First Voices
—
The Flood
At the foot of The Andes Mountains, the chiefs of all communities came together.
They smoked and talked things over.
The Tree of Abundance rose up in all its plenitude, even beyond the roof of the world. From below were seen the high branches bent down by the weight of bunches of pineapples, coconuts, ackees, and soursops, corn, agaves, beans….
The rats and birds enjoyed the delicacies. The people, no. The Fox, who went up and down feasting himself, had not been invited. The men who had tried climbing up had crashed to the tree’s bottom.
“What’ll we do?”
One of the chiefs, in a dream, summoned up an axe. But he woke up with a toad in his hand. He struck with The Toad at the immense trunk of The Tree of Abundance, but the little creature vomited its liver from his mouth.
“This dream has lied,” The Toad said.
Another chief dreamt. He asked the Father of Us All for an axe. The Father warned that the tree would take revenge, but he sent down a parrot.
Grabbing The Parrot, this chief brought down The Tree of Abundance. A rain of foodstuffs fell across the earth and left it deafened by the racket. Then, the most enormous storm ever burst from the river bottoms. The waters rose, covering the world.
Of all the men, only one survived. He swam and swam, day and night, until he was able to cling to the top of a palm tree that stuck up from the waters.
Translation ©2024. Terence Clarke. All rights reserved.
About Eduardo Galeano? click here. For a selection of Galeano’s books, click here. For my recent Substack piece that tells of Galeano, click here.
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Another fascinating mystery from our common past.