Every now and then someone would bring lollipops to the location. The huge macho grips would pounce on them, licking away on a grape sucker while pulling a camera out of the mud.
The llamas and alpacas would periodically look up from grazing the rain-soaked knolls, blink those incredibly long eyelashes, observe our madness with judicially pursed lips, and go back to the sanity of being one with nature.
Whenever I could, I returned to the peace of my trailer, a gutted-out bus, wide and very comfortable. I wanted to invite every crew member in with me, but where would I start?
I carefully hoarded and slowly consumed each bowl of custard I had found in a bakeshop in the Cuzco Plaza. Sometimes the electric power in the trailer worked, sometimes not. The Peruvians said the gods at Machu Picchu were responsible for whether the power worked anywhere in the country.
Returning to my hotel at the end of every day, I looked forward to a hot bath to remove the mud. There was no stopper in the bathtub, so I used the heel of my foot to prevent the water from leaking out. Instead of a sheet, I slept with a blanket next to my skin for warmth, and when I wondered how I could ever communicate what we were going through, I huddled over my notebooks and jotted down my feelings. Day passed day, yet time seemed to be standing still.
Chapter 21
The second assault on Machu Picchu was rapidly approaching. And the ire of the cultural representative was rapidly reaching a boiling point. He had taken to calling me a neo-Nazi in public again. He had telephoned not only members of the local press but the foreign press as well, in order to call attention to the problem. He claimed he was going to shut down shooting of our picture unless I rewrote the scene in Machu Picchu.
I, in the meantime, had met a good friend of his. She was a woman who knew him and his family quite well. She told me that his son was a mystic, deeply involved in researching esoteric subjects. She said the man himself had seen spacecraft on a number of occasions. (“It would be difficult to avoid them, living in Cuzco,” she added.) He had even speculated that the Inca ruins could not simply have been built by people from “here.”
In any case, there had been an archeological and anthropological seminar held in Cuzco the previous year. Several factions were represented, attempting to explain the splendor of the Inca civilization, not only in Machu Picchu but throughout Peru. One faction strongly contended there must have been extraterrestrial help of some kind, since so many craft had been sighted over the centuries and the technology required to build such monuments was beyond present-day explanation. Another faction objected vehemently to that. This was the political faction that claimed that recognition of extraterrestrial help was a neo-Nazi plot engineered to undermine belief in the intelligence of the Third World. This faction garnered a great deal of publicity. For whatever reasons of his own, the cultural representative had decided to embrace that position and was continuing to make it as public as possible. Several wire services had picked up this story, saying that shooting on our show had actually been shut down. All of it was engineered to pressure me into cutting the extraterrestrial speculation from the script. Frankly, I was more interested in whether we’d have sunshine, because the scene the man appeared to be worried about had already been shot in Los Angeles. But he didn’t know that.
Esther Ventura was an Argentinian woman working for the production outfit that hired our crew in Peru. She was a cultured and sensitive woman with dark eyes and naturally curl-tossed hair who understood my script because she was on the path of her own spiritual quest. She knew of my concern about the one-shot chance we had to shoot Machu Picchu in good weather.
“I suggest you let me bring a broujo to you,” she said in her husky voice. “They can be very effective in helping you control the weather.”
I had never met a broujo. I had heard about them in my metaphysical readings and I was attracted to the notion of asking one for help with the weather, particularly in view of the fact that there seemed to be so much negative energy building up over the Machu Picchu shoot.
“Benito” was accepted as the Inca high priest of the Andean area including Cuzco and Machu Picchu. His blessing would be needed in any case, according to Inca law. So the ceremony that was arranged was not a mere occult adventure; it would have taken place on some level, whether one had been aware of its implications or not.
Esther brought Benito to my trailer during a night shoot. It was particularly dark and cold. I expected an elderly man garbed in a traditional poncho and cap, but to my surprise Benito, dressed in a tweed suit with a vest, stepped out of a Toyota. He wore a brown felt slouch hat and was accompanied by his wife, who was dressed in a long skirt and a shawl.
Simo ushered them into my trailer and offered them cookies, liquor, coffee, and See’s chocolates. Though Benito had very few front teeth, he polished off most of the chocolates in the first half hour while we chatted by the light of a candle. From the moment I looked into his sweet, wise face I liked him, which made it very difficult for me when I realized he was suffering badly from emphysema and could hardly manipulate his arthritic fingers as he pulled out his bag of coca leaves.
The bag of leaves seemed to be his prized possession. Through the leaves and the way they fell when he tossed them, he could see the past, future, and present. The coca leaves were somehow empowered to hold the secrets of the universe.
Immediately I thought of a drug arrest I had read about in New York City. Some man had gotten a long sentence for bringing through Customs a souvenir from Peru of a bag of coca leaves. I wondered what they’d do with old Benito.
With slow and attentive tenderness (and labored breathing) Benito placed a small felt packet, held together with string, on one of the orange crates I had set before him. For a moment he almost seemed to gaze through the fabric of the packet, his eyes a soft watery brown. Then with arthritic difficulty he untied the packet and extracted about a dozen tiny silver objects. As I looked closely, I saw they were representations of a star, a llama, numbers, a goat, zodiac symbols, and so on. He held the tiny silver cutouts securely in his hand. Suddenly one of them fell through his fingers. He looked at me and gasped. I didn’t understand what had happened.
“Very unusual,” he said to Esther in Quechua. “Never happen to me—don’t understand.”
I looked at the silver object that had fallen. It was a tiny silver star.
“What does it mean then?” I asked.
Esther translated and asked Benito.
“We will know in the days to come,” he answered in his labored breathless way. Then he looked deeply into my eyes. It was almost as though the falling star represented a disaster of some kind (dis-astrado meaning torn, or separated, from the stars). But I couldn’t imagine what it was. Could it be that the weather in Machu Picchu would be really bad and we wouldn’t get the shot?
Then for some reason I felt that someone had died. I didn’t know why.
Benito held the little star for a few minutes in the palm of his hand as though tuning in to its message. Then he looked up at me again with a sad smile on his face and waved the thought away.
Apparently having ascertained what he wanted from the rest of the silver objects, he bagged them again and put them away in the pocket of his suit jacket. He then gestured toward his wife, who was swaying on her feet where she stood above him, beside Simo. She handed him a package wrapped in newspaper. Placing the package on his lap, he opened it and slowly began to extract what was contained inside.
With crippled determination he placed the following objects on the daybed beside us: an ear of corn, a wad of animal fat, some seeds, a crystal, a coin of silver and gold, a small book made of silver and gold paper, some seashells, a sponge, several marzipan candies, a piece of a llama fetus (as I later learned), and a condor feather. He then sprinkled sugar over everything, on top of which he splashed some anisette liqueur.
I thought the daybed was going to enjoy some interesting aftereffects, but this was clearly the beginning of some kind of ceremo
ny.
Just then there was a knock on the door of my trailer.
“They’re ready for you,” said one of the second assistants.
I got up and explained that I would return after we got the shot. Esther translated and Benito nodded.
When I stepped out into the cold wet night, the second assistant said, “What kind of voodoo ceremony is going on in there?” I laughed and said I’d do anything for good weather in Machu Picchu tomorrow.
I trekked to the set, which was the interior of the jeep lit for a small scene between John and me. John was sitting behind the wheel in a somber mood and didn’t say much. I was glad—I could get the shot and return to my trailer.
Benito was waiting for me. As I sat down he made the sign of the cross and held his head in silent meditation for a long time. When he finished he said, “I talk to the high priests of Inca at Machu Picchu. They govern the weather. You have seven titular spiritual guides who guide you. They talk together. You are sincere in your search, but you must make ceremony to high priest of Inca.”
“All right,” I said. “What should I do?”
Benito waved my words away as, one by one, he lifted each of his displayed objects and meditated on them separately.
Esther whispered to me: “He told me they each represent an element of life at Machu Picchu which must be respected and recognized.”
His meditation ceremony was well into the hour mark when another rap came at the door.
“They’re ready for me again,” I said. “I’m sorry, but that is why we’re here.”
I left Benito and company and walked to the set again. By now there were whispers and sidelong glances cast toward me.
“She’s doing one of her out-of-body astrals or something, you know,” I overheard someone say.
We got the shot and I returned.
I was called to the set about five times during the course of the rest of the evening, and each time left my trailer as promptly as I could. I made a point of that because I was afraid that what happened later would happen.
Anyway, during a time period when they didn’t need me, Benito earnestly conducted his ceremony and talked to me of my life. By now he had spread a gigantic bag of coca leaves across the daybed and proceeded to caress and meditate on each one in turn, as though each told a story. I had been to enough psychics to know that tarot cards or tea leaves or palm reading or I-ching were only tools that enabled the psychic to attune to a higher level of awareness. That awareness is available to all of us because it is only contact with the higher self, which is all-knowing and directly connected to the Divine Universal Energy Source. But psychics have had more training in attuning to that energy level, so they are able to trust it more readily than the rest of us are.
As Benito studied the shape of the coca leaves, I could see him go into a space with his spiritual mind which enabled him to see and sense more clearly.
“You have encountered many obstacles in your life,” he said.
I nodded.
“But you have overcome. You will use your seven guides into the future to help shepherd your project through.”
He stopped a moment.
“Why are you so interested in the lives you have led in the past?”
I shrugged.
“You must give that up. Your present is more interesting.”
He stopped breathing for a moment. Then began again.
“You have separation from someone because you opened big trough in life he could not understand.”
I said nothing but I thought of Gerry. Benito looked at me sadly again but didn’t continue. He then got to the business at hand.
“You must do ceremony for good weather at Machu Picchu. The high priest of Inca agrees to help if you will do your part. Everything stems from feeling within. You will manifest what you sincerely believe. Do not doubt. Do not be afraid. Do not be mistrustful. What you believe is what will occur.”
Benito then poured more anisette into a glass which he passed around the trailer to his wife, Esther, Simo, and me.
“It is not the liquor that is important,” he said. “It is the sharing.”
We each took a sip of the sweet liqueur and passed it on.
Two and one half hours had passed. The energy output Benito had exuded just psychically was demanding for a person in such ill health, but the ceremony was winding down. After blessing each coca leaf he gathered them up into his large bag and put them aside. Then he piled all the natural objects together and made a separate package out of them. He tied the package tightly, blessed it, and handed it to me.
“You must take this,” he said, “to the highest point of Machu Picchu, face the East, and burn this packet. While burning you will think only of your vision of good weather, and your wish of good weather will come to pass. Do not doubt what you wish to happen.”
I took the packet and handed it to Simo, wondering if the animal fat and llama fetus would keep until the next day. Benito took a small packet from his jacket.
“This is infusion tea,” he said. “You may become ill when doing the ceremony. If so, drink this.”
I took the tea packet from him. Benito stood up. The candles were burned nearly to stumps and the company crew had gone home. There was a cold drizzling rain gently drumming on the roof of the trailer. Benito gave one last hacking cough.
“You must see a doctor,” I said. “You have done this for me. Let me do something for you.”
Esther translated. He nodded and said something to her.
“He says he hears you are famous. All he wants is a picture of you.”
“Certainly,” I said, making a mental note that I would have the company doctor see him as soon as possible.
“Thank you, Benito,” I said. “By the way, what is your last name?”
Esther told him what I asked. He looked at me triumphantly.
“My name means the condor of gold.”
With that he bowed to me, and with his wife in tow, he left my trailer and stepped into his Toyota—which, I was to learn later, had been rented so that he could come to me. Through the misty rain I waved goodbye to him. Then I looked up into the night drizzle. I said a silent prayer that the package he had given me would work. I also noticed that I was too self-centered to say a prayer for him.
* * *
Simo woke me at 4:00 the next morning. This was the big day. Crew members all over Cuzco were rising and wondering if the arduous train trip would be worth it this time.
I did a quick yoga in my cold room, ate a piece of toast popped into a toaster by my bed, and determined to myself that everything would go perfectly for the day.
I wasn’t in the car for five minutes before it was clear that “swimmingly” was not how the day would go.
The drive to the train for Machu Picchu would take several hours, particularly at zero ceiling outside. The fog was so thick that a snail would have beaten us. I wondered how the camera truck with all our equipment was going to make it in time to load onto the train. Never mind, I thought. I patted Simo’s arm, which was holding Benito’s weather packet for safekeeping.
“Oh,” said Peter, our driver. “You should probably know—the security guard who has the key to the camera truck was out drunk all night and no one can find him. He never came back to the truck and he is the only one with the key, so unless they get the camera equipment to the train, how are you going to shoot?”
I clutched my stomach. I could literally feel it turn over. I couldn’t talk. I stared out the window as though I could see through the fog. Simo cleared his throat.
“How do you know this?” he asked Peter.
“Well,” he said, “they were going crazy in the production office when I left, but none of the bigwigs know about it yet.”
“I do,” I said, finding my voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
Well, well, well. Talk about trying to find the purposeful good in everything. This was my big chance. The security guard got drunk and
shacked up all night with a hooker who probably rolled him afterward (keys included) because his destiny was to learn something? But what about me and the rest of us? What the hell was going on? I tried to stay calm. If the camera truck missed the train, what would be the point of the rest of us going? Sometimes the finer points of higher consciousness eluded me.
As we crawled along in the fog we passed the camera crew van. The guys inside had no idea that there would be no equipment to shoot with. What were they supposed to learn from this?
As we plowed through the rain and fog I realized that my lesson was probably “Stop projecting the worst. Somehow it will all work out.” That kind of attitude had been guaranteed to make me irritatingly perturbed whenever someone quoted it to me. I thought it was irresponsibly idealistic, unprofessional, and all-in-all hopelessly undisciplined and capricious. In sum: “spaced out.”
Yet there I was having no recourse but to accept it. Now, as I felt myself helpless to change anything, why not believe that it was all happening for a good reason? This attitude of mine being one of them.
In a slightly more positive—which is to say, resigned—frame of mind, I sat back. Well, at least I didn’t jump out the window as we drove.
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