Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

Now he, too, is a deer, like the others. There he is, I hear, wandering up and down the forest, troc, troc. Fleeing the jaguar, frightened of the snake. Troc, troc. Hiding from the puma and from the arrows of the hunter who, through ignorance or wickedness, kills and eats his brothers.

When I come upon a deer, I remember the story the seripigari of the Kompiroshiato told me. What if this one were Tasurinchi the hunter? Who can tell? I for my part have no way of telling whether a deer was or wasn’t a man who walks, before. I just step back a little way and look at it. Perhaps it recognizes me; perhaps when it sees me it thinks: I was like him. Who knows?

In a bad trance a machikanari of the rainbow river, the Yoguieto, turned into a jaguar. How did he know? Because of the terrible urge he felt to kill deer and eat them. “I grew blind with rage,” he said. And roaring with hunger, he began running through the forest, tracking them. Until he came upon one and killed it. When he changed back into a machikanari, he had shreds of flesh between his teeth and his nails were bloody from all the ripping and tearing he’d done. “Kientibakori must have been pleased,” he said. He may well have been.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

Like the deer, every animal in the forest has its story. Whether little, middle-sized, or big. The one that flies, like the hummingbird. The one that swims, like the boquichico. The one that lives in a herd, like the huangana. Before, they were all something different from what they are now. Something happened to all of them that you could tell a story about. Would you like to know their stories? So would I. Many of the ones I know I heard from the seripigari of the Kompiroshiato. If I’d had my way, I’d still be there listening to him, the Way all of you are listening, here, now. But, one day, he threw me out of his hut. “How long are you going to stay here, Tasurinchi?” he scolded me. “You have to be on your way. You’re a storyteller, I’m a seripigari, and now, with all your questions and your making me talk so much, you’re turning me into what you are. Would you like to become a seripigari? If so, you’d have to be born again. Pass all the tests. Purify yourself. Have many trances, bad ones and good ones, and, above all, suffer. Attaining wisdom is difficult. You’re already old; I don’t think you’ll get that far. And besides, who knows whether that’s your destiny? Be off with you; start walking. Talk; keep talking. Don’t disturb the order of the world, storyteller.”

It’s true; I was always asking him questions. He knew everything, and that made me all the more curious. “Why do the men who walk paint their bodies with annatto?” I once asked him. “Because of the moritoni,” he replied. “You mean that little bird?” “The very same.” And with that, he started me thinking. Why do you suppose the Machiguengas avoid killing the moritoni? Why do they make a point of not stepping on it when they come upon it in the tall grass? Why do you feel grateful when you see it perching on a branch and notice its little white legs and its black breast? It’s thanks to the achiote bush that gives us annatto and to the moritoni bird that we’re walking, Tasurinchi. Without the two of them, the men who walk would have disappeared. They’d have boiled to death, burning with blisters till they burst like bubbles.

That was before.

In those days, the moritoni was a child who walks. One of its mothers is said to be Inaenka. Yes, the evil that destroys flesh was a woman then. The evil that burns the face, leaving it full of holes. Inaenka. She was that evil and she was the mother of the moritoni, too. She looked like a woman, like any other, except that she had a limp. Do all devils limp? It seems they do. They say that Kientibakori does, too. Her limp made Inaenka furious; she wore a long cushma, so long that no one ever saw her feet. It wasn’t easy to recognize her, to know that she wasn’t a woman but what she was.

Tasurinchi was fishing from the riverbank. Suddenly an enormous súngaro fell into his net. He was very pleased. He’d get a tubful of oil out of it, maybe. Just then he saw a canoe in front of him, cleaving the water. He could make out a woman paddling, and several children. A seripigari sitting in Tasurinchi’s hut breathing in tobacco immediately saw the danger. “Don’t call to her,” he warned. “Can’t you see it’s Inaenka?” But Tasurinchi, being impatient, had already whistled, had already waved to her. The paddles propelling the canoe were raised. Tasurinchi saw the craft come into shore. The woman jumped out onto the bank; she was pleased.

“That’s a fine fish you’ve caught, Tasurinchi,” she said as she approached. She walked slowly and he didn’t notice her limp. “Come on, carry it to your hut, and I’ll cook it for you. Just for you.”

Tasurinchi, puffed up with vanity, obeyed. He hoisted the fish onto his back and set off for his hut, unaware that he had met his fate. Knowing what was going to happen, the seripigari looked at him sadly. When he was a few steps from his hut, the fish slipped off his back, drawn by the power of an invisible kamagarini. Tasurinchi saw that when it touched the ground the creature’s skin started coming off, as though it had had boiling water sprinkled on it. He was so astonished he wasn’t able to call out to the seripigari or even move. That was fear. I expect his teeth chattered. He was so overcome he didn’t realize that the same thing was happening to him as to the súngaro. Only when he felt the heat and smelled scorched flesh did he look at his body: his skin, too, was peeling off. He could see his bloody guts in places. He fell to the ground, terrified, screaming. Kicking and weeping, Tasurinchi was. Then Inaenka came over and looked at him with her real face, a blister of boiling water. She wet him thoroughly, from head to foot, enjoying seeing Tasurinchi losing his skin like the fish, bubbling and dying from her evil.

Inaenka began dancing for joy. “I’m the mistress of the sickness that kills swiftly,” she goaded men, shrieking so loudly the whole forest would hear. “I’ve killed them and now I’m going to stew them and season them with annatto and eat them!” she shouted. Kientibakori and his little devils danced merrily, pushing and biting each other in the forest. Singing: “Ehé, ehé, she’s Inaenka.”

It was only then that the woman whose face was a boiling blister noticed that the seripigari was there, too. He was quietly watching what was going on, without anger, without fear, breathing in tobacco through his nose. He sneezed calmly, as though she weren’t there and nothing had happened. Inaenka decided to kill him. She went over to him and was about to sprinkle a little boiling water on him when the seripigari imperturbably showed her two white stones dangling from around his neck.

“You can’t do anything to me while I have these stones,” he reminded her. “They protect me from you and from all the evils in the world. Perhaps you didn’t know?”

“What you say is true,” said Inaenka. “I’ll wait here near you till you fall asleep. Then I’ll remove the stones, throw them in the river, and sprinkle you as much as I like. Nothing will save you. Your skin will come off, the way the fish’s did, and you’ll blister, the way Tasurinchi did.”

And that’s what must have happened. However hard he fought against sleep, the seripigari couldn’t resist. During the night, dazed by the false light of Kashiri, the stained one, he fell asleep. Inaenka limped to his side. Very carefully, she removed his two stones and threw them into the river. After that, she was able to sprinkle water on him from her great blister of a face, and gloated as the seripigari’s body boiled, swelled with innumerable blisters, and started peeling and bursting.