The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

there are no fish. It’s a dark place, full of toads and armadillos. Damp earth that rots plants.
    I’ve always known that armadillo meat must not be eaten because the armadillo has an impure mother and brings harm; spots come out all over the body of anybody who eats it. But there they ate it. The women skinned an armadillo and then roasted its meat, cut up in small chunks. Tasurinchi put a piece in my mouth with his fingers. I was so scared I had a hard time swallowing it down. It doesn’t seem to have done me any harm. If it had, I might not be here walking, perhaps.
    â€œWhy did you go so far, Tasurinchi?” I asked him. “I had trouble finding you. What’s more, the Mashcos live in this region, quite close to here.” “You went around to my place on the Mitaya and didn’t meet up with Viracochas?” he said in surprise. “They’re everywhere down there. Especially on the riverbank opposite where I used to live.”
    Strangers started using the river, going up and coming down, coming down and going up, many moons ago. There were Punarunas, come down from the sierra, and many Viracochas. They weren’t just passing through. They stayed. They’ve built cabins and cut down trees. They hunt animals with guns that thunder in the forest. Some men who walk also came with them. The ones who live high up, on the other side of the Gran Pongo, the ones who have already given up being men and have more or less taken up Viracocha ways of dressing and talking. They’d come down to help them, there along the Mitaya. They came to visit Tasurinchi. Trying to persuade him to go to work with them, clearing the forest and carrying stones for a road they were opening up along the river. “The Viracochas won’t hurt you,” they encouraged him, saying: “Bring the women along too, to prepare your food for you. Look at us—have they done us any harm, would you say? It’s no longer like the tree-bleeding. In those days, yes, the Viracochas were devils. They wanted to bleed us like they bled the trees. They wanted to steal our souls. It’s different now. With these, you work as long as you like. They give you food, they give you a knife, they give you a machete, they give you a harpoon to fish with. If you stay on, you can have a gun.”
    The ones who had been men seemed happy, perhaps. “We’re lucky people,” they said. “Look at us, touch us. Don’t you want to be like us? Learn, then. Do like us, then.” Tasurinchi allowed himself to be persuaded. “All right,” he said, “I’ll go have a look.” And crossing the river Mitaya, he went with them to the Viracochas’ camp. And discovered, there and then, that he’d fallen into a trap. He was surrounded by devils. What made you realize that, Tasurinchi? Because the Viracocha who was explaining to him what it was he wanted him to do—and it wasn’t easy to understand—suddenly, just like that, showed the filth of his soul. How so, Tasurinchi? What happened? The Viracocha had been asking him: “Are you any good with a machete?” when all of a sudden he broke off, just like that, with his face all puckered up. He opened his mouth wide, and achoo! achoo! achoo! Three times running, it seems. His eyes got all teary, red as a candle flame. Tasurinchi had never been that scared in his whole life. I’m seeing a kamagarini, he thought. That’s what its face looks like; that’s the noise it makes. I’m going to die, this very day. As he was thinking, It’s a devil, a devil, he felt little drops all over him, as though he’d just come out of the water. The cold made his bones creak, and he saw himself from inside, as in a trance. He had to make the greatest effort of his life, he said, to force himself to move. His legs wouldn’t obey him, he was shaking so hard. At last he was able to move. The Viracocha was talking