by Tom Vitale
To clarify, we weren’t actually retracing Conrad’s steps, instead kind of doing the geographic opposite. “Inner Station” was where Conrad’s protagonist Marlow had concluded his arduous river journey of psychological isolation that so captivated Tony. In fact, probably the very spot we were standing at that moment was the setting for his encounter with the infamous Kurtz, an ivory trader gone mad, worshiped by the local population as some kind of god. Much like Marlow, Tony saw Kurtz as an alluring and enigmatic figure. Was he monster, demagogue, or prophet? Kurtz had gone to the Congo with “good intentions,” but ended up decorating his house with severed human heads. Kurtz, what the book represented, as well as Tony’s infatuation with it, were all somewhat… ambiguous and open to interpretation. Conrad quit after his first trip as steamboat captain on the Congo River, the horrors of what he witnessed having left him in a deep depression. Now 123 years later, it was our turn to embark on a river journey toward our own indefinite narrative conclusion.
AT FIRST LIGHT WE HEADED down to the river to check out the boat and deal with all the things that would inevitably go wrong. For starters, an unfortunate coat of gleaming white paint on the picture boat was just being completed. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Mo said, kicking the nearest tree. “White is the absolute worst possible color for filming in equatorial sun!”
On the bright side, “La Vie Est Un Combat,” which translated to “Life Is a Fight,” had been painted on the wheelhouse. The top deck, where we’d be sleeping, ran nearly the full length of the thirty-meter-long vessel. Beneath was a large space that would serve as galley, dining room, and storage for our gear. Nearly walking right into an irregular sized ceiling support beam dangerously lower than the others, I made a mental note to affix some brightly colored gaffer tape as a warning. Our ship was no Belgian Colonial steamer or Vietnam War–style patrol boat, but she came with a crew of five trusty local sailors, had a bespoke charm, and reeked of fresh paint.
With two hours until Tony’s arrival, I went over our supply list one last time while Moose coordinated with the security team, camera crew, and production assistants to load up the gear. For one night on the river we were bringing a charcoal cooker, fuel, generator, machete, case of light bulbs, fourteen mattresses and mosquito nets, umbrellas, oil lanterns, the remainder of our bottled water, cutting boards, forks, knives, coffee cups, plates, frying pans, pots, two dozen eggs, bananas, pineapples, bread, spatula, seven handles of Johnnie Walker, five crates of beer, a baby goat, a duck, and twelve chickens. There was also personal luggage, film equipment, a medical kit, a satellite phone, emergency MiFi to keep Tony connected to the internet, and Moose’s burlap sack of energy bars. In my backpack were essential props: a copy of Heart of Darkness, a 1902 map of the Congo found on eBay, and several tins of Spam. Though it might not sound like it, for us, this was traveling light.
“Good news,” Dan said, hanging up the phone. “Between the hotel and our connections, we managed to get everything Tony wanted. Just not the tomatoes.” I wasn’t sure what was worse, that we hadn’t found tomatoes or that we’d somehow managed to source everything else on the impossible eleventh-hour shopping list.
“I’ll make coq au vin,” Tony said last night at dinner. “If we’re gonna endure a fetid, humid, mosquito-ridden night of sleeping on the boat while parasites hatch in our kidneys, we might as well eat a good meal.” Tony often did surprising things; they just didn’t usually involve him cooking on camera. Despite having spent twenty-eight years working in a kitchen—or maybe because of it—he usually made a point of leaving the food preparation to the local experts. On the rare occasions when Tony did participate, he usually had a good reason. The coq au vin, I estimated, was an insurance policy on his other unexpected pronouncement. “Each of you are going to kill your own chicken… on camera.”
I’d ordered the death of enough animals over the years in the course of making the show, but I’d never killed anything myself before. I didn’t like spiders, but that didn’t stop me from scooping them up with a cup and putting them outside when I crossed paths with one. Why was Tony intentionally manufacturing conflict and stakes with this chicken menace? Was the shoot not living up to his expectations?
I took a deep breath and resolved to put the whole thing out of my mind. Knowing Tony’s fickle nature, it probably wouldn’t happen anyway. And right now, I had other pressing concerns, like the kerfuffle from inside the boat when Jerry whacked his head on that troublesome low beam. And on shore a well-upholstered man with a gold watch, neatly pressed slacks, and a badge (never a good sign) was arguing with Moose and Horeb.
“Dude claims to be a ‘port official,’” Dan said. “He’s fucking pissed we didn’t pay his office some imaginary ‘fuel surcharge,’ and is demanding five thousand dollars or we’ll have to cease operations immediately.”
“Well, that sounds like it could be an issue…” I said, worrying about the schedule. We had to make it at least eighty clicks downriver before nightfall, as moving on the water after dark was extremely dangerous.
“It’s a cultural tradition for everyone here to cause problems and block other people’s shit,” Dan said, lighting a cigarette. “Don’t stress, Horeb will get him down to twenty dollars.”
“FIVE MINUTES TO TONY, FIVE MINUTES TO TONY,” the walkie squawked. Fuck! Tony was already en route from the hotel and we weren’t done loading, and the extortion situation had yet to be resolved, forget being ready to film. As soon as I saw Tony step out of his Land Cruiser, I could tell something was a little off. He was uncharacteristically decked out in two tribal necklaces, an endangered leopard skin purse, and, most worrisome, he appeared ebullient. Coming right over, Tony said, “Cameras not ready yet? Too bad, because it’s been my life’s ambition to come to the Congo. Boom, bumper! I’m just enjoying torturing you, Tom. I’m brimming with content. So, I’m ready any time.”
Mo materialized out of nowhere, camera in hand, and said, “I’m firing.”
“Did you maggots load the chickens? And you are fully briefed and squared away as far as plucking and gutting of said chickens?” Tony asked, looking in my direction. “I will take your guffaw and expression of utter disgust as meaning yes. Well, I’m psyched. My dream has finally come true. Or kind of, almost, about to be. I shall dub this boat The Captain Willard.”
While the remainder of the gear was loaded, Tony boarded for an inspection and promptly whacked his head on the low beam despite a large neon-green gaffer tape “X.” Unharmed, he waved toward the offending support and said, “Have this unnecessary hazard removed immediately. Anything else I should be aware of?”
“Well, there’s a little paperwork issue,” I said.
“Oh, no… Blocked by officials? This could be months,” Tony said, looking concerned. We watched as more of our local crew got involved and additional “port officials” joined the mess of wild gesticulations and yelling. At one point Dan’s voice rose above the rest. “I don’t fucking care what it takes, we need this boat to move NOW!” Some amount of money presumably greater than twenty dollars changed hands, and passage was granted.
As we left Kisangani, the Congo River opened up ahead of us like a superhighway. Much as in Conrad’s day, it had again become the main route of transportation, but other than a pirogue or two and a few scows like ours, traffic was scarce. Small thatched villages were occasionally visible, but mostly the banks remained clad in an unbroken wall of green.
Going below deck, I found Tony ominously singing, “Time to kill chickens, weed out the chickens,” while using a large amount of our fast-dwindling supply of bottled drinking water to rinse the onions and potatoes he’d been cutting. Without looking up, he said, “Getting close to killy time, Tom. These decks will soon be awash with blood. Summon the crew. I want this on tape.”
“I’m not killing a chicken,” I said, my voice getting a touch shrill. “They’re cute.”
“We’ll see how cute they are when you’re wrist-deep in their guts.
Flapping their wings, the little severed head gazing up at you.” Switching to mock chicken falsetto, Tony squeaked, “Why me, Tom? Why?”
If Tony could make a joke that resulted in you doubled over laughing or, conversely, scared shitless, well, let’s just say getting big reactions out of people was one of Tony’s joys. But engineering an improvised sadistic chicken killing ritual was a new level of… I don’t know what. Was any of this rational? Was I losing my mind? One thing was clear: I was definitely losing control of the situation. With everyone present and Mo rolling, Tony proclaimed, “Gentlemen, we’re in? We’ve got a chicken for each of you. Mo, Jerry, Moose?”
I watched in dismay while my fellow crew members fervently chorused, “Let’s do this,” “Hell yeah, I’m in,” and, “Just another day in the Congo.”
“This will not be my first time at the rodeo,” Tony said. “I’ll tell you right up front it’s extremely unpleasant. There will be no joy in this. But, Tom, in the interest of togetherness, I’m really impressed you’ve chosen to go along with this. After all these years on the show, basically exploiting the miracle of human toil, and food production, and animals’ lives. I think it’s only fair you learn on a cellular level, in a deep way, where your food comes from.”
Over the last couple of days Tony’s references had increasingly switched from Heart of Darkness to Apocalypse Now. In our security briefing when Dez cautioned about the dangers of getting off the boat—snakes, armed militia, bandits, parasites, etc.—Tony had interrupted with a quote from the movie: “Never get off the boat, unless you’re going all the way, man.” But from where I was standing, any potential shore-based hazards seemed worth the risk compared to what was happening on board the boat. With or without my consent, the whole grisly scene was shaping up to be like some corporate retreat held in the Seventh Circle of Dante’s Hell. There was no question the farther we got from a cell phone signal, the further we were descending into madness. The basket of chickens arrived clucking in terror, and Dan went first. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I’m gonna kill you,” he said, sawing off the chicken’s head. “Wow, this knife is dull!”
Still somewhat in a state of denial that this was actually happening, I began backing away and said, “I’m just going to make myself useful opening these bottles of wine.”
“Nah, you’re just gonna kill a chicken,” Tony said, cutting through his chicken’s neck with some difficulty. Plucking a bloody feather from his cheek, he said, “Tom, you might want to observe how it’s done, so you don’t cause the poultry any unnecessary suffering. Jerry, let’s go.” Jerry put down his camera and—being a farm boy from Iowa—nonchalantly popped off the chicken’s head like it was a bottle cap.
“Clean kill, Jerry, clean kill,” Dan said, having adopted the role of execution commentator.
Holding the bloody severed chicken head, its beak still slowly opening and closing, Jerry asked, “What do we do with these?”
Tony looked proud, and I decided my best course of action was to slip overboard unnoticed, or at least disappear for a bit. I turned around to sneak away and slammed my head into the low beam so hard I fell back flat against the floor. My first thought was, maybe if I’m paralyzed, I won’t have to kill a chicken! Regrettably, I was uninjured.
“It’s batter up, Tom,” Tony said.
“Please, I really don’t want to do this,” I said.
“If we don’t kill those chickens, we’ll starve to death,” Tony said, thrusting the bloody knife in my direction. “You want to eat a raw onion for dinner?”
As much as I didn’t want to kill a chicken, I also didn’t want to look like a chicken in front of Tony. I know none of this makes any sense, but such refined notions as logic had been left a long way upriver. Besides, both cameras were pointed in my direction—which in case you didn’t know has a way of making people do stupid things—so I took a deep breath and resigned myself to participating in Tony’s bizarre blood rite. I reached down and grabbed the chicken, who stopped struggling and stared up at me. As Tony had prophesied, I could tell the chicken was thinking, “Why me, Tom?” Hovering, Tony said, “Don’t be gentle, you’re not going out on a date. C’mon, just do it!” I looked away and plunged the knife into the chicken’s neck and sawed and sawed as hard as I could. Over the ringing in my ears and the horrified screams of the other chickens, I could hear voices shouting, “Hold it higher so I can get a better a shot!” and “Kill! Kill! Kill!” The Congolese boat guys were all watching the spectacle and must have been wondering what the hell was going on. When I looked down, it seemed like the knife was barely penetrating, let alone going all the way through, and the chicken was still looking up into my eyes, and there was blood.
“Saw harder!” Dan laughed maniacally.
I was really trying, back and forth with the knife, and the chicken was still looking at me. “Do it faster!” Tony commanded. “You’re making him suffer!” And that’s when the panic set in. “Stop it, stop it!” I yelled through tears. I felt myself let go of the knife, and I ran to the other side of the boat. Had it been an axe or even something sharp, it would have been bad enough. But that fucking knife was so dull, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of the poor chicken not seeing another sunrise.
When the red mist cleared, I felt pretty pathetic for freaking out over a chicken, considering I was in a country where horrific acts of cruelty and violence were facts of life. Worst of all, I’d failed the test. I was too chicken to kill the chicken, too chicken to say no, then too chicken to finish the job. The sad truth is I was the chicken all along. I’d managed to hold it together very well on the Congo shoot thus far—and for the last ten years of working on the show—but Tony had finally broken me. He had a way of always getting what he wanted. Perhaps as a consolation prize Tony put a smudge of blood on my forehead and said, “Now you can join our treehouse.”
THOUGH SOMEWHAT MACABRE AND PERVERSE, the whole day had been pretty lighthearted, at least as far as Tony was concerned. But as the last bluish remainders of twilight faded away, fate was about to ensure nobody got off the boat unscathed.
“We’re in a hurry,” Tony said, organizing his mise en place. “I need my secret blend of herbs and spices and these bottles of wine opened.” Jerry and Dez went to the stern and fired up the generator rigged to a string of bulbs around Tony’s work area. Trying to focus over the din of two clattering outboard engines and now a clanking, sputtering generator, Tony placed the first chicken on the cutting board, raised his knife, and the lights cut out, plunging us into complete darkness. “Jeee-zuuus,” Tony said, drawing out the syllables for dramatic emphasis. “I need some fucking light so I can see what the fuck I’m doing!” I felt around along the floor to my backpack and found a headlamp. Moose did the same, and soon a few beams of illumination cut through the inky void. Dez went to investigate why the generator was still whirring away but not providing power. Within a minute or so, the bulbs flickered on to reveal a pissed-off looking Tony. “This knife is as dull as a soup spoon,” he said, going to work butchering the chickens. “Get me the machete, and I need another pot.” Before either could be found, the lights wavered, dimmed, and failed again. “Fuuuuck,” he moaned. As power returned, I was faced with an even more pissed-off Tony, arms folded. Wiping some blood off his Rolex to check the time, he said, “Tom, if we’re going to eat at all, you need to unfuck this situation!”
Like it was my fault the generator wasn’t cooperating with Tony’s “Full Metal Julia Child” fantasy of effortlessly preparing a jungle-style coq au vin. “Well, it is a documentary. I’m just ‘letting it happen.’ Isn’t that what you’re always telling me to do?” is what I wanted to say. Instead I tried to sound like I knew anything about electricity and offered, “Maybe there’s too many bulbs going; how many do we have on?”
“There’s only a draw of two hundred forty watts,” Mo shouted from behind his camera. “It’s the shitty generator!”
“Where’s that empty pot I asked for?” Tony demanded
as the lights flared out, then on.
“Hey, this is Congo, man.” Dan chuckled at the absurdity of our predicament.
“This is gonna be starvation is what it’s gonna be,” Tony said. He ineffectually hack, hack, hacked away at a chicken foot. “I’m never gonna get through with this fucking knife! And open the wine, please. Somebody!” Thankfully, Dan had been a sous chef in a previous life and went to work assisting with the food prep. “Dan, I want you to take the onions and put them on the fire and stir it until such time as they’re clear,” Tony said as the boat plummeted into blackness. “You’re fucking loving this, Tom.” His voice loomed up from the abyss. “More interested in getting the shot of me looking desperate and miserable than helping me out even a little by like doing anything about food.”
Clearly such refined notions as logic had been left a long way upriver, but I was still operating under the assumption it was my job to make sure the food got filmed. In fact, I’d just been thinking about all the elements needed to edit this scene to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” When the lights came back up, I said, “Jerry, maybe you should get some coverage of the generator drama.”
“NO!” Tony yelled, slamming down his knife. “Maybe we should figure out how to cook fucking dinner, unless you don’t want to eat anything. Okay? So, let us dedicate all our attention to that. While all this might be high comedy, I’ve had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today and I would like to eat, especially since we’ve gone through all this fucking misery with these fucking chickens. I think it would be right, and only respectful of the chicken you so cruelly tortured and left slowly dying, to actually eat them.”