“Luckily, you’ve realized we’re talkers,” one of them suddenly said. All the others were silent. There was a great stillness in the forest. “Now you doubtless understand why we’re here, accompanying you. Now you realize why we’ve been following you ever since you were born again and started walking and talking. Day and night; through forests, across rivers. You’re a talker too, aren’t you, Tasurinchi? We’re alike, don’t you think?”
Then I remembered. Each man who walks has his animal which follows him. Isn’t that so? Even if he doesn’t see it and never guesses which animal it is. According to what he is, according to what he does, the mother of the animal chooses him and says to her little one: “This man is for you, look after him.” The animal becomes his shadow, it seems. Was mine a parrot? Yes, it was. Isn’t it a talking animal? I knew it and felt that I’d known it from before. If not, why was it that I had always been particularly fond of parrots? Many times in my travels I’ve stopped to listen to their chattering and laughed at the uproar and all the flapping of wings. We were kinfolk, perhaps.
It’s been a good thing knowing that my animal is the parrot. I’m more confident now when I’m traveling. I’ll never feel alone again, perhaps. If I’m tired or frightened, if I feel angry about something, I know what to do now. Look up at the trees and wait. I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. Like gentle rain after heat, the chattering will come. The parrots will be there. Saying: “Yes, here we are, we haven’t abandoned you.” That’s doubtless why I’ve been able to journey alone for such a long time. Because I wasn’t journeying alone, you see.
When I first started wearing a cushma and painting myself with huito and annatto, breathing in tobacco through my nose and walking, many people thought it strange that I should travel alone. “It’s foolhardy,” they warned me. “Don’t you know the forest is full of horrible demons and obscene devils breathed out by Kientibakori? What will you do if they come out to meet you? Travel the way the Machiguengas do, with a youngster and at least one woman. They’ll carry the animals you kill and remove those that fall into your traps. You won’t become unclean from touching the dead bodies of the animals you’ve killed. And what’s more, you’ll have someone to talk to. Several people together are better able to deal with any kamagarinis that might appear. Who’s ever seen a Machiguenga entirely on his own in the forest!” I paid no attention, for in my wanderings I’d never felt lonely. There, among the branches, hidden in the leaves of the trees, looking at me with their green eyes, my companions were following me, most likely. I felt they were there, even if I didn’t know it, perhaps.
But that’s not the reason why I have this little parrot. Because that’s a different story. Now that he’s asleep, I can tell it to you. If I suddenly stop and start talking nonsense, don’t think I’ve gone out of my head. It will just mean that the little parrot has woken up. It’s a story he doesn’t like to hear, one which must hurt him as much as that nettle hurt me.
That was after.
I was headed toward the Cashiriari to visit Tasurinchi and I’d caught a cashew bird in a trap. I cooked it and started eating it, when suddenly I heard a lot of chattering just above my head. There was a nest in the branches, half hidden by a large spiderweb. This little parrot had just hatched. It hadn’t yet opened its eyes and was still covered with white mucus, like all chicks when they break out of the shell. I was watching, not moving, keeping very quiet, so as not to upset the mother parrot, so as not to make her angry by coming too near her newborn chick. But she was paying no attention to me. She was examining it closely, gravely. She seemed displeased. And suddenly she started pecking at it. Yes, pecking at it with her curved beak. Was she trying to remove the white mucus? No. She was trying to kill it. Was she hungry? I grabbed her by the wings, keeping her from pecking me, and took her out of the nest. And to calm her I gave her some leftovers of the cashew bird. She ate with gusto; chattering and flapping her wings, she ate and ate. But her big eyes were still furious. Once she’d finished her meal, she flew back to the nest. I went to look and she was pecking at the chick again. You haven’t woken up, my little parrot? Don’t, then; let me finish your story first. Why did she want to kill her chick? It wasn’t out of hunger. I caught the mother parrot by the wings and flung her as high in the air as I could. After flapping around a bit, she came back. Facing up to me, furious, pecking and squawking, she came back. She was determined to kill the chick, it seems.
It was only then that I realized why. It wasn’t the chick she’d hoped it would be, perhaps. Its leg was twisted, and its three claws were just a stump. Back then I hadn’t yet learned what all of you know: that animals kill their young when they’re born different. Why do pumas claw their cubs that are lame or one-eyed? Who do sparrow hawks tear their young to pieces if they have a broken wing? They must sense, since the life of young such as that is not perfect, it will be difficult, with much suffering. They won’t know how to defend themselves, to fly, or hunt, or flee, or how to fulfill their obligation. They must sense that they won’t live long, for other animals will soon eat them. “That’s why I’ll eat it myself, so that it feeds me at least,” they perhaps tell themselves. Or could it be that, like Machiguengas, they refuse to accept imperfection? Do they, too, believe that imperfect offspring were breathed out by Kientibakori? Who knows?
That’s the story of the little parrot. He’s always curled up on my shoulder, like this. What do I care if he’s not pure, if he’s got a game leg and limps, if he flies even this high he’ll fall? Because, besides his stump of a foot, his wings turned out to be too short, it seems. Am I perfect? Since we’re alike, we get on well together and keep each other company. He travels on this shoulder, and every now and then, to amuse himself, he climbs up over my head and settles on the other shoulder. He goes and comes, comes and goes. He clings to my hair when he’s climbing, pulling it as though to warn me: “Be careful or I’ll fall; be careful or you’ll have to pick me up off the ground.” He weighs nothing; I don’t feel him. He sleeps here, inside my cushma. Since I can’t call him father or kinsman or Tasurinchi, I call him by a name I invented for him. A parrot noise. Let’s hear you imitate it. Let’s wake him up; let’s call him. He’s learned it and repeats it very welclass="underline" Mas-ca-ri-ta, Mas-ca-ri-ta, Mas-ca-ri-ta…
Florentines are famous, in Italy, for their arrogance and for their hatred of the tourists that inundate them, each summer, like an Amazonian river. At the moment, it is hard to determine whether this is true, since there are virtually no natives left in Firenze. They have been leaving, little by little, as the temperature rose, the evening breeze stopped blowing, the waters of the Arno dwindled to a trickle, and mosquitoes took over the city. They are veritable flying hordes that successfully resist repellents and insecticides and gorge on their victims’ blood day and night, particularly in museums. Are the zanzare of Firenze the totem animals, the guardian angels of Leonardos, Cellinis, Botticellis, Filippo Lippis, Fra Angelicos? It would seem so. Because it is while contemplating their statues, frescoes, and paintings that I have gotten most of the bites that have raised lumps on my arms and legs neither more nor less ugly than the ones I’ve gotten every time I’ve visited the Peruvian jungle.