Genesis

“Don’t distract me. I’m busy.”

  “What’s that for?”

  The armadillo explained.

  “Ah,” said the fox, savoring the words, “for the fiesta tonight?”

  “What do you mean, tonight?”

  The armadillo’s heart sank. He had never been more sure of his time calculations. “And me with my cloak only half finished!”

  While the fox took off with a smothered laugh, the armadillo finished the cloak in a hurry. As time was flying, he had to use coarser threads, and the weave ended up too big. For this reason the armadillo’s shell is tight-warped around the neck and very open at the back.

  (174)

  The Rabbit

  The rabbit wanted to grow.

  God promised to increase his size if he would bring him the skins of a tiger, of a monkey, of a lizard, and of a snake.

  The rabbit went to visit the tiger. “God has let me into a secret,” he said confidentially.

  The tiger wanted to know it, and the rabbit announced an impending hurricane. “I’ll save myself because I’m small. I’ll hide in some hole. But what’ll you do? The hurricane won’t spare you.”

  A tear rolled down between the tiger’s mustaches.

  “I can think of only one way to save you,” said the rabbit. “We’ll look for a tree with a very strong trunk. I’ll tie you to the trunk by the neck and paws, and the hurricane won’t carry you off.”

  The grateful tiger let himself be tied. Then the rabbit killed him with one blow, stripped him, and went on his way into the woods of the Zapotec country.

  He stopped under a tree in which a monkey was eating. Taking a knife, the rabbit began striking his own neck with the blunt side of it. With each blow of the knife, a chuckle. After much hitting and chuckling, he left the knife on the ground and hopped away.

  He hid among the branches, on the watch. The monkey soon climbed down. He examined the object that made one laugh, and he scratched his head. He seized the knife and at the first blow fell with his throat cut.

  Two skins to go. The rabbit invited the lizard to play ball. The ball was of stone. He hit the lizard at the base of the tail and left him dead.

  Near the snake, the rabbit pretended to be asleep. Just as the snake was tensing up, before it could jump, the rabbit plunged his claws into its eyes.

  He went to the sky with the four skins.

  “Now make me grow,” he demanded.

  And God thought, “The rabbit is so small, yet he did all this. If I make him bigger, what won’t he do? If the rabbit were big, maybe I wouldn’t be God.”

  The rabbit waited. God came up softly, stroked his back, and suddenly caught him by the ears, whirled him about, and threw him to the ground.

  Since then the rabbit has had big ears, short front feet from having stretching them out to break his fall, and pink eyes from panic.

  (92)

  The Snake

  God said to him, “Three canoes will pass down the river. In two of them, death will be traveling. If you guess which one is without death, I’ll liberate you from the shortness of life.”

  The snake let pass the first canoe, which was laden with baskets of putrid meat. Nor did he pay attention to the second, which was full of people. The third looked empty, but when it arrived, he welcomed it.

  For this reason the snake is immortal in the region of the Shipaiás.

  Every time he begins to get old, God presents him with a new skin.

  (111)

  The Frog

  From a cave in Haiti came the first Taíno Indians.

  The sun had no mercy on them. Suddenly, without warning, he would kidnap and transform them. He turned the one who mounted guard by night into a stone; of the fisherman he made trees, and the one who went out for herbs he caught on the road and turned into a bird that sings in the morning.

  One of the men fled from the sun. When he took off, he took all the women with him.

  There is no laughter in the song of the little frogs in the Caribbean islands. They are the Taíno children of those days. They say, “Toa, toa,” which is their way of calling to their mothers.

  (126 and 168)

  The Bat

  When time was yet in the cradle, there was no uglier creature in the world than the bat.

  The bat went up to heaven to look for God. He didn’t say, “I’m bored with being hideous. Give me colored feathers.” No. He said, “Please give me feathers, I’m dying of cold.”

  But God had not a single feather left over.

  “Each bird will give you a feather,” he decided.

  Thus the bat got the white feather of the dove and the green one of the parrot, the iridescent one of the hummingbird, the pink one of the flamingo, the red of the cardinal’s tuft and the blue of the kingfisher’s back, the clayey one of the eagle’s wing, and the sun feather that burns in the breast of the toucan.

  The bat, luxuriant with colors and softness, moved between earth and clouds. Wherever he went, the air became pleasant and the birds dumb with admiration. According to the Zapotec peoples, the rainbow was born of the echo of his flight.

  Vanity puffed out his chest. He acquired a disdainful look and made insulting remarks.

  The birds called a meeting. Together they flew up to God. “The bat makes fun of us,” they complained. “And what’s more, we feel cold for lack of the feathers he took.”

  Next day, when the bat shook his feathers in full flight, he suddenly became naked. A rain of feathers fell to earth.

  He is still searching for them. Blind and ugly, enemy of the light, he lives hidden in caves. He goes out in pursuit of the lost feathers after night has fallen and flies very fast, never stopping because it shames him to be seen.

  (92)

  Mosquitos

  There were many dead in the Nootkas village. In each dead body there was a hole through which blood had been stolen.

  The murderer, a child who was already killing before he learned to walk, received his sentence roaring with laughter. They pierced him with lances and he laughingly picked them out of his body like thorns.

  “I’ll teach you to kill me,” said the child.

  He suggested to his executioners that they should light a big bonfire and throw him into it.

  His ashes scattered through the air, anxious to do harm, and thus the first mosquitos started to fly.

  (174)

  Honey

  Honey was in flight from his two sisters-in-law. He had thrown them out of his hammock several times.

  They came after him night and day. They saw him and it made their mouths water. Only in dreams did they succeed in touching him, licking him, eating him.

  Their spite kept growing. One morning when the sisters-in-law were bathing, they came upon Honey on the riverbank. They ran and splashed him. Once wet, Honey dissolved.

  In the Gulf of Paria it’s not easy to find the lost honey. You have to climb the trees, ax in hand, open up the trunks, and do a lot of rummaging. The rare honey is eaten with pleasure and with fear, because sometimes it kills.

  (112)

  Seeds

  Pachacamac, who was a son of the sun, made a man and a woman in the dunes of Lurín.

  There was nothing to eat, and the man died of hunger.

  When the woman was bent over searching for roots, the sun entered her and made a child.

  Jealous, Pachacamac caught the newborn baby and chopped it to pieces. But suddenly he repented, or was scared of the anger of his father, the sun, and scattered about the world the pieces of his murdered brother.

  From the teeth of the dead baby, corn grew; from the ribs and bones, cassava. The blood made the land fertile, and fruit trees and shade trees rose from the sown flesh.

  Thus the women and men born on these shores, where it never rains, find food.

  (57)

  Corn

  The gods made the first Maya-Quichés out of clay. Few survived. They were soft, lacking strength; they fell apart before they could walk.

>   Then the gods tried wood. The wooden dolls talked and walked but were dry; they had no blood nor substance, no memory and no purpose. They didn’t know how to talk to the gods, or couldn’t think of anything to say to them.

  Then the gods made mothers and fathers out of corn. They molded their flesh with yellow corn and white corn.

  The women and men of corn saw as much as the gods. Their glance ranged over the whole world.

  The gods breathed on them and left their eyes forever clouded, because they didn’t want people to see over the horizon.

  (188)

  Tobacco

  The Carirí Indians had implored the Grandfather to let them try the flesh of wild pigs, which didn’t yet exist. The Grandfather, architect of the Universe, kidnapped the little children of the Carirís and turned them into wild pigs. He created a big tree so that they could escape into the sky.

  The people pursued the pigs up the tree from branch to branch and managed to kill a few. The Grandfather ordered the ants to bring down the tree. When it fell, the people suffered broken bones. Ever since that great fall, we all have divided bones and so are able to bend our fingers and legs or tilt our bodies.

  With the dead boars a great banquet was made in the village.

  The people besought the Grandfather to come down from the sky, where he was minding the children saved from the hunt, but he preferred to stay up there.

  The Grandfather sent tobacco to take his place among men. Smoking, the people talked with God.

  (111)

  Maté

  The moon was simply dying to tread the earth. She wanted to sample the fruit and to bathe in some river.

  Thanks to the clouds, she was able to come down. From sunset until dawn, clouds covered the sky so that no one could see the moon was missing.

  Nighttime on the earth was marvelous. The moon strolled through the forest of the high Paranà, caught mysterious aromas and flavors, and had a long swim in the river. Twice an old peasant rescued her. When the jaguar was about to sink his teeth into the moon’s neck, the old man cut the beasts throat with his knife; and when the moon got hungry, he took her to his house. “We offer you our poverty,” said the peasant’s wife, and gave her some corn tortillas.

  On the next night the moon looked down from the sky at her friends’ house. The old peasant had built his hut in a forest clearing very far from the villages. He lived there like an exile with his wife and daughter.

  The moon found that the house had nothing left in it to eat. The last corn tortillas had been for her. Then she turned on her brightest light and asked the clouds to shed a very special drizzle around the hut.

  In the morning some unknown trees had sprung up there. Amid their dark green leaves appeared white flowers.

  The old peasant’s daughter never died. She is the queen of the maté and goes about the world offering it to others. The tea of the maté awakens sleepers, activates the lazy, and makes brothers and sisters of people who don’t know each other.

  (86 and 144)

  Cassava

  No man had touched her, but a boy-child grew in the belly of the chief’s daughter.

  They called him Mani. A few days after birth he was already running and talking. From the forest’s farthest corners people came to meet the prodigious Mani.

  Mani caught no disease, but on reaching the age of one, he said, “I’m going to die,” and he died.

  A little time passed, and on Mani’s grave sprouted a plant never before seen, which the mother watered every morning. The plant grew, flowered, and gave fruit. The birds that picked at it flew strangely, fluttering in mad spirals and singing like crazy.

  One day the ground where Mani lay split open. The chief thrust his hand in and pulled out a big, fleshy root. He grated it with a stone, made a dough, wrung it out, and with the warmth of the fire cooked bread for everyone.

  They called the root mani oca, “house of Mani,” and manioc is its name in the Amazon basin and other places.

  (174)

  The Potato

  A chief on Chiloé Island, a place populated by sea gulls, wanted to make love like the gods.

  When pairs of gods embraced, the earth shook and tidal waves were set moving. That much was known, but no one had seen them.

  Anxious to surprise them, the chief swam out to the forbidden isle. All he got to see was a giant lizard, with its mouth wide open and full of foam and an outsized tongue that gave off fire at the tip.

  The gods buried the indiscreet chief in the ground and condemned him to be eaten by the others. As punishment for his curiosity, they covered his body with blind eyes.

  (178)

  The Kitchen

  In the center of the wood, a woman of the Tillamook people came upon a cabin that was throwing out smoke. Curious, she approached and went in.

  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)

  Music

  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)

  Death

  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)

  Resurrection

  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.