Suddenly I noticed. They’d shut me up. Who was it who had done that, who were they? My family, yes, that was who. They’d closed off the hut, sealed up all the holes I might be able to escape through. They’d shut me up like a girl with her first blood. But who would come bathe Gregor-Tasurinchi and bring him back to the land of the living, pure and clean now? Nobody would come, perhaps. Why had they done this to me? Out of shame, most likely. So that nobody visiting them would see me and feel repelled by me or make fun of them. Had my kinfolk pulled a lock of hair from my head and taken it to the machikanari so he’d change me into Gregor-Tasurinchi? No, it must have been a little devil or even Kientibakori. I had done something wrong, perhaps, for them to shut me up like an enemy, on top of the evil I’d suffered. Why didn’t they fetch a seripigari who’d give me back my own bodily wrapping, instead? Maybe they’ve gone to the seripigari and have shut you up so you don’t hurt yourself by going outside.
That gave me hope. Don’t give up, Gregor-Tasurinchi, not yet; it was a little ray of sunshine in the storm. Meanwhile, I went on trying to turn over. My legs hurt from waving them about so much and my wings creaked with my efforts as though they were splitting apart. How much time went by? Who knows? But suddenly I succeeded. Courage, Gregor-Tasurinchi! Perhaps I moved more energetically; perhaps I stretched one of my legs out farther. I don’t know. But my body contracted, moved sideways, flipped over, and there it was, I could feel it underneath me, hard. Firm, solid: the ground. I shut my eyes, intoxicated. But the joy of having righted myself disappeared immediately. What was that horrible pain in my back? As though I’d been burned. I’d torn my right wing on a splinter as I took those sudden leaps, or before, while I was struggling so violently. There it was, dangling down, split in two, dragging along. That was perhaps my wing. I was beginning to feel hungry as well. I was frightened. The world had turned into an unknown one. Dangerous, perhaps. At any moment someone might squash me. Crush me. Eat me. Poor Gregor-Tasurinchi! Lizards! Trembling, trembling all over. Had I ever seen them eating cockroaches or beetles or any of the insects they chase? My broken wing hurt more and more, so much I could hardly move. And hunger-thorns still piercing my belly. I tried to eat the dry straw stuffed into the wall, but it tore my mouth without getting any softer, so I spat it out. I started scratching around here and there in the damp earth till I came across a nest of larvae. They were very small, squirming about, trying to escape. They were pocos, wood-worm larvae. I swallowed them slowly, shutting my eyes, happy. Feeling that the pieces of my soul that had been leaving were returning to my body. Yes, happy.
I hadn’t finished swallowing the larvae when a distinctly unpleasant smell made me leap into the air, trying to fly. I felt something panting, very close by. The heat of its breath went up my nose. It smelled — it was — dangerous, perhaps. The lizard! So it had appeared. There was its triangular head between two worm-eaten partitions. There were its gummy eyes looking at me. Gleaming with hunger. Despite the pain, I flapped my wings, but trying, trying my best, I couldn’t get off the ground. I took a few feeble hops, it seems. Losing my balance, hobbling. The pain of my wound was more severe now. There it came, there it was. Contracting like a snake, wriggling from side to side, it slid its body between the partitions and was inside. So there was the lizard. It crept closer and closer, quite slowly, never taking its eyes off me. How big it looked! Then, swiftly, swiftly, it came at me on its two legs. I saw it open its enormous mouth. I saw its two rows of teeth, curved and white; its steamy breath blinded me. I felt it bite, I felt it pulling off the damaged wing. I was so frightened I felt no pain. I was falling into a deeper trance, as though I were dropping off to sleep. I could see its crumpled green skin, its maw palpitating as it digested, and how it half closed its great eyes as it swallowed that mouthful of me. I would resign myself to my destiny, then. Better that way. Feeling sad, perhaps. Waiting for it to finish eating me. Then, once I’d been eaten, I could see through its insides, through its soul, through its bulging eyes — everything was green — that my family was coming back.
They entered the hut, as apprehensive as before. I wasn’t there anymore! Saying: Where could he have gone? They went over to the corner where the buzz-buzz bug had been, they looked, they searched. Gone! They sighed with relief, as though they’d been rescued from some great danger. They might have smiled; they were pleased. Thinking: We’re free of that shameful thing. They’d have nothing to hide from their visitors now. They could now go on with their everyday lives, perhaps.
And that’s the end of the story of Gregor-Tasurinchi, over by the Kimariato, the tapir-river.
I asked Tasurinchi, the seripigari, the meaning of what I’d been through in that bad trance. He pondered my question for a while, then made a gesture with his hand as though to chase something invisible away. “Yes, it was a bad trance,” he agreed at last, thoughtfully. “Gregor-Tasurinchi! I wonder why. Something bad behind it, doubtless. Being changed into a buzz-buzz bug must be the work of a kamagarini. I can’t really tell you for certain. I’d have to go up the pole of my hut and ask the saankarite in the world of clouds. He’d know, I expect. You’d best forget it. Don’t talk about it anymore. What’s remembered goes on living and can happen again.” But I haven’t been able to forget and I go on telling about it.
I wasn’t always the way all of you see me now. I don’t mean my face. I’ve always had this stain the color of darkpurple maize. Don’t laugh. I’m telling you the truth. I was born with it. It’s true; you needn’t laugh. I know what you’re thinking. “If you’d been born that way, Tasurinchi, your mothers would have thrown you into the river. If you’re here, walking, you were born pure. It was only later that something or someone made you the way you are.” Is that what you’re thinking? You see: I saw it even though I’m not a seer, and it didn’t take smoke or a trance.
I’ve asked the seripigari many times: “What does it mean, having a face like mine?” No saankarite has been able to explain it, it seems. Why did Tasurinchi breathe me out this way? Shh, shh, don’t get angry. What are you shouting about? All right, it wasn’t Tasurinchi. Kientibakori, then? No? All right, it wasn’t him either. Doesn’t the seripigari say that everything has its cause? I haven’t found one for my face yet. So some things may not have one. They just happen, that’s all. I know you don’t agree. I can see it just by looking at your eyes. Yes, I grant you, not knowing the cause doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Before, this stain used to matter a lot to me. I didn’t say so. Only to myself, to my souls. I kept it to myself, and this secret was eating me alive. Bit by bit it was eating me up, here inside. I was sad, it seems. Now I don’t mind. At least I think I don’t. That could be because of all of you. That’s the way it’s been, perhaps. Because I realized that it didn’t matter to the people I went to visit, to talk to. Many moons ago, the first time, I asked a family I was living with along the Koshireni. “Does it matter to you, seeing what I look like? Does it matter to you that I’m the way I am?” “What people do and what they don’t do matters,” Tasurinchi, the oldest one, explained to me. Saying: “Walking, fulfilling their destiny, matters. The hunter not touching what he’s killed, or the fisherman what he’s caught; respecting the taboos matters. It matters if they’re capable of walking so that the sun won’t fall. So that the world remains orderly. So that darkness and evils don’t return. That’s what matters. Stains on a face don’t, I expect.” That’s wisdom, they say.