Iquitos, 17 January 1981
Shooting. The strike on again in the city, but none of this seems as bad as the feverish horrors the rumors had projected. The water rose so high that it came in through the floor of my cabin. A pillow was floating around. In the morning, when I put on my pants they felt cold and odd. I turned one pant leg inside out, and a frog jumped out.
Iquitos, 21 January 1981
A dream, not dreamed at night because I do not dream, but experienced while walking: when I saw snow falling over the jungle and forming a soggy blanket over the huge, warm river, over the palm huts, the vultures’ branches, I knew at once that an ice age had broken out in Europe, covering everything calamitously, and this could only be a long-distance effect from that. A large boa constrictor was also there, killed by a volley of buckshot to the head, but brought back to life with energetic massage. Then I was riding in a speedboat ahead of the steamer, and at a bend in the river let an empty yellow plastic bucket drift back toward the ship. I told the crew the ship would explode if it continued on and passed the bucket. They radioed back that if they stopped, the pail would drift by them. That my gesture had been recognized as an empty threat did nothing to change the fact that I thought I had demonstrated my resoluteness.
Departure for the Camisea postponed again, this time because Robards’s lawyers are demanding that we install a heart-lung machine there. Then they demanded that Claude supply his medical license, but after a rather long discussion they realized that this would be difficult to do from the jungle; Claude suggested that they simply check with the Sorbonne administration in Paris. Next they wanted to know what the Sorbonne was. Claude got the idea of obtaining a broken heart-lung machine from a junkyard in Miami and having our crew rig it up in some imaginative way. We were amazed at how terrified Robards must be of the jungle.
Río Camisea, 2 February 1981
Continuing mutiny because of the heart-lung machine, to which has been added a demand for a defibrillator, which is supposed to get a stopped heart beating again. War preparations along the border to Ecuador. We…
Río Camisea, 3 February 1981
Last night a Campa woman died very suddenly. The whole camp is quiet, nothing moving. She had diarrhea, developed colic, vomited, and died. In the afternoon a boat carrying many Campas sailed past our ship. They had the dead woman on board, and we buried her on a bank in the jungle. Alberto offered a prayer in her language.
Now that the water level in the river has fallen dramatically, the ship can make it around only one more bend. We started work late, because we are shooting at night now, and drove down to Camisea to take Lucki and Alan Dunn to the plane that had landed there. After some difficulty we had just managed to distribute our weight evenly in the overloaded speedboat, and had reached the speed that holds it up and allows it to glide, when I saw that about a hundred of the Indians were standing on the bank by their camp, gesticulating wildly and pointing at the water. We did not see anything, and Alberto, who was sitting in the bow, had not seen anything, either. But I shouted to the boatman, who was glad the boat was gliding at last, that he should turn around immediately to see what was wrong. From the confused shouting we gathered that a child was drowning, and I pulled off my shoes and dived in. Others followed, and then we searched with a second boat, going far downstream, but we found nothing. It turned out that two young men, both married already, had defied the order not to use the dugouts, and had somehow pulled a canoe out of the large stack chained together and fenced off. They had paddled out onto the river and capsized. Neither of them could swim, and only one of the two had made it back to the bank, while the other sank, and our wake had apparently stirred up the water and made it murkier at this very spot, so that the drowned man disappeared completely. We searched until it got dark. In the space of twelve hours we have had two deaths. In defiance of all reason I kept diving in the dark, so the others would not see how depressed I am. The river is as amorally beautiful as ever.
The drowned man, whom we did not find, was recently married. People told me that at noon he had left all his food for his wife, saying he did not need it anymore, and then told her good-bye.
Río Camisea, 4 February 1981
The search for the dead man continued, without success, without hope. In addition, problems with the ship. The water level had gone down so much that we got hung up in the only river bend in which we could still move. With the help of ropes and speedboats we managed to tug the bow, which was still free, into the current, so that the ship, whose stern was aground, actually floated free.
The council of elders chose a new husband for the drowned man’s widow. The jungle does not allow widowhood. The wedding took place in the office of the Ashininkas’ camp, with our radio crackling and squawking in the background. The bride, about fifteen years old, seemed outwardly completely indifferent, but in her right hand she was clutching the large plastic comb she had taken out of her hair, and she kept playing a single note on its teeth, repeating it mechanically and thereby revealing her inner turmoil. Her new husband knows how old he is—eighteen. He wore a light-colored shirt.
As Henning was working to fasten the carved Amazonian female figurehead more firmly to the ship, he was asked by a Campa whether she was dead; it was the same Campa who keeps insisting that instead of pay he wants a Suzuki motorcycle from us. No, Henning replied, she was made of wood. So was the snake made of wood as well? Yes, he answered. So how was it possible that the snake had crawled up and looped itself around her?
Río Camisea, 5 February 1981
Klausmann is still more disabled than he cares to admit; he is getting around in the jungle on crutches, but with some difficulty. In the bathing lagoon near Iquitos, where children are always splashing and swimming, a piranha bit off half of his second toe. At the time there was much laughing and joking at his expense, but to Robards this is proof of how malicious and life-threatening the jungle is. I fished several piranhas out of the Camisea and right afterward made a show of swimming in the river, because piranhas are a threat only in stagnant water, never in flowing water. But Robards saw me pulling the fishhook out of the mouth of one of the creatures, and because it was still snapping its sharp teeth, I stuck a pencil into its mouth to block it, from which it promptly bit off several chunks.
Last night Lucki sounded the alarm from Iquitos: things could not go on. The second ship had been stopped, Laplace was not coming, ultimatums and threats from Walter, but it looks as though we will be able to meet each other halfway. Upon returning from the Indians’ camp the actors fell upon me like vultures on a carcass. There was not enough mineral water on hand for them to wash with; where could water be found here? I pointed wordlessly to the river, where some of our people were swimming just then and washing themselves. Before the contracts were drawn up, I had described the camps in detail, which in any case are much better equipped than originally planned. Everyone has a washbasin, a porcelain toilet, and a shower, which, however, is supplied with river water when the little brook that flows into the Camisea dries up. None of the meals here has fewer than three courses, and fresh fruit, lettuce, and juices are always available. Several cases of illness in the large camp, which make me uneasy. But among the hundreds of Indians are quite a few who came to us suffering from anemia, because they depend too much on yucca as their main source of nutrition, and it is not easy for the cooks to give them foods they are not accustomed to. We let them decide for themselves what they want to eat.
A little farther upstream I shone a powerful flashlight on the opposite bank and made out alligators, their eyes glowing as if someone were smoking a cigarette over there. But they have been almost completely wiped out here, and are small. Recently Machiguengas shot one of them at night with a shotgun, and I saw them smoking it over a small, guttering fire; it was only half a meter long and tasted good, if a bit swampy.
Río Camisea, 6 February 1981
Later I took a boat to Sepahua to meet Walter. Prompted by César, Vignati,
and me, the workers and Campas had put together a petition asking for W.’s return, to make it easier for him to save face. The question is whether he has the gumption to step back from a line he has drawn in the sand, as I have done. The fact is that he alone is to blame for many of the lacks and omissions, except for the absence of a helicopter for emergencies; the war on the border alone is responsible for the military’s failing to live up to the agreement.
Yesterday, when the ship’s crew, armed to the teeth, flees in one scene in a dinghy, the Campas stood on the bank and laughed and cheered. The extras joined them for a commemorative photo, and some of the Campas yelled, “Emiliano Zapata!” César, who always wants to see things as serious problems, spread the word that upon seeing the men armed with guns, the Campas in their camp had equipped themselves with bows and arrows. The day before we had explained our camera to them; there was lots of laughter, and everyone had a chance to look through the viewfinder. The ocular was so smeared with their red face paint that Mauch later had a red ring around his eye, which made him look very odd. Yesterday the water level in the river rose tremendously, up to a banana plant that serves me as a landmark and from which it is only three more meters to the platform of our can-teen building. Thought a lot of my son, with a heavy heart. Otherwise numb, tired, lacking a sense of meaning, very much alone.
In the shed—with our wretched attempt at raising chickens—sickly, half-naked creatures vegetate; with some sympathy, they can be described as hens, barely hanging on. A captured tapir is tied up there, as big as a full-grown hog. It is still young and is said to cry at night, thereby luring the tapir mother closer, whom the Indians have already sighted once on the edge of their camp but could not kill. Today the tapir was missing. It had quiet, sad, desperate eyes. Most likely they slaughtered it.
Sepahua—Camisea, 6 February 1981
My dates have been wrong, but apparently I am on track again. Yesterday, as we were sailing to the Río Sepahua, the radiator failed, not far from the Río Picha. A canoe with a peke-peke motor towed us as far as the mission. Henning, Uli, César, and Vignati were along. While the repair was being done, I fell asleep in the boat, and the sun shone on me and actually burned my face. Mendoza and his son happened to come by, returning from looking for gold on the upper Picha, and young Mendoza gave us a ride. We arrived toward evening, and at that very moment the plane with Walter, Lucki, Sluizer, and Cucho was circling before landing. A rapprochement reached with Walter after a long discussion that we conducted on a tree trunk. Nine of the extras arrived an hour later in another boat. I slept in a hut that we call the Sepahua Hilton, next to a deep hole dug in the ground, between rusting gasoline drums and plastic crates with empty beer bottles, but I actually had a kind of bed, from which I first shook the dried rat droppings. The rats darted like squirrels up the mats serving as walls. In the morning I woke up early and found myself staring a guinea pig in the face; it was looking at me dumbfounded. In the evening I had got through to Mauch on the radio and given instructions for the next stage of the job.
Big reception for Walter in Camisea. Women and children were there, drums, the men with bows and arrows. It did Walter good, and I drove around the last bend to our camp, a bit farther up the river, feeling the future was somewhat less uncertain.
Camisea, 7 February 1981
I saw a Campa woman sitting on a tree trunk. She was staring intently over her shoulder at something I could not make out. Her child of about three was standing in front of her. It worked her breast out of her cushma, grasped it with both hands, and nursed, without the mother’s paying the slightest attention.
Last night the various groups of Campas and Machiguengas played the drums and danced; we drank masato with them. A boatman had taken a plate of food with him as he sailed from one camp to the other because he had not even had breakfast, and he was so preoccupied with the food that by mistake he steered into a wall of overhanging jungle. Robards is disintegrating more and more. Adorf is revealing himself increasingly as a whiner, a stupid star full of posturing who cannot stand it that the Indian extras are sometimes more important than he is, the famous actor. Furthermore, he is simply cowardly, sneaky, and dumb, high-decibel dumb, as Mauch says. Yesterday Jerry Hall wafted into Camisea on a plane.
At night I had first the feeling and then the certainty that I was caught in a twilit prehistory, without speech or time.
Afternoon: the camp seems dead. We decided to enlarge the treetop platform first and make it more stable because Robards, using Adorf as his spokesman, is calling for stuntmen. Walter, who was there with workmen, also reported that the pathway up the slope was nearly impassable. He was unable to clamber over a huge tree trunk knocked down in the storm a few weeks ago and extremely difficult to go around. Before he had even seen it, Adorf, almost dying of cowardice, pronounced the scene on the lookout platform dangerous, unsafe, and superfluous without even having seen it, and he is talking about doing the whole thing one meter above ground level, now using Robards as his spokesman. But in the film the geography has to be visible: two rivers that almost touch, with only a mountain ridge between them, over which the ship has to be hauled. Without that understanding the point of the story is lost.
The rain pours and subsides, and Mick is taking photos for Vogue of Jerry Hall in leopard-patterned bathing suits, with a backdrop of rain forest and wild Indians; it is disturbing to me to see our background used for commercial purposes. Mick told me he would earn $1,000 for the photos, and laughed himself sick. I washed my socks in the river because too many of them disappear when I put them in the laundry. The river’s sluggish whirlpools pass by, following the bidding of a distant fate. In the forest behind me the birds are cursing each other. Nothing ever gets properly dry here, shoes or clothing. Anything made of leather gets mildewed, and electric clocks stop. In two weeks we have not managed to get the steer to the ship; he is impossible to control, and no one was in a position to get him onto a freight boat. The leaves in the forest gleam and drip, and from time to time very large fish break with a smacking sound through the sluggish surface of the river and leave widening rings behind, as mighty as if a prehistoric dinosaur had dived in, smacking its lips after a good meal. When the rain lets up and there is just a gentle dripping from the trees, something resembling peace descends on one’s soul for a few moments. A bug came toward me, of terrifying size. Far off in the forest chain saws are working at some job I don’t know about.
Then an unbelievably powerful and steady rain came down over the jungle; language itself resists calling it rain. Foamy white brooks formed in the sand along the riverbank below my cabin and streamed into the brown river, which pulls everything to it and carries everything away: tree trunks, broken-off limbs, the drowned man, earth, pebbles. The pebbles clunk and roll and bang against each other, as if the entire base of the earth were washing away. In the meantime an immeasurable misty vapor spread among the treetops, which stood there rigid and patient, from time immemorial. All the birds are silent; the rain is having the last say. On a branch floating downstream, many ants; the rain forest has such an extraordinary surfeit of life. On the swaying liana suspension bridge wet leaves are lying, stuck on after being ripped from the trees by the rain. Little reservoirs form on the slope side of the path, next to rounds cut from trees and placed next to each other, and overflow between them. These round stepping-stones are partially submerged, the rest poking out as if they were drowning.
During the dance of the Indians, who resemble drunken birds displaying their tail feathers, the men and women do not touch. I drank masato till it tasted good. Little girls open the tough peels of green bananas with their teeth, just the way animals do. I have also seen animals lying and sleeping as they do. This morning, when we assembled all the Indians on the path in the rain and mud and saw that we could not shoot the scene without lights, and it was clear that it would take over an hour to get the ship with the generator in position and to lay a cable up the slope, I asked them all to go back to th
eir camp, but they wanted to stay and wait. When I came back almost two hours later, most of them were lying on large leaves on the soaking, rotting forest floor, sleeping, wrapped only in their cushmas.
Nature has come to her senses again; only the forest is still menacing, motionless. The river rolls along without a sound, a monster. Night falls very fast, with the last birds scolding the evening, as always at this hour. Rough cawing, malevolent sounds, punctuated by the even chirping of the first cicadas. From all this working in the rain my fingers are wrinkly, like those of the laundresses. I must have a hundred bites on my back from some insect I never did see; all of me is rotting with moisture. I would be grateful if it were only dreams tormenting me. Across the table came a strange primeval insect, with a thin, lancelike, excessively long proboscis and feelers on both sides. I could not make out any eyes. It was dragging a dead insect of the same species, and disappeared through the cracks in the bark floor. Then caterpillars crawled toward me from all directions, brainless but unstoppable. I thought intensely of the great moment when I showed my son, five at the time, the mountains of the moon through a telescope.
Camisea, 8 February 1981
Robards demanded that he not be required to drink masato, because he knew it was made from yucca fermented with saliva; no further discussion was possible. He was sure he would catch tuberculosis from it. He hates the jungle because he finds it unhygienic, and dirty as well. Yesterday he ate steak, flown in from the U.S. packed in Styrofoam and deep-frozen. Outside the river is rising more and more; its color has changed to a fresh brown, and it is flowing appreciably faster. Large uprooted tree trunks and pieces of wood are carried along. It is raining without pause, and I like the sound, the taste, the feel of the rain. The floating platform, consisting of a balsa raft with a pona bark covering, that serves as a mooring place for our boat tore loose. Someone saw it happen, and one of our boats took up the chase. Janoud, Silvia, and Alan Dunn arrived. They set out yesterday from Sepahua, but soon saw that with all the driftwood they could not make it. They spent the night in Nueva Luz and started out very early today. Their expressions did not bode well. Everything still vague, to be worked out—maybe—only with wrenching effort.
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo Page 12