The Storyteller (24 page)

This is the story of creation.

This is the fight between Tasurinchi and Kientibakori.

That was before.

It happened over yonder, in the Gran Pongo. That was where the beginning began. Tasurinchi came down from Inkite along the river Meshiareni with an idea in his head. Puffing out his chest. Good lands, rivers full of fish, forests teeming with game, all the many animals to eat began appearing. The sun was in its place in the sky, warming the world. Content, looking at things as they appeared. Kientibakori threw one of his terrible temper tantrums. Seeing what was happening up above, he spewed toads and vipers. Tasurinchi was breathing out and Machiguengas had begun appearing, too. Then Kientibakori abandoned Gamaironi, the world of black clouds and waters, and went up a river of piss and shit. In a fury, steaming with rage he was, saying: “I can do it better!” He began breathing out as soon as he reached the Gran Pongo. But it wasn't Machiguengas he breathed out: rotten lands, rather, where nothing grew; swamps where only vampires could live, the air was so foul. Snakes appeared. Vipers, caimans, mice, mosquitoes, bats. Ants, turkey buzzards. All the plants that give fever, that burn the skin, that are not good to eat appeared, and only those. Kientibakori went on breathing out, and instead of Machiguengas, kamagarinis and little devils on pointed, twisted feet with spurs appeared. She-devils with donkey faces, eating earth and moss. And squat, four-footed men, the hairy, bloodthirsty achaporo. Kientibakori raged. He raged in such fury that the beings he breathed out, the evils and the predators, came out even more impure, even more malevolent. When the two of them had had done with breathing out and gone back—Tasurinchi to Inkite and Kientibakori to Gamaironi—this world was what it is now.

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.

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.