Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

I am well, walking. Now I am well. The evil was in me a while ago and I thought the time had come for me to put up my shelter of branches on the riverbank. I had set out to visit Tasurinchi, the blind one who lives by the river Cashiriari. Suddenly everything started streaming out of me as I walked. I didn’t realize it till I saw my dirtied legs. What evil is this? What has entered my body? I went on walking, but I still had a long way to go to reach the Cashiriari. When I sat down to rest, the shivers came over me. I wondered what I could do, and casting my eyes all round, I finally saw a datura tree and tore off all the leaves I could reach. I made a brew and sprinkled it on my body. I warmed the water in the pot again. I heated the stone the seripigari had given me till it was red-hot and put it in. I breathed the steam from it till sleep came over me. I was like that for many moons, who knows how many, lying on my straw mat without the strength to walk, without even strength enough to sit up. Ants crawled over my body and I didn’t brush them off. When one came close to my mouth I swallowed it, and that was my only food. Between dreams I heard the little parrot calling me: “Tasurinchi! Tasurinchi!” Half asleep, half awake, and always cold, so cold. I felt great sadness perhaps.

Then some men appeared. I saw their faces above me, leaning over to look at me. One pushed me with his foot and I couldn’t speak to him. They weren’t men who walk. They weren’t Mashcos either, happily. Ashaninkas, I think they were, because I could understand some of what they said. They stood there looking at me, asking me questions I didn’t have the strength to answer, even though I heard them, far away. They seemed to be having an argument as to whether I was a kamagarini or not. And also about what it was best to do if you met up with a little devil in the forest. They argued and argued. One said it would bring evil on them to have seen someone like me on their path and the prudent thing to do was to kill me. They couldn’t agree. They talked it over and thought for a long time. Luckily for me, they finally decided to treat me well. They left me some cassavas, and seeing I hadn’t strength enough to pick them up, one of them put a bit in my mouth. It wasn’t poison; it was cassava. They put the rest in a plantain leaf and placed it in this hand. Maybe I dreamed it all. I don’t know. But later, when I felt better and my strength came back, there were the cassavas. I ate them, and the little parrot ate, too. Now I could continue my journey. I walked slowly, stopping every so often to rest.

When I arrived at the place by the river Cashiriari where Tasurinchi, the blind one, lives, I told him what had happened to me. He breathed smoke on me and prepared a tobacco brew. “What happened to you was that your soul divided itself into many souls,” he explained to me. “The evil entered your body because some machikanari sent it or because, quite by accident, you crossed its path. The body is merely the soul’s cushma. Its wrapping, like a worm’s. Once the evil had gotten inside, your soul tried to defend itself. It ceased to be one and became many so as to confuse the evil, which stole the ones it could. One, two, several. It can’t have taken many or you’d have gone altogether. It was a good thing to bathe in tohé water and breathe its steam, but you should have done something more cunning. Rubbed the top of your head with annatto dye till it was red all over. Then the evil couldn’t have gotten out of your body with its load of souls. That’s where it gets out, that’s its door. The annatto blocks its path. Feeling itself a prisoner inside, it loses its strength and dies. It’s the same with bodies as with houses. Don’t devils who enter houses steal souls by escaping through the crown of the roof? Why do we weave the slats in the top of the roof so carefully? So the devil can’t escape, taking the souls of those who are asleep along with him. It’s the same with the body. You felt weak because of the souls you’d lost. But they’ve already come back to you and that’s why you’re here. They must have escaped from Kientibakori, taking advantage of his kamagarinis’ carelessness, and come back looking for you — aren’t you their home? — and found you there in the same place, gasping, dying. They entered your body and you were born again. Now, inside of you, all the souls are back together again. Now they’re just one soul again.”

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.