What I really wanted to say is that, before, I wasn’t what I am now. I became a storyteller after being what you are at this moment: listeners. That’s what I was, a listener. It happened without my willing it, little by little. Without even realizing it, I began finding my destiny. Slowly, calmly. It appeared bit by bit. Not with tobacco juice, or with ayahuasca brews. Or with the help of the seripigari. I discovered it all by myself.
I went from one place to another seeking out the men who walk. Are you there? Ehé, here I am. I stayed in their huts and helped them clear the weeds from the cassava patch and set traps. As soon as I found out by what river, in what gorge there was a family of men who walk, I went to visit them. Even if I had to go a very long way and cross the Gran Pongo, I went. At last I arrived. There they were. Have you come? Ehé, I’ve come. Some of them knew me; others got to know me. They asked me in; they gave me food and drink. They lent me a mat to sleep on. I stayed with them for many moons. I felt like one of the family. “Why have you come this far?” they asked me. “To learn how you prepare tobacco before sniffing it up your nostrils,” I answered. “To learn how you glue the long bones of the pavita kanari together with resin to use for breathing in tobacco,” I said. They let me listen to what they said, to learn what they were. I wanted to know how they lived, that is to say. To hear it from their mouths. What they are, what they do, where they come from, how they’re born, how they go, how they come back. The men who walk. “Very well,” they said to me. “Let us walk together then.”
I marveled at what they said. I remembered everything. About this world and the others. About what was before and what was after. I remembered the explanations and the causes. At first the seripigaris didn’t trust me. Later on, they did. They let me listen to them, too. The stories about Tasurinchi. The evil deeds of Kientibakori. The secrets of rain, lightning, the rainbow, of the colors and lines men paint on themselves before they set out to hunt. Of all the things I heard, I didn’t forget a one. Sometimes, when I went to visit a family, I told them what I’d seen and learned. They didn’t all know the whole of it, and even if they did, they liked hearing it again. Me, too. The first time I heard the story of Morenanchiite, the lord of thunder, it made a great impression on me. I asked everyone about it. I made them tell it once, many times. Does the lord of thunder have a bow? Yes, he has a bow. But instead of loosing arrows he looses thunder. And does he go about accompanied by jaguars? Yes. By pumas too, it seems. And though he’s not a Viracocha, does he have a beard? Yes, he has a beard. So I repeated the story of Morenanchiite everywhere I went. They listened to me and were pleased, perhaps. Saying: “Tell us that one again. Tell us, tell us.” Little by little, without knowing what was happening, I started doing what I’m doing now.
One day, as I arrived to visit a family, I heard them saying behind my back: “Here comes the storyteller. Let’s go listen to him.” It surprised me a lot. “Are you talking about me?” I asked. They all nodded their heads. “Ehé, ehé, it’s you we’re talking about.” So there I was — the storyteller. I was thunderstruck. There I was. My heart was like a drum. Banging away in my chest: boom, boom. Had I met my destiny? Perhaps. That’s how it was that time, it seems. It was in a little ravine by the Timpshía where there were Machiguengas. There aren’t any there now. But every time I pass by that ravine my heart starts dancing again. Thinking: Here I was born a second time. Here I came back without having gone. That’s how I began to be what I am. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, I expect. Nothing better will ever happen, I believe. Since then I’ve been talking. Walking. And I shall keep on till I go, it seems. Because I’m the storyteller.
That, anyway, is what I have learned.
Is a face like mine an evil? Is being born with more or fewer fingers than the right number an evil? Is it a misfortune to look like a monster without being one? A misfortune and an evil at the same time, it must be. To look like one of those twisted, crookbacked, misshapen beings with claws and fangs that Kientibakori breathed out on the day of creation, over there in the Gran Pongo, and not be one. To look like a demon or a little devil, and be only a man breathed out by Tasurinchi, must be both the work of evil and a misfortune. And that’s just what it is, I’d say.
When I started walking, I heard that a woman had drowned her newborn girl in the river because she lacked a foot or a nose, because she had stains, or because two children had been born instead of one. I didn’t understand, it seems. “Why did you do that? Why did you kill it?” “It wasn’t perfect, so it had to go.” I didn’t understand. “Tasurinchi only breathed out perfect men and women,” they explained. “Monsters were breathed out by Kientibakori.” I’ll never be able to understand that, perhaps. Being what I am, having the face I have, I’ll doubtless find it difficult. When I hear: “I threw her into the river because she was born a little devil, I killed him because he was born a demon,” I don’t understand all over again. What are you laughing about?
If imperfect people were impure, if they were children of Kientibakori, why were there men who had a limp, who had marks on their skin, who had deformed hands or were blind? How come they were still here, walking? Why hadn’t they been killed? Why didn’t they kill me, with this face of mine, I asked them. They, too, laughed. How could they be children of Kientibakori, devils or monsters! Were they born that way? They were pure; they were born perfect. They’d become that way later. It was their own doing, or that of a kamagarini or some other demon of Kientibakori’s. Who knows why they changed them. Only their outside is that of a monster; inside, they’re still pure, no doubt about it.
Even if you don’t believe me, it wasn’t Kientibakori’s little devils who changed me like this. I was born a monster. My mother didn’t throw me into the river; she let me live. And what used to seem cruel to me, before, now seems fortunate. Every time I go visit a family I don’t know yet, I think maybe they’ll be frightened and say: “He’s a monster, he’s a devil,” when they see me. There, you’re laughing again. All of you laugh like that when I ask you: “Do you think I’m a devil? Is that what my face means?” “No, no, no, and you’re not a monster. You’re Tasurinchi, the storyteller.” You make me feel at peace. Content, even.
The souls of the children that the mothers drown in the rivers and the lakes go down to the bottom of the Gran Pongo. That’s what they say. Down to the depths. Deeper than the whirlpools and the falls of muddy water, to caves full of crabs. There they must be, amid enormous rocks, deafened by the din, suffering. There the souls of those children will meet the monsters that Kientibakori breathed out when he fought with Tasurinchi. That was the beginning, it seems. Before, the world we walk in was empty. Does someone who drowns in the Gran Pongo come back? He sinks, deeper and deeper, in the roaring waters, a whirlpool traps his soul and spins it around and around, taking it lower and lower. All the way down to the dark muddy bottom, where monsters live. So then it settles there among the souls of other drowned children. Listening to the devils and the monsters lamenting the day that Tasurinchi first breathed out. The day when so many Machiguengas appeared.
This is the story of creation.