Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

As evening set in and we were loading our equipment for the flight to the village — New Light — where we were to spend the night, we learned that New World would probably have to change its location soon. What had happened? One of those chance geographical occurrences that are the daily bread of life in the jungle. During the last rainy season the Mipaya had radically changed its course because of heavy floods and was now so far distant from New World that when the waters were down to their winter level the inhabitants had to go a very long way to reach its shores. So they were looking for another spot, less subject to unforeseeable mischances, in order to resettle. That would not be difficult for people who had spent their lives on the move — their settlements were evidently born under an atavistic sign of eternal wandering, of a peripatetic destiny — and besides, their huts of tree trunks, cane, and palm leaves were far easier to take down and put up again than were the little houses of civilization.

They explained to us that the twenty-minute flight from New World to New Light was misleading, since it took at least a week to go from one to the other on foot through the jungle, or a couple of days by canoe.

New Light was the oldest of the Machiguenga villages — it had just celebrated its second birthday — and had a little more than twice the number of huts and inhabitants as in New World. Here too, only Martín, the village chief and head administrator, who was the teacher of the bilingual school, was dressed in a shirt, trousers, and shoes, and wore his hair cut in Western style. He was quite young, short, deadly serious, and spoke fast, fluent, syncopated Spanish, dropping a good many word endings. The welcome the Machiguengas of New Light gave the Schneils was as exuberant and noisy as the one in the previous village; all the rest of the day and during a good part of the night we saw groups and individuals patiently waiting for others to take their leave of them so that they could approach and start a crackling conversation full of gestures and grimaces.

In New Light, too, we recorded dances, songs, drum solos, the school, the shop, seed-sowing, looms, tattoos, and an interview with the head of the village, who had been through Bible school at Mazamari; he was young and very thin, with hair cropped almost to his skull, and ceremonious gestures. He was a disciple well versed in the teachings of his masters, for he preferred talking about the Word of God, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit to talking about the Machiguengas. He had a sullen way of beating about the bush and resorting to endless vague biblical verbiage whenever he didn’t care to answer a question. I tried twice to draw him out on the subject of storytellers, and each time, looking at me without understanding, he explained all over again that the book he had on his knee was the word of God and of his apostles in the Machiguenga language.

Our work finished, we went to swim in a gorge of the Mipaya, some fifteen minutes’ walk from the village, guided by the two Institute pilots. Twilight was coming on, the most mysterious and most beautiful hour of the day in Amazonia, as long as there isn’t a cloudburst. The place was a real find, a branch of the Mipaya deflected by a natural barrier of rocks, forming a sort of cove where one could swim in warm, quiet waters, or, if one preferred, expose oneself to the full force of the current, protected by the portcullis of rocks. Even silent Alejandro started splashing and laughing, madly happy in this Amazonian Jacuzzi.

When we got back to New Light, young Martín (his manners were exquisite and his gestures genuinely elegant) invited me to drink lemon verbena tea with him in his hut next to the school and the village store. He had a radio transmitter, his means of communication with the headquarters of the Institute at Yarinacocha. There were just the two of us in the room, which was as meticulously neat and clean as Martín himself. Lucho Llosa and Alejandro Pérez had gone to help the pilots unload the hammocks and mosquito nets we were to sleep in. The light was failing fast and the dark shadows were deepening around us. The entire jungle had set up a rhythmical chirring, as always at this hour, reminding me that, beneath its green tangle, myriads of insects dominated the world. Soon the sky would be full of stars.

Did the Machiguengas really believe that the stars were the beams of light from the crowns of spirits? Martín nodded impassively. That shooting stars were the fiery arrows of those little child-gods, the ananeriites, and the morning dew their urine? This time Martín laughed. Yes, that was their belief. And now that the Machiguengas had stopped walking, so as to put down roots in villages, would the sun fall? Surely not: God would take care of keeping it in place. He looked at me for a moment with an amused expression: how had I found out about these beliefs? I told him that I’d been interested in the Machiguengas for nearly a quarter of a century and that from the first I’d made a point of reading everything that was written about them. I told him why. As I spoke, his face, friendly and smiling to begin with, grew stern and distrustful. He listened to me grimly, not a muscle of his face moving.

“So, you see, my questions about storytellers aren’t just vulgar curiosity but something much more serious. They’re very important to me. Perhaps as important as to the Machiguengas, Martín.” He remained silent and motionless, with a watchful gleam in the depth of his eyes. “Why didn’t you want to tell me anything about them? The schoolmistress at New World wouldn’t tell me anything about them, either. Why all this mystery about the habladores, Martín?”

He assured me he didn’t understand what I was talking about. What was all this business about “habladores”? He’d never heard a word about them, either in this village or in any other of the community. There might be habladores in other tribes perhaps, but not among the Machiguengas. He was telling me this when the Schneils came in. We hadn’t drunk up all that lemon verbena, the most fragrant in all Amazonia, had we? Martín changed the subject, and I thought it best not to pursue the matter.

But an hour later, after we’d taken our leave of Martín and I’d put up my hammock and mosquito net in the hut they’d loaned us, I went out with the Schneils to enjoy the cool evening air, and as we walked in the open surrounded by the dwellings of New Light, the subject came irresistibly to my lips once again.

“In the few hours I’ve been with the Machiguengas, there are many things I haven’t been able to figure out yet,” I said. “I have realized one thing, however. Something important.”

The sky was a forest of stars and a dark patch of clouds hid the moon, its presence visible only as a diffuse brightness. A fire had been made at one end of New Light, and fleeting silhouettes suddenly stole around it. All the huts were dark except for the one they’d lent to us, some fifty meters away, which was lit by the greenish light of a portable kerosene lamp. The Schneils waited for me to go on. We were walking slowly over soft ground where tall grass grew. Even though I was wearing boots, I had begun to feel mosquitoes biting my ankles and insteps.

“And what is that?” Mrs. Schneil finally asked.

“That all this is quite relative,” I went on impetuously. “I mean, baptizing this place New Light and calling the village chief Martín. The New Testament in Machiguenga; sending the Indians to Bible school and making pastors out of them; the violent transition from a nomadic life to a sedentary one; accelerated Westernization and Christianization. So-called modernization. I’ve realized that it’s just outward show. Even though they’ve started trading and using money, the weight of their own traditions exerts a much stronger pull on them than all that.”