The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa Read Free Book Online Page B

fell trembling from poisoned darts and bad trances. Each time the Mashcos attacked and he saw the people set upon, Tasurinchi pointed to the sky, saying: “The sun is falling. We have done something wrong. We have become corrupt, staying so long in one place. Custom must be respected. We must become pure again. Let us keep walking.” And wisdom returned, happily, just as they were about to disappear. So then they forgot about the fields they had sown, their houses, everything that could not be carried in their pouches. They put on their necklaces and their headdresses, burned the rest, and beating their drums, dancing and singing, they started walking. Once again, once again. Then the sun stopped falling down the sky worlds. Suddenly they felt it waking up, in a fury. “Now it’s heating the world again,” they said. “We’re alive,” they said. And they went on walking.
    So, that time, the men who walk reached the Cerro. There it was. So high, so pure, rising, rising up to Menkoripatsa, the white world of the clouds. Five rivers flowed, dancing amid the salty stones. Around the Cerro were little groves of yellow ichu, with doves and partridges, with playful mice and ants that tasted of honey. The rocks were salt, the ground was salt, the river bottoms, too, were salt. The men of earth filled their baskets and their pouches and their nets, at peace, knowing that the salt would never run out. They were happy, it seems. They went away, they came back, and the salt had increased. There was always salt for those who went up to collect it. Many went up, Ashaninkas, Amueshas, Piros, Yaminahuas. The Mashcos went up. Everyone knew the Cerro. We arrived and the enemy was there. We didn’t fight each other. There were no wars or massacres, only respect, they say. That, anyway, is what I have learned. And maybe it’s true. Just as with the salt licks, just as with the water holes. In the hidden places in the forest where the earth is salty and they go to lick it, do animals fight each other? Who has ever seen a sajino attack a majaz, or a capybara bite a shimbillo at a salt lick? They don’t do anything to each other. There they meet and there they stay, each one in its place, quietly licking the salt or the water from the ground until they’ve had their fill. Is it not a good thing to find a salt lick or a water hole? How easy it is to hunt the animals then. There they are, at peace, trustful, licking. They pay no attention to the stones; they don’t flee when the arrows whistle. They fall easily. The Cerro was the salt lick of men, their great water hole. Perhaps it had its own magic. The Ashaninkas say that it is sacred, that spirits speak within the stone. That may be so; perhaps they talk together. They arrived with baskets and pouches and nobody hunted them. They looked at each other, that was all. There was salt and respect for everyone.
    After, it was no longer possible to go up to the Cerro. After, they had to do without salt. After, anyone who went up there was hunted. Bound fast and carried off to the camps. That was the tree-bleeding. Get on with it, damn you! After, the earth was filled with Viracochas tracking down men. They carried them off to bleed trees and tote rubber. Get a move on, damn you! The camps were worse than the darkness and the rains, it seems; worse than the time of evil and the Mashcos. We were very lucky. Aren’t we still walking? The Viracochas were cunning, they say. They knew people would go up with their baskets and nets to collect salt on the Cerro. They lay in wait for them with traps and shot at them. They carried off the ones who fell. Ashaninkas, Piros, Amahuacas, Yaminahuas, Mashcos. They had no preferences. Anyone who fell, if they had hands to bleed the tree, fingers to tear it open, stick a tin in it, and collect its milk, shoulders to carry, and feet to run with the balls of gum elastic to the camp. A few escaped perhaps. Very few, they