At night working on a scene that takes place on board. When I finally headed to my hut in the wee hours of the night and was crossing the bridge woven out of lianas, I was taken aback when next to me something dark-colored that I had not seen suddenly made a noise. It turned out to be two black hens that had been sleeping on the railing. I shone my light directly into their eyes at close range until I felt sorry for them.
Camisea, 18 April 1981
There was much talk of Pucallpa today, for no particular reason, and I found myself wondering why that town existed at all. Why is it not gone? I listened to the entire St. Matthew’s Passion. For Burro in Albersdorf it is evening already. All the mothers are dying now. There is a trembling in the air. The valleys are swaying. Stillness above the mountains. In the jungle the leaves of the soul are stirring, leaf by leaf. Today many things are dropping from the trees. Wind springs up and carries away the last remaining prosaic things. The trees turn their leaves up, confessing. Heavy logs come drifting through the Pongo rapids’ pipe organ.
Kinski was complaining and wanted to move out of his hut immediately because a trail of ants has formed nearby. He never knows his lines, either. I took him with me to inspect the ant trail and make it clear to him that he is in no danger. We followed the trail through the entire camp; it had no recognizable beginning, and the end was lost somewhere in the void of the jungle, where the trail branched off and came back together in a broad, bustling stream. In some confused spots knots of ants were battling each other furiously. Many of them had white larvae clinging to their underbellies that seemed larger than the adult ants themselves, although the larvae, already fully developed, with all their limbs, were folded up and looked like unborn mummies. This species of ant is about the size of our forest ants, perhaps a bit larger, with firm, knobby heads and very prominent biting apparatus. Under a piece of floor matting that had blown away from a cabin, a two-dimensional colony of larvae had formed, and when I picked up the mat, the ground beneath turned into a battlefield.
A man who had become a billionaire in Zurich by playing cards (!) purchased a beautifully curved Art Nouveau bridge made of copper, with a patina and age spots that made it seem even more valuable and significant. The billionaire had hidden his money in two secret bank accounts, whose numbers he wrote in pencil on the wall next to his telephone. But over the years so many telephone numbers and other scribbling were added that he could not make out his secret accounts. Half impoverished, he had to sell his bridge back to the city of Zurich, and with part of the money remaining in the other account he bought himself a sailing yacht, planning to set out into the wide world, to drown his disappointment. But the first time he took it out, the yacht capsized, in perfectly calm weather. All this happened very close to shore, yet no one noticed the accident. After swimming to shore, the man made several attempts to be washed up like a corpse on the sand and gravel, because he wanted his misfortune to appear dramatic. By mistake he actually drowned. As a result, his story ended up in the newspaper. My friend’s name was Djibril Diop Mambeti; you could let his name melt on your tongue. He came from Senegal, and upon hearing this bad news, he wanted to leave Zurich and return to Africa. A burning sensation coursed through my body, telling me I should go with him, and would do better to pick over rice in my hand than to continue my work.
Camisea, 19 April 1981—Easter Sunday
Walter returned yesterday. He had flown to Oventeni and from there to Satipo, where five Campas were hospitalized. The entire accident turns out to have been far more serious than we assumed at first. It is almost certain that Nico, one of the chieftains, is paralyzed from the waist down; he broke two vertebrae. A hundred and fifty more Campas were ready to be picked up, and now not one of them is willing to fly, which is understandable. They wanted to kill Nico’s brother on the spot. The mood is as tense as can be. One Campa, who escaped from the wreckage of the plane, wrapped his broken arm, which was dangling limp by his side, in his cushma and fled into the jungle. “Stop!” the others called out to him. Despite his serious injury, the man shouted back that there was nothing wrong with him, and hurled himself into a tangle of lianas, from which they had to drag him by his hair; otherwise he would have died there. Nico was pinned under the wreckage for a long time. The pilot also sustained a spinal injury, and his face was badly banged up. It is too early to tell whether he too will be paralyzed. On the doctor’s advice, Walter flew Nico to Lima and also had the pilot transported there. This was the account we received of the accident: during takeoff, a sturdy branch flew up and got stuck in the tail unit, immobilizing it. That apparently caused the plane to climb too steeply, and it would have looped completely over, plunging straight back toward the ground. The pilot kept his wits about him and shut off the engine, switching it on again quickly as the plane came down, so as to reduce the angle of impact. I recall my mother’s telling me about seeing a similar accident that occurred during an air show put on by an elite unit. With a large crowd watching, the entire formation went into a backward loop at low altitude, but the unit commander had miscalculated the curve radius, and the entire squadron hurtled in perfect geometrical order straight down into a harvested field.
Has bad luck taken up residence with us? I feel a kind of aimless gratitude for every nondescript day that passes without some disaster. The sound of woodcutting echoes from far off through the jungle. The river, now quiet, is withdrawing more and more into itself.
A long conversation with Kinski about Paganini; he has brought along cassettes with Paganini violin pieces, which he wanted us to play on my porch at top volume. Over the course of forty years Paganini’s son spent most of his inheritance trying to get his father buried. The violinist was not welcome anywhere. Every burial was temporary, and the dead man was sent from cemetery to cemetery. Kinski gave me his screenplay to read, all six hundred pages of it; he wants me to direct the film. One glance at the script makes it clear that Kinski’s project is beyond repair. There is half a page of fucking, then half a page of fiddling—and so on, for six hundred pages. The whole thing adds up to one enormous Kinski ego trip. He will have to do this one himself.
On their underside the pieces of bark were inscribed with hieroglyphics, faithful copies of the text left behind by ants and caterpillars. Then the trees suddenly disappeared, vanished. With them vanished the insects, leaving only those trapped in amber, evidence of more plentiful times. And this, too: leaves from trees that toppled thousands of years ago are still floating around, tumbling through the void. On this land stripped of trees, only four monks are left. They hitch up their robes on an almost completely harvested turnip field and mount the unsuspecting peasant women from behind. I think this image comes from Kinski, who apparently thinks of himself and me in the plural.
I always associate Easter with my childhood in Sachrang. One time in the fall, when the stags were rutting, a bicyclist was attacked on a lonely road by a fourteen-pointer. He ran to an under-pass, where empty food cans were lying around. The rattling of the cans finally scared the stag off. I also remember that on the Sturm farm a dead calf was left in the snow by the edge of the forest, where crows hacked out its eyes and seven foxes tore into it. As I approached, the foxes took off first, then the crows. The calf’s face was almost completely gone. Then, when I was almost upon the cadaver, a startled fox came shooting out of the calf’s abdominal cavity, lowered its haunches for a moment as if expecting to be struck, and then followed the other foxes in a long, loping stride. I ran off in the opposite direction.
Last year an Aguaruna Indian began trailing me around and finally cornered me, determined to sing me a song. It was in Spanish, about what a beautiful day Saturday was; he belonged to the Seventh-Day Adventists, for whom Saturday is apparently sacred, and was trying to convert me. The whole time he kept smiling, to make it clear to me how happy he was.
My middle finger, which I sliced open when I slipped in the Pongo, is badly swollen, oozing pus. Shooting in late afternoon in the fading light, the
scene in which the Campas first board the ship: Kinski’s tantrum over the still photos from yesterday’s scene, when the light ran out on us. Kinski had insisted on doing them, but flew into an incomprehensible rage because he was convinced that for one of the dozens of shots the picture had been snapped at the wrong moment. After dark, we shot the rest of Scene 106 with Huerequeque and the two Indian boys, McNamara and El Comandante. All three of them handled themselves very well. Tricky Dick Nixon pulled out a clump of McNamara’s hair.
Camisea, 20 April 1981
Shooting early in the morning, with hundreds of Indians. Things always look better unrehearsed. The moment I start repeating sequences, they take on a mechanical quality; the life goes out of them. Worried about my hand: the cut on my middle finger is so inflamed that it is bright red and swollen, and the infection is spreading in a red, painful line up to my wrist and beyond.
The first plane to the Pongo had already taken off with Walter, Mauch, Klausmann, and Juarez shortly before I got to Camisea, because I had stopped to grab some food and raingear from the camp; now I am waiting with Vignati at the hut, where four empty gasoline drums were left lying around in the grass. Tossed over tree stumps are two discarded airplane seats, upholstered in artificial red velvet. Flies are buzzing. From the schoolhouse we hear voices. A rooster is pecking away next to me on the raised bark platform. Down below a large sow is wallowing in the earth; otherwise everything is at a complete standstill. From very far off the sound of an ax striking a resonant tree trunk. I talked with Vignati about the Sahara. Two Germans in a 2CV Renault had gone off the road close to the border between Algeria and Niger, near Assamaka, and the car broke down with a cracked chassis. The two of them had a pretty good supply of water and provisions, and because the rainy season apparently set in, they also found water now and then. They did the recommended thing and stayed near the car, but because it was a border region, neither of the two countries made any serious effort to find them, each thinking the other was responsible. When planes flew over, they set fire to their tires to call attention to themselves, and eventually burned the whole car. After about sixty days, one of them died. After eighty-three days, when any search had long since been abandoned, the survivor was found, quite by chance. A vehicle carrying tourists, also off course, came by. They saw the burned-out wreck and took pictures. As they were driving away, one of the tourists happened to notice that two feet were sticking out from under the wreck. They stopped again and found the surviving German, who had dug himself into the sand. He still had a bit of life in him. He gradually recovered, but months later, if you asked him anything, he would stare right through you, and minutes would pass before he responded.
On the way to the airfield I took a look at the cleared swath in the jungle. Mud and groundwater are causing problems. The Caterpillar’s entire rear end sank into the mud, and is now stuck. Laplace thinks it will take more than a day to shovel it out. El Tigre and several other men dug a ditch to divert the water, but that will not help much because the subsoil is saturated.
An old Machiguenga woman, who was using a forehead strap to support two heavy pieces of wood, tied together, on her back ran straight toward the plane as it was landing, followed by a galloping pig. Vignati pulled her aside. Delicate white chicken feathers are stuck to a stump, the execution block for chickens. The feathers flutter in the draft from the propeller while the plane is being refueled with the help of a plastic bucket.
We were received with questioning, annoyed looks by those who had arrived before us on the Huallaga. Where had we left the cameras, the tripod, and the lenses? they wanted to know. Which camera? we responded. It turned out that W. had not even unloaded the most important camera and accessories from the other speedboat in Camisea, and had instead instructed the boatman to give us the equipment, which he had not done, of course. He, the boatman, had even added a few cases of beer to our cargo, and while we were waiting for the plane had passed us several times, but had not mentioned anything. So I flew with the pilot, whose parents are from Yugoslavia, back to Camisea. As we took off from the Pongo, mud spurted in all directions. I actually welcomed this chance to have a doctor give me an injection, because my infection had rapidly moved up my arm in a red line and was looking like the early stages of blood poisoning. By now it was raining so hard in Camisea that we landed with almost zero visibility. The little plane is completely spattered with mud. Five travelers with luggage, like Peruvian domestic tourists, sat with me under the roof of the first hut, but do not know how they will get out of here. I have never seen them before; possibly they are some of our workers. I do not think we will be able to shoot today in the Pongo, because the Huallaga had been hauled by means of winches only half the requisite distance against the current. Besides, it was raining so hard that in any case we would not be able to take off in the next few hours.
Dr. Parraga came, filled a hypodermic with penicillin, and asked me, almost as an afterthought, whether I was allergic to it. I told him I did not know, since to my knowledge I had never been given penicillin. He was surprised to hear that in my entire life I had probably taken aspirin fewer than ten times. Just to be safe, he gave me a mini-mal test dose in the arm. In almost no time my arm showed a violent reaction, with round, raised, whitish welts, in addition to which my right ear felt on fire and swelled up, turning purple and blue. When welts developed all over my body, Parraga quickly gave me an injection against anaphylactic shock. He was very alarmed, sure he would have killed me if he had given me a full intravenous injection. He very carefully injected a different antibiotic in the rump, and insisted that I stretch out on the bark floor of the cabin. So, lying on my back, I studied the underside of the thatched roof. The smoke from the fireplace has darkened the ribs of the palm fronds, which have a greasy sheen. Stuck into the underside of the roof are duck feathers, presumably intended for arrows, and next to them a toothbrush and toothpaste, a ballpoint pen, a tin spoon and pliers, a wrench, and also a plastic whistle, probably for the soccer games here. A man came and brought a hundredweight of fish, which he slid off his back right next to me. Stored on the roof’s crossbeams are arrows with shafts over two meters long, woven baskets, mats, a pair of patched pants. A small monkey, a fraile, is cavorting around. He has an amulet around his neck. He is not tethered. A duck hisses at the chickens. The rain is gradually slowing to a trickle. A dog hopped over to me on three legs and looked at me like an apostle gazing at the Lord, who has not given him a mission yet.
Upon arriving in the Pongo, I first collected two cameras already on dry land, because it was fast becoming too dark for filming. A biting chill wind is blowing through the chasm, and the water in the Pongo is fast-moving, gray, and sandy. We drank coffee and hung up our hammocks. The Swiss began to roll dice, for high stakes. The generator stopped, so we sat there in the light of two gruesomely flickering and appallingly smoky lanterns that the captain had quickly fashioned from empty tin cans that had once held peas. He drilled holes in the tops, stuffed in wicks, and filled the cans with diesel oil. The Huallaga keeps banging into the bluff, but it is securely tethered. Each time a groan and a long drawn-out shudder passes through the whole ship, which I feel distinctly in my hammock; when the entire ship’s body moans dully and writhes and quakes, as if suffering from cramps, its agony is communicated in a painful translation to my swaying resting place. During the evening the sky cleared briefly, and through the wisps of clouds I saw two stars above the ravine. An electrical crackling came from the radio. One of the men lit a fire in the galley; he is going to cook some chicken soup because I had told the crew to lodge the very pregnant cook in a temporary hut below the rapids. I had also brought along bread, onions, cheese, garlic, and tuna fish, which came in handy. I was overcome by massive dejection, and I called for more coffee. More! Scram, you ghosts!
Because the wind was blowing so cold, I thought long and hard about how I could get warm, but the only thing I could come up with was Kinski’s coiled-up mountain-climbing rope, which
I wanted to lay over my stomach as a sort of blanket. I gave up that idea, however, and instead hung up my hammock in another spot, where it was better shielded from the wind. Toward midnight there was hot chicken soup. The men in their hammocks swing lethargically until they are jolted hard at almost regular intervals when the ship bangs into the bluff.
Camisea—Pongo de Mainique, 21 April 1981
Bloody Tuesday.
Camisea, 22 April 1981
We spent a cold, unpleasant night on the Huallaga in the Pongo, and got to work first thing in the morning setting up the cameras. From my vantage point, the ship’s pilotless trip through the rapids did not look particularly exciting, but after the ship had crashed four times into the cliffs on either side, I saw Raimund and Vignati on a promontory below me pounding each other on the back. Right near where they were standing the ship had ridden up on the cliff a bit, and I saw rocks splitting and dust rising from the friction. They must have filmed that special moment from close up, but there were too many other dead intervals, so we all had the same feeling, and it soon became apparent that we would have to repeat the whole thing, but with the cameras on board. Five volunteers offered to go on board, and I was of the opinion that it would be good to have Kinski and Paul there, too, provided they were willing to cooperate. I promptly went to get Tomislav, the pilot, and we took off below the Pongo from a cow pasture, while those who stayed behind began to move the Huallaga back up through the rapids.
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo Page 18