Telluride, Colorado, 31 August 1979
When the penguins hibernate in Antarctica—how, I do not know exactly; at any rate, it seems to be like what bears do: when they wake up in the spring without having had anything to eat for months, sometimes the ice shelf on which they spent the dark winter months has changed completely, so they have sixty or seventy kilometers to march before they reach the open sea. Scientists are trying to study the phenomenon of the marching penguins, and I saw films of penguins who had been put on treadmills, like in a fitness studio, with a kind of helmet fastened to their heads that allowed their brain waves to be measured. They march along steadily, their broad feet tapping, straight ahead, undeterred, their rhythm as even as a machine’s, with mournful seriousness.
San Francisco was not pleasant. I felt completely out of place, especially in Broadway House. Errol Morris was suffering even more, because his latent hostility to Coppola’s empty promises is becoming increasingly obvious. In addition, he was uneasy to the point of complete panic because as usual he has too much material but still no plot for his story about a small town in Florida where dozens of insurance fraud cases are uncovered by a detective working for an insurance company: policyholders keep losing limbs in the most absurd ways so they can bring enormous claims, but every time the accident leaves them with a combination of limbs—missing a leg or an arm, or one leg and one arm—that still permits them afterward to drive a Cadillac with an automatic transmission. I suggested to Errol that in the first scene, set in the town of Vernon, which the insurance companies privately call Nub City, which Errol wants to use as his film’s title, he should show Junior attaching a self-shooting device to a tree so he can shoot off his left arm. He has a pot of tar heating up, into which he can plunge the stump to stop the bleeding, has already fastened the device to a branch with a wire attached to the trigger, so he can explain afterward that he was planning to attack a nest of vultures, when he notices at the last moment that he is being watched: the insurance company detective has come to town. From then on, the cops-and-robbers game can get under way, with the insurance investigator as the bad guy, the cop who tries to prevent the “accident,” which Junior tries to pull off with increasingly clever techniques. In the end Junior triumphs when he succeeds in losing an arm.
We have no dinosaur, it says on a hand-lettered sign outside a farm that puts on rattlesnake rodeos.
A long, good evening visiting Satty, the painter. He told me about experiencing the war in Bremen, about the nights spent in bunkers. One time a bunker was destroyed by multiple-strike bombs, the ceiling caved in in front of him and buried 450 people. He spent two days and two nights in the water with his aunt, who held him up the entire time to keep his head above water—the water pipes had broken. After a day they heard the rescuers’ jackhammers, and that gave them courage. He also described the postwar period in Bremen, which was wonderful for him; he and his playmates ruled over the ruins like kings. Wherever he went, he took along a hammer and chisel and a length of rope so he could collect scrap metal.
Telluride, 1 September 1979
Abel Gance talked to me for a long time about his idea for a fifteen-hour film on Columbus, which he wants to pass on to me, now that he has seen Aguirre. He says he is ninety, and it is too much for him. Half seriously, half jokingly, he said that he would like to die here, if that were acceptable. We drank red wine to that, straight from the bottle, and he remarked that he did not take anything seriously; he took everything tragically. Last night I saw his Napoleon outdoors, on a triple screen. I was wrapped in a blanket against the piercing cold, for five long hours. This morning Abel Gance blocked a screening of his film Beethoven; he had not seen it in forty years, and he remembered everything so differently that he did not want to believe it was his film.
San Francisco, 6 September 1979
Loneliness, huge problems with the finances. This morning a reporter from Spiegel phoned me from Hamburg and read me the most far-fetched made-up stories, which he wants to publish. I simply told him I had no desire to be a dancing bear in his circus. I had a reunion with Constance Carroll, who was with me fifteen years ago in Pittsburgh, and hid me in the library and let me sleep there for a week, after I had impulsively given up my scholarship and as a result had no host family. Today she is the president of the college in Novato, and I was very happy to see that as a woman, and a black woman at that, she has come so far at such an early age. I had only a vague memory of what she looked like, but a vivid memory of her gentle voice. The group that once coalesced around her literary magazine has dissolved, and none of its members has amounted to anything. They never made it out of Pittsburgh, and now they have children, are divorced, have become alcoholics, live in suburbia. On the campus here large herds of deer, with forty or fifty animals, roam about at night, stripping all the plantings, and the college is located right on an active fault; anything else she could deal with more easily, she told me as we parted.
San Francisco, 7 September 1979
Yesterday I had opened the window in the bathroom, and the evening sun was shining in, clear and bright. I took my shoes and put them on the windowsill to air out, half inside, half outside, with the toes pointing in. Later I forgot they were there, and as I was washing my face I turned toward the window and was filled with terrible panic at seeing the shoes standing there empty, as if no one was climbing in the window.
San Francisco, 10 September 1979
For my birthday recently, Kitty, the female sheriff, secretly made me copies of the crime-scene photos from one of the Kemper murders, because she knew I had visited Kemper in the Vacaville jail. I returned the favor by going to see her Sunday morning in the prison here where she is in charge; it is the women’s wing on the sixth floor of the justice department building, and on Sundays she is pretty much alone there, and no one objected to my bringing champagne. We had a jolly time, and I laughed a lot with Gabby, the whore who has become a trusty there. I should have smuggled in more alcohol.
New York, 29 September 1979
After a dramatic blow-up with his wife, a man rushes into the bathroom, hastily weighs himself on the scale, then shoots himself.
Munich—London, 8 October 1979
Big organizational and financing problems. Jack Nicholson wanted me to meet him on the set of The Shining; he said he would like to do something with me, but does not want to go to the jungle and wonders whether we could not shoot the whole thing at home in a studio. Kubrick heard that I was on the set, and because it happened to be the midday break, invited me to lunch. A bucket brigade of assistants with walkie-talkies passed me along to him. We were very respectful, but did not have much to say to each other. Since I knew hardly anything about his project, I told him that I found his set impressive, and we talked about how he had to open with long traveling shots, without cuts.
In Los Angeles, Sandy Liebersohn confided to me that he was going to resign as president of Fox; no one else had been told, and I should keep it to myself. But insider news like this does not mean a thing to me because I am going to be on my own as a producer. For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do—out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation—look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.
Iquitos, 12 October 1979
In the jefatura Gustavo and I tried to get onto the flight going to Teniente Pinglo tomorrow. The fat young captain took us to a reception area that was the most pitiful thing I have seen in a long time. It had a clumsily made kidney-shaped table and an upholstered bench, as well as two chairs, all covered in the same yellowing plastic, already killed by the tropics. Just as there is a clinical death, there is a tropical death. The captain was young and pudgy, and complained he had gained thirty kilos sitting around in Iquitos. He had unbuttoned
his shirt at the bottom to let his belly fat spill out more comfortably. His hair was dripping with sweat. He offered us Coke and leaned back against the wall. When he got up, the wall was damp with sour sweat.
I had heard from Walter by radio that the situation on the Cenepa was critical. He intends to hang in there, however, because of the contracts, but all he sees is the formal legal situation, whereas I am in favor of a total break and a completely new start.
Santa Maria de Nieva, 14 October 1979
Seen from the air, the jungle below looked like kinky hair, seemingly peaceful, but that is deceptive, because in its inner being nature is never peaceful. Even when it is denatured, when it is tamed, it strikes back at its tamers and reduces them to pets, rosy pigs, which then melt like fat in a skillet. This brings to mind the image, the great metaphor, of the pig in Palermo, which I heard had fallen into a sewer shaft: it lived down there for two years, and continued to grow, surviving on the garbage that people threw down the shaft, and when they hauled the pig out, after it had completely blocked the drain, it was almost white, enormously fat, and had taken on the form of the shaft. It had turned into a kind of monumental, whitish grub, rectangular, cubic, and wobbly, an immense hunk of fat, which could move only its mouth to eat, while its legs had shrunk and retracted into the body fat.
Festival of the Virgen de Fatima in Santa Maria de Nieva, with a soccer tournament, a procession, and dancing. Les Blank filmed the photographer who sets up an ancient camera with bellows and does his developing on the spot. He took a picture of me. First he gave me a comb and said I should comb my hair, then sat me down on a stool. His shutter is the lid from an oil canister, which he pulls away with a flourish for a second, while with the other hand he shades the lens. The negative that he develops, poking around inside his camera, he then rephotographs with a frame of roses, birds, and maxims, which gives him a print. During the procedure he carries on a conversation with two voluble little parrots, which he keeps in a basketlike pouch attached to the tripod.
We traveled a stretch up the Nieva to see Grimaldo, the cook, where we were served fairly warm beer, and since I had already done some drinking at the fiesta, we went to the nearby waterfall and positioned ourselves under it. Les and I let the water pound down on us; it felt like a herd of cattle trampling me, but afterward I was quite refreshed and also sober.
The reports on us have stopped referring to jailed Indians; somehow that has been taken care of. I did some investigating in Santa Maria, checking on the names that had been mentioned. Three of the four who were named had never had anything to do with us and had also never been in jail, but the fourth had in fact been locked up here for about a week. He had run up debts in about thirty stores and bars and was on the point of making himself scarce, so a barkeeper had him arrested. He, too, had had no contact with us. In the meantime new reports are circulating to the effect that we are dealing in weapons and drugs. Tomorrow I plan to go directly to the Consejo de Aguarunas y Huambisas in Napuruka, even though they are warning me here that I would be killed there immediately. A political agitator, a Frenchman, is living there now, and in Wawaim two Germans have turned up, apparently from the Society for Endangered Peoples, who are handing around pictures of Auschwitz with heaps of skeletons, as an argument against me.
Santa Maria de Nieva—Wachintsa, 16 October 1979
After only two hundred meters we had to turn back, because the engine was not running properly. Walter had set out shortly before us in the completely overloaded speedboat; he had invited the five musicians from the fiesta to go along, with their microphones, amplifier, and Hammond organ. Only the thrust of the engine kept the boat slightly above the waterline and prevented it from sinking. We managed to locate a replacement engine for our big wooden boat, and set out again. An Aguaruna woman with tattoos on her face and upper thighs spoke to me, gesticulating wildly and apparently asking to be taken along. I went to the bow and fetched the boatman, who had to sound the depth of the river in the shallower spots with a pole, and had him translate. Where did she want to go? To Pinglo, downriver, and from there to Iquitos, she answered agitatedly. She was very put out that I could not speak Aguaruna—she found that unnatural. I asked why she wanted to go to Iquitos; was not her family here, and what did she want to do in Iquitos? But all she said was that she wanted to go to the city of Iquitos; she did not know anyone there. I asked whether she did not have a husband and children here. At the same time I tried to make it clear to her that there was nothing for her in Iquitos, that they would not understand her, either, since only Spanish was spoken. With agitated gestures she then talked about her husband, and the pilot was reluctant to translate. Her story was as follows: her husband had run away with their eldest daughter; he did not want his wife anymore and had taken their daughter as his wife. When we pushed off—I had told her again that we were traveling in the opposite direction, upstream—she suddenly jumped into the boat after all. She wanted to get away, it did not matter where to. After a few hundred meters, however, she asked us to tie up again so she could get off, because on the bank she had spotted a woman with a baby whom she knew well. When she got off, she did not go straight onto land but hiked up her skirt first and washed her legs.
We made a stop in Napuruka, and I climbed the long, steep bank alone to the large village at the top, to see for myself how much truth there was to the story that I would be killed if I showed my face there. I was wondering what good it would do to kill me, but maybe such a question is too Western. When I got to the top, the children gazed at me solemnly in silence, as if a prisoner in shackles were passing by. Two young men with machetes in their hands approached me, and for a moment it looked as though they were prepared to undertake the fine deed that would bring them everlasting glory, the way in medieval armies the greatest honor accrued to the first knight to advance on the enemy. But I saw a few members of the Consejo whom I knew, and asked them whether I could confer with someone in their village so as to hear whether there were charges against me. For the time being that defused the momentary and perplexed tension. I asked whether it was possible to sit down at a table with the Consejo and talk. In no time people converged from all sides. Evaristo Nunkuag was there, along with most of the council members, and they asked me formally whether I was armed, whether I would permit a body search. That was mostly for the benefit of the villagers, to show that the council was exercising its authority here. Obviously I had no objection, I said, and they patted me down and turned my pockets inside out. Since all I had was a Kleenex, they confiscated the most dangerous object I had—my sunglasses.
The members of the Consejo de Aguarunas were enthroned at a table on a podium, and soon they had a thick packet of papers in front of them, whereas I was placed on a stool, with my back to the assembled villagers. Things took a wrong turn at the very beginning, starting with the reading of resolutions and communiqués in stilted bureaucratic Spanish. I was not really allowed to speak, which I did not want to do anyway; I wanted to listen. Interestingly enough, the resolutions had to do with demands for legal jurisdiction, to be exercised by an autonomous Indian administration, with a military presence and an appropriate share in the oil revenues. There were several references to unification with the Aguarunas’ brothers and sisters over the border in Ecuador, an obvious provocation to the national integrity of Peru. They wanted to force me to sign a declaration immediately, to the effect that I recognized the sovereignty of the council over the entire region, including Wawaim, and that as a sign of this recognition I would withdraw from the Wawaim area.
I replied that most people in Wawaim had never heard of them, and from what I knew those who did know had rejected the extension of the council’s jurisdiction to their territory. At that, the mood became menacing, and they locked the door and would not let me leave. All right, I said, if the assembly had more to say to me, I would be glad to take the time. Only then did a free exchange take place with the villagers behind me, with questions and fears expressed that act
ually had something to do with me: did I intend to settle here for good; they were having all sorts of problems with three Aguaruna families that had moved into their village. Did I plan to dig a canal between the Marañón and Cenepa rivers? Did I know what the military was up to with all the new garrisons it was establishing?
I asked them to explain the reports that on my instigation Aguarunas had been jailed. The council conferred for a while, whispering in Aguaruna, and then told me they had no knowledge of any prisoners. Yet this story had been given to the press by Evaristo Nunkuag. Altogether, the people here are very skilled in dealing with the media: when he is here, Evaristo wears a particularly fine example of a “Disco Fever” T-shirt that is very popular in these parts, and with it Ray-Ban designer sunglasses, but the protection-seeking Indians he brings to his news conferences in Lima have their faces painted, are wearing feathers, and carry their bows and arrows. After several hours of listening, which included hearing more communiqués read aloud, the assembly ran out of steam, and we quietly went our separate ways, after shaking hands. I had pointedly left my sunglasses there, and someone came running after me with them as I was heading back to the boat.
On the way to Wachintsa I used Maureen’s umbrella to protect myself from the sun. Shortly before we reached the Urakusa military outpost, a gust of wind blew it out of my hand, and it landed on the water, with the handle sticking up in the air. This image impressed me so much that I quickly wrote a scene into the script. To round out the day, I had a confrontation at the garrison with the sentries, who wanted to confirm my personal information down to the smallest detail: hair color, race (!), number of children, mother’s maiden name. I said I had supplied this information many times already, and lately people had simply accepted the form I had filled out previously. At that point the guard turned snotty, and I went to find the major, who had always impressed upon us that we should stop in to see him if there was any trouble; he knew us, and did not much care for bureaucracy. But the major was not there, so I simply went back down to the boat, but then realized they would shoot if I sailed on without registering. A soldier came running to say I should come back immediately; they had located the major, and he wanted to speak with me. I said the major should come to me if he wanted anything of me; I would go back only if they arrested me. Up above a palaver with César Vivanco took place, the major did not come down to the river, and I did not go up to the garrison. I went swimming in the river, and nothing happened. We simply sailed on.
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo Page 6