The Storyteller

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  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 ar
ound 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.

  That, anyway, is what I have learned.

  Tasurinchi is well. Walking. I was on my way to visit him there where he lives, by the Timpanía, when I met him on the trail. He and two of his sons were returning from a visit to the White Fathers, the ones who live on the banks of the Sepahua. He’d brought them his maize harvest. He’d been doing so for some time now, he told me. The White Fathers give him seed, machetes to clear the forest, spades to work the ground and grow potatoes, yams, maize, tobacco, coffee, and cotton. Later on, he sells them what he doesn’t need, and that way he can buy more things. He showed me what he’s already acquired: clothes, food, an oil lamp, fishhooks, a knife. “Maybe next time I can buy myself a shotgun as well,” he said. Then he’d be able to hunt anything in the forest, he told me. But he wasn’t happy, Tasurinchi wasn’t. Worried, rather; his forehead wrinkled and his eyes hard. “In the ground here by the Timpanía you can only sow a crop a couple of times in the same place, never more,” he lamented. “And in some places only once. It’s bad earth, it seems. My last sowing of cassavas and yams produced a miserable yield.” It’s land that tires quickly, it appears. “It wants me to leave it in peace,” Tasurinchi said. “This earth here along the Timpanía is lazy,” he complained bitterly. “You barely put it to work and it starts asking for a rest. That’s its nature.”

  Talking of this and that, we reached his hut. His wife ran out to meet us, all upset. She’d painted her face in mourning, and waving her hands and pointing, she said the river was a thief. It had stolen one of her three hens, it seemed. She was holding it in her arms to warm it, since it appeared to be sick, as she filled her water jar. And then, all of a sudden, everything started shaking. The earth, the forest, the hut, everything started shaking. “Like when you have the evil,” she said. It shook as though it were dancing. In her fright she let go of the hen and saw the current carry it away and devour it before she could rescue it. It’s true that the current is very swift there in that gorge of the Timpanía. Even close into shore, there is white-water.

  Tasurinchi was furious and began beating her. Saying: “I’m not beating you because you let it fall into the river. That could happen to anyone. I’m beating you because you lied. Instead of making up a story about the earth shaking, why don’t you say you fell asleep? It slipped out of your arms, didn’t it? Or maybe you left it on the bank and it fell in. Or you threw it into the river in a fit of temper. Don’t talk of things that didn’t happen. Are you a storyteller, may I ask? Don’t lies bring harm to a family? Who’s going to believe you when you say the earth began dancing? If it had, I’d have felt it, too.”

  And as Tasurinchi scolded her, raging and beating her, the earth began shaking. Don’t laugh. I’m not making it up; I didn’t dream it. It happened. It started dancing. First we heard a deep growling, as though the lord of thunder were down below, making his jaguars roar. A sound of war, many drums beating all together, down in the earth’s entrails. A deep, threatening sound. We suddenly felt that the world was restless. The earth was moving about, dancing, leaping as though it were drunk. The trees moved, and Tasurinchi’s hut; the waters of the river bubbled and seethed, like cassava boiling in a tub. There was anger in the air, it seemed. The sky filled with terrified birds; parrots squawked in the trees; from the forest came the grunts, whistles, and croaks of frightened animals. “Again!” Tasurinchi’s wife screamed. We looked all about, confused, not knowing whether to run or to stay where we were. The children were crying; clinging to Tasurinchi, they howled. He, too, was frightened, and so was I. “Is this world coming to an end?” he said. “Is darkness returning, is chaos coming?”

  When the shaking stopped at last, the sky turned black, as though the sun had begun to fall. Then all at once, very suddenly, it was dark. A great dust storm arose, from everywhere, blanketing this world in an ashen color. I could hardly see Tasurinchi and his family with all the dust blowing in the strong wind. Everything was gray. “Something very grave is happening and we don’t know what it is,” said Tasurinchi fearfully. “Can it be the end of us men who walk? The time has come for us to go, perhaps. The sun has fallen. It may not rise again.”

  I know now that it didn’t fall. I know now that if it had fallen, we wouldn’t be here. The dust storm moved on, the sky cleared, and the earth was still at last. A smell of brine and rotted plants lingered in the air, a sickening stench. The world wasn’t pleased, it seemed. “You see, I didn’t lie; it did shake. That’s why the river swallowed up the hen,” said Tasurinchi’s wife. But he was hardheaded, insisting: “That’s not certain.” He was enraged. “You lied,” he screamed at his wife. “Perhaps that’s why the earth shook just now.” He began beating her again, thrusting his chest out, roaring from the sheer effort he was expending. Tasurinchi, the one from the Timpanía, is a very stubborn man. It’s not the first time he’s fallen into a fury. I’ve seen him have fits of rage at other times. That may be why few people visit him. He refused to admit he’d been wrong, but I could see, as anyone could have, that his wife had spoken the truth.

  We ate; we lay down for a night’s rest on the mats; in just a little wh
ile, long before dawn, I heard him get up. I saw him go out and sit down on a stone a few paces away from the hut. There was Tasurinchi, sitting brooding in the moonlight. I got up in the semi-darkness and went out to talk to him. He was grinding up tobacco to inhale. I saw him tamp down the powder in the hollow turkey bone, and then he asked me to blow it up his nose for him. I placed it in one nostril and blew; he breathed it in deeply, anxiously, closing his eyes. Then I placed it in his other nostril and blew. And after that he breathed the powder that was left into my nose. He was worried, Tasurinchi was. Tormented, even. Saying: “I can’t sleep,” in the voice of a man who is very tired. “Two things have happened that make a person think. The river stole one of my hens and the earth started shaking. And, what’s more, the sky grew dark. What must I do?” I didn’t know; I was as bewildered as he was. Why are you asking me that, Tasurinchi? “These things happening, one right after the other, almost at the same time, mean that I must do something,” he said to me. “But I don’t know what. There’s no one I can ask hereabouts. The seripigari is many moons’ walk away, up the Sepahua.”

  Tasurinchi spent the whole day sitting on that stone, not speaking to anyone. Neither drinking nor eating. When his wife came out to bring him some mashed bananas, he wouldn’t even let her come near; he made a threatening gesture with his hand as though he were about to hit her again. That night he didn’t come inside his hut. Kashiri shone brightly up in the sky and I could see Tasurinchi, not moving, his head buried in his chest, trying his best to understand these misfortunes. What were they telling him to do? Who knows? The whole family was silent, worried, even the little ones. Watching him anxiously, not daring to move. Wondering: What’s going to happen?

  Around midday, Tasurinchi, the one by the Timpanía, got up from the stone. He approached the hut with a lively step; we saw him coming, beckoning to us with open arms. A determined expression on his face, it seemed.