meant to do? Was it not their task to walk, helping the sun to rise? They fulfilled their obligation, perhaps. Are we fulfilling ours? Are we walking? Are we living?

  Among all the many different kamagarinis that Kientibakori breathed out, the worst little devil is the kasibarenini, it seems. Small as a child, if he turns up somewhere in his earth-colored cushma, it’s because there’s somebody sick the
re. He’s out to take possession of his soul so as to make him do cruel things. That’s why sick people should never be left alone, not for a single moment. The slightest inattention and the kasibarenini has things his way. Tasurinchi says that’s what happened to him. The one who’s living by the river Camisea now. Tasurinchi. According to him, a kasibarenini was to blame for what happened over there in Shivankoreni, where everybody’s still furious, remembering. I went to see him on the little beach along the Camisea where he’d put up his hut. He was alarmed when he caught sight of me. He grabbed his shotgun. “Have you come to kill me?” he said. “Watch out, look here at what I have in my hand.” He wasn’t angry, just sad. “I’ve just come to visit you,” I soothed him. “And to talk to you if you care to listen. If you’d rather I went away, I’ll go.” “How could I not want you to talk to me?” he replied, unrolling two straw mats. “Come, come. Eat all my food, take all my cassavas. Everything is yours.” He complained bitterly because they wouldn’t let him go back to Shivankoreni. If he even goes near the place, his former kinfolk come out to meet him with stones and arrows, screaming at him: “Devil, cursed devil!”

  Worse still, they’ve asked a bad sorcerer, a machikanari, to bring evil on him. Tasurinchi caught him trying to hide in his house to steal a lock of his hair or something belonging to him, so as to be able to make him fall sick and die a horrible death. He could have killed the machikanari, but all he did was make him run away by shooting his gun off in the air. According to him, this proves his soul is pure again. “It’s not right that they should hate me so,” he says. He told me he’d gone to visit Tasurinchi, upriver, to bring him food and presents. Offering to clear a new field for him in the forest, he asked him to give him any one of his daughters as a wife. Tasurinchi insulted him: “Nit, shit, traitor, how dare you come round here? I’m going to kill you right now.” And he’d gone after him with a machete.