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 around 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.