The Storyteller (4 page)

But this did not raise a smile from Matos Mar.

“I'm serious, Dr. Porras. It's a pity, because the boy has outstanding qualities. He's intelligent, perceptive, a fine researcher, a hard worker. And yet he's taken it into his head, can you believe it, that the work we're doing is immoral.”

“Immoral? Well, when it comes right down to it, who can tell what you're up to there among the good old chunchos, under cover of prying into their customs?” Porras laughed. “I myself wouldn't swear to the virtue of ethnologists.”

“He's convinced that we're attacking them, doing violence to their culture,” Matos Mar went on, paying no attention to him. “That with our tape recorders and ball-point pens we're the worm that works its way into the fruit and rots it.”

He then recounted how, a few days before, there had been a meeting in the Department of Ethnology, at which Saúl Zuratas had flabbergasted everyone, proclaiming that the consequences of the ethnologists' work were similar to those of the activities of the rubber tappers, the timber cutters, the army recruiters, and other mestizos and whites who were decimating the tribes.

“He maintained that we've taken up where the colonial missionaries left off. That we, in the name of science, like them in the name of evangelization, are the spearhead of the effort to wipe out the Indians.”

“Is he reviving the fanatical Indigenista movement to save Indian cultures that swept over the campus of San Marcos in the thirties?” Porras sighed. “I wouldn't be surprised. It comes in waves, like flu epidemics. I can already see Zuratas penning pamphlets against Pizarro, the Spanish Conquest, and the crimes of the Inquisition. No, I don't want him in the History Department! Let him accept the fellowship, take out French citizenship, and make his name furthering the Black Legend!”

I didn't pay much attention to what I heard Matos Mar say that afternoon amid the dusty shelves covered with books and busts of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, in Porras Barrenechea's Miranor house in the Calle Colina. And I don't think I mentioned it to Saúl. But today, here in Firenze, as I remember and jot down notes, this episode takes on considerable meaning in retrospect. That fellow feeling, that solidarity, that spell, or whatever it may have been, had by then reached a climax and assumed a different nature. In the eyes of the ethnologists—about whom the least that could be said was that, however shortsighted they might be, they were perfectly aware of the need to understand the jungle Indians' way of seeing in their own terms—what was it that Mascarita was defending? Was it something as chimerical as the recognition of their inalienable right to their lands, whereupon the rest of Peru would agree to place the jungle under quarantine? Must no one, ever, have the right to enter it, so as to keep those cultures from being contaminated by the miasmas of our own degenerated one? Had Saúl's purism concerning the Amazon reached such extremes?

The fact was that we saw very little of each other during our last months at San Marcos. I was all wrapped up in writing my thesis, and he had virtually given up his law studies. I met him very infrequently, on the rare occasions when he put in an appearance at the Department of Literature, in those days next door to the Department of Ethnology. We would have a cup of coffee, or smoke a cigarette together while talking under the yellowing palms outside the main building on campus. As we grew to adulthood and became involved in different activities and projects, our friendship, quite close in the first years, evolved into a sporadic and superficial relationship. I asked him questions about his travels, for he was always just back from or just about to set out for the jungle, and I associated this—until Matos Mar's remarks to Dr. Porras—with his work at the university or his increasing specialization in Amazonian cultures. But, except for our last conversation—that of our taking leave of each other, and his diatribe against the Institute of Linguistics and the Schneils—I think it is true to say that in those last months we never again had those endless dialogues, with both of us speaking our minds freely and frankly, that had been so frequent between 1953 and 1956.

If we had kept them up, would he have opened his heart to me and allowed me to glimpse what his intentions were? Most likely not. The sort of decision arrived at by saints and madmen is not revealed to others. It is forged little by little, in the folds of the spirit, tangential to reason, shielded from indiscreet eyes, not seeking the approval of others—who would never grant it—until it is at last put into practice. I imagine that in the process—the conceiving of a project and its ripening into action—the saint, the visionary, or the madman isolates himself more and more, walling himself up in solitude, safe from the intrusion of others. I for my part never even suspected that Mascarita, during the last months of our life at San Marcos—we were both adults by then—could be going through such an inner upheaval. That he was more withdrawn than other mortals or, more probably, became more reserved on leaving adolescence behind, I had indeed noticed. But I put it down entirely to his face, interposing its terrible ugliness between himself and the world, making his relationship with others difficult. Was he still the laughing, likable, easygoing person of previous years? He had become more serious and laconic, less open than before, it seems to me. But there I don't quite trust my memory. Perhaps he went on being the same smiling, talkative Mascarita whom I knew in 1953, and my imagination has changed him so as to make him conform more closely to the other one, the one of future years whom I did not know, whom I must invent, since I have given in to the cursed temptation of writing about him.

I am certain, however, that memory does not fail me as far as his dress and his physical appearance are concerned. That bright red hair, with its wild, uncombed tuft on the crown of his head, flaming and unruly, dancing above his bipartite face, the untouched side of it pale and freckled. Bright, shining eyes, and shining teeth. He was tall and thin, and I am quite sure that, except on his graduation day, I never spotted him wearing a tie. He always wore cheap coarse cotton sport shirts, over which he threw some bright-colored sweater in winter, and faded, wrinkled jeans. His heavy shoes never saw a brush. I don't think he confided in anyone or had any really intimate friends. His other friendships were most likely similar to the one between the two of us, very cordial but fairly superficial. Acquaintances, yes, many, at San Marcos, and also, doubtless, in the neighborhood where he lived. But I could swear that no one ever heard, from his own lips, what was happening to him and what he intended to do. If in fact he had planned it carefully, and it hadn't just happened, gradually, imperceptibly, the product of chance circumstances rather than the result of personal choice. I have thought about it a lot these last years, and of course I'll never know.

After, the men of earth started walking, straight toward the sun that was falling. Before, they too stayed in the same place without moving. The sun, their eye of the sky, was fixed. Wide awake, always open, looking at us, warming the world. Its light was very strong, but Tasurinchi could withstand it. There was no evil, there was no wind, there was no rain. The women bore pure children. If Tasurinchi wanted to eat, he dipped his hand into the river and brought out a shad flicking its tail; or he loosed an arrow without aiming, took a few steps into the jungle, and soon came across a little wild turkey, a partridge, or a trumpet-bird brought down by his arrow. There was never any lack of food. There was no war. The rivers were full of fish, the forests of animals. The Mashcos didn't exist. The men of earth were strong, wise, serene and united. They were peaceable and without anger. Before the time afterwards.

Those who went came back, and entered the spirit of the best. That way, nobody used to die. “It's time I departed,” Tasurinchi would say. He would go down to the riverbank and make his bed of leaves and dry branches, with a roof of ungurabi overhead. He would put up a fence of sharp-pointed canes all round to keep the capybaras prowling about on the shore of the river from eating his corpse. He would lie down, go away, and soon after come back, taking up his abode in the man who had hunted most, fought best, or faithfully followed the customs. The men of earth lived together. In peace and quiet. Death was not death. It was going away and coming back. Instead of weakening them, it made them stronger, adding to those who remained the wisdom and the strength of those who went. “We are and we shall be,” said Tasurinchi. “It seems that we are not going to die. Those who went have come back. They are here. They are us.”

Then why, if they were so pure, did the men of earth begin walking? Because one day the sun started falling. They walked so that it wouldn't fall any farther, to help it to rise. So Tasurinchi says.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

Had the sun yet fought its war with Kashiri, the moon? Perhaps. It began blinking, moving, its light dimmed, and you could hardly see it. People started rubbing their bodies, shivering. That was the cold. That's how after began, it seems. Then, in the half darkness, confused, frightened, men fell into their own traps, they ate deer meat thinking it was tapir, they could not find the path from the cassava patch to their own house. Where am I? they said in despair, walking like blind men, stumbling. Where can my family be? What is happening to the world? The wind had begun to blow. Howling, buffeting, making off with the tops of the palm trees and pulling the lupunas up by the roots. The rain fell with a roar, causing floods. You could see herds of drowned huanganas, floating feet up in the current. Rivers changed course, rafts broke up on the dams, ponds turned into rivers. Souls lost their serenity. That was no longer going. It was dying. Something must be done, they said. Looking left and right, what? What shall we do? they said. “Start walking,” Tasurinchi ordered. They were in total darkness, surrounded by evil. The cassava was beginning to give out, the water stank. Those who went no longer came back, frightened away by the disasters, lost between the world of the clouds and our world. Beneath the ground they walked on, they could hear the slow-moving Kamabiría, the river of the dead, flowing. Seeming to come closer, seeming to call to them. Start walking? “Yes,” said the seripigari, falling into a tobacco trance. “Walk, keep walking. And remember this. The day you stop walking, you will disappear completely. Dragging the sun down with you.”

That's how it started. Moving, walking. Keeping on, with or without rain, by land or by water, climbing up the mountain slopes or climbing down the ravines. Amid forests so dense that it was night in the daytime, and plains so bare they looked like pampas, without a single bush, like the head of a man that a little kamagarini devil has left completely bald. “The sun hasn't fallen yet,” Tasurinchi encouraged them. “It trips and gets up again. Watch your step, it's dozed off. We must wake it up, we must help it. We have suffered evil and death, but we keep on walking. Would all the sparks in the sky be enough to count the moons that have passed? No. We are alive. We are moving.”

So as to live walking, they had to travel light, stripping themselves of everything that was theirs. Dwellings, animals, seed, the abundance all round them. The little beach where they used to flip salty-fleshed turtles over on their backs, the forest bubbling with singing birds. They kept what was essential and started walking. Was their march through the forest a punishment? No, a celebration, rather, like going fishing or hunting in the dry season. They kept their bows and arrows, their horns full of poison, their hollow canes of annatto dye, their knives, their drums, the cushmas they were wearing, the pouches, and the strips of cloth to carry the children. The newborn were born walking, the old died walking. When the morning light dawned, the undergrowth was already rustling as they passed; they were already walking, walking, in single file, the men with their weapons at the ready, the women carrying the baskets and trays, the eyes of each and all fixed on the sun. We haven't lost our way yet. Our determination must have kept us pure. The sun hasn't fallen once and for all; it hasn't stopped falling yet. It goes and it comes back, like the souls of the fortunate. It heats the world. The people of the earth haven't fallen, either. Here we are. I in the middle, you all around me. I talking, you listening. We live, we walk. That is happiness, it seems.

But before, they had to sacrifice themselves for this world. Bear catastrophes, sufferings, evils that would have been the end of any other people.

That time, the men who walk halted to rest. In the night the jaguar roared and the lord of thunder rolled his hoarse thunder. There were bad omens. Butterflies invaded the huts and the women had to flap straw mats at them to chase them away from the trays of food. They heard the owl and the chícua screech. What is going to happen? they said, alarmed. During the night the river rose so high that at dawn they found themselves surrounded by roiling waters carrying along logs, small trees, weeds, and corpses being smashed to bits as they crashed against the banks. They hastily felled trees, improvised rafts and canoes before the flood swallowed the desolate island the earth had become. They had to shove their craft into the muddy waters and start paddling. They paddled and paddled, and while some pushed on the poles others cried out, signaling on the right a dam approaching, on the left the mouth of a whirlpool, and over there, over there, a flick of the tail of the cunning yacumama, lying very still beneath the water, waiting for the right moment to overturn the canoe and swallow the paddlers. Deep in the forest, the lord of demons, Kientibakori, crazy with joy, drank masato and danced in the middle of a crowd of kamagarinis. Many went, drowned in the flood when a tree trunk, invisible beneath the floodwaters, split open a raft and families were swept away.

Those didn't come back. Their bodies, bloated and nibbled at by piranhas, would sometimes turn up on a beach or dangling in shreds from the roots of a tree by the riverbank. Appearances don't deceive. The ones who went like that, went. Did the seripigaris know that then? Who knows whether wisdom had yet appeared? Once birds and beasts have eaten its shell, the soul can't find its way back, it seems. It stays lost in some world, it becomes a little kamagarini devil and goes down to join those below, or it becomes a little saankarite god and goes up to the worlds above. That's why, before, they mistrusted rivers, lakes, and even side channels that weren't very deep. That's why they plied the rivers only when all the other ways were closed. Because they didn't want to die, perhaps. Water is treacherous, it's said. To go away by drowning is to die, no doubt.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

The bottom of the river in the Gran Pongo is strewn with our corpses. There must be a very great number of them. There they were breathed forth and there they no doubt return to die. That's where they must be, far below the surface, hearing the water moan as it crashes against the stones and dashes against the sharp rocks. That's why there are no turtles above the Pongo, in the mountain reaches. They're good swimmers, but even so, not one of them has ever been able to swim against the current in those waters. The ones that tried drowned. They, too, must be at the bottom now, hearing the shudders of the world above. That's where we Machiguengas started and that's where we'll end, it seems. In the Gran Pongo.

Others went fighting. There are many ways of fighting. Back then, the men who walk had paused to get back their strength. They were so tired they could hardly talk. They halted in a stretch of forest that seemed safe. They cleared it, built their houses, wove their roofs. It was a place high up and they thought the waters sent by Kientibakori to drown them wouldn't reach there, or if they did, they would see them in time and could escape. After clearing and burning off the forest, they planted cassava and sowed maize and plantain. There was wild cotton to weave cushmas, and tobacco plants, whose smell kept vipers away. Macaws came and chattered on their shoulders. Jaguar cubs sucked at the women's nipples. Women about to give birth went deep into the forest, bathed, and came back with infants who moved their hands and feet, whimpering, pleased by the gentle warmth of the sun. There were no Mashcos. Kashiri, the moon, caused no evils yet; he'd already been on earth, teaching people how to grow cassava. He had sown his bad seed, perhaps. People did not know. Everything seemed to be going well.

Then one night a vampire bit Tasurinchi as he slept. It sank its two fangs into his face, and even though he hit it with his fists, it wouldn't let him go. He had to tear it to pieces, smearing himself with its soft bones, sticky as shit. “It's a warning,” said Tasurinchi. What did the warning say? Nobody understood it. Wisdom was lost or hadn't yet come. They didn't go away. They stayed there, frightened, waiting. Before the cassava and the maize grew, before the plantains bore fruit, the Mashcos came. They didn't sense their coming, they didn't hear the music of their monkey-skin drums. Suddenly arrows, darts, stones rained down on them. Suddenly great flames burned their houses down. Before they could defend themselves, the enemy had cut off many heads and carried off many women. And taken away all the baskets of salt they had gone to the Cerro to fill. Did the ones who went like that come back, or did they die? Who knows? They died perhaps. Their spirit went to give more fury and more strength to their despoilers, perhaps. Or are they still there, wandering helplessly about the forest?

Who knows how many have not returned? Those who were killed by arrows or stones, or fell trembling from poisoned darts and bad trances. Each time the Mashcos attacked and he saw the people set upon, Tasurinchi pointed to the sky, saying: “The sun is falling. We have done something wrong. We have become corrupt, staying so long in one place. Custom must be respected. We must become pure again. Let us keep walking.” And wisdom returned, happily, just as they were about to disappear. So then they forgot about the fields they had sown, their houses, everything that could not be carried in their pouches. They put on their necklaces and their headdresses, burned the rest, and beating their drums, dancing and singing, they started walking. Once again, once again. Then the sun stopped falling down the sky worlds. Suddenly they felt it waking up, in a fury. “Now it's heating the world again,” they said. “We're alive,” they said. And they went on walking.

So, that time, the men who walk reached the Cerro. There it was. So high, so pure, rising, rising up to Menkoripatsa, the white world of the clouds. Five rivers flowed, dancing amid the salty stones. Around the Cerro were little groves of yellow ichu, with doves and partridges, with playful mice and ants that tasted of honey. The rocks were salt, the ground was salt, the river bottoms, too, were salt. The men of earth filled their baskets and their pouches and their nets, at peace, knowing that the salt would never run out. They were happy, it seems. They went away, they came back, and the salt had increased. There was always salt for those who went up to collect it. Many went up, Ashaninkas, Amueshas, Piros, Yaminahuas. The Mashcos went up. Everyone knew the Cerro. We arrived and the enemy was there. We didn't fight each other. There were no wars or massacres, only respect, they say. That, anyway, is what I have learned. And maybe it's true. Just as with the salt licks, just as with the water holes. In the hidden places in the forest where the earth is salty and they go to lick it, do animals fight each other? Who has ever seen a sajino attack a majaz, or a capybara bite a shimbillo at a salt lick? They don't do anything to each other. There they meet and there they stay, each one in its place, quietly licking the salt or the water from the ground until they've had their fill. Is it not a good thing to find a salt lick or a water hole? How easy it is to hunt the animals then. There they are, at peace, trustful, licking. They pay no attention to the stones; they don't flee when the arrows whistle. They fall easily. The Cerro was the salt lick of men, their great water hole. Perhaps it had its own magic. The Ashaninkas say that it is sacred, that spirits speak within the stone. That may be so; perhaps they talk together. They arrived with baskets and pouches and nobody hunted them. They looked at each other, that was all. There was salt and respect for everyone.

After, it was no longer possible to go up to the Cerro. After, they had to do without salt. After, anyone who went up there was hunted. Bound fast and carried off to the camps. That was the tree-bleeding. Get on with it, damn you! After, the earth was filled with Viracochas tracking down men. They carried them off to bleed trees and tote rubber. Get a move on, damn you! The camps were worse than the darkness and the rains, it seems; worse than the time of evil and the Mashcos. We were very lucky. Aren't we still walking? The Viracochas were cunning, they say. They knew people would go up with their baskets and nets to collect salt on the Cerro. They lay in wait for them with traps and shot at them. They carried off the ones who fell. Ashaninkas, Piros, Amahuacas, Yaminahuas, Mashcos. They had no preferences. Anyone who fell, if they had hands to bleed the tree, fingers to tear it open, stick a tin in it, and collect its milk, shoulders to carry, and feet to run with the balls of gum elastic to the camp. A few escaped perhaps. Very few, they say. It wasn't easy. You had to do more than run, you had to fly. Die, damn you! A bullet brought down the ones who tried to get away. One dead Machiguenga, damn you! “It's no use trying to escape from the camps,” said Tasurinchi. “The Viracochas have their magic. Something is happening to us. We must have done something. The spirits protect them, and us they abandon. We are guilty of something. It's better to stick a chambira thorn into yourself or drink cumo juice. Going like that, from a thorn or poison, of your own free will, there's hope of coming back. Those who go from a rifle bullet don't come back. They stay floating on the river Kamabiría, dead amid the dead, forever.” It seemed that men were going to disappear. But aren't we fortunate? Here we are. Still walking, still happy. After that time they never went to collect salt on the Cerro again. It must still be there, very high up, its pure soul looking the sun in the face.