The Storyteller (14 page)

“Lucky for you that you didn't meet him when you were flying up there clutching the stork,” Tasurinchi the seripigari said to me mockingly. “You'd have gotten burned by his tail.” According to him, Kachiborérine comes down to earth every so often to collect Machiguenga corpses from the riverbanks. He slings them over his shoulder and carries them up yonder. He changes them into secret stars, they say.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

We sat chatting there in that country where there are so many fireflies. Night had come on as I talked with Tasurinchi, the seripigari. The forest lighted up here, fell dark there, lighted up farther on. It seemed to be winking at us. “I don't know how you can live in this place, Tasurinchi. I wouldn't live here. Going from one place to another, I've seen all sorts of things among the men who walk. But nowhere have I seen so many fireflies, I swear. All the trees have begun to give off sparks. Isn't that a sign of some misfortune to come? I tremble every time I come to visit you, thinking of those fireflies. It's as though they're looking at us, listening to what I tell you.”

“Of course they're looking at us,” the seripigari assured me. “Of course they listen carefully to what you say. Just as I do, they look forward to your coming. They're happy seeing you come, happy listening to your stories. They have a good memory, unlike what's happening to me. I'm losing my wisdom along with my strength. They stay young, it seems. Once you've gone, they entertain me, reminding me of what they heard you telling.”

“Are you making fun of me, Tasurinchi? I've visited many seripigaris and I've heard something extraordinary from each one. But I never knew before that any of them could talk with fireflies.”

“Well, you're seeing one right here who can,” Tasurinchi said to me, laughing at my surprise. “If you want to hear, you have to know how to listen. I've learned how. If I hadn't, I'd have given up walking some time ago. I used to have a family, remember. They all went, killed by the evil, the river, lightning, a jaguar. How do you think I was able to bear so many misfortunes? By listening, storyteller. Nobody ever comes here to this part of the forest. Once in a great while, some Machiguenga from the river valleys farther down, seeking help. He comes, he goes, and I'm alone again. Nobody's going to come kill me here; no Viracocha, Mashco, Punaruna, or devil is going to climb all the way up here to this forest. But the life of a man so completely alone soon ends.

“What could I do? Rage? Despair? Go to the riverbank and stick a chambira thorn into myself? I started thinking and remembered the fireflies. They more or less preyed on my mind, just as they do you. Why were there so many of them? Why didn't they congregate in any other part of the forest the way they did here? In one of my trances, I learned why. I asked the spirit of a saankarite, back in the roof of my house. ‘Isn't it on your account?' he answered. ‘Couldn't they have come to keep you company? A man needs his family, if he's going to walk.' That made me think. And that was when I first spoke to them. I felt odd, talking to some little lights that kept going on and off without answering me. ‘I've learned you're here to keep me company. The little god explained it to me. It was stupid of me not to have guessed before. Thank you for coming, for being everywhere around me.' One night went by, then another and another. Each time, the forest first darkened and then filled with little lights. I purified myself with water, prepared tobacco and brews, talked to them by singing to them. All night long I sang to them. And even though they didn't answer, I listened to them. Carefully. Respectfully. Very soon I was certain they heard me. ‘I understand, I understand. You're testing Tasurinchi's patience.' Silent, motionless, serene, my eyes shut, waiting. I listened but heard nothing. At last, one night, after many nights, it happened. Over there, now. Sounds different from the sounds of the forest when night falls. Do you hear them? Murmurs, whispers, laments. A cascade of soft voices. Whirlpools of voices, voices colliding, intermingling, voices you can barely hear. Listen, listen, storyteller. It's always like that in the beginning. A sort of confusion of voices. Later on, you can understand them. I had earned their trust, perhaps. Very soon, we could converse. And now they're my kinfolk.”

That's how it's come about, it seems. Tasurinchi and the fireflies have gotten used to each other. They now spend their nights talking together. The seripigari tells them about the men who walk and they tell him their eternal story. They, for their part, aren't happy. Before, yes, they were, it seems. They lost their happiness many moons ago, though they go on glowing nonetheless. Because all the fireflies here are males. That is the misfortune that has befallen them. Their females are the lights in the sky above. That's right, the stars of Inkite. And what are the females doing in the world up above and the males in this one? That's the story they keep telling, according to Tasurinchi. Look at them, just look at them. Little lights blinking on and off. The same as words to them, perhaps. Right here, right now, all around us, they're telling each other how they lost their women. They never tire of talking about it, he says. They spend their lives remembering their misfortune and cursing Kashiri, the moon.

This is the story of the fireflies.

That was before.

In that time, they were all one family. The males had their females and the females their males. There was peace and food, and those who went came back, breathed out by Tasurinchi.

We Machiguengas had not yet started walking. The moon lived among us, married to a Machiguenga. He was insatiable; all he wanted was to be on top of her. He got her pregnant and the sun was born. Kashiri kept mounting her more and more often. The seripigari warned him: “Some evil will happen, in this world and in the ones above, if you go on like this. Let your wife alone, don't be so greedy.” Kashiri paid no attention, but the Machiguengas were alarmed. The sun might lose its light. The earth would be in darkness, cold; life would slowly disappear, perhaps. And that was what happened. There were sudden terrible upheavals. The world shook, the rivers overflowed, monstrous beings emerged from the Gran Pongo and devastated the countryside. The men who walked, dismayed, ill-counseled, lived by night, fleeing the day, to please Kashiri. Because the moon was jealous of his child and hated the sun. Were we all going to die? So it seemed. Then Tasurinchi breathed out. He blew once again. He went on blowing. He didn't kill Kashiri, but he nearly snuffed him out, leaving him only the dim light he now has. And he sent him back to Inkite, back to where he'd been before he came down seeking a wife. That's how after must have started.

So that the moon wouldn't feel lonely, Tasurinchi said to him: “Take company with you, whatever company you like.” So Kashiri pointed at the females of those fireflies. Because they shone with their own light? They reminded him of the light he'd lost, perhaps. That region of Inkite to which the father of the sun was exiled must be night. And the stars up there must be the females of those fireflies. Letting themselves be mounted by the moon, that insatiable male. And the males here, without their women, waiting for them. Is that why fireflies go mad when they see a shooting star falling, down and down in a bright ball? Is that why they bump into each other, crash into the trees, flying wildly about? It's one of our women, they must be thinking. She's escaped from Kashiri. All the males dreaming: It's my wife who's escaped, my wife who's coming.

That's how after began, perhaps. The sun lives alone too, giving light and heat. It was Kashiri's fault that there was night. Sometimes the sun would like to have a family. To be near his father, however wicked he's been. He must go looking for him. And that's why he goes down, over and over again. That's what sunsets are, it seems. That's why we began walking. To put the world in order and avoid confusion. Tasurinchi the seripigari is well. Content. Walking. With fireflies all around him.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

On each of my journeys I learn a lot, just listening. Why can men plant and harvest cassavas in the cassava patch and not women? Why can women plant and pick cotton in the field and not men? Then, one day, over by the Poguintinari, listening to the Machiguengas, I understood. “Because cassava is male and cotton female, Tasurinchi. Plants like dealing with their own kind.” Females with females and males with males. That's wisdom, it seems. Right, little parrot?

Why can a woman who's lost her husband go fishing, though she can't go hunting without endangering the world? If she shoots an arrow into an animal, the mother of things suffers, they say. That may be so. I was thinking about taboos and dangers as I came. “Aren't you frightened journeying alone, storyteller?” they ask me. “You ought to take someone along with you.” Sometimes I do travel in company. If someone is going my way, we walk together. If I see a family walking, I walk with them. But it's not always easy to find company. “Aren't you frightened, storyteller?” I wasn't before, because I didn't know. Now I am. I know now I might meet a kamagarini or one of Kientibakori's monsters in a ravine or a gorge. What would I do? I don't know. Sometimes when I've put up my shelter, driven the poles into the riverbank, roofed it over with palm leaves, it starts raining. And I think: What'll you do if the little devil appears? And I lie awake all night. It hasn't ever appeared so far. Perhaps the herbs in my pouch scare it away; perhaps the necklace the seripigari hung around my neck, saying: “It'll protect you against demons and the wiles of the machikanari.” I haven't taken it off since. Anyone who sees a kamagarini lost in the woods dies on the spot, people assure you. I haven't seen one yet. Perhaps.

Traveling through the forest alone isn't a good thing either, because of the hunting taboos, the seripigari explained. “What will you do when you've gotten yourself a monkey or downed a pavita with your bow and arrow?” he said. “Who's going to pick up the dead body? If you touch an animal you've killed, you'll make yourself impure.” That's dangerous, it seems. By listening, I learned what you have to do. Clean the blood off first, with grass or water. “Clean all the blood off and then you can touch it. Because the impurity isn't in the flesh or in the bones, but in the blood of whatever has died.” That's what I do, and here I am. Talking, walking.

Thanks to Tasurinchi, the firefly seripigari, I'm never bored when I'm traveling. Nor sad, thinking: How many moons still before I meet the first man who walks? Instead, I start listening. And I learn. I listen closely, the way he did. Go on listening, carefully, respectfully. After a while the earth feels free to speak. It's the way it is in a trance, when everything and everyone speaks freely. The things you'd least expect speak. There they are: speaking. Bones, thorns. Pebbles, lianas. Little bushes and budding leaves. The scorpion. The line of ants dragging a botfly back to the anthill. The butterfly with rainbow wings. The hummingbird. The mouse up a branch speaks, and circles in the water. Lying quietly, with closed eyes, the storyteller is listening. Thinking: Let everyone forget me. Then one of my souls leaves me. And the Mother of something that is all around me comes to visit me. I hear, I am beginning to hear. Now I can hear. One and all have something to tell. That is, perhaps, what I have learned by listening. The beetle, as well. The little stone you can hardly see, it's so small, sticking out of the mud. Even the louse you crack in two with your fingernail has a story to tell. If only I could remember everything I've been hearing. You'd never tire of listening to me, perhaps.

Some things know their own story and the stories of other things, too; some know only their own. Whoever knows all the stories has wisdom, no doubt. I learned the story of some of the animals from them. They had all been men, before. They were born speaking, or, to put it a better way, they were born from speaking. Words existed before they did. And then, after that, what the words said. Man spoke and what he said appeared. That was before. Now a man who speaks speaks, and that's all. Animals and things already exist. That was after.

The first man to speak must have been Pachakamue. Tasurinchi had breathed out Pareni. She was the first woman. She bathed in the Gran Pongo and put on a white cushma. There she was: Pareni. Existing. Then Tasurinchi breathed out Pareni's brother: Pachakamue. He bathed in the Gran Pongo and put on a clay-colored cushma. There he was: Pachakamue. The one who, by speaking, would give birth to so many animals. He gave them their name, spoke the word, and men and women became what Pachakamue said. He didn't do it intentionally. But he had that power.

This is the story of Pachakamue, whose words were born animals, trees, and rocks.

That was before.

One day he went to visit his sister, Pareni. They were sitting on mats, drinking masato, when he asked after her children. “They're playing over there, up in a tree,” she said. “Be careful they don't turn into little monkeys.” Pachakamue laughed. The words were barely out of his mouth when the children they'd been, with hair and tails all of a sudden, deafened the day with their screeching. Hanging by their tails from the branches, swinging happily to and fro.

On another visit to his sister, Pachakamue asked Pareni: “How is your daughter?” The girl had just had her first blood and was purifying herself in a shelter behind the hut. “You're keeping her shut up like a sachavaca,” Pachakamue remarked. “Whatever does ‘sachavaca' mean?” Pareni exclaimed. At that moment they heard a bellowing and a scraping of hoofs on the ground. And there came the terrified sachavaca, sniffing the air, heading for the forest. “Well then, that's what it means,” Pachakamue murmured, pointing at it.

Thereupon, Pareni and her husband, Yagontoro, became alarmed. Wasn't Pachakamue upsetting the order of the world with the words he uttered? The prudent thing to do was to kill him. What evils might come about if he went on speaking? They offered him masato. Once he'd gotten drunk, they lured him to the edge of a precipice. “Look, look,” they said. He looked and then they pushed him off. Pachakamue rolled and rolled. By the time he got to the bottom, he hadn't even waked up. He went on sleeping and belching, his cushma covered with masato vomit.