The Night Bird (Urutaú)
“I am the daughter of misfortune,” said the chief’s daughter Ñeambiú, when her father forbade her love for a man of an enemy community.
She said it and fled.
After a while they found her in the Iguazú Mountains. They found a statue. Ñeambiú looked without seeing; her mouth was still and her heart asleep.
The chief sent for the one who deciphers mysteries and heals sicknesses. The whole community came out to witness the resurrection.
The shaman sought advice from mate tea and cassava wine. He went up to Ñeambiú and lied right into her ear:
“The man you love has just died.”
Ñeambiú’s scream turned all the people into weeping willows. She flew off, turned into a bird.
The screams of the urutaú, which shake the mountains at nighttime, can be heard more than half a league away. It’s difficult to see the urutaú, impossible to hunt him. No one can catch up with the phantom bird.
(86)
The Ovenbird
When he reached the age for the three manhood tests, this boy ran and swam better than anyone and spent nine days without food, stretched out by leather thongs, without moving or complaining. During the tests he heard a woman’s voice singing to him from far away, which helped him to endure.
The chief of the community decided that the boy should marry his daughter, but he took flight and got lost in the woods of the Paraguay River, searching for the singer.
There you still meet the ovenbird. He flaps his wings powerfully and utters glad sounds when he thinks the sought-after voice is flying his way. Waiting for the one who doesn’t come, he has built a house of mud, with the door open to the northern breeze, in a place secure from lightning.
Everyone respects him. He who kills the ovenbird or breaks his house draws the storm upon himself.
(144)
The Crow
The lakes were dry, the riverbeds empty. The Takelma Indians, dying of thirst, sent the male and the female crow to look for water.
The male crow got tired right away. He urinated in a bowl and said that was the water he was bringing from a far place.
The female kept on flying. She returned much later with a load of fresh water and saved the Takelma people from the drought.
As a punishment the male crow was sentenced to suffer thirst through the summers. Unable to moisten his throat, he talks in a very raucous voice while the weather is hot.
(114)
The Condor
Cauillaca was weaving cloth in the shade of a tree, and overhead soared Coniraya, who had turned into a bird. The girl paid absolutely no attention to his warblings and flutterings.
Coniraya knew that other, older, more important gods burned with desire for Cauillaca. However, he sent his seed down to her from up there, in the form of a ripe fruit. When she saw the fleshy fruit at her feet, she picked it up and bit into it. She felt a strange pleasure and became pregnant.
Afterward he turned into a person—a ragged, sad sack of a man—and pursued her all over Peru. Cauillaca fled toward the ocean with her little son on her back, and behind trekked Coniraya, furiously hunting her.
He made inquiries of a skunk. The skunk, noticing his bleeding feet and general distress, answered, “Idiot. Can’t you see there’s no point in following her?”
So Coniraya cursed him, “You shall wander about by night, leaving a bad smell wherever you go. When you die, no one will pick you up off the ground.”
But the condor put spirit into the hunter. “Run!” he called to him. “Run and you’ll catch her!”
So Coniraya blessed him, “You shall fly wherever you want. There won’t be any place in the sky or on earth where you can’t go. No one will get to where you build your nest. You’ll never lack for food; and he who kills you will die.”
After climbing a lot of mountains, Coniraya reached the coast. He was too late. The girl and her son were already an island, carved in rock, out in midocean.
(100)
The Jaguar
The jaguar was out hunting with bow and arrows when he met a shadow. He tried to catch it and couldn’t. He lifted his head. The master of the shadow was young Botoque of the Kayapó tribe, who was near death from hunger on top of a rock.
Botoque had no strength to move and could only just stammer a few words. The jaguar lowered his bow and invited him to a roast meat dinner in his house. Although the lad didn’t know what “roast” meant, he accepted and dropped on to the hunter’s back.
“You’re carrying some stranger’s child,” said the jaguar’s wife.
“He’s mine now,” said the jaguar.
Botoque saw fire for the first time. He got acquainted with the stone oven and the smell of roast tapir and venison. He learned that fire illuminates and warms. The jaguar gave him a bow and arrows and taught him to defend himself.
One day Botoque fled. He had killed the jaguar’s wife.
He ran desperately for a long time and didn’t stop till he reached his village. There he told his story and displayed the secrets: the new weapon and the roast meat. The Kayapós decided to appropriate fire, and he led them to the remote house. Nothing was left to the jaguar of the fire except its reflection shining in his eyes.
Ever since then, the jaguar has hated men. For hunting, all he has are his fangs and claws, and he eats the flesh of his victims raw.
(111)
The Bear
The day animals and the night animals got together to decide what they would do about the sun, which then came and went whenever it liked. The animals resolved to leave the problem to fate. The winning group in the game of riddles would decide how long the world would have sunlight in the future.
They were still talking when the sun approached, intrigued by the discussion. The sun came so close that the night animals had to scatter. The bear was a victim of the general flurry. He put his right foot into his left moccasin and his left foot into his right moccasin, and took off on the run as best he could.
According to the Comanches, since then the bear walks with a lurch.
(132)
The Crocodile
The sun of the Macusi people was worried. Every day there were fewer fish in their ponds.
He put the crocodile in charge of security. The ponds got emptier. The crocodile, security guard and thief, invented a good story about invisible assailants, but the sun didn’t believe it, took a machete, and left the crocodile’s body all crisscrossed with cuts.
To calm him down, the crocodile offered his beautiful daughter in marriage.
“I’ll be expecting her,” said the sun.
As the crocodile had no daughter, he sculpted a woman in the trunk of a wild plum tree.
“Here she is,” he said, and plunged into the water, looking out of the corner of his eye, the way he always looks.
It was the woodpecker who saved his life. Before the sun arrived, the woodpecker pecked at the wooden girl below the belly. Thus she, who was incomplete, was open for the sun to enter.
(112)
The Armadillo
A big fiesta was announced on Lake Titicaca, and the armadillo, who was a very superior creature, wanted to dazzle everybody.
Long beforehand, he set to weaving a cloak of such elegance that it would knock all eyes out.
The fox noticed him at work. “Are you in a bad mood?”
“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-w
arped 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)
Tobacc
o
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 Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 7