Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

Everything followed its course. The world was peaceful. Flocks of parrots flew overhead, noisy and content. But there was another girl in the hamlet, who may not have been a woman but an itoni, that wicked little devil. It disguises itself as a pigeon now, but then it dressed as a woman. She waxed furious, it seems, seeing all the presents Kashiri brought his new family. She would have liked to have him as her husband; she would have liked, in a word, to give birth to the sun. Because the moon’s wife had given birth to the healthy child whose fire would give light and heat to our world when he grew up. So everyone would know how angry she was, she painted her face red with annatto dye. She went and posted herself at a bend in the path where Kashiri had to pass on his way back from the cassava patch. Squatting down, she emptied her body. She pushed hard, swelling herself up. Then she dug her hands into the filth and waited, storing up fury. When she saw him coming, she threw herself at him from among the trees. And before the moon could escape, she’d rubbed his face with the shit she’d just shat.

Kashiri knew at once that those stains could never be washed away. Marked by such shame, what was he going to do in this world? Sadly, he went back to Inkite, the sky above. There he has remained. Because of the stains, his light was dimmed. Yet his son is resplendent. Doesn’t the sun shine? Doesn’t he warm us? We help him by walking. Rise, we say to him each night as he sinks. His mother was a Machiguenga, after all.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

But the seripigari of Segakiato tells the story differently.

Kashiri came down to the earth and spied the girl in the river, bathing and singing. He approached and threw a handful of dirt at her that hit her in the belly. She was angry and started throwing stones at him. It had started raining all of a sudden. Kientibakori must have been in the forest, dancing, having drunk his fill of masato. “Stupid woman,” said the moon to the girl. “I threw mud at you so you’d have a son.” All the little devils were happily farting at each other under the trees. And that’s what happened. The girl got pregnant. But when her time came to give birth, she died. And her son died, too. The Machiguengas were furious. They seized their arrows and their knives. They went to Kashiri and surrounded him, saying: “You must eat that corpse.” They threatened him with their bows. They thrust their stones under his nose. The moon resisted, trembling. But they said: “Eat her up. You must eat up the dead woman.”

At last, weeping bitter tears, he slit open his wife’s belly. There was the baby, twinkling. He pulled it out and it came to life, it seems. It moved and whimpered in thanks. It was alive. Kashiri, on his knees, began swallowing his wife’s body, starting with the feet. “That’s all right, you can go now,” the Machiguengas said when he’d reached her stomach. Then the moon, hoisting the remains onto his shoulder, went on his way, back to the sky above. There he is still, looking at us. Listening to me. The stains that show on him are the pieces he didn’t eat.

Furious at what they’d done to Kashiri, his father, the sun stayed put, burning us. He dried up the rivers, parched the fields and the woods. Made the animals die of thirst. “He’s never going to move again,” said the Machiguengas, tearing their hair. They were frightened. “We’re doomed to die,” they sang sadly. So then the seripigari went up to Inkite. He spoke to the sun. He persuaded him, it seems. He would move again. “We’ll walk together,” they say he said. That’s the way life was from then on, the way it is now. That’s where before ended and after began. That’s why we go on walking.

“Is that why Kashiri’s light is so weak?” I asked the seripigari of the Segakiato. “Yes,” he answered. “The moon is only half a man. Others say that a bone got stuck in his throat while he was eating a fish. And that, ever since, his light has been dim.”

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

As I was coming here, even though I knew the way, I got lost. It must have been Kientibakori’s fault, or his little devils’, or a very powerful machikanari’s. Without any warning, it suddenly started raining; the sky hadn’t darkened or the air turned briny. I was fording a river and the rain was coming down so hard I couldn’t climb up the bank. After two or three steps I slipped back, the earth gave way beneath my feet, and I found myself at the bottom of the channel. My little parrot was frightened, flapped his wings, and flew away squawking. The bank became a gully. Mud and water, stones, branches, bushes, trees split in two by the storm, bodies of birds and insects. All rolling down on top of me. The sky turned black; bolts of lightning flashed and crashed. The peals of thunder sounded like all the animals of the forest roaring at once. When the lord of thunder rages like that, something grave is happening. I went on trying to climb up the gully. Would I succeed? If I don’t clamber up a really tall tree, I’ll be carried away, I thought. Any moment now, all this is going to be a boiling caldron of water pouring down from heaven. I had no strength left to struggle; my arms and legs were badly injured from my many hard falls. I was swallowing water through my nose and my mouth. Even my eyes and my anus seemed to be taking in water. This is going to be the end of you, Tasurinchi. Your soul will take off to goodness knows where. And I touched the top of my head to feel it leaving.

I don’t know how long I kept on, climbing up, rolling down, climbing up again. The channel had become a wide river after swallowing its banks. At last I was so tired out I let myself sink beneath the water. “I’m going to rest,” I said. “Enough of this useless struggle.” But do the ones who go like that rest? Isn’t drowning the worst way to go? In a moment I’d be floating on the Kamabiría, the river of the dead, headed for the abyss with no sunlight and no fish: the lowest world, the dark land of Kientibakori. Meanwhile, without my noticing, my hands had grabbed hold of a tree trunk that the storm had cast into the river, perhaps. I don’t know how I managed to climb onto it. Nor whether I fell asleep at once. The sun had set. It was dark and cold. The raindrops falling on my back felt like stones.

In my sleep I discovered the trap. What I’d taken for a tree trunk was an alligator. What sort of bark could those hard, prickly scales be? It’s a caiman’s back, Tasurinchi. Had the alligator noticed that I was on its back? If so, it would have been flicking its tail. Or it would have dived under to make me let go, and then bitten me underwater, the way caimans always do. Could it be dead, perhaps? If it were, it would be floating feet up. What are you going to do, Tasurinchi? Slip into the water very slowly and swim to the shore? I’d never have gotten there in that storm. You couldn’t even see the trees. And, anyway, there might not be any land left in the world. Try to kill the alligator? I had no weapon. Back at the channel, while I was struggling up the bank, I’d lost my pouch, my knife, and my arrows. I’d best stay still, sitting tight on the alligator. Best wait till something or someone decided.

We were floating along, borne by the swift current. I was shivering with cold and my teeth were chattering. Thinking: Where can the little parrot be? The alligator didn’t paddle with its feet or its tail, but just went where the river took it. Little by little it was getting light. Muddy water, dead animals, jumbled islets of roofs, huts, branches, and canoes. Here and there, men half eaten by piranhas and other river creatures. There were great clouds of mosquitoes, and water spiders crawling over my body. I felt them biting me. I was very hungry and perhaps I could have grabbed one of the dead fish the water was bearing along, but what if I attracted the alligator’s notice? All I could do was drink. I didn’t have to move to quench my thirst. I just opened my mouth and the rain filled it with fresh cold water.