Delicia Dagua, "Tsumi warmi Narrative and Song."

When I am still a child I go around fishing with a hook and catch a catfish. I catch a chunda shimi and then I catch a tanla and a white catfish. Then after I catch four, I throw the line out again—it takes the hook, pulling hard like a person. When it pulls I let go of the pole (and it is pulled into the water). Then when I enter the water to get the hook out I get a bad feeling in my heart and look toward the river. When I look toward the river that woman is there. That Tsumi (anaconda woman) is standing with the water up to her waist. She is a woman with long hair but cut across here, with bangs in front, like a native woman. She looks like a human woman. So then I get scared. Is it an anaconda? Yes. An anaconda. So I get scared. I leave my hook and line there and run toward the hill. I don’t fall in the water. No. I don’t fall. How old are you? I am about eleven then. Eleven years old. Since I am still a child I run when I see her. I run scared and when I get to my house I stay there. I don’t even go get my fish that I catch. So since I come back just like that without getting my fish, when my mother comes back, when they come from the garden, I tell her, “I do catch some fish, Mamita, but I leave them over there.” “I don’t bring them because I am afraid. There is a woman standing in the river. I see a woman in the river and so I get scared and don’t bring them.” “Where do you see that?” my mother asks. “You go around by yourself like you don’t have a Dad. Since your Dad doesn’t bother to fish, you go around fishing in the deep parts of the river. You don’t see if it is a boa or Tsumi?” she asks. Does that woman look like an adult or like a young woman? She is an adult woman. She appears like that in the middle of the river with half her body rising above the water, like above this table. Bare-breasted? Yes, bare. This part of her body is bare. Her body is naked but she appears like a woman, like a person. Imasna wata shina. How old does she look? Who knows how old that anaconda is. I don’t know. But is she young or old? She is young. Young, but she looks like an adult, like about thirty years old. She must be about that old because her face appears like an adult woman there in the middle of the river. I see from close by what she looks like there in the middle of the river. That river is like this one. The water goes up against the cliffs just like this one. Her hair is like this. It is cut here, across like bangs, but when she comes out of the water her hair is long like this. Her hair is wet like this, but she does not have the thickness of a human woman. I get scared and run because there is no one there in Morete Cocha. They call the place where I see her “Morete.” And that night as I sleep she comes to me in a dream, singing. And in the song she sings, “I am going to take you.” “As I am about to take you, you catch on and run scared,” she says. “Since you run away, I am left sad,” she tells me. Is she going to take you for her son? Since she has a son, the Tsumi woman wants to do that. That is how she sings in my dream. She sings her complete song. Does she sing? Yes, she sings. In your dream? She sings in my dream. That woman is like a human woman but she says, “I am Tsumi, anaconda woman.” I am the woman from the East who comes upriver searching for the deep pools. From the mouth of the Marañón I am the woman who comes from the East. I come resting in the deep pools. It is I. I am not a human woman. I go following and following them. I am not a human woman. It is I. I am the Tsumi, anaconda woman. //I am the woman who lies at the base of the deep pools// On the high cliffs I am the woman who lies on the high cliffs of the riverbank. When noon comes I am the woman who lies there. I am the woman who comes traveling upriver from the mouth of the Marañón. I am not a woman from around here. I am not a human woman. And I, and I… I am an anaconda woman. Yes, I am. And who can scare me? Since they are all afraid of deep pools. I am just the woman who wants to take the child that she desires. This is what I am planning. The child that they take such good care of, that they have in their care. Just one child, a girl child is all I want. I have only one son, a good boy. My son is handsome and single. I take the girl that I choose to give to him. I give her to him when she grows. I give her to him when she grows up. I leave her if she is not good-hearted. In that case, I do not take that child. Yes, that child is going to die. It is the girl I am thinking of who is going to die. That is the song I sing for you to hear.