The Storyteller

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  And suddenly, down below, getting farther and farther away, I saw the alligator, the river, the mud. The wind was so strong I could hardly breathe. There I was, in the air, way up high. There was Tasurinchi, the storyteller, flying. The stork was flying, and clinging to its neck, my legs twined around its legs, I was flying, too. Down below was the earth, getting smaller. There was gleaming water everywhere. Those little dark stains must be trees; those snakes, rivers. It was colder than ever. Had we left the earth? If so, this must be Menkoripatsa, the world of the clouds. There was no sign of its river. Where was the Manaironchaari, with its waters made of cotton? Was I really flying? The stork must have grown to be able to carry me. Or maybe I’d shrunk to the size of a mouse. Who knows which? It flew calmly on, with steady sweeps of its wings, letting itself be carried by the wind. Untroubled by my weight, perhaps. I shut my eyes so as not to see how far away the earth was now. Such a drop, such a long way down. Feeling sad at leaving it, maybe. When I opened them again I saw the stork’s white wings, their pink edges, the regular wingbeat. The warmth of its down sheltered me from the cold. Now and then it gurgled, stretching out its neck, lifting its beak, as though talking to itself. So this was the Menkoripatsa. The seripigaris rose to this world in their trances; among these clouds they held counsel with the little saankarite gods about the evils and the mischief of the bad spirits. How I would have liked to see a seripigari floating there. “Help me,” I’d say to him. “Get me out of this fix, Tasurinchi.” Because wasn’t I even worse off way up there, flying in the clouds, than when I was perched on the back of the caiman?

  Who knows how long I flew with the stork? What to do now, Tasurinchi? You won’t be able to hang on much longer. Your arms and legs are getting tired. You’ll let go, your body will dissolve in the air, and by the time you reach the earth, you’ll be nothing but water. It had stopped raining. The sun was rising. This cheered me up. Courage, Tasurinchi! I kicked the stork, I yanked at it, I butted it, I even bit it to make it descend. It didn’t understand. It was frightened and stopped gurgling; it started squawking, pecking here and there, flying first this way, then that, like this, to get rid of me. It nearly won the tussle. Several times I was just about to slip off. Suddenly I realized that every time I squeezed its wing, we fell, as though it had stumbled in the air. That’s what saved me, perhaps. With the little strength I had left, I wound my feet around one of its wings, pinning it down so that the stork could hardly move it. Courage, Tasurinchi! What I hoped for happened. Flying on only one wing now, the other one, it flapped with all its might, but even so, it couldn’t fly as well as before. It tired and started descending. Down, down, squawking; despairing, perhaps. I was happy, though. The earth was getting closer. Closer, closer. How lucky you are, Tasurinchi. Here you are already. When I grazed the tops of the trees, I let go. As I fell, down and down, I could see the stork, burbling for joy, flying on both wings again, rising. Down I went, getting badly scratched and battered. Bouncing from branch to branch, breaking them, scraping the bark from the trunks, feeling that I, too, was falling to bits. I tried to catch hold with my hands, with my feet. How lucky monkeys are, or any other creature that has a tail to hang by, I thought. The leaves and small branches, the vines and twining plants, the spiders’ webs and lianas would check my fall, perhaps. When I landed, the shock didn’t kill me, it seems. What joy feeling the earth beneath my body. It was soft and warm. Damp, too. Ehé, here I am. I’ve arrived. This is my world. This is my home. The best thing that ever happened to me is living here, on this earth, not in the water, not in the air.

  When I opened my eyes, there was Tasurinchi, the seripigari, looking at me. “Your little parrot’s been waiting a long time for you,” he said. And there it was, clearing its throat. “How do you know it’s mine?” I joked. “There are lots of parrots in the forest.” “Well, this one looks like you,” he answered. Yes, it was my little parrot. It jabbered, pleased to see me. “You’ve slept for I don’t know how many moons,” the seripigari told me.

  Many things have happened to me on this journey, coming to see you, Tasurinchi. It’s been hard getting here. I’d never have made it if it hadn’t been for an alligator, a kirigueti, and a stork. Let’s see if you can explain to me how that was possible.

  “What saved you was your never once losing your temper from the beginning to the end of your adventure” was his comment after I’d told him what I’ve just told you. That’s most likely so. Anger is a disorder of the world, it seems. If men didn’t get angry, life would be better than it is. “Anger is what’s to blame for there being comets—kachiborérine—in the sky,” he assured me. “With their fiery tails and their wild careering, they threaten to throw the four worlds of the Universe into confusion.”

  This is the story of Kachiborérine.

  That was before.

  In the beginning the comet was a Machiguenga. He was young and peaceable. Walking. Content, most likely. His wife died, leaving a son, who grew up healthy and strong. He brought him up and took a new wife, a younger sister of the one he’d lost. One day, coming back from fishing for boquichicos, he found the lad mounted on his second wife. They were both panting, well satisfied. Kachiborérine went away from the hut, perturbed. Thinking: I must get a woman for my son. He needs a wife.

  He went to consult the seripigari, who went and spoke to the saankarite and came back: “The one place you can get a wife for your son is in Chonchoite country,” he said. “But be careful. You know why.”

  Kachiborérine went there, knowing full well that the Chonchoites chip their teeth to sharp points with knives and eat human flesh. He’d hardly entered their territory, just crossed the lake where it began, when he felt the earth swallow him. Everything went dark. I’ve fallen into a tseibarintsi, he thought. Yes, there he was, in a hole in the ground hidden by leaves and branches, with spears to impale peccaries and tapirs. The Chonchoites pulled him out, bruised and terrified. They wore devil masks that left their starving gullets showing. They were pleased, smelling him and licking him. They sniffed and licked him all over. And without further ado they ripped out his intestines, the way you clean a fish. There and then, they put the intestines to bake on hot stones. And as the Chonchoites, giddy, beside themselves with joy, were eating his entrails, Kachiborérine’s gutted skin escaped and crossed the lake.

  On the way back home he made a brew of tobacco. He was a seripagari too, maybe. In his trance, he learned that his wife was heating a potion with cumo poison in it, so as to kill him. Still not giving way to anger, Kachiborérine sent her a message, counseling her. Saying: “Why do you want to kill your husband? Don’t do it. He has suffered a great deal. Instead, prepare a brew that will put back the intestines the Chonchoites ate.” She listened without saying anything, looking out of the corner of her eye at the youth who was now her husband. The two of them were living together, happy as could be.

  Soon after, Kachiborérine reached his hut. Tired out from so much journeying; sad because of his failure. The woman handed him a bowl. The yellow liquid looked like masato, but it was maize beer. Blowing the foam from the surface, he eagerly drank it down. But the liquid, mixed with a stream of blood, came pouring out of his body that was nothing but a skin. Weeping, Kachiborérine realized that he was empty inside; weeping, that he was a man without guts or heart.

  Then he became angry.

  It rained. Lightning flashed. All the little devils must have come out to dance in the woods. The woman was frightened and started to run. She ran, up through the woods, to the field, stumbling as she ran. There she hid in the trunk of a tree that her husband had hollowed out to make a canoe. Kachiborérine searched for her, screaming in fury: “I’m going to tear her to pieces.” He asked the cassavas in the cassava field where she was hidden, and since they couldn’t answer, he ripped them out by the handful. He asked the maguna and the datura: we don’t know. Neither the plants nor the trees told him where she was hidden. So he slashed them with his machete and then stamped on them. De
ep in the forest, Kientibakori drank masato and danced for joy.

  At last, his head reeling from searching, blind with rage, Kachiborérine returned to his hut. He grabbed a bamboo cane, pounded one end, smeared it thickly with resin from the ojeé tree, and lighted it. When the flame leaped up, he grabbed the cane by the other end and shoved it up his anus, a good way up. Leaping about and roaring, he looked at the ground, looked at the forest. At last, choking with anger, pointing at the sky, he cried: “Where can I go, then, that’s not this cursed world? I’ll go up there above; I’ll be better off there, perhaps.” He’d already changed into a devil and he started rising, higher and higher. Since then, that’s where he’s been, up there. Since then, that’s who we see, now and again, in Inkite, Kachiborérine, the comet. You don’t see his face. You don’t see his body. Only the flaming cane he carries around in his anus. He’ll go on his way in a fury forever, maybe.

  “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 bum
p 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.