Mario Vargas Llosa - The Storyteller

Because this story happened again and again in many places. Always the same, like a seripigari who can’t get back from a bad trance, who has lost his way and keeps going around and around in the clouds. Yet, despite so many misfortunes, that people didn’t disappear. In spite of its sufferings, it survived. It wasn’t warlike, it never won wars, yet it’s still here. It lived dispersed, its families scattered through the forests of the world, and yet it endured. Greater peoples, warriors, strong peoples, Mashcos and Viracochas with wise seripigaris, peoples who seemed indestructible, all went. Disappeared, that is to say. No trace of them remained in the world, nobody remembered them, after. Those survivors, however, are still about. Journeying, coming and going, escaping. Alive and walking. Down through time, and through all this wide world, too.

Could it be that despite everything that happened to it, Jehovah-Tasurinchi’s people never was at odds with its destiny? Always fulfilled its obligation; always respected the prohibitions, too. Was it hated because it was different? Was that why, wherever it went, peoples would not accept it? Who knows? People don’t like living with people who are different. They don’t trust them, perhaps. Other customs, another way of speaking would frighten them, as though the world had suddenly become confused and dark. People would like everyone to be the same, would like others to forget their own customs, kill their seripigaris, violate their own taboos, and imitate theirs. If it had done that, Jehovah-Tasurinchi’s people would have disappeared. Not one storyteller would have survived to tell their story. I wouldn’t be here talking, perhaps.

“It is a good thing for the man who walks to walk,” the seripigari says. That is wisdom, I believe. It is most likely a good thing. For a man to be what he is. Aren’t we Machiguengas now the way we were a long time ago? The way we were that day in the Gran Pongo when Tasurinchi began breathing us out: that’s how we are. And that’s why we haven’t disappeared. That’s why we keep on walking, perhaps.

I learned that from all of you. Before I was born, I used to think: A people must change. Adopt the customs, the taboos, the magic of strong peoples. Take over the gods and the little gods, the devils and the little devils of the wise peoples. That way everyone will become more pure, I thought. Happier, too. It wasn’t true. I know now that that’s not so. I learned it from you. Who is purer or happier because he’s renounced his destiny, I ask you? Nobody. We’d best be what we are. The one who gives up fulfilling his own obligation so as to fulfill that of another will lose his soul. And his outer wrapping too, perhaps, like Gregor-Tasurinchi, who was changed into a buzz-buzz bug in that bad trance. It may be that when a person loses his soul the most repulsive beings, the most harmful predators, come and make their lair in the empty body. The botfly devours the fly; the bird, the botfly; the snake, the bird. Do we want to be devoured? No. Do we want to disappear without a trace? No, again. If we come to an end, the world will come to an end, too. It seems we’d best go on walking. Keeping the sun in its place in the sky, the river in its bed, the tree rooted in the ground and the forest on the earth.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

Tasurinchi is well. Walking. I was on my way to visit him there where he lives, by the Timpanía, when I met him on the trail. He and two of his sons were returning from a visit to the White Fathers, the ones who live on the banks of the Sepahua. He’d brought them his maize harvest. He’d been doing so for some time now, he told me. The White Fathers give him seed, machetes to clear the forest, spades to work the ground and grow potatoes, yams, maize, tobacco, coffee, and cotton. Later on, he sells them what he doesn’t need, and that way he can buy more things. He showed me what he’s already acquired: clothes, food, an oil lamp, fishhooks, a knife. “Maybe next time I can buy myself a shotgun as well,” he said. Then he’d be able to hunt anything in the forest, he told me. But he wasn’t happy, Tasurinchi wasn’t. Worried, rather; his forehead wrinkled and his eyes hard. “In the ground here by the Timpanía you can only sow a crop a couple of times in the same place, never more,” he lamented. “And in some places only once. It’s bad earth, it seems. My last sowing of cassavas and yams produced a miserable yield.” It’s land that tires quickly, it appears. “It wants me to leave it in peace,” Tasurinchi said. “This earth here along the Timpanía is lazy,” he complained bitterly. “You barely put it to work and it starts asking for a rest. That’s its nature.”

Talking of this and that, we reached his hut. His wife ran out to meet us, all upset. She’d painted her face in mourning, and waving her hands and pointing, she said the river was a thief. It had stolen one of her three hens, it seemed. She was holding it in her arms to warm it, since it appeared to be sick, as she filled her water jar. And then, all of a sudden, everything started shaking. The earth, the forest, the hut, everything started shaking. “Like when you have the evil,” she said. It shook as though it were dancing. In her fright she let go of the hen and saw the current carry it away and devour it before she could rescue it. It’s true that the current is very swift there in that gorge of the Timpanía. Even close into shore, there is white-water.

Tasurinchi was furious and began beating her. Saying: “I’m not beating you because you let it fall into the river. That could happen to anyone. I’m beating you because you lied. Instead of making up a story about the earth shaking, why don’t you say you fell asleep? It slipped out of your arms, didn’t it? Or maybe you left it on the bank and it fell in. Or you threw it into the river in a fit of temper. Don’t talk of things that didn’t happen. Are you a storyteller, may I ask? Don’t lies bring harm to a family? Who’s going to believe you when you say the earth began dancing? If it had, I’d have felt it, too.”

And as Tasurinchi scolded her, raging and beating her, the earth began shaking. Don’t laugh. I’m not making it up; I didn’t dream it. It happened. It started dancing. First we heard a deep growling, as though the lord of thunder were down below, making his jaguars roar. A sound of war, many drums beating all together, down in the earth’s entrails. A deep, threatening sound. We suddenly felt that the world was restless. The earth was moving about, dancing, leaping as though it were drunk. The trees moved, and Tasurinchi’s hut; the waters of the river bubbled and seethed, like cassava boiling in a tub. There was anger in the air, it seemed. The sky filled with terrified birds; parrots squawked in the trees; from the forest came the grunts, whistles, and croaks of frightened animals. “Again!” Tasurinchi’s wife screamed. We looked all about, confused, not knowing whether to run or to stay where we were. The children were crying; clinging to Tasurinchi, they howled. He, too, was frightened, and so was I. “Is this world coming to an end?” he said. “Is darkness returning, is chaos coming?”

When the shaking stopped at last, the sky turned black, as though the sun had begun to fall. Then all at once, very suddenly, it was dark. A great dust storm arose, from everywhere, blanketing this world in an ashen color. I could hardly see Tasurinchi and his family with all the dust blowing in the strong wind. Everything was gray. “Something very grave is happening and we don’t know what it is,” said Tasurinchi fearfully. “Can it be the end of us men who walk? The time has come for us to go, perhaps. The sun has fallen. It may not rise again.”

I know now that it didn’t fall. I know now that if it had fallen, we wouldn’t be here. The dust storm moved on, the sky cleared, and the earth was still at last. A smell of brine and rotted plants lingered in the air, a sickening stench. The world wasn’t pleased, it seemed. “You see, I didn’t lie; it did shake. That’s why the river swallowed up the hen,” said Tasurinchi’s wife. But he was hardheaded, insisting: “That’s not certain.” He was enraged. “You lied,” he screamed at his wife. “Perhaps that’s why the earth shook just now.” He began beating her again, thrusting his chest out, roaring from the sheer effort he was expending. Tasurinchi, the one from the Timpanía, is a very stubborn man. It’s not the first time he’s fallen into a fury. I’ve seen him have fits of rage at other times. That may be why few people visit him. He refused to admit he’d been wrong, but I could see, as anyone could have, that his wife had spoken the truth.