The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

  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.

  (14)

  Magic

  An extremely old Tukuna woman chastised some young girls who had denied her food. During the night she tore the bones out of their legs and devoured the marrow, so the girls could never walk again.

  In her infancy, soon after birth, the old woman had received from a frog the powers of healing and vengeance. The frog had taught her to cure and kill, to hear unhearable voices and see unseeable colors. She learned to defend herself before she learned to talk. Before she could walk she already knew how to be where she wasn’t, because the shafts of love and hate instantly pierce
the densest jungles and deepest rivers.

  When the Tukunas cut off her head, the old woman collected her own blood in her hands and blew it toward the sun.

  “My soul enters you, too!” she shouted.

  Since then anyone who kills receives in his body, without wanting or knowing it, the soul of his victim.

  (112)

  Laughter

  The bat, hanging from a branch by his feet, noticed a Kayapó warrior leaning over the stream.

  He wanted to be his friend.

  He dropped on the warrior and embraced him. As he didn’t know the Kayapó language, he talked to him with his hands. The bat’s caresses drew from the man the first laugh. The more he laughed, the weaker he felt. He laughed so much that finally he lost all his strength and fell in a faint.

  When the villagers learned about it, they were furious. The warriors burned a heap of dry leaves in the bats’ cave and blocked up the entrance.

  Afterward they had a discussion. The warriors resolved that laughter should be used only by women and children.

  (111)

  Fear

  These incredible bodies called to them, but the Nivakle men dared not enter. They had seen the women eat: they swallowed the flesh of fish with the upper mouth, but chewed it first with the lower mouth. Between their legs they had teeth.

  So the men lit bonfires, called to the women, and sang and danced for them.

  The women sat around in a circle with their legs crossed.

  The men danced all through the night. They undulated, turned, and flew like smoke and birds. When dawn came they fell fainting to the ground. The women gently lifted them and gave them water to drink.

  Where they had been sitting, the ground was all littered with teeth.

  (192)

  Authority

  In remote times women sat in the bow of the canoe and men in the stern. It was the women who hunted and fished. They left the villages and returned when they could or wanted. The men built the huts, prepared the meals, kept the fires burning against the cold, minded the children, and tanned skins for clothes.

  Such was life for the Ona and Yagan Indians in Tierra del Fuego, until one day the men killed all the women and put on the masks that the women had invented to scare them.

  Only newly born girls were spared extermination. While they grew up, the murderers kept repeating to them that serving men was their destiny. They believed it. Their daughters believed it, too, likewise the daughters of their daughters.

  (91 and 178)

  Power

  In the lands where the Juruá River is born, Old Meanie was lord of the corn. He gave out the grains roasted, so that no one could plant them.

  The lizard succeeded in stealing a raw grain from him. Old Meanie caught her and ripped off her jaw and fingers and toes; but she had managed to conceal the grain behind her back molar. The lizard afterward spat out the raw grain on the common land. Her jaw was too big and her fingers and toes too long to be completely torn off.

  Old Meanie was also lord of the fire. The parrot sneaked up close to it and started screeching her lungs out. Old Meanie threw at her everything that was handy, and the little parrot dodged the projectiles until she saw a lighted stick flying her way. Then she picked it up with her beak, which was an enormous as a toucan’s, and fled. A trail of sparks followed her. The embers, fanned by the wind, burned her beak, but she had already reached the trees when Old Meanie beat his drum and let loose a rainstorm.

  The parrot managed to leave the burning stick in the hollow of a tree under the care of the other birds and flew back into the downpour. The water relieved her burns, but her beak, shortened and curved, still shows a white scar from the fire.

  The birds protected the stolen fire with their bodies.

  (59)

  War

  At dawn, the trumpet call announced from the mountain that it was time for crossbows and blowguns.

  At nightfall, nothing remained of the village except smoke.

  A man lay among the dead without moving. He smeared his body with blood and waited. He was the only survivor of the Palawiyang people.

  When the enemy moved off, that man got up. He contemplated his destroyed world. He walked among the people who had shared hunger and food with him. He sought in vain some person or thing that hadn’t been wiped out. The terrifying silence dazed him. The smell of fire and blood sickened him. He felt disgusted to be alive, and he threw himself back down among his own.

  With the first light came the vultures. There was nothing left in that man except fog and a yearning to sleep and let himself be devoured.

  But the condor’s daughter opened a path through the circling birds of prey. She beat her wings hard and dived. He grabbed onto her feet, and the condor’s daughter took him far away.

  (54)

  Parties

  An Inuit, bow in hand, was out hunting reindeer when an eagle unexpectedly appeared behind him.

  “I killed your two brothers,” said the eagle. “If you want to save yourself you must give a party in your village so everyone can sing and dance.”

  “A party? Sing, what’s that? What’s dance?”

  “Come with me.”

  The eagle showed him a party. There was a lot of good food and drink. The drum beat as hard as the heart of the eagle’s old mother, its rhythm guiding her children from her house across the vast expanses of ice and mountain. Wolves, foxes, and other guests danced and sang until sunup.

  The hunter returned to his village.

  A long time afterward he learned that the eagle’s old mother and all the oldsters of the eagle world were strong and handsome and swift. Human beings had finally learned to sing and dance, and had sent them, from afar, from their own parties, gaieties that warmed the blood.

  (174)

  Conscience

  When the waters of the Orinoco lowered, canoes brought the Caribs with their battle-axes.

  No one had a chance against the sons of the jaguar. They leveled villages and made flutes from their victims’ bones. They feared nobody. The only thing that struck panic into them was a phantom born in their own hearts.

  The phantom lay in wait for them behind the trees. He broke their bridges and placed in their paths tangled lianas. He traveled by night. To throw them off the track, he walked backward. He was on the slope from which rocks broke off, in the mud that sank beneath their feet, in the leaf of the poisonous plant, in the touch of the spider. He knocked them down with a breath, injected fever through their ears, and robbed them of shade.

  He was not pain, but he hurt. He was not death, but he killed. His name was Kanaima, and he was born among the conquerors to avenge the conquered.

  (54)’

  The Sacred City

  Wiracocha, who had fled from the darkness, ordered the sun to send a daughter and a son to earth to light the way for the blind.

  The sun’s children arrived on the banks of Lake Titicaca and set out through the Andean ravines. They carried a golden staff. Wherever it sank in at the first blow, they would there found a new kingdom. From the throne they would act like their father, who gives light, clarity, and warmth, sheds rain and dew, promotes harvests, multiplies flocks, and never lets a day pass without visiting the world.

  They tried everywhere to stick in the golden staff, but the earth bounced it back. They scaled heights and crossed cataracts and plateaus. Whatever their feet touched was transformed; arid ground became fertile, swamps dried, and rivers returned to their beds. At dawn, wild geese escorted them; in the evening, condors.

  Finally, beside Mount Wanakauri, the sun’s children stuck in the staff. When the earth swallowed it, a rainbow rose in the sky.

  Then the first of the Incas said to his sister and wife:

  “Let us call the people together.”

  Between the mountains and the prairie, the valley was covered with scrub. No one had a house. The people lived in holes or in the shelter of rocks, eating roots, and didn’t know how to weave cotton o
r wool to keep out the cold.

  Everyone followed the sun’s children. Everyone believed in them. Everyone knew, by the brilliance of their words and eyes, that the sun’s children were not lying, and accompanied them to the place where the great city of Cuzco, still unborn, awaited them.

  (76)

  Pilgrims

  The Maya-Quichés came from the east.

  When they first reached the new lands, carrying their gods on their backs, they were scared that there would be no dawn. They had left happiness back in Tulán and arrived out of breath after a long and painful trek. They waited at the edge of the Izmachí forest, silent, huddled together, without anybody sitting down or stretching out to rest. But time passed and it went on being dark.

  At last the morning star appeared in the sky.

  The Quichés hugged each other and danced; and afterward, says the sacred book, the sun rose like a man.

  Since then the Quichés gather at the end of each night to greet the morning star and watch the birth of the sun. When the sun is first about to peep out, they say:

  “That’s where we come from.”

  (188)

  The Promised Land

  Sleepless, naked, and battered, they journeyed night and day for more than two centuries. They went in search of the place where the land extends between canes and sedges.

  Several times they got lost, scattered, and joined up again. They were buffeted by the winds and dragged themselves ahead lashed together, bumping and pushing each other. They fell from hunger and got up and fell again and got up again. In the volcanic region where no grass grows, they ate snake meat.

  They carried the banner and the cloak of the god who had spoken to the priests in sleep and promised a kingdom of gold and quetzal feathers. You shall subject all the peoples and cities from sea to sea, the god had announced, and not by witchcraft but by valor of the heart and strength of the arm.