The stories in Marayrasu stage fantastical, mysterious encounters that belie the characters’ often harsh economic and political realities as they seek belonging in modern Peru through art, music, and relationships. Depicted in poetic prose, these characters are loners, orphans, and outcasts experiencing quiet, tender encounters with other people and animals, the creative arts, and the land they find themselves depending on. Living vibrantly within these stories, the leviathan of Inca lore considers its own form, a young boy moves to a mining town and gets involved with a local union leader’s fight for worker rights while feeling the powerful pull of a large mountain overlooking the town, and a Persian cat captures the attention of a family down on its luck. Amy Olen’s translation smoothly captures Rivera Martínez’s impressive stories, offering a unique lens into the region at the heart of this canonical author’s inimitable work.
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Angel of Ocongate
Who am I, if not a silent shadow in the atrium of a crumbling chapel in the middle of a vast high plain? At times the wind howls, but then everything returns to silence. An uncertain hour, gray, at the foot of this facade, when my soliloquy is more anxious and febrile. And my appearance, even stranger—a bird, a black bird, who speaks and thinks without moving. A cloak of silk and wool over my shoulders, threadbare, yet splendid. A hat with ragged feathers, a doublet, a linen and lace shirt. An adorned baldric. All in tatters and so absurd. How could those seeing me for the first time not be astonished? How could they not think of me as a danzante lost on the high plateau? They would say in the language of their ayllus, “Who is he? For which dance are those clothes? Where could he have performed?” And the people I met would ask, “What’s your name? What’s your hometown?” And because I would become quiet and they would notice the strange glow in my eyes, and my distractedness, my melancholy, they would end up thinking I had lost my mind, along with my memory, perhaps due to the very frenzy of the dance in which I had participated. And they would say, “Poor thing. He doesn’t remember his father or mother anymore, or the place where he came into the world. And maybe nobody is looking for him…” Old women would make the sign of the cross when they saw me. And young women would lament, “He’s young and handsome, and so sad…” And so, given my supposed insanity, appearance, and seriousness, the sensation of astonishment my presence incited grew. A sensation so intense that it necessarily precluded any potential ridicule. There were even shepherds who, so moved by a magical respect, placed little bags of coca leaves within my reach as a kind of offering. Because no one ever heard me talk, not even a monosyllable, they determined that I had also lost the ability to speak. An understandable conclusion since I only speak to myself in a discourse untranslatable to the slightest movement of lips. Only to myself, in silent fluency, because a tenacious resistance impedes me from communicating in any form with others and, certainly, from conversing with them. And it’s better this way, no doubt. Be that as it may, that image of a mute and alienated stranger spread rapidly and was advantageous to my freedom, because no government offcials or varayocs stopped me from wandering as I do. Rather, they too shared that mix of surprise, fear, and compassion their compatriots felt when seeing me. Furthermore, ancestral beliefs weighed heavy for some folks, and for them my “insanity” acquired an almost supernatural status. My madness! The rumors that spread about me in this regard never bothered me, but on occasion, doubt would strike. And what if it was true? What if I really had been a danzante and I forgot it all? What if I used to have a name, a house, a family? Troubled, I would go to the water and look at myself. So sallow, my face, and always shrouded in a somber air. Always identical to itself, in its severity, in its hermeticism. I looked at myself and was certain that I had never lost my mind. I was certain I had never been a dancer. Only an intuitive sense, but a strong one, nonetheless. But then, if my spirit had never been lost, what to make of the taciturn current that absorbs and alienates me? What to make of this attire and the obstinance with which I cling to it? Why my unease when seeing the lake? No. I could not answer these questions, and anyway, it was useless to seek justification for such white hands and for a manner of speaking that is neither that of misti nor campesino. And even more useless still is trying to answer the fundamental question: Who am I, then? It was as if, in an indeterminable moment in the past, I had emerged out of nothing, already dressed as I am and mumbling, agonizing. Already wandering and disconnected from my youth, from love and family. Closed within myself, unable to recall a beginning or perceive a purpose. So, I would walk along the roads and high plateaus not sleeping even for a minute or stopping for more than a day. Always absorbed in my silent monologue, even when approaching to help an elder in the rain, a woman with her little ones, a dying pongo on a barren pampa. I would go to towns celebrating festivals and I would listen anxiously, yet hopefully, to the music of the quenas and sicuris. One after another, I would watch the groups of dancers, and most of all, those that came from far away and, especially, those from Copacabana, Oruro, Zepita, Combapata. Their dances were moving, but I never recognized a melody or noticed clothing that was like mine. The years went by like this and all would have continued in such a fashion if chance—was it really chance?—hadn’t taken me, at the end of this desultory walk, to the inn at Raurac. Nobody was there except an old man who was resting and who looked at me closely. Suddenly he spoke to me, and in what seemed to be very old Quechua, he said, “You are the dancer who lost his memory. You are him, and you have been walking for a long time. Go to the Chapel of Santa Cruz, on the pampa of Ocongate. Go and look!” I took note of his advice and his insistence, and very early the next morning I began to walk. And so, after three days, I arrived at this abandoned shrine where even the facade and pillars are barely standing. I walked up to the atrium and soon my eyes settled on the frieze under those conjoined arches. And there, in the stone once cracked by a lightning bolt, are four figures in relief. Four figures of dancers. They wear cloaks, doublets, feather hats, and baldrics. Images not of saints, but rather, of angels, like those in the paintings in Pomata and Cusco. There are four, but the last is where the lightning struck and all that is left is a silhouette and some imprinted lines of wings and plumage. Four angels, on a bloom of stone leaves, fruit, and arabesques. What is the dance they perform? What music do they follow? Is their act one of celebration, of joy? I look at them in the glacial and terrible silence of this place, and I linger on the vacant outline of the one who is missing. I close my eyes. Yes, I am only a shadow, a silent shadow. And a bird, a black bird, who lost his memory, who will never know the reason for his fall. Silent, always, and with no end to the solitude, the twilight, the exile…
(1982)
Translated by Amy Olen
English translation copyright © 2026 by Northwestern University. Published 2026 by Curbstone Books / Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.
Marayrasu: Stories is available now from Northwestern University Press.
