Xiucutil

Xiucutil is a South American creature whose reputed effect is presented as a threat that demands an immediate response. In the novel’s episodic world, it also becomes an instrument of A. J.’s disruption: he releases a swarm at the New York Metropolitan’s opening night, and the audience’s reaction overwhelms the ceremony.

Description and Reported Effect

The narrator hears about the creature from a German prospector dying of uremia in Pasto, Colombia. The prospector says it is a large grasshopper-like insect found, supposedly, in the Putumayo region. According to his account, a person stung by one must find a woman quickly or die. He has seen Indigenous people trying to remove the insects after contact. The narrator notes that he has never obtained a Xiucutil himself, leaving the creature’s reputation grounded in a secondhand report rather than direct observation.

A. J.’s Metropolitan Disruption

On opening night at the New York Metropolitan, A. J. releases a swarm of Xiucutils while protected by insect repellent. The protection marks his intervention as deliberate: he can set the insects loose while avoiding their reported effects himself. The account then shifts from the formal setting to the audience’s response, as Mrs. Vanderbligh swats at a Xiucutil and the disturbance spreads through the crowd. Screams and damage to clothing and glass give way to a mass of people in disarray, with evening wear, jewelry, and other belongings left on the floor. The creature’s reputed danger thus becomes the mechanism through which A. J. turns an elite cultural gathering into disorder.

Narrative and Thematic Role

Xiucutil is introduced through uncertain testimony and then made consequential in a separate, staged public incident. That movement from rumor to action is central to its role: its power in the narrative depends less on natural history than on the fear its reported effect can provoke. A. J. exploits that fear by choosing a crowded, prestigious occasion and taking precautions for himself. The episode places bodily vulnerability against the Metropolitan’s social formality, making the creature both a disruptive animal presence and a tool in A. J.’s recurring public mischief.