How could I ask for help without talking? I didn’t know. That was the worst torment, perhaps. Bound to suffer, knowing that nobody would come and put me right side up. Would I never walk again? I remembered the tortoises. When I went to hunt them on the little beach where they come out of the water to bury their young; how I turned them over, catching hold of their shell. That’s the way I was now, frantically waving my legs in the air, unable to right myself, just like them. I was a buzz-buzz bug, and I felt like a tortoise. Like them, I would be thirsty and hungry, and then my soul would go. Does the soul of a buzz-buzz bug come back? Perhaps it does.
Suddenly I noticed. They’d shut me up. Who was it who had done that, who were they? My family, yes, that was who. They’d closed off the hut, sealed up all the holes I might be able to escape through. They’d shut me up like a girl with her first blood. But who would come bathe Gregor-Tasurinchi and bring him back to the land of the living, pure and clean now? Nobody would come, perhaps. Why had they done this to me? Out of shame, most likely. So that nobody visiting them would see me and feel repelled by me or make fun of them. Had my kinfolk pulled a lock of hair from my head and taken it to the machikanari so he’d change me into Gregor-Tasurinchi? No, it must have been a little devil or even Kientibakori. I had done something wrong, perhaps, for them to shut me up like an enemy, on top of the evil I’d suffered. Why didn’t they fetch a seripigari who’d give me back my own bodily wrapping, instead? Maybe they’ve gone to the seripigari and have shut you up so you don’t hurt yourself by going outside.
That gave me hope. Don’t give up, Gregor-Tasurinchi, not yet; it was a little ray of sunshine in the storm. Meanwhile, I went on trying to turn over. My legs hurt from waving them about so much and my wings creaked with my efforts as though they were splitting apart. How much time went by? Who knows? But suddenly I succeeded. Courage, Gregor-Tasurinchi! Perhaps I moved more energetically; perhaps I stretched one of my legs out farther. I don’t know. But my body contracted, moved sideways, flipped over, and there it was, I could feel it underneath me, hard. Firm, solid: the ground. I shut my eyes, intoxicated. But the joy of having righted myself disappeared immediately. What was that horrible pain in my back? As though I’d been burned. I’d torn my right wing on a splinter as I took those sudden leaps, or before, while I was struggling so violently. There it was, dangling down, split in two, dragging along. That was perhaps my wing. I was beginning to feel hungry as well. I was frightened. The world had turned into an unknown one. Dangerous, perhaps. At any moment someone might squash me. Crush me. Eat me. Poor Gregor-Tasurinchi! Lizards! Trembling, trembling all over. Had I ever seen them eating cockroaches or beetles or any of the insects they chase? My broken wing hurt more and more, so much I could hardly move. And hunger-thorns still piercing my belly. I tried to eat the dry straw stuffed into the wall, but it tore my mouth without getting any softer, so I spat it out. I started scratching around here and there in the damp earth till I came across a nest of larvae. They were very small, squirming about, trying to escape. They were pocos, wood-worm larvae. I swallowed them slowly, shutting my eyes, happy. Feeling that the pieces of my soul that had been leaving were returning to my body. Yes, happy.
I hadn’t finished swallowing the larvae when a distinctly unpleasant smell made me leap into the air, trying to fly. I felt something panting, very close by. The heat of its breath went up my nose. It smelled—it was—dangerous, perhaps. The lizard! So it had appeared. There was its triangular head between two worm-eaten partitions. There were its gummy eyes looking at me. Gleaming with hunger. Despite the pain, I flapped my wings, but trying, trying my best, I couldn’t get off the ground. I took a few feeble hops, it seems. Losing my balance, hobbling. The pain of my wound was more severe now. There it came, there it was. Contracting like a snake, wriggling from side to side, it slid its body between the partitions and was inside. So there was the lizard. It crept closer and closer, quite slowly, never taking its eyes off me. How big it looked! Then, swiftly, swiftly, it came at me on its two legs. I saw it open its enormous mouth. I saw its two rows of teeth, curved and white; its steamy breath blinded me. I felt it bite, I felt it pulling off the damaged wing. I was so frightened I felt no pain. I was falling into a deeper trance, as though I were dropping off to sleep. I could see its crumpled green skin, its maw palpitating as it digested, and how it half closed its great eyes as it swallowed that mouthful of me. I would resign myself to my destiny, then. Better that way. Feeling sad, perhaps. Waiting for it to finish eating me. Then, once I’d been eaten, I could see through its insides, through its soul, through its bulging eyes—everything was green—that my family was coming back.
They entered the hut, as apprehensive as before. I wasn’t there anymore! Saying: Where could he have gone? They went over to the corner where the buzz-buzz bug had been, they looked, they searched. Gone! They sighed with relief, as though they’d been rescued from some great danger. They might have smiled; they were pleased. Thinking: We’re free of that shameful thing. They’d have nothing to hide from their visitors now. They could now go on with their everyday lives, perhaps.
And that’s the end of the story of Gregor-Tasurinchi, over by the Kimariato, the tapir-river.
I asked Tasurinchi, the seripigari, the meaning of what I’d been through in that bad trance. He pondered my question for a while, then made a gesture with his hand as though to chase something invisible away. “Yes, it was a bad trance,” he agreed at last, thoughtfully. “Gregor-Tasurinchi! I wonder why. Something bad behind it, doubtless. Being changed into a buzz-buzz bug must be the work of a kamagarini. I can’t really tell you for certain. I’d have to go up the pole of my hut and ask the saankarite in the world of clouds. He’d know, I expect. You’d best forget it. Don’t talk about it anymore. What’s remembered goes on living and can happen again.” But I haven’t been able to forget and I go on telling about it.
I wasn’t always the way all of you see me now. I don’t mean my face. I’ve always had this stain the color of darkpurple maize. Don’t laugh. I’m telling you the truth. I was born with it. It’s true; you needn’t laugh. I know what you’re thinking. “If you’d been born that way, Tasurinchi, your mothers would have thrown you into the river. If you’re here, walking, you were born pure. It was only later that something or someone made you the way you are.” Is that what you’re thinking? You see: I saw it even though I’m not a seer, and it didn’t take smoke or a trance.
I’ve asked the seripigari many times: “What does it mean, having a face like mine?” No saankarite has been able to explain it, it seems. Why did Tasurinchi breathe me out this way? Shh, shh, don’t get angry. What are you shouting about? All right, it wasn’t Tasurinchi. Kientibakori, then? No? All right, it wasn’t him either. Doesn’t the seripigari say that everything has its cause? I haven’t found one for my face yet. So some things may not have one. They just happen, that’s all. I know you don’t agree. I can see it just by looking at your eyes. Yes, I grant you, not knowing the cause doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Before, this stain used to matter a lot to me. I didn’t say so. Only to myself, to my souls. I kept it to myself, and this secret was eating me alive. Bit by bit it was eating me up, here inside. I was sad, it seems. Now I don’t mind. At least I think I don’t. That could be because of all of you. That’s the way it’s been, perhaps. Because I realized that it didn’t matter to the people I went to visit, to talk to. Many moons ago, the first time, I asked a family I was living with along the Koshireni. “Does it matter to you, seeing what I look like? Does it matter to you that I’m the way I am?” “What people do and what they don’t do matters,” Tasurinchi, the oldest one, explained to me. Saying: “Walking, fulfilling their destiny, matters. The hunter not touching what he’s killed, or the fisherman what he’s caught; respecting the taboos matters. It matters if they’re capable of walking so that the sun won’t fall. So that the world remains orderly. So that darkness and evils don’t return. That’s what matters. Stains on
a face don’t, I expect.” That’s wisdom, they say.
What I really wanted to say is that, before, I wasn’t what I am now. I became a storyteller after being what you are at this moment: listeners. That’s what I was, a listener. It happened without my willing it, little by little. Without even realizing it, I began finding my destiny. Slowly, calmly. It appeared bit by bit. Not with tobacco juice, or with ayahuasca brews. Or with the help of the seripigari. I discovered it all by myself.
I went from one place to another seeking out the men who walk. Are you there? Ehé, here I am. I stayed in their huts and helped them clear the weeds from the cassava patch and set traps. As soon as I found out by what river, in what gorge there was a family of men who walk, I went to visit them. Even if I had to go a very long way and cross the Gran Pongo, I went. At last I arrived. There they were. Have you come? Ehé, I’ve come. Some of them knew me; others got to know me. They asked me in; they gave me food and drink. They lent me a mat to sleep on. I stayed with them for many moons. I felt like one of the family. “Why have you come this far?” they asked me. “To learn how you prepare tobacco before sniffing it up your nostrils,” I answered. “To learn how you glue the long bones of the pavita kanari together with resin to use for breathing in tobacco,” I said. They let me listen to what they said, to learn what they were. I wanted to know how they lived, that is to say. To hear it from their mouths. What they are, what they do, where they come from, how they’re born, how they go, how they come back. The men who walk. “Very well,” they said to me. “Let us walk together then.”
I marveled at what they said. I remembered everything. About this world and the others. About what was before and what was after. I remembered the explanations and the causes. At first the seripigaris didn’t trust me. Later on, they did. They let me listen to them, too. The stories about Tasurinchi. The evil deeds of Kientibakori. The secrets of rain, lightning, the rainbow, of the colors and lines men paint on themselves before they set out to hunt. Of all the things I heard, I didn’t forget a one. Sometimes, when I went to visit a family, I told them what I’d seen and learned. They didn’t all know the whole of it, and even if they did, they liked hearing it again. Me, too. The first time I heard the story of Morenanchiite, the lord of thunder, it made a great impression on me. I asked everyone about it. I made them tell it once, many times. Does the lord of thunder have a bow? Yes, he has a bow. But instead of loosing arrows he looses thunder. And does he go about accompanied by jaguars? Yes. By pumas too, it seems. And though he’s not a Viracocha, does he have a beard? Yes, he has a beard. So I repeated the story of Morenanchiite everywhere I went. They listened to me and were pleased, perhaps. Saying: “Tell us that one again. Tell us, tell us.” Little by little, without knowing what was happening, I started doing what I’m doing now.
One day, as I arrived to visit a family, I heard them saying behind my back: “Here comes the storyteller. Let’s go listen to him.” It surprised me a lot. “Are you talking about me?” I asked. They all nodded their heads. “Ehé, ehé, it’s you we’re talking about.” So there I was—the storyteller. I was thunderstruck. There I was. My heart was like a drum. Banging away in my chest: boom, boom. Had I met my destiny? Perhaps. That’s how it was that time, it seems. It was in a little ravine by the Timpshía where there were Machiguengas. There aren’t any there now. But every time I pass by that ravine my heart starts dancing again. Thinking: Here I was born a second time. Here I came back without having gone. That’s how I began to be what I am. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, I expect. Nothing better will ever happen, I believe. Since then I’ve been talking. Walking. And I shall keep on till I go, it seems. Because I’m the storyteller.
That, anyway, is what I have learned.
Is a face like mine an evil? Is being born with more or fewer fingers than the right number an evil? Is it a misfortune to look like a monster without being one? A misfortune and an evil at the same time, it must be. To look like one of those twisted, crookbacked, misshapen beings with claws and fangs that Kientibakori breathed out on the day of creation, over there in the Gran Pongo, and not be one. To look like a demon or a little devil, and be only a man breathed out by Tasurinchi, must be both the work of evil and a misfortune. And that’s just what it is, I’d say.
When I started walking, I heard that a woman had drowned her newborn girl in the river because she lacked a foot or a nose, because she had stains, or because two children had been born instead of one. I didn’t understand, it seems. “Why did you do that? Why did you kill it?” “It wasn’t perfect, so it had to go.” I didn’t understand. “Tasurinchi only breathed out perfect men and women,” they explained. “Monsters were breathed out by Kientibakori.” I’ll never be able to understand that, perhaps. Being what I am, having the face I have, I’ll doubtless find it difficult. When I hear: “I threw her into the river because she was born a little devil, I killed him because he was born a demon,” I don’t understand all over again. What are you laughing about?
If imperfect people were impure, if they were children of Kientibakori, why were there men who had a limp, who had marks on their skin, who had deformed hands or were blind? How come they were still here, walking? Why hadn’t they been killed? Why didn’t they kill me, with this face of mine, I asked them. They, too, laughed. How could they be children of Kientibakori, devils or monsters! Were they born that way? They were pure; they were born perfect. They’d become that way later. It was their own doing, or that of a kamagarini or some other demon of Kientibakori’s. Who knows why they changed them. Only their outside is that of a monster; inside, they’re still pure, no doubt about it.
Even if you don’t believe me, it wasn’t Kientibakori’s little devils who changed me like this. I was born a monster. My mother didn’t throw me into the river; she let me live. And what used to seem cruel to me, before, now seems fortunate. Every time I go visit a family I don’t know yet, I think maybe they’ll be frightened and say: “He’s a monster, he’s a devil,” when they see me. There, you’re laughing again. All of you laugh like that when I ask you: “Do you think I’m a devil? Is that what my face means?” “No, no, no, and you’re not a monster. You’re Tasurinchi, the storyteller.” You make me feel at peace. Content, even.
The souls of the children that the mothers drown in the rivers and the lakes go down to the bottom of the Gran Pongo. That’s what they say. Down to the depths. Deeper than the whirlpools and the falls of muddy water, to caves full of crabs. There they must be, amid enormous rocks, deafened by the din, suffering. There the souls of those children will meet the monsters that Kientibakori breathed out when he fought with Tasurinchi. That was the beginning, it seems. Before, the world we walk in was empty. Does someone who drowns in the Gran Pongo come back? He sinks, deeper and deeper, in the roaring waters, a whirlpool traps his soul and spins it around and around, taking it lower and lower. All the way down to the dark muddy bottom, where monsters live. So then it settles there among the souls of other drowned children. Listening to the devils and the monsters lamenting the day that Tasurinchi first breathed out. The day when so many Machiguengas appeared.
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 o
ut 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.