"It is a good thing for the man who walks to walk", the storyteller relates this knowledge shared with him by the seripigari and continues, saying "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." (220)
He says this after relating his own personal experience, and another bit of wisdom from a seripigari, who claimed that "being born with a face like yours isn't the worst evil; it's not knowing one's obligation" which Mascarita, the storyteller, ponders. "Not being at one with one's destiny, then? That happened to me before I became what I am now. I was no more than a wrapping, a shell, the body of one whose soul has left through the top of one's head." (214)
And yet, the animals in Amazonia still kill their imperfect offspring.
Envisioning the world of the Jewish Machiguenga storyteller through the enlightened and entranced mind of Mario Vargas Llosa was a fascinating journey for me. As a writer, I cannot help but let my fantasy wander deeper into the forests of the Amazon and wonder what words were spoken in actuality by this unorthodox hablador; what paths led to which journeys and how our Mascarita manages to become one with a tribe to which he was not born; but the more I ponder, the more Llosa's insights and ideas on the matter display themselves to me as essentially flawless. Llosa is so well-researched on the subject and has obviously spent an incredible amount of time considering the topic, so much so that I cannot find any fault in his ideas and representations of a matter which no one could possibly fully and properly represent with any sort of certainty.
Llosa's comparison of Mascarita basically being a marginalized marginalized person - between his Jewish ancestry and his birthmark - helping him to relate to the Machiguengas and also that of the Jewish people walking, being pushed out time and again, and continuing to be who they are in spite of everything seemingly being against them being who they are spoke to me as obvious truth - though they were something I'd never before thought of in my life. And when problems arise in the Machiguenga culture, the answer is to walk, to remember who you are, to fulfill your obligation. Walk. Such a simple thing, but it really has been capable of allowing their tribal culture to survive for many years; as outside of Amazonia in South America, things change year by year as different political parties take over or different cultural influences are introduced and so on. And you wouldn't think something as simple as walking would be easy to forget. But we humans seem to forget everything unless it's shoved under our noses and stinks.
Mascarita's rebirth is something that I also think, though he takes it to the extremes, that most people can relate to on some level. Did your life have meaning before it had meaning? When did you learn to really see and know yourself and what you contribute to the world? Or do you contribute to the world? And do you know what you are? Sometimes, it seems, we may not really fit within the lines that our lives have constructed around us.
And if this is the case, are you brave enough to push those walls aside, and step without them into an unknown realm. I dare say most of us are not.
As the storyteller says "I had a bad trance, and in it I lived through a story I'd rather not remember. Nonetheless, I still remember it." (202) "But I haven't been able to forget and I go on telling about it." (207)
Maybe it's worth us telling about.
That, anyway, is what I have learned.
So it goes.
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