Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

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 bump 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.

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.