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also, doubtless, in the neighborhood where he lived. But I could swear that no one ever heard, from his own lips, what was happening to him and what he intended to do. If in fact he had planned it carefully, and it hadn’t just happened, gradually, imperceptibly, the product of chance circumstances rather than the result of personal choice. I have thought about it a lot these last years, and of course I’ll never know.

 
    After, the men of earth started walking, straight toward the sun that was falling. Before, they too stayed in the same place without moving. The sun, their eye of the sky, was fixed. Wide awake, always open, looking at us, warming the world. Its light was very strong, but Tasurinchi could withstand it. There was no evil, there was no wind, there was no rain. The women bore pure children. If Tasurinchi wanted to eat, he dipped his hand into the river and brought out a shad flicking its tail; or he loosed an arrow without aiming, took a few steps into the jungle, and soon came across a little wild turkey, a partridge, or a trumpet-bird brought down by his arrow. There was never any lack of food. There was no war. The rivers were full of fish, the forests of animals. The Mashcos didn’t exist. The men of earth were strong, wise, serene and united. They were peaceable and without anger. Before the time afterwards.
    Those who went came back, and entered the spirit of the best. That way, nobody used to die. “It’s time I departed,” Tasurinchi would say. He would go down to the riverbank and make his bed of leaves and dry branches, with a roof of ungurabi overhead. He would put up a fence of sharp-pointed canes all round to keep the capybaras prowling about on the shore of the river from eating his corpse. He would lie down, go away, and soon after come back, taking up his abode in the man who had hunted most, fought best, or faithfully followed the customs. The men of earth lived together. In peace and quiet. Death was not death. It was going away and coming back. Instead of weakening them, it made them stronger, adding to those who remained the wisdom and the strength of those who went. “We are and we shall be,” said Tasurinchi. “It seems that we are not going to die. Those who went have come back. They are here. They are us.”
    Then why, if they were so pure, did the men of earth begin walking? Because one day the sun started falling. They walked so that it wouldn’t fall any farther, to help it to rise. So Tasurinchi says.
    That, anyway, is what I have learned.
    Had the sun yet fought its war with Kashiri, the moon? Perhaps. It began blinking, moving, its light dimmed, and you could hardly see it. People started rubbing their bodies, shivering. That was the cold. That’s how after began, it seems. Then, in the half darkness, confused, frightened, men fell into their own traps, they ate deer meat thinking it was tapir, they could not find the path from the cassava patch to their own house. Where am I? they said in despair, walking like blind men, stumbling. Where can my family be? What is happening to the world? The wind had begun to blow. Howling, buffeting, making off with the tops of the palm trees and pulling the lupunas up by the roots. The rain fell with a roar, causing floods. You could see herds of drowned huanganas, floating feet up in the current. Rivers changed course, rafts broke up on the dams, ponds turned into rivers. Souls lost their serenity. That was no longer going. It was dying. Something must be done, they said. Looking left and right, what? What shall we do? they said. “Start walking,” Tasurinchi ordered. They were in total darkness, surrounded by evil. The cassava was beginning to give out, the water stank. Those who went no longer came back, frightened away by the disasters, lost between the world of the clouds and our world. Beneath the ground they walked on, they could hear the slow-moving Kamabiría, the river of the