Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

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. Deep 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.”