And suddenly, down below, getting farther and farther away, I saw the alligator, the river, the mud. The wind was so strong I could hardly breathe. There I was, in the air, way up high. There was Tasurinchi, the storyteller, flying. The stork was flying, and clinging to its neck, my legs twined around its legs, I was flying, too. Down below was the earth, getting smaller. There was gleaming water everywhere. Those little dark stains must be trees; those snakes, rivers. It was colder than ever. Had we left the earth? If so, this must be Menkoripatsa, the world of the clouds. There was no sign of its river. Where was the Manaironchaari, with its waters made of cotton? Was I really flying? The stork must have grown to be able to carry me. Or maybe I’d shrunk to the size of a mouse. Who knows which? It flew calmly on, with steady sweeps of its wings, letting itself be carried by the wind. Untroubled by my weight, perhaps. I shut my eyes so as not to see how far away the earth was now. Such a drop, such a long way down. Feeling sad at leaving it, maybe. When I opened them again I saw the stork’s white wings, their pink edges, the regular wingbeat. The warmth of its down sheltered me from the cold. Now and then it gurgled, stretching out its neck, lifting its beak, as though talking to itself. So this was the Menkoripatsa. The seripigaris rose to this world in their trances; among these clouds they held counsel with the little saankarite gods about the evils and the mischief of the bad spirits. How I would have liked to see a seripigari floating there. “Help me,” I’d say to him. “Get me out of this fix, Tasurinchi.” Because wasn’t I even worse off way up there, flying in the clouds, than when I was perched on the back of the caiman?
Who knows how long I flew with the stork? What to do now, Tasurinchi? You won’t be able to hang on much longer. Your arms and legs are getting tired. You’ll let go, your body will dissolve in the air, and by the time you reach the earth, you’ll be nothing but water. It had stopped raining. The sun was rising. This cheered me up. Courage, Tasurinchi! I kicked the stork, I yanked at it, I butted it, I even bit it to make it descend. It didn’t understand. It was frightened and stopped gurgling; it started squawking, pecking here and there, flying first this way, then that, like this, to get rid of me. It nearly won the tussle. Several times I was just about to slip off. Suddenly I realized that every time I squeezed its wing, we fell, as though it had stumbled in the air. That’s what saved me, perhaps. With the little strength I had left, I wound my feet around one of its wings, pinning it down so that the stork could hardly move it. Courage, Tasurinchi! What I hoped for happened. Flying on only one wing now, the other one, it flapped with all its might, but even so, it couldn’t fly as well as before. It tired and started descending. Down, down, squawking; despairing, perhaps. I was happy, though. The earth was getting closer. Closer, closer. How lucky you are, Tasurinchi. Here you are already. When I grazed the tops of the trees, I let go. As I fell, down and down, I could see the stork, burbling for joy, flying on both wings again, rising. Down I went, getting badly scratched and battered. Bouncing from branch to branch, breaking them, scraping the bark from the trunks, feeling that I, too, was falling to bits. I tried to catch hold with my hands, with my feet. How lucky monkeys are, or any other creature that has a tail to hang by, I thought. The leaves and small branches, the vines and twining plants, the spiders’ webs and lianas would check my fall, perhaps. When I landed, the shock didn’t kill me, it seems. What joy feeling the earth beneath my body. It was soft and warm. Damp, too. Ehé, here I am. I’ve arrived. This is my world. This is my home. The best thing that ever happened to me is living here, on this earth, not in the water, not in the air.
When I opened my eyes, there was Tasurinchi, the seripigari, looking at me. “Your little parrot’s been waiting a long time for you,” he said. And there it was, clearing its throat. “How do you know it’s mine?” I joked. “There are lots of parrots in the forest.” “Well, this one looks like you,” he answered. Yes, it was my little parrot. It jabbered, pleased to see me. “You’ve slept for I don’t know how many moons,” the seripigari told me.
Many things have happened to me on this journey, coming to see you, Tasurinchi. It’s been hard getting here. I’d never have made it if it hadn’t been for an alligator, a kirigueti, and a stork. Let’s see if you can explain to me how that was possible.
“What saved you was your never once losing your temper from the beginning to the end of your adventure” was his comment after I’d told him what I’ve just told you. That’s most likely so. Anger is a disorder of the world, it seems. If men didn’t get angry, life would be better than it is. “Anger is what’s to blame for there being comets — kachiborérine — in the sky,” he assured me. “With their fiery tails and their wild careering, they threaten to throw the four worlds of the Universe into confusion.”
This is the story of Kachiborérine.
That was before.
In the beginning the comet was a Machiguenga. He was young and peaceable. Walking. Content, most likely. His wife died, leaving a son, who grew up healthy and strong. He brought him up and took a new wife, a younger sister of the one he’d lost. One day, coming back from fishing for boquichicos, he found the lad mounted on his second wife. They were both panting, well satisfied. Kachiborérine went away from the hut, perturbed. Thinking: I must get a woman for my son. He needs a wife.
He went to consult the seripigari, who went and spoke to the saankarite and came back: “The one place you can get a wife for your son is in Chonchoite country,” he said. “But be careful. You know why.”
Kachiborérine went there, knowing full well that the Chonchoites chip their teeth to sharp points with knives and eat human flesh. He’d hardly entered their territory, just crossed the lake where it began, when he felt the earth swallow him. Everything went dark. I’ve fallen into a tseibarintsi, he thought. Yes, there he was, in a hole in the ground hidden by leaves and branches, with spears to impale peccaries and tapirs. The Chonchoites pulled him out, bruised and terrified. They wore devil masks that left their starving gullets showing. They were pleased, smelling him and licking him. They sniffed and licked him all over. And without further ado they ripped out his intestines, the way you clean a fish. There and then, they put the intestines to bake on hot stones. And as the Chonchoites, giddy, beside themselves with joy, were eating his entrails, Kachiborérine’s gutted skin escaped and crossed the lake.
On the way back home he made a brew of tobacco. He was a seripagari too, maybe. In his trance, he learned that his wife was heating a potion with cumo poison in it, so as to kill him. Still not giving way to anger, Kachiborérine sent her a message, counseling her. Saying: “Why do you want to kill your husband? Don’t do it. He has suffered a great deal. Instead, prepare a brew that will put back the intestines the Chonchoites ate.” She listened without saying anything, looking out of the corner of her eye at the youth who was now her husband. The two of them were living together, happy as could be.
Soon after, Kachiborérine reached his hut. Tired out from so much journeying; sad because of his failure. The woman handed him a bowl. The yellow liquid looked like masato, but it was maize beer. Blowing the foam from the surface, he eagerly drank it down. But the liquid, mixed with a stream of blood, came pouring out of his body that was nothing but a skin. Weeping, Kachiborérine realized that he was empty inside; weeping, that he was a man without guts or heart.
Then he became angry.
It rained. Lightning flashed. All the little devils must have come out to dance in the woods. The woman was frightened and started to run. She ran, up through the woods, to the field, stumbling as she ran. There she hid in the trunk of a tree that her husband had hollowed out to make a canoe. Kachiborérine searched for her, screaming in fury: “I’m going to tear her to pieces.” He asked the cassavas in the cassava field where she was hidden, and since they couldn’t answer, he ripped them out by the handful. He asked the maguna and the datura: we don’t know. Neither the plants nor the trees told him where she was hidden. So he slashed them with his machete and then stamped on them. Deep in the forest, Kientibakori drank masato and danced for joy.