Eduardo Galeano - The Memory of Fire Trilogy - Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

Fire burned amid stones in the center of the cabin. From the ceiling hung a number of salmons. One fell on her head. The woman picked it up and hung it back in place. Once again the fish fell and hit her on the head. Again she hung it back up, and again it fell.

The woman threw on the fire the roots she had gathered to eat. The fire burned them up in a flash. Furious, she struck the fire several times with the poker, so violently that the fire was almost out when the master of the house arrived and stayed her arm.

The mysterious man revived the flames, sat down beside the woman, and explained to her, “You didn’t understand.”

By striking the flames and dispersing the embers she had been on the point of blinding the fire, and that was a punishment it didn’t deserve. The fire had eaten up the roots because it thought the woman was offering them to it. And before that, it was the fire that had caused the salmon to fall several times on the woman’s head, not to hurt her but to tell her that she could cook it.

“Cook it? What’s that?”

So the master of the house taught the woman how to talk to the fire, to roast the fish on the embers, and eat it with relish.

(114)

While the spirit Bopé-joku whistled a melody, corn rose out of the ground, unstoppable, luminous, and offered giant ears swollen with grains.

A woman was picking them and doing it wrong. Tugging hard at an ear, she injured it. The ear took revenge by wounding her hand. The woman insulted Bopé-joku and cursed his whistling.

When Bopé-joku closed his lips, the corn withered and dried up. The happy whistlings that made the cornfields bloom and gave them vigor and beauty were heard no more. From then on the Bororo people cultivated corn with pain and effort and reaped wretched crops.

Spirits express themselves by whistling. When the stars come out at night, that’s how the spirits greet them. Each star responds to a note, which is its name.

(112)

The first of the Modoc Indians, Kumokums, built a village on the banks of a river. Although it left the bears plenty of room to curl up and sleep, the deer complained that it was very cold and there wasn’t enough grass.

Kumokums built another village far from there and decided to spend half of every year in each. For this he divided the year into two parts, six moons of summer and six of winter, and the remaining moon was dedicated to moving.

Life between the two villages was as happy as could be, and births multiplied amazingly; but people who died refused to get out, and the population got so big that there was no way to feed it.

Then Kumokums decided to throw out the dead people. He knew that the chief of the land of the dead was a great man and didn’t mistreat anybody.

Soon afterward Kumokums’s small daughter died. She died and left the country of the Modocs, as her father had ordered.

In despair, Kumokums consulted the porcupine.

“You made the decision,” said the porcupine, “and now you must take the consequences like anyone else.”

But Kumokums journeyed to the far-off land of the dead and claimed his daughter.

“Now your daughter is my daughter,” said the big skeleton in charge there. “She has no flesh or blood. What can she do in your country?”

“I want her anyway,” said Kumokums.

The chief of the land of the dead thought for a long time.

“Take her,” he yielded, and warned, “Shell walk behind you. On approaching the country of the living, flesh will return to cover her bones. But you may not turn around till you arrive. Understand? I give you this chance.”

Kumokums set out. The daughter walked behind him.

Several times he touched her hand, which was more fleshy and warm each time, and still he didn’t look back. But when the green woods appeared on the horizon he couldn’t stand the strain and turned his head. A handful of bones crumbled before his eyes.

(132)

After five days it was the custom for the dead to return to Peru. They drank a glass of chicha and said, “Now I’m eternal.”

There were too many people in the world. Crops were sown at the bottom of precipices and on the edge of abysses, but even so, the food wouldn’t go around.

Then a man died in Huarochirí.

The whole community gathered on the fifth day to receive him. They waited for him from morning till well after nightfall. The hot dishes got cold, and sleep began closing eyelids. The dead man didn’t come.

He came the next day. Everyone was furious. The one who boiled most with indignation was his wife, who yelled, “You good-for-nothing! Always the same good-for-nothing! All the dead are punctual except you!”

The resurrected one stammered some excuse, but the woman threw a corncob at his head and left him stretched out on the floor. Then the soul left the body and flew off, a quick, buzzing insect, never to return.

Since that time no dead person has come back to mix with the living and compete for their food.

(14)

An extremely old Tukuna woman chastised some young girls who had denied her food. During the night she tore the bones out of their legs and devoured the marrow, so the girls could never walk again.

In her infancy, soon after birth, the old woman had received from a frog the powers of healing and vengeance. The frog had taught her to cure and kill, to hear unhearable voices and see unseeable colors. She learned to defend herself before she learned to talk. Before she could walk she already knew how to be where she wasn’t, because the shafts of love and hate instantly pierce the densest jungles and deepest rivers.

When the Tukunas cut off her head, the old woman collected her own blood in her hands and blew it toward the sun.

“My soul enters you, too!” she shouted.

Since then anyone who kills receives in his body, without wanting or knowing it, the soul of his victim.

(112)

The bat, hanging from a branch by his feet, noticed a Kayapó warrior leaning over the stream.

He wanted to be his friend.

He dropped on the warrior and embraced him. As he didn’t know the Kayapó language, he talked to him with his hands. The bat’s caresses drew from the man the first laugh. The more he laughed, the weaker he felt. He laughed so much that finally he lost all his strength and fell in a faint.

When the villagers learned about it, they were furious. The warriors burned a heap of dry leaves in the bats’ cave and blocked up the entrance.

Afterward they had a discussion. The warriors resolved that laughter should be used only by women and children.

(111)

These incredible bodies called to them, but the Nivakle men dared not enter. They had seen the women eat: they swallowed the flesh of fish with the upper mouth, but chewed it first with the lower mouth. Between their legs they had teeth.

So the men lit bonfires, called to the women, and sang and danced for them.

The women sat around in a circle with their legs crossed.

The men danced all through the night. They undulated, turned, and flew like smoke and birds. When dawn came they fell fainting to the ground. The women gently lifted them and gave them water to drink.