The Storyteller

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  There were the deer, calm, not angry. Drinking, eating, moving about, mating. Twining their necks together, butting each other. As though nothing had happened, as though nothing were going to happen. But Tasurinchi knew that they knew that he was there. Could they be avenging their dead in this way? By making him endure this painfully long wait? No, this was only the beginning. What had to happen would not happen while the sun was in Inkite, but later, when Kashiri rose. Kashiri the resentful, the stained one. Darkness fell. The sky filled with stars. Kashiri sent his pale light. Tasurinchi could see the eyes of the deer, glistening with regret at no longer being men, with sadness at not walking. Then suddenly, as though at a command, the animals started moving. All at the same time, it seems. They all came to Tasurinchi’s tree. There they were, at his feet. A great many of them. A forest of deer, you might say. One after another, in an orderly way, not hurrying, not getting in each other’s way, they butted the tree. Playfully at first, then harder. Harder still. He was sad. Saying: “I’m going to fall.” He never would have believed that before going he’d be like a shimbillo monkey, clinging to a branch, trying not to drown in that dark mass of deer. But he held out the whole night. Sweating and moaning, he resisted, hoping his arms and legs would not give out. At dawn, his strength gone, he let himself fall. Saying: “I must accept my fate.”

  Now he, too, is a deer, like the others. There he is, I hear, wandering up and down the forest, troc, troc. Fleeing the jaguar, frightened of the snake. Troc, troc. Hiding from the puma and from the arrows of the hunter who, through ignorance or wickedness, kills and eats his brothers.

  When I come upon a deer, I remember the story the seripigari of the Kompiroshiato told me. What if this one were Tasurinchi the hunter? Who can tell? I for my part have no way of telling whether a deer was or wasn’t a man who walks, before. I just step back a little way and look at it. Perhaps it recognizes me; perhaps when it sees me it thinks: I was like him. Who knows?

  In a bad trance a machikanari of the rainbow river, the Yoguieto, turned into a jaguar. How did he know? Because of the terrible urge he felt to kill deer and eat them. “I grew blind with rage,” he said. And roaring with hunger, he began running through the forest, tracking them. Until he came upon one and killed it. When he changed back into a machikanari, he had shreds of flesh between his teeth and his nails were bloody from all the ripping and tearing he’d done. “Kientibakori must have been pleased,” he said. He may well have been.

  That, anyway, is what I have learned.

  Like the deer, every animal in the forest has its story. Whether little, middle-sized, or big. The one that flies, like the hummingbird. The one that swims, like the boquichico. The one that lives in a herd, like the huangana. Before, they were all something different from what they are now. Something happened to all of them that you could tell a story about. Would you like to know their stories? So would I. Many of the ones I know I heard from the seripigari of the Kompiroshiato. If I’d had my way, I’d still be there listening to him, the Way all of you are listening, here, now. But, one day, he threw me out of his hut. “How long are you going to stay here, Tasurinchi?” he scolded me. “You have to be on your way. You’re a storyteller, I’m a seripigari, and now, with all your questions and your making me talk so much, you’re turning me into what you are. Would you like to become a seripigari? If so, you’d have to be born again. Pass all the tests. Purify yourself. Have many trances, bad ones and good ones, and, above all, suffer. Attaining wisdom is difficult. You’re already old; I don’t think you’ll get that far. And besides, who knows whether that’s your destiny? Be off with you; start walking. Talk; keep talking. Don’t disturb the order of the world, storyteller.”

  It’s true; I was always asking him questions. He knew everything, and that made me all the more curious. “Why do the men who walk paint their bodies with annatto?” I once asked him. “Because of the moritoni,” he replied. “You mean that little bird?” “The very same.” And with that, he started me thinking. Why do you suppose the Machiguengas avoid killing the moritoni? Why do they make a point of not stepping on it when they come upon it in the tall grass? Why do you feel grateful when you see it perching on a branch and notice its little white legs and its black breast? It’s thanks to the achiote bush that gives us annatto and to the moritoni bird that we’re walking, Tasurinchi. Without the two of them, the men who walk would have disappeared. They’d have boiled to death, burning with blisters till they burst like bubbles.

  That was before.

  In those days, the moritoni was a child who walks. One of its mothers is said to be Inaenka. Yes, the evil that destroys flesh was a woman then. The evil that burns the face, leaving it full of holes. Inaenka. She was that evil and she was the mother of the moritoni, too. She looked like a woman, like any other, except that she had a limp. Do all devils limp? It seems they do. They say that Kientibakori does, too. Her limp made Inaenka furious; she wore a long cushma, so long that no one ever saw her feet. It wasn’t easy to recognize her, to know that she wasn’t a woman but what she was.

  Tasurinchi was fishing from the riverbank. Suddenly an enormous súngaro fell into his net. He was very pleased. He’d get a tubful of oil out of it, maybe. Just then he saw a canoe in front of him, cleaving the water. He could make out a woman paddling, and several children. A seripigari sitting in Tasurinchi’s hut breathing in tobacco immediately saw the danger. “Don’t call to her,” he warned. “Can’t you see it’s Inaenka?” But Tasurinchi, being impatient, had already whistled, had already waved to her. The paddles propelling the canoe were raised. Tasurinchi saw the craft come into shore. The woman jumped out onto the bank; she was pleased.

  “That’s a fine fish you’ve caught, Tasurinchi,” she said as she approached. She walked slowly and he didn’t notice her limp. “Come on, carry it to your hut, and I’ll cook it for you. Just for you.”

  Tasurinchi, puffed up with vanity, obeyed. He hoisted the fish onto his back and set off for his hut, unaware that he had met his fate. Knowing what was going to happen, the seripigari looked at him sadly. When he was a few steps from his hut, the fish slipped off his back, drawn by the power of an invisible kamagarini. Tasurinchi saw that when it touched the ground the creature’s skin started coming off, as though it had had boiling water sprinkled on it. He was so astonished he wasn’t able to call out to the seripigari or even move. That was fear. I expect his teeth chattered. He was so overcome he didn’t realize that the same thing was happening to him as to the súngaro. Only when he felt the heat and smelled scorched flesh did he look at his body: his skin, too, was peeling off. He could see his bloody guts in places. He fell to the ground, terrified, screaming. Kicking and weeping, Tasurinchi was. Then Inaenka came over and looked at him with her real face, a blister of boiling water. She wet him thoroughly, from head to foot, enjoying seeing Tasurinchi losing his skin like the fish, bubbling and dying from her evil.

  Inaenka began dancing for joy. “I’m the mistress of the sickness that kills swiftly,” she goaded men, shrieking so loudly the whole forest would hear. “I’ve killed them and now I’m going to stew them and season them with annatto and eat them!” she shouted. Kientibakori and his little devils danced merrily, pushing and biting each other in the forest. Singing: “Ehé, ehé, she’s Inaenka.”

  It was only then that the woman whose face was a boiling blister noticed that the seripigari was there, too. He was quietly watching what was going on, without anger, without fear, breathing in tobacco through his nose. He sneezed calmly, as though she weren’t there and nothing had happened. Inaenka decided to kill him. She went over to him and was about to sprinkle a little boiling water on him when the seripigari imperturbably showed her two white stones dangling from around his neck.

  “You can’t do anything to me while I have these stones,” he reminded her. “They protect me from you and from all the evils in the world. Perhaps you didn’t know?”

  “What you say is true,” said Inaenka. “I’ll wait he
re near you till you fall asleep. Then I’ll remove the stones, throw them in the river, and sprinkle you as much as I like. Nothing will save you. Your skin will come off, the way the fish’s did, and you’ll blister, the way Tasurinchi did.”

  And that’s what must have happened. However hard he fought against sleep, the seripigari couldn’t resist. During the night, dazed by the false light of Kashiri, the stained one, he fell asleep. Inaenka limped to his side. Very carefully, she removed his two stones and threw them into the river. After that, she was able to sprinkle water on him from her great blister of a face, and gloated as the seripigari’s body boiled, swelled with innumerable blisters, and started peeling and bursting.

  “What a feast I’m going to have myself now,” you could hear her shouting as she leapt and danced. From the canoe beached on the shore, Inaenka’s children had seen her misdeeds. Perhaps they were disturbed. Perhaps sad.

  There was an achiote close by. One of the children of the evil-bringing woman noticed that the little bush was stretching out its branches and waving its leaves in his direction. Could it be trying to tell him something? The boy drew near and took shelter beneath the burning breath of its fruit. “I’m Potsotiki,” he heard it say in a tremulous voice. “Inaenka, your mother, will be the end of the people who walk if we don’t do something.” “What can we do?” said the boy sadly. “She has this power, she is the sickness that kills swiftly.” “If you’ll help me, we can save the men who walk. If they disappear, the sun will fall. It will no longer warm this world. Or would you rather that everything turned dark and Kientibakori’s demons became masters of everything?” “I’ll help you,” the boy said. “What must I do?”

  “Eat me,” the annatto bush instructed him. “Your face will change and your mother won’t recognize you. You’re to go up to her and say to her: ‘I know a place where what’s imperfect becomes perfect, where monsters become men. There, your feet will be like those of other women.’ And then you’re to lead her to this place.” Sagely waving its leaves and branches and making its fruit dance gaily, Potsotiki gave him directions as to the path he must follow.

  Inaenka, busy rending the last remains of her kill, watching the guts and the hearts appearing, took no notice of their plotting. Once she had hacked the bodies into pieces, she roasted them, flavored with the annatto she was so fond of. In the meantime, the boy had eaten Potsotiki. He’d changed into a red boy, clay-red, annatto-red. He went up to his mother and she did not recognize him. “Who are you?” she asked. “How can you come near me without trembling? Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Of course I do,” said the annatto-boy. “I’ve come to get you, because I know a place where you can be happy. If anyone sets foot there and bathes in the rivers, it’s enough to straighten anything that’s crooked, and any limbs that anyone has lost grow back again. I’ll take you there. You’ll lose your limp. You’ll be happy, Inaenka. Follow me.”

  Their journey was endless. They crossed forests, rivers, lakes, gorges; they went up and down wooded slopes and through more forests still. Rain poured down on them many times. Lightning flashed above their heads and tempests roared at them, deafening them. After crossing a steaming bog with whistling butterflies, they were there. The Oskiaje. There all the rivers of this world and the other worlds meet; the Meshiareni comes down from the starlit sky; the Kamabiría, whose waters carry the souls of the dead to the worlds of the deep, also runs through it. There were monsters of every shape and size, beckoning to Inaenka with their trunks and claws. “Come, come, you’re one of us,” they grunted at her.

  “Why have you brought me here?” Inaenka whispered. Alarmed, enraged, smelling the trap at last. “I’ve trod this earth, and my feet are still crooked.”

  “Potsotiki, the annatto bush, counseled me to bring you here,” her son revealed. “So you wouldn’t go on destroying the people who walk, that’s why. The sun mustn’t fall through your fault.”

  “Very well,” Inaenka said, accepting her fate. “You’ve saved them, perhaps. But I’ll follow you day and night. Day and night, till I’ve sprinkled you with my fiery water. I’ll cover you with blisters. I’ll watch you peeling, kicking the ground. I’ll laugh at your suffering. You cannot free yourself of me.”

  But he did free himself. To escape from Inaenka, his soul had to give up its human wrapping; that was what it had to do, and that is what it did. It left his body and started wandering, wandering in search of a refuge, it made its home in that little black bird with white legs. He is now a moritoni. He now lives by the river and sleeps nestled in the grass. Thanks to him and to Potsotiki, the men who walk were saved from the evil that makes the skin peel off, that burns and kills swiftly. That’s why we paint our skin with annatto dye, it seems. Seeking Potsotiki’s protection. Nobody steps on the moritoni he comes upon sleeping in the grass; instead, he walks away. When a moritoni gets caught on the twigs sticky with resin that the hunters set out in the drinking places, he frees it and breathes on it to take away the cold and the fear it feels; the women cradle it between their breasts until it can fly. And that must be the reason why.

  Nothing that happens happens just because, said Tasurinchi, the seripigari of the Kompiroshiato. There’s a reason for everything; everything is a cause or a result of something. Perhaps that’s so. There are more little gods and little devils than drops of water in the biggest lake and the biggest river, he used to say. They’re involved with everything that exists. The sons of Kientibakori so as to perturb the world, the sons of Tasurinchi so as to preserve its order. One who knows causes and consequences has wisdom, perhaps. I haven’t attained it yet, he said, even though I’m fairly wise and can do certain things that others can’t. What can you do, Tasurinchi? Fly, talk with the souls of the dead, visit the worlds of below and above, enter the bodies of the living, foresee the future, understand the language of some of the animals. That’s a lot. But there are so many other things I don’t know.

  That, anyway, is what I have learned.

  It’s true; he guessed rightly: if I weren’t a storyteller I would have liked to be a seripigari. To be able to control trances through wisdom so that they’d always be good ones. Once, over there by the tapir-river, the Kimariato, I had a bad trance, and in it I lived through a story I’d rather not remember. Nonetheless, I still remember it.

  Here is the story.

  That was after, by the tapir-river.

  I was people. I had a family. I was asleep. Then I woke up. I’d barely opened my eyes when I understood. Alas, poor Tasurinchi! I’d changed into an insect, that’s what. A buzz-buzz bug, perhaps. A Gregor-Tasurinchi. I was lying on my back. The world had grown bigger, it seemed to me. I was aware of everything. Those hairy, ringed legs were my legs. Those transparent mud-colored wings, which creaked when I moved and hurt me so much, had once been my arms. The stench that surrounded me: was that my odor? I saw the world differently: I could see the underside and the top, the back and the front, at the same time. Because now, being an insect, I had several eyes. What’s happened to you, Gregor-Tasurinchi? Did a bad witch eat a lock of your hair and change you? Did a little kamagarini devil get into you through your ass-eye and turn you into this? I was covered with shame at seeing myself the way I was. What would my family say? Because I had a family, like the other men who walk, it seemed. What would they think, seeing me changed into a repulsive insect? All you can do with buzz-buzz bugs is squash them. Can you eat them? Can you cure evil with them? You can’t even make filthy machikanari potions with them, perhaps.

  But my family didn’t say anything. They pretended. They came and went in the hut or down by the river, as though they hadn’t noticed the misfortune that had befallen me. They must have felt ashamed, too. Saying: Look how he’s been changed! That might have been the reason they avoided mentioning me by name. Who knows? And in the meantime, I saw everything. The world seemed content, the same as before. I could see the children lifting stones off anthills and happily eating the soft-shelled ants, squab
bling over them. The men, going to clear the weeds from the cassava patches or painting themselves with annatto and huito before going off to hunt. The women, cutting up the cassava, chewing it, spitting it out, leaving it to rest in the masato tubs; unraveling cotton to weave cushmas. When night fell, the old men got the fires ready, cutting two reeds and making a hole near the tip of the smaller one, planting it firmly in the dirt, holding it fast with their feet, placing the other reed in the hole and turning it, turning it, patiently, till a thread of smoke started rising. Then they’d collect the dust in a banana leaf, wrap the leaf in cotton, and shake it till the fire caught. Then they lighted the fires for the families to sleep around. The men and women came and went, getting on with life, content perhaps. Without mentioning the change I’d suffered, showing neither anger nor surprise. Who asked after the storyteller? Nobody. Did anybody take a sack of cassava and another of maize to the seripigari, saying: “Change him back into a man who walks?” Nobody. Many people bustled about, their eyes avoiding the corner where I was. Poor Gregor-Tasurinchi! Furiously fluttering my wings and wriggling my legs; trying to turn over, fighting to get up. Ay, ay!