The Storyteller

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  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.

  When he opened his eyes, he was amazed. Pareni was watching him from the edge. “Help me out of here!” he begged her. “Change yourself into an animal and climb up the precipice yourself,” she mocked him. “Isn’t that what you do to Machiguengas?” Following her advice, Pachakamue spoke the word “sankori.” And there and then he changed himself into a sankori ant, the one that builds a hanging nest in a tree trunk or on a cliff. But this time the little ant’s constructions behaved oddly; they fell apart each time they had nearly reached the edge of the precipice. “What do I do now?” moaned the speaker-of-words in despair. Pareni counseled him: “Make something grow between the stones, with words, and climb up it.” Pachakamue said, “Reed,” and a reed sprouted and grew. But every time he hoisted himself up it, the reed broke in two and he rolled to the bottom of the ravine.

  So then Pachakamue set off in the opposite direction, following the curve of the precipice. He was furious, saying, “I’ll wreak havoc.” Yagontoro took off after him to kill him. It was a long, hard chase. Moons went by and Pachakamue’s trail grew faint. One morning, Yagontoro came across a maize plant. In a trance, he learned that the plant had grown from toasted maize seeds that Pachakamue was carrying in his pouch; they had fallen to the ground without his noticing. He was catching up with him at last. And not long after, he spied him. Pachakamue was damming a river, blocking its flow by rolling trees and boulders down into the water. He was trying to change its course so as to flood a cluster of huts and drown the Machiguengas. He was still in a rage, farting furiously. There in the forest, Kientibakori and his kamagarinis must have been dancing, drunk with joy.

  Then Yagontoro spoke to him. He made him think things over, and persuaded him, it seems. He suggested they go back to Pareni together. But soon after they had set out, he killed him. A storm arose that made the rivers boil and uprooted many trees. The rain came down in torrents; the thunder rolled. Unperturbed, Yagontoro went on cutting the head off Pachakamue’s corpse. Then he drove two chonta thorns through the head, a vertical one and a horizontal one, and buried it in a secret place. But he neglected to cut off the tongue, a mistake we’re still paying for. As long as we don’t cut it off, we’ll go on being in danger, it seems. Because sometimes that tongue speaks, putting things all out of kilter. It is not known where the head is buried. The place stinks of rotten fish, they say. And the ferns around it give off smoke continually, like a fire that’s going out.

  After cutting Pachakamue’s head off, Yagontoro set out to return to Pareni. He was pleased, believing he had saved this world from disorder. Now everyone will be able to live in peace, he was no doubt thinking. But he hadn’t walked far when he started feeling sluggish. And why was it such slow going? Horrified, he saw that his legs were insect legs, his hands antennae, his arms now wings. Instead of being a man who walks, he was now a carachupa, just what his name says he is. Beneath the forest, choking on earth, through the two darts piercing it, Pachakamue’s tongue had said: “Yagontoro.” And so Yagontoro had become a yagontoro.

  Dead and decapitated, Pachakamue went on transforming things so they would be like his words. What was going to happen to the world? By then, Pareni had another husband and was walking, content. One morning, as she was weaving a cushma, crossing and uncrossing the cotton threads, her husband came to lick the sweat running down her back. “You look like a little bee that sucks flowers,” said a voice from deep within the earth. He heard no more, for he was flying about, a happy buzzing bee borne lightly on the air.

  Shortly thereafter, Pareni married Tzonkiri, who was still a man
. He noticed that every time he came back from weeding the cassava patch, his wife gave him unknown fish to eat: boquichicos. What river or lake did they come from? Pareni never ate a single mouthful of them. Tzonkiri suspected that something unusual was happening. Instead of going to his cassava patch, he hid in the underbrush and watched. What he saw gave him a terrible scare: the fish were coming out from between Pareni’s legs. She was giving birth to them, like children. Tzonkiri was enraged. He threw himself upon her to kill her. But before he could do so, a distant voice, from out of the earth, spoke his name. Who ever heard of a hummingbird killing a woman? “You’ll never eat boquichicos again,” Pareni mocked. “You’ll go from flower to flower now, sipping pollen.” And since then, Tzonkiri has been what he is.

  By now, Pareni didn’t want another husband. Together with her daughter, she started walking. She climbed into a canoe and went up the rivers; she clambered up ravines, made her way through tangled forests. After many moons, the two of them reached the Cerro de la Sal. Where both of them heard, from far, far away, words of the buried head that turned them into stone. They are now two great gray rocks, covered with moss. They are still there, perhaps. The Machiguengas used to sit in the shadow of them, drinking masato and talking together, it seems. When they went up to collect salt.

  That, anyway, is what I have learned.

  Tasurinchi, the herb doctor, the one who lived by the Tikompinía, is walking. He gave me the herbs I carry in my pouch and explained what each little leaf and each handful is for. This leaf, the one with burned edges, is for stopping up the jaguar’s nostrils, so it can’t catch the scent of the man who walks. This other one, the yellow one, wards off vipers. There are so many of them I get them all mixed up. Each one has a different use. Against evil and strangers. So the fish in the lake will swim into the net. So the arrow doesn’t stray from the target. And, this one, so as not to trip or fall into a ravine.

  I went to visit the herb doctor, knowing he lived in country swarming with Viracochas. It’s true; they’re still there. There are lots of them. As I came along the trail, I saw boats on the river, roaring, full of Viracochas. On the sandbanks, where the turtles used to come at night to hatch their young, and where men used to go to turn them over on their backs, Viracochas are now living. They’re where the herb doctor used to live, too. These Viracochas haven’t gone there because of the turtles, or to farm, or to fell trees, it seems. But to carry off the sand and the pebbles of the river. Searching for gold, it seems. I didn’t go close; I hid from sight. But even from afar I could see that there were lots of them. They’ve built cabins. They’re here to stay, perhaps.

  I found no sign anywhere of Tasurinchi, the herb doctor, or of his kinfolk, or of any man who walks. I’ve come for nothing, I thought. I felt uneasy with so many Viracochas around. What would happen if I met up with one? I hid out waiting for darkness to fall so I could get a little way away from the Tikompinía. I climbed a tree, and hidden among the branches, I watched them. On both banks of the river they were digging up earth and stones, with their hands, poles, picks. And putting the stones in big sieves, the way you sift cassava for masato. And pounding the pebbles to pieces in troughs. Some went into the forest to hunt, and you could hear them shooting off their guns. The sound shook the trees, and the birds took fright and started squawking. With all that noise, there soon won’t be one animal left around there. They’ll go off, like Tasurinchi, the herb doctor. As soon as night had fallen, I climbed down from the tree and walked off as fast as my legs could carry me. When I was far enough away, I made myself a shelter of ungurabi leaves and went to sleep.

  When I awakened, I saw one of the herb doctor’s sons squatting beside me. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. “Waiting for you to wake up,” he said. He’d been following me since the day before, when he’d seen me on the trail leading to the river where the Viracochas are. His family had moved three moons’ journey away, upstream on a branch of the Tikompinía. We traveled slowly, so as not to run into the strangers. Getting through the forest is difficult up there. There are no trails. The trees grow very close together, intertwining, fighting with each other. Your arms get tired, hacking at the branches and the bushes that close around you, as if to say, “You shall not pass.” There was mud everywhere. We sank and slid down the slopes slippery with rain. Laughing at the sight of ourselves, scratched and filthy. At last we arrived. And there Tasurinchi was. “Are you there?” “Ehé, here I am.” His wife brought mats for us to sit on. We ate cassava and drank masato.

  “You’ve gone so far in the Viracochas will surely never come here,” I said. “They’ll come,” he answered. “It may take a while, but they’ll turn up here, too. You must learn that, Tasurinchi. They always get to where we are in the end. It’s been that way from the beginning. How many times have I had to leave where I was because they were coming? Since before I was born, it seems. And that’s how it will be as I go and come, if my soul doesn’t stay in the worlds beyond, that is. We’ve always been leaving because someone was coming. How many places have I lived in? Who knows, but there have been any number of them. Saying: ‘We’re going to look for a place so hard to reach, amid such a tangle, that they’ll never come. And if they do, they’ll never want to stay there.’ But they’ve always come and they’ve always wanted to stay. That’s just how it is. No mistake about it. They’ll come and I’ll go. Is that a bad thing? No, that’s a good thing. It must be our destiny, Tasurinchi. Aren’t we the ones who walk? So, then, we should thank the Mashcos and the Punarunas. The Viracochas too. Do they invade the places where we live? They force us to fulfill our obligation. Without them, we’d become corrupt. The sun would fall, perhaps. The world would be darkness, the earth belong to Kashiri. There would be no men, and surely much cold.”

  Tasurinchi, the herb doctor, speaks with the voice of an hablador.

  According to him, the worst time was the tree-bleeding. He hadn’t lived through it himself, but his father and mothers had. And he’d heard so many stories that it was as though he had. “So many that I sometimes think I, too, wounded the tree trunks to drain off their milk, and I, too, was hunted down, like a peccary, to be taken off to the camps.” When things like that happen, they don’t disappear. They linger on in one of the four worlds, and the seripigari can go see them in his trance. Those who see them come back heart-stricken, it seems, their teeth chattering with sickened disgust. The fear was so great and the confusion such that there was no trust left. Nobody believed anybody, the sons suspecting that their fathers would hunt them, and the fathers thinking the sons would cast them in chains and take them off to the camps if they ever once let their guard down. “They didn’t need magic to steal the people they needed. They got as many as they wanted, through sheer cunning. The Viracochas must be wise,” Tasurinchi said in awe.

  In the beginning they scoured the countryside, hunting people. They went into the settlements, shooting off their guns. Their dogs barked and bit; they, too, were hunters. Overwhelmed by the noise, the men who walk took fright, like the birds I saw by the river. But they couldn’t take wing. They trapped them in their huts. They trapped them on the trails, and in their canoes if they took to the river. Get a move on, damn you! Move along there, Machiguenga! They carried off the ones who had hands to bleed the trees. They didn’t take the newborn or old people. “They’re of no use,” they said. But they carried off the women too, to look after the fields and prepare food. Get along there! Get along there! They entered the camps with a rope around their necks. All those who had been caught were there. Get along there, Machiguenga! Get along there, Piro! Get along there, Yaminahua! Get along there, Ashaninka! And there they stayed, all mixed together. They were of great use to the Viracochas, it seems; they were pleased. Few left the camps. They would go quickly, so enraged or so sad their souls wouldn’t come back, perhaps.

  The worst, says Tasurinchi, the herb doctor, was when the camps began to be short of men because so many went. Get on with it, damn you! But
they couldn’t. They had no strength left. Too weak to lift their arms, they were slowly dying. The Viracochas were furious. “What will we do without workmen?” they said. “What are we going to do?” Then they told the ones who were tied up to go out and hunt people. “Buy your freedom,” they said. “And presents as well. Here’s food. And clothes. And here’s a gun, too. Does that suit you?” It suited all of them, it seems. They said to each of the Piros: “Catch three Machiguengas and you can go forever. Here’s a gun for you.” And to each Mashco: “Catch a few Piros and you can go home, taking your wife and these gifts with you. Take the dog to help you.” They were happy, perhaps. So as to leave the camp, they became hunters of men. Families began to bleed, just like the trees. Everyone hunted everyone. With guns, with bows and arrows, with traps, with lassos, with knives. Get along, damn you! And they turned up back in the camps, saying: “There you are, I’ve caught them for you. Give me my wife,” they said. “Give me my gun. Give me gifts. I’m going now.”

  So trust was lost. Everyone was the enemy of everyone then. Was Kientibakori dancing for joy? Did the earth tremble? Did the rivers carry away the dwelling places? Who knows? “All of us must go,” they said fearfully. They had lost knowledge, too. “What was it we did to have become so corrupt?” they wept. There were killings every day. The rivers must have run red with blood, and the trees been spattered. Women gave birth to dead children; they went before they were born, not wanting to live where everything was evil and confusion. Before, there were many men who walk; after, very few. That was the tree-bleeding. “The world has fallen into chaos,” they raged. “The sun has fallen.”