Iquitos, 26 October 1981
Another name for hamster is corn piglet. My bed was floating in blood, as smoothly as a skiff. On the border between Mali and Mauretania, my jeep disappeared with all my equipment, and then my money and passport were also taken from me. A frog appeared under the mosquito net and stared at me. Out on the porch I leaned against one of the posts, overcome with misery, and crushed the termites’ tunnel that ran the length of it. They spilled out like water from a leaky pipe, but were not angry in the slightest. By morning they had repaired the damage to their tunnel. They had to haul material from far away, at least from the ground underneath my cabin. Which of the termites do that? On whose orders? How are such orders given for building and repairs? Or are there specialized construction squads just for that?
A zebu calf became emaciated. In Atalaya an Indian woman in the airport tavern called her daughter, about eight, Disney. Disney, bring the gentleman another beer. The boy playing the violin in the scene outside the prison is called Modus Vivendi. I was told the boy played for funerals, for a funeral parlor called Modus Vivendi, for which his father had worked before him. The city here is more than ever a city of children.
At Huerequeque’s bar there was another shoot-out between drug dealers, who pursued each other on motorcycles. No police came, they do not come out to the Nanay unless people get killed. Huerequeque gave me a vivid account, leaping off an imaginary motorcycle, landing on one knee on the ground, pulling out an imaginary revolver and firing shots after the fleeing miscreants, his face distorted with rage and determination. He knows the assassin well; the man always comes to his bar to eat. Recently, in Leticia, a drug dealer was shot, but only after he had his tongue cut out—a young soccer player who is very well known around here.
Iquitos, 27 October 1981
Suddenly my room was full of light. There was a rustling in the roof. On the ground all around me, the places where stars had struck glowed and blossomed. There was white and black steam and in between tight knots of lightning. The roaches, probably sensing that they would be the only ones left to survive, ate their fill of my pink soap. In the morning I saw their tracks on the soap, as if someone had scratched it with a fine wire brush. To do something nice for me, Julian invented the news that the Huallaga was free, but the boat is high and dry, just as before. The rain is cowardly. At the edge of the jungle, birds were calling like mad dogs. My body is parched like a drought-stricken stretch of land. Fine cracks opened up in the ground. I rode into town on the motorcycle, taking Maria-Luisa and her little girl along. On the way back, the little girl, who was wedged between her mother and me, fell asleep. I could tell the exact moment when her little head drooped to one side and the grip of her little hands around me loosened. When I tossed a cigarette butt, still glowing, into a metal sewer grating, suddenly something like a snake shot up out of the damp, black sewer, seized the butt, dropped it again at once, and disappeared just as fast. It was a very large frog.
A man was carrying his guitar, packed in a plastic bag, over his shoulder like an ax, on the dusty road, in the blazing sun. Dogs were lying motionless in the hot sand, in the spotty shadow of several bare bushes. Since yesterday Gustavo has a little Sanyo tape recorder, like a Walkman, and I asked him where he had gotten it. He got it from customs. The customs officials stole an entire box full of them, stuck the devices into their boots, and offered one of them to Gustavo if he would remove the empty box from the customs area along with the other things he had to pick up.
Camisea, 1 November 1981, All Saints’ Day
Snow had already fallen in Munich, Anja reported. A pump for the pressure tank that provided our running water had broken down, but otherwise the camp had been put back in good shape. There was a pervasive sense of déjà vu: Huerequeque swam past me, going against the current, Kinski came to me with a crazed flickering in his eyes and bellowed because Miguel Ángel had turned up his music too loud. I was tired of playing policeman, and I felt sorry for Miguel Ángel, because he tries to combat the homesickness that assails him immediately by playing his cassettes. The ship has already been moved halfway down the slope toward the Urubamba. The clearing at the very bottom by the water has to be widened and compacted today; we are still missing a smaller muerto and a turnstile, which the Campas will build. David is here, Miguel Camaytieri, McNamara, and El Comandante, and about a hundred Campas. A large crowd is on its way here in boats, on foot, and by plane. In two days the ship could be in the water.
Camisea, 2 November 1981
We towed the ship without any safety mechanism holding it from behind about eighty meters down the slope, calculating that it could handle the descent like a regular launching. We shot the scene from safe positions until the ship got hung up in the trees and the tangle of lianas on one side of the cleared strip. The Urubamba was rising until noon, but then the water level sank rapidly. We concentrated on the new molinette, and while we were filming there, to fill a break during which the cables for the ship had to be adjusted, the Campas ran in a circle so fast that in their haste one of them jammed his hand between the rope and the tree trunk, which would have torn off his hand at the wrist if Vignati had not jumped in immediately and stopped everything. The morning was murderously hot, and since the Campas had brought nothing along to drink, our big pot of lemon-flavored water was empty within minutes. At noon when we went back to the camp for lunch, we were so drained from the work and from thirst that no one spoke.
The people of Shivankoreni had given Dr. Parraga four chickens as a gift. They were in a little crate, where they sat with their feet tied together and poked their bare necks through the bars. I received an enormous bunch of green plantains, weighing about a hundred pounds, as well as a heap of very large yucca roots. I gave them the jerseys with the logo of the Bavarian Munich soccer team that they had been so keen on, along with a team pennant and a new soccer ball. Now they will beat all other teams, they are sure, especially the one from Nueva Luz.
For days there has been a sick duck lying around by the water. At first I thought she might be sitting on eggs, but after she was roasted on two crossed sticks over Zézé’s fire, I learned that the duck had had the habit of climbing into the Indian laundry women’s large plastic tub when it was filled with detergent, because apparently she liked bubble baths. But as a result she had lost the film of oil on her feathers, and whenever she tried to swim in the river, she soaked up water and sank.
The water level rose so much that Julian detached our pressure tank and moved it to higher ground. We caught several oil drums that were floating in the river. Then, in the evening, I saw an empty dugout drift by my cabin, and as we had not sent any canoes farther upstream, I thought it had to belong to the Amehuacas. Since our boats were tied up at the time, it took a while before our people could take off after the mystery vessel. At night, since we left lights on by the dock, so many flying insects came, soft bodies with transparent wings, and in such pointlessly large swarms, that the wings they lost covered the ground there like powder snow. Our large parrot, Aurora, sat on the railing there with a heavy six-volt battery clutched in her talons and tried to eat it.
Word arrived from the Pongo that the Huallaga on its gravel bank now had quite a bit of water under its keel and was already shifting. If the water rose only two more feet, the boat would be free. Even though I always receive such messages with cautious skepticism, a bold image is forcing its way into my thoughts and refuses to be banished, a final, truly surreal act: that in the moment when we had finally hauled the ship over the mountain and into the water of the Urubamba, its identical twin would drift into the picture and collide with it, with the effect that these two monsters, mysteriously doubled, would suddenly sink each other.
Camisea, 3 November 1981
In the morning I took a boat over to the cleared strip. We pulled the ship in smaller and smaller stretches, until it was almost down at the Urubamba. At noon fearfully menacing clouds formed—in the morning there had already been three b
rief downpours—and I had taken refuge under the ship along with several Campas. But the water streamed along the lengthwise curve of the ship’s hull and soaked us. I ate some of the Campas’ coarse yucca flour, which they had with them in a sack. I handed out photos I had brought along for them. One Campa borrowed a walkie-talkie from me that I was trying to keep out of the rain, and spoke into it for a long time, without being in actual contact with anyone. Then he hung two walkie-talkies crosswise around on his chest and had Vignati take his picture.
With our goal so close, I let our heavy equipment be pushed to the limit. As the Caterpillar was tugging the ship’s bow from the side, the wheels inside the pulley system snapped one after another. The pieces, boiling hot, bounced hissing into the slippery mud, yet I told the crew to keep pulling. When everything was quiet, I saw for the first time the shy cluck bird, which utters such strange sounds, sending them echoing through the treetops. Something that struck the bird as unusual must have lured it there. This bird is black and quite large, and when it calls, it rears up toward the sky and with each call shakes its wings in a courting posture. Right after lunch a powerful storm struck, and I had just time to get to my hut with a cup of hot coffee, where I lay down in my hammock to read. I fell asleep, while on both sides of me water was dripping through the roof. I was practically thrown out of my hammock by two tremendous thunderclaps very close by. Then word came that the Urubamba was rising like crazy, and we should get ready at once, because it was possible the ship might start moving on the slippery ground all by itself and would not be stoppable even with steel cables, or the river might rise so high that it could reach the front of the keel, which was only ten meters from the water, and drag the ship into the current. In no time I had all the men on the cleared strip. I found the Urubamba immensely swollen, full of tree trunks and dirt, and the gravel bank on the opposite side had almost completely disappeared. To the left of the cleared strip the Caterpillar had sunk deep into the mud while trying to position another muerto. It took one and a half hours before we could loop a cable around a tree higher up so the bulldozer could winch itself out. Because we had too few people to help move the cables, I pitched in, together with almost the whole technical team; it was killing work. So much time passed while we were trying to get the Caterpillar unstuck that all we had was a quarter of an hour before the light was gone, so everyone supported my decision to give up our plan of shooting today. I am willing to bet that if we just straighten out the ship slightly, it will start sliding down the compacted path on its own. The water, grumpy and dirty, swept past us, its level going down somewhat.
In the light of the crescent moon, the Campas began to sing and drink, and in no time the cleared strip looked like a battlefield sown with beer bottles.
Camisea, 4 November 1981
We had chosen two camera positions: Mauch with a handheld on the chata, whose floor was as slick as soft soap from oil and mud, so much so that he could find a firm base only by sitting on an aluminum suitcase; Klausmann very close to the ship, squeezed into a corner of a little spit of land, from which, however, the only escape route was straight into the water. But his position remained risky, because once the ship really started to move it could conceivably tear down the earth berm and plow him under. We conferred about this for a long time. Raimund, the lighting technician, and several Campas posted themselves above his perch, ready to pull him up and out of the danger zone. For myself I tried to find a somewhat higher lookout, from which I could see both cameras, as well as the position of the bulldozer. I had visual contact with both Walter and Tercero. In case something unforeseen happened, I could warn the cameraman below me in time. In fact the ship did initially veer toward the earthen berm by the camera, and I saw Raimund leap to the other side of the camera to get it out of the way, moving it toward the water, while the Campas held themselves in readiness to rescue Klausmann. But Tercero managed to get the ship swung back in the other direction. Once half the ship was in the water, it keeled over so breathtakingly to the side, against the current, that it seemed inevitable that the boat would capsize and sink. Tossing and turning in a confused, chaotic fever dream, the ship heaved from one side to the other. I lost sight of the Caterpillar, which had bravely jammed itself under the tipping boat, so I ran around the ship, out of range of the camera. As I did so, my bare feet came down on the razor-sharp shards of a broken beer bottle, which the Indians had left lying in the mud after their nocturnal fiesta. I noticed that I was bleeding profusely, and that there were lots of other shards lying around. Rushing on, I was paying more attention to the broken glass than to the ship, which I assumed was a goner. By the time I had reached the other side of the ship, the Caterpillar had already stuck its blade with brute strength under the ship’s hull, with the result that the railing, which was almost scraping the ground, was crushed with a terrible crunching sound, but the ship, by now almost entirely in the water, righted itself.
I did not even feel my bleeding foot. The ship meant nothing to me—it held no more value than some broken old beer bottle in the mud, than any steel cable whipping around itself on the ground. There was no pain, no joy, no excitement, no relief, no happiness, no sound, not even a deep breath. All I grasped was a profound uselessness, or, to be more precise, I had merely penetrated deeper into its mysterious realm. I saw the ship, returned to its element, right itself with a weary sigh. Today, on Wednesday, the 4th of November 1981, shortly after twelve noon, we got the ship from the Río Camisea over a mountain into the Río Urubamba. All that is to be reported is this: I took part.
EPILOGUE
Even then my trials were not at an end. We still had shooting to do in Iquitos, for which we needed at least one of the two boats, but on the way downstream both of them ran aground several times, which kept adding to the delays. At the last moment, when Claudia Cardinale had to fly home for another film, the Huallaga arrived in Iquitos. When I saw the ship pulling into the spot where we were planning to film, a ten-meter-high pier, I was so overjoyed that I dove headfirst into the water. That dive could have cost me my life—what I did not know was that just a meter under the murky brown water’s surface enormous beams were bolted parallel to one another. I grazed one of them with my shoulder.
For several days we had also been having problems with one member of the team. It was becoming more and more noticeable that he was acting frantic, distracted, incoherent, to the point that I suspected him of being on drugs. What I did not know was that he had gone temporarily insane. He arrived emaciated, altered, confused. I finally decided, in order to keep an eye on him, to have him join us at our headquarters on the Nanay. I gave him my hut on stilts and moved for the time being into the house up front. The first night, just before dawn, my hut went up in flames. He had set it on fire, and, wearing only a loincloth, had jumped onto a motorcycle and raced into town, a large machete clamped between his teeth. He had also painted his face black, so as to be invisible like the Indians in the film. In town he seized two young travel-agency employees as hostages, but fortunately released them before the police opened fire. Weeks went by before we had managed to pay enough bribes to get all the charges against him dropped and could send him home, escorted by a doctor and a paramedic. Fortunately this turned out to be a passing episode. To this day, he is someone for whom I feel undying friendship.
Twenty years later I returned to Camisea, on the trail of my collaboration with Kinski. I had taken a boat through the Pongo de Mainique and stopped over in Shivankoreni. There I found two of the Machiguengas who had offered to kill Kinski for me. The village has hardly changed at all. The same huts, the same landing. Only the soccer goals have been dismantled, because many of the young people have left. One hut is new, roofed with corrugated tin. It is the medical station, the pharmacy, remarkably well stocked. The oil company put it up; otherwise the territory of the Machiguengas between the two rivers, to which they now have legal title, remains untouched. Directly on the other side of the Camisea the oil company has a large
installation, hidden away in the hills of the primeval forest. One of the world’s largest deposits of natural gas, if not the largest, was discovered there. The Amehuacas, I was assured, had been contacted long since and had been tamed into good Peruvians. I found not a trace of either of our camps, even after a careful search—not a nail, not a post, not even a hole where a post had been. The strip we had cleared was completely overgrown, as if we had never been there. Only the forest was a lighter green there, if you knew where we had dragged the ship over the mountain. But the vegetation had grown up to its previous height. It was midday and very still. I looked around, because everything was so motionless. I recognized the jungle as something familiar, something I had inside me, and I knew that I loved it: yet against my better judgment. Then words came back to me that had been circling, swirling inside me through all those years: Hear-ken, heifer, hoarfrost. Denizens of the crag, will-o’-the-wisp, hogwash. Uncouth, flotsam, fiend. Only now did it seem as though I could escape from the vortex of words.
Something struck me, a change that actually was no change at all. I had simply not noticed it when I was working here. There had been an odd tension hovering over the huts, a brooding hostility. The native families hardly had any contact with each other, as if a feud reigned among them. But I had always overlooked that somehow, or denied it. Only the children had played together. Now, as I made my way past the huts and asked for directions, it was hardly possible to get one family to acknowledge another. The seething hatred was undeniable, as if something like a climate of vengeance prevailed, from hut to hut, from family to family, from clan to clan.
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo Page 28