Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

by Werner Herzog

  Before sundown César and I rode to the other side of the lagoon to have a look at the lodge the American missionaries were having built. They are here under the pretext of doing linguistic research to further destroy the Indians’ culture. From a distance the roofs with their stepped rows of skylights looked good, but on closer inspection the huts the people here build are much better. Many of the missionaries were out swimming and sunning their obese bodies like pigs on a small wooden platform, and German tourists were taking pictures. A woman photographer from north Germany asked me whether I was the one, and I said, yes, that was me, and then preserved such a silence that she did not dare try to make conversation.

  The Río Pachitea is a disappointment—along almost its entire length up to Puerto Inca, just one chakra and cow pasture after another. The few steeper spots between bends in the river are all almost vertical with flattish tops like those of tabletop mountains. There is some hope along the Río Picha and the Río Pachitea, but the thought of building a camp there for the entire production team and almost a thousand extras terrifies me, because the nearest larger town, like Iquitos, is fourteen hundred kilometers away. Every nail, every gram of salt would have to be brought in from there.

  Pucallpa—Yarinacocha, 7 July 1980

  An entire school of small fishes leaped out of the water as our boat passed. I saw a stuffed alligator, standing upright supported by its tail and singing to the accompaniment of a guitar. The alligator was also wearing sunglasses. A young man was holding five small alligators by the head and wanted to sell them to me. At first I thought they were dead, because they were drooping, but it was probably from exhaustion, because the seller insisted on demonstrating how much life was left in them by holding his lit cigarette lighter to their tails, which made them writhe like snakes. A young woman was suckling a newborn piglet that had been orphaned. Once the pigs are fully grown, saddlebags are hitched to their backs for loads, and then off they go. The Indian women like gold teeth. The powers of heaven are powerless against the jungle.

  Earlier, on Río Huallaga, the boat stopped where actually no village was to be seen. Other than a dock and a corrugated tin shed filled with broken engines there was nothing, but there must have been some huts farther into the jungle, because I heard chickens and the shouts of children. The captain and crew had disappeared without a word. At first no one noticed, but when evening came and there was nothing for the passengers to eat, anxiety began to take hold. This situation lasted for two days, and it turned out that the entire crew had got drunk on beer and was holed up in a village brothel.

  In my French grammar book there was a picture of Camus engaged in a philosophical conversation with an intelligent, somewhat older man about human beings’ right to exist on this earth. He was squatting casually, his weight resting on one knee, on a road that wound up a mountainside, and it was nice to see a philosopher speaking so spontaneously. He was squatting near a low stone parapet, whitewashed, obviously there to keep vehicles from tumbling into the ocean. The harbor in the background looked a bit like Dubrovnik or a small town on the Cte d’Azur. I heard the two of them talking, then laughing out loud. Then one of Camus’s legs must have gone to sleep, and he shifted his weight. I could see the man he was talking to only from behind or at an angle over his shoulder. Then Camus straightened up from his squatting position. All the time while he was philosophizing, he had been feeling gas in his stomach and thinking of nothing else as he laid out his arguments. The dialogue was printed on the left side of the book. All the women and children gathered around a glowing fire nearby looked around. On the fire a fish was grilling.

  At night it was quiet. Only the stars sang, far off. A few stars came shooting down. Wagner, a naked little Indian boy with a distended stomach, not yet able to speak, was pushed toward me among the silent observers. Another child, about five, asked whether I wanted him; little Wagner did not have either a father or a mother, only his shadow.

  Yarinacocha, 8 July 1980

  We are going to fly up the Río Ucayali/Urubamba as far as the rapids; there is still hope that the Río Picha, the Río Camisea, and maybe the Río Mishagua will work out. But if we cannot find a suitable place, there is nothing left in this country. The Río Pachitea and Río Huallaga can be written off, and that would be it. Weather: a little cloudy. We are not going to take off until almost nine, because the mist does not clear in the mountains until about ten in the morning. We buy a few cans of food, sugar, Nescafé, and three papayas, just in case there is nothing to be had on the Camisea.

  I was told that the Lima Times of 20 June reported that I had almost finished filming without permission, and there was some nonsense about United Artists, probably that they were behind the whole thing as producers, but apparently no else is picking up that version. Maybe no one is interested in the story anymore. Otherwise the usual: on the back of a motorcycle a pole was fastened horizontally with a dozen live chickens attached by their feet, and also a tied-up hog. Their heads were dragged in the dust kicked up by the rear tire.

  Camisea, 9 July 1980

  Yesterday we flew over Atalaya, then over the secret penal colony on the Sepa, where dangerous criminals serve their time without walls and barbed wire, imprisoned by the jungle, so to speak. All of them have sentences of at least ten years. From there to the Picha, the Camisea, and the Pongo de Mainique. At the Pongo it took me a while to realize that what looked like clouds in the distance were actually snow-covered mountains. The Pongo itself, a good show, is not passable for us with a large boat, because when the water level is low, as it is now, the Urubamba is not navigable, so out of the question, and when the water is high, the current will be too strong.

  In the village of Camisea the Machiguenga Indians had put up a soccer goal at the beginning of the runway, which made the landing somewhat perilous. The village consists of a row of about fifteen huts along the bumpy grass strip. Completely different types from those along the upper reaches of the Marañón, a friendly attitude, and children who crowded around us and reciprocated when we shook hands, except that this form of greeting is unknown to them, so they offered us their wrists, a little fist, or stretched out their fingertips toward us. We ate a few bananas that they brought us and recruited two guides with machetes so we could check out the ridge that occupies the isthmus of land between the Río Camisea and the Río Urubamba. A very arduous hike through the jungle until we reached the almost perpendicular spot from which the two rivers should have been visible, but the vegetation was too dense, and the view of the whole site will be accessible only from a platform built in one of the treetops. Exhausted and drenched in sweat, I threw myself into the Urubamba when we got to the bottom, and immediately felt little fishes swarming around my blistered foot and nibbling bits of skin. In the end, I was just panting and stumbling through the vines after the guide, but we got back to the village too late to fly on to the Picha. There was a chicken available, for an astronomical price, but no one to cook it, so we let it go and ate tuna fish with onions and lemon juice. I downed tea by the liter. The family who had given us a pot of hot water crowded around, and we fixed tuna for them and gave them tea; that is how it is done here—food is always shared, César says, which is why there is no word for “thank you” in their language.

  At night I slept fitfully, plagued by worries and freezing cold. Also the bats, against which we had put up the mosquito nets, kept fluttering around my hammock. In the morning I saw that the pilot was sleeping in my blanket, which had disappeared suddenly, that is to say, he had it inside his sleeping bag, and during the night, when I was so cold that I got up to put on a long-sleeved shirt, César was lying on my duffle bag, which he had taken to use as a pillow. How and where are we supposed to set up a camp here and keep it going? No one has any salt, candles, or string—a man I asked for a piece so I could put up my hammock gave me the string from his bow. In the end I used a length of liana bark.

  After eight in the morning we flew to Picha and met there the fat Do
minican padre who looks more like a tavern keeper. Another man, a Spaniard, with a dark beard and smeared with oil, was working on a tractor, which was beyond repair. Later I saw him sitting on it, and thirty or forty children were pulling him with a rope across the cow pasture. The tractor was puffing white and black smoke from places where no smoke should have been coming out, and refused to jump-start. Inquiries about the Picha and the Urubamba, fruitless. From the fat man I purchased a cushma, one of the Machiguengas’ almost ankle-length nightshirtlike tunics, woven from a nearly indestructible fiber, for Gisela Storch to use as a prototype. The two Spanish padres are quite obviously living in a marriagelike state with the two Indian schoolteachers; one could tell from the women, but not so much from the priests, who remained rather discreet in the presence of strangers.

  Thought for a long time about the inertia and the unique rhythms of cultural history, for instance why the Middle Ages did not end in Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Albania until two or three centuries later than elsewhere, and in some parts of that region still have not ended.

  Pucallpa—Yarinacocha, 10 July 1980

  I got up very early because out on the porch mosquitoes and ticks were swarming all over me, and went down to the boat landing. I had a sense of great delight when I saw the lagoon. Some seabirds were fishing, an early peke-peke sailed by with a heavy load, and farther off the mist was rising from the jungle. I heard someone in the house laughing quite shamelessly and unabashedly, but it was such a strange laugh that I soon realized it was one of the two parrots here. Workmen were tossing boards from one pile onto another next to it, and even after considerable reflection I could not see any rhyme or reason to what they were doing.

  In town several streets were blocked off. Indian schoolgirls were marching in Prussian goosestep, three abreast, practicing for the parade on the national holiday. They were wearing uniforms consisting of knee-length gray skirts and white blouses, with suspenders. They kept their hands flat at their sides to diminish any wind resistance and swung their arms, slicing the air to accompany their brisk steps. We rode to the Shipibo village of San Francisco, which is devoted entirely to the tourist trade. All the textiles look as if they were made in Hong Kong. I bought a few samples for Gisela and left the place feeling quite depressed. The harbor of Pucallpa, which I had a closer look at, is so chaotic and run-down that just the thought of ever having to ship anything from here terrified me.

  Across from the wretched Pucallpa airport is a bar with a beautiful monkey, black, with limbs that go on forever. He looks very intelligent and would make the ideal companion for Fitz. A drunk spat at the monkey and almost hit him from behind. The monkey inspected and sniffed with great interest at this globule from the depths of an unhealthy lung, as it lay on the ground, greenish yellow and steaming. It looked as though the monkey wanted to eat the spit, or at least taste it. I said silently to him, Leave it, leave it alone, and he let it be. Now he is sitting with his tail wrapped around his buttocks like a rope, his knees under his chin, and his arms around his knees. That is how he sits when he is chained to a tree limb. I realized I was sitting the same way, with my feet propped in the rungs of a second chair and my knees under my chin. Does the monkey dream my dreams in the branches above me? I ordered a beer, and my voice sounded altered, like the voice of a parrot imitating operatic arias. The sun sank in an angry blaze. For a moment, and for the only time I think I can remember, the earth struck me as motherly, covered with a decaying forest that seemed positively humble. A large brown moth was boring into the smooth concrete floor as if it wanted to go down into the earth, and beating its wings so violently that the wooden sound it created blended with the electrical hissing and crackling of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead like a symphony from the depths of a ghastly universe, a universe readying itself for the final harvest.

  Iquitos, 11 July 1980

  We reached Iquitos at eleven in the evening. Walter had been sick for a few days. In the morning I sent off several telexes to Munich and Los Angeles, because of Mick Jagger. The young cat here has caught a lizard whose front third is green, the rest brown and spotted. The cat was tormenting the lizard to death, like a mouse, and in its terror it sought refuge in one of my pant legs, but I did not want that, either. When the lizard stops moving for a while, with only its throat sac pulsating, the cat stretches out, half on her back, striking out rapidly with her paws until the lizard darts off again. One of its hind legs is already dragging and does not work anymore.

  I settled in for a stay in Iquitos and hung some of the Shipibos’ textiles on the wall and over the window. Then I fastened two pieces of wood to the wall to serve as a bulletin board. I pinned up aerial photos of Camisea, along with photos of Burro, the ski jumper Steiner, and Lotte Eisner. I was mulling over plans for colonies in space, but aside from a few maneuvers in Antarctica there was nothing doing.

  Iquitos, 12 July 1980

  A dead tarantula, tacked to a piece of Styrofoam in the office, makes me uneasy, but especially when it is behind me. I have a hard time reading. Deep inside I have made the decision to shoot in Camisea, though not announced it yet. Walter also seems to favor this solution, but it is easy for him, and he seems less tense, only because he does not have any way of fully realizing the enormity of what lies ahead of us.

  In the afternoon Walter caught a little green snake that opened its mouth wide in a threatening way but seems not to be poisonous. Later we stuck it in the cage with the smaller boa, which immediately began to hiss and thrash the end of its tail like a cat ready to pounce, while the rest of its body was as taut as a spring. Only once did the two involuntary companions go at each other in a brief, crazed dart, and after that they maintained an uneasy truce.

  Iquitos, 13 July 1980

  A beautiful, fresh, sunny morning. I read in bed awhile and listened to music on cassettes. The two newly hatched chicks had been put in an empty rabbit hutch to keep them safe from the cat. One of them drowned in a saucer containing only a couple of millimeters of water. The other chick slipped through the woven wire to one of the albino rabbits, which, murderous through and through, wanted to devour it instantly, and bit off a leg and a piece of its stomach. Gloria barely managed to press the bloodthirsty rabbit to the back wall of the cage with a broom and rescue the chick, which is done for, however. Why do these animal dramas preoccupy me so? Because I do not want to look inside myself. Only this much: a sense of desolation was tearing me up inside, like termites in a fallen tree trunk.

  In the peace and quiet of this Sunday I intend to make my decision. The sultry heat is building gradually. In the slight breeze I see a plant with thin, sharp, lancelike leaves whose inner tension holds them upright in all directions. Only one leaf, its sharp edge slicing the rising wind, vibrates and quivers, while the others remain motionless in their taut strength. Nature here surrenders only after victorious battle.

  Wind sprang up and whirled dust from the pores of the earth. The little boa and the green water snake escaped, resuming their place in the seething of the jungle. César took off, clinging to the big motorcycle, and when I asked where he was going, I was told “the hippodrome.” I did not understand what was meant until they explained that was the brothel. Later, at supper, César was smiling quietly to himself. We heard the deep foghorn of a distant ocean liner blowing across the jungle, and Walter is excited: that must be the ship from Houston with our cars on board.

  Iquitos, 14 July 1980

  The whole town is on strike because of the redrawing of the departamentos, and everything seems dead. I have never seen Iquitos this dead; the sun blazed down indifferently and mercilessly onto the dusty, empty streets and revealed the shadows of things as never before. Nonetheless the mason came out to our place and worked with Vivanco to put up a roof for the motorcycles. The concrete had been covered with palm fronds to protect it from the previous day’s rain, and once the concrete had set, they were removed. Underneath sat a large tarantula, and César unceremoniously stepped on it. It is l
ying there now, crushed, as big as a hand, and flies with plump green bellies are perched on it. This sight provides a handy trigonometrical focal point for my fear of spiders. In the grass behind the house two lizards were fighting, their speed breathtaking. I did not know that lizards fought.

  Vivanco says that bureaucracy is not merely an instrumentarium, an ugly form of organization; here, he says, it is a despicable disposition of the heart. The jungle growing riotously around Iquitos is on strike against human efforts, in perpetuity.

  Uneasiness because I have some blood in my urine. I noticed it a few days ago but at the time did not take it seriously, but now it is impossible to ignore. Maybe it is upsetting me so much because I had bilharzia from my time in Africa, and the symptoms were the same then. After I confided to Walter and Vivanco, I felt as though the worry was somehow distributed over three sets of shoulders, and we decided to send a Coke bottle with a urine sample to the hospital tomorrow, though it is more than doubtful that they can do more there other than the traditional taste test. Actually, they would simply dip their fingers into the urine and taste it. We laughed a lot, and Walter gave me a big glass of bourbon to medicate myself with.

  I wrote letters, including a long one to my little son, but when I write, I always feel fairly certain these letters will never get there. For weeks I have been sending mail without once receiving confirmation that it arrived. Phoning Europe is practically impossible; recently I tried for forty-eight hours to get through, without success.

  Iquitos, 15 July 1980

  In town, sitting on parked motorcycles, with people all around us, I had a major blow-up with Walter on a matter of principle, which continued later over lunch with great vehemence. The relationship with Koechlin in Lima also needs to be recalibrated. Behind the house, near the banana plants, growing toward the jungle, the construction of my hut on stilts got under way. It is supposed to have a raised platform made of springy bark and a roof of palm fronds. It has gotten too crowded here, and I need a place of my own. I gave orders that they should procure taller supports, so I can see over the bananas somewhat. I also think the platform would have been too low when the river rose, because I remembered how high the water had been in our office. The telex machine’s keyboard just barely showed above the brown brew, and it was a miracle that it still worked. I also remember the secretary, Nancy, rowing into the room in a canoe and lying on her stomach in the bow of the dugout to send a message.