Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

That’s how after began, it seems.

That’s how we started walking. In the Gran Pongo. And we’ve been walking ever since. And ever since, we’ve been resisting evils, suffering the cruel misdeeds of Kientibakori’s devils and little devils. Before, the Gran Pongo was forbidden. Only the dead returned there, souls that went and didn’t come back. Now many go there: Viracochas and Punarunas go. Machiguengas, too. They must go with fear and respect. Thinking, no doubt: Is that loud noise only the sound of water striking against rocks as it falls? Only a river as it narrows between cliffs? It doesn’t sound like that. The noise comes from below as well. It must be the moans and cries of drowned children rising from the caverns at the bottom. You can hear them on moonlit nights. They’re sad; they’re moaning. Kientibakori’s monsters are abusing them, perhaps. Making them pay with torments for being there. Not because they’re impure, but because they’re Machiguengas, perhaps.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

A seripigari said to me: “Being born with a face like yours isn’t the worst evil; it’s not knowing one’s obligation.” Not being at one with one’s destiny, then? That happened to me before I became what I am now. I was no more than a wrapping, a shell, the body of one whose soul has left through the top of his head. For a family and for a people too, the worst evil would be not knowing their obligation. A monster-family, a monster-people, that’s what it would be, with not enough hands or feet, or too many. We are walking, and the sun is up above. That must be our obligation. We’re fulfilling it, it seems. Why do we survive the evils of countless devils and little devils? That must be the reason. That must be why we’re here now. I talking, you listening. Who knows?

The people who walk are my people now. Before, I walked with another people and I believed it was mine. I hadn’t been born yet. I was really born once I began walking as a Machiguenga. That other people stayed behind. It, too, had its story. It was a small people and lived very far from here, in a place that had been its own and no longer was, belonging now to others. Because it had been occupied by strong, cunning Viracochas. Like the tree-bleeding time? Exactly. Despite the presence of the enemy in their forests, they spent their days hunting tapir, sowing cassava, brewing masato, dancing, and singing. A powerful spirit had breathed them out. He had neither face nor body. Jehovah-Tasurinchi, that was who he was. He protected them, it seems. He had taught them what they must do and also taught them the taboos. So they knew their obligation. They lived quietly, it’s said. Content and without anger, perhaps.

Until one day, in a remote little ravine, a child was born. He was different. A serigorómpi? Yes, perhaps. He started saying: “I am the breath of Tasurinchi, I am the son of Tasurinchi, I am Tasurinchi. I am all three things at once.” That’s what he said. And that he’d come down from Inkite to this world, sent by his father, who was himself, to change the customs because the people had become corrupt and no longer knew how to walk. They must have listened to him in astonishment. Saying: “He must be an hablador.” Saying: “Those must be stories he’s telling.” He went from one place to another, the way I do. Talking and talking. Raveling things and unraveling them, giving advice. He had a different wisdom, it seems. He wanted to impose new customs, because — so he said — the ones people were practicing were impure. They were evil. They brought misfortune. And he kept saying to everyone: “I’m Tasurinchi.” So he should be obeyed, be respected. He alone, only he. The others weren’t gods, but devils and little devils breathed out by Kientibakori.

He was good at convincing people, they say. A seripigari with many powers. He had his own magic, too. Could he have been a bad sorcerer, a machikanari? Or a good one, a seripigari? Who knows? He had the power to change a few cassavas and a few catfish into a whole lot, into enough cassavas and enough catfish so that everybody had something to eat. He could make an arm grow back on those who had lost one, and give the blind their eyes back; he could even make the souls of those who had gone come back to their very same body as before. Some people were impressed and began following him and doing what he told them to. They gave up their customs; they no longer obeyed the age-old taboos. They became different, perhaps.

The seripigaris grew alarmed. They journeyed; they met together in the hut of the oldest. They drank masato, sitting in a circle on mats. “Our people will disappear,” they said. It would melt away like a cloud, perhaps. Be nothing but wind in the end. “What will make us any different from the others?” they asked fearfully. Would they be like Mashcos? Would they be like Ashaninkas or Yaminahuas? Nobody would know who was who; neither they nor the others. “Aren’t we what we believe, the stripes we paint on ourselves, the way we set our traps?” they argued. If they listened to this storyteller and did everything differently, did everything backward, wouldn’t the sun fall? What would keep them together if they became the same as everybody else? Nothing, nobody. Would everything be confusion? And so, because he’d come to dim the brightness of the world, the seripigaris condemned him. Saying: “He’s an impostor and a liar; he must be a machikanari.”

The Viracochas, the powerful ones, were also worried. There was much disorder, people were restless, full of doubts because of the clever talk of that storyteller. “Is what he’s telling us true or false? Ought we to obey him?” And they pondered what he meant by the stories he told them. So then the ones whose word was law killed him, believing they’d be free of him that way. In accordance with their custom, when someone did wrong, stole or violated the taboo, the Viracochas flogged him and put a crown of chambira thorns on his head. After that — the way they do with big river paiche so the water inside them will drain out — they nailed him to two crossed tree trunks and left him to bleed. They did the wrong thing. Because, after he’d gone, that storyteller came back. He might have come back so as to go on throwing this world into even worse confusion than before. They began saying among themselves: “It was true. He’s the son of Tasurinchi, the breath of Tasurinchi, Tasurinchi himself. All three things together, in a word. He came. He went and has come back again.” And then they began doing what he taught them to do and respecting his taboos.

Since that seripigari or that god died, if he really did die, terrible misfortunes befell the people into which he had been born. The one breathed out by Jehovah-Tasurinchi. The Viracochas drove that people out of the forest where they’d lived up until then. Out, out! Like the Machiguengas, that people had to start walking through the jungle. The rivers, the lakes, the ravines of this world saw them arrive and depart. Never sure they’d be able to stay in the place they’d arrived at, they, too, had to become accustomed to living on the move. Life had become dangerous, as though at any moment a jaguar might attack them or a Mashco arrow fell them. They must have lived in fear, expecting evil. Expecting the spells of machikanaris. Lamenting their fate each day of their lives, perhaps.

They were driven out of all the places where they camped. They would put up their huts and there would come the Viracochas to do them in. There would come the Punarunas and the Yaminahuas, blaming them for every wrong and every misfortune; even accusing them of having killed Tasurinchi. “He made himself man and came to this world and you betrayed him,” they said as they seized them. If Inaenka passed by somewhere, sprinkling her scalding water on people and their skin peeled off and they died, nobody said: “It’s the blister that’s come to a head that brings on these calamities, it’s Inaenka sneezing and farting.” What they said was: “It’s the fault of those accursed foreigners who killed Tasurinchi. They’ve now cast spells so as to fulfill their obligations to their master Kientibakori.” The belief had spread everywhere: that they helped the little devils, dancing and drinking masato with them, perhaps. So then they went to the huts of those whom Jehovah-Tasurinchi had breathed out. They beat them and took everything they had; they pierced them with arrows and burned them alive. So they were always on the run. Making their escape, hiding. In scattered bands, they wandered through all the forests of the world. When will they come to kill us? they’d think. Who will kill us this time? The Viracochas? The Mashcos? Nobody would take them in. When they came by and asked the master of the house: “Are you there?” the answer always was: “No, no, I’m not.” Just as with the people who walk, families had to separate so as to be accepted. If they weren’t too big a family, if they cast no shadow, other peoples allowed them a place to sow, to hunt, to fish. Sometimes they gave orders: “You can stay but you can’t sow. Or hunt. That’s the custom.” So there they would stay for a few moons; many, perhaps. But it always ended badly. If it rained a lot or there was a drought, if some catastrophe occurred, people started hating them. Saying: “It’s your fault. Out!” They were driven out again, and it seemed that they were going to disappear.