Shattered Love

by Richard Chamberlain

  Not long after the revelations of the workshop I was asked to play the challenging role of Shannon in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, directed by my good friend Joseph Hardy. The cast was first-rate: Dorothy McGuire as Hannah, Eleanor Parker as Maxine, and my dearly loved Raymond Massey playing Grandfather in what was to be the final performance of his long and remarkable career.

  At our first read-through I met a talented young fellow named Martin who was part of the production team. During the run in L.A. we became friends. As usually happens in show business our acting company split up at the end of our six-week run and everyone, including Martin, leapt off in various directions to distant jobs.

  Less than a year later, however, the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York reassembled our Iguana production and brought us to Broadway. Martin was promoted to understudy several roles as well as to assistant stage manager, and our friendship picked up where we’d left off. It soon blossomed into romance. In the blissful delirium of our first months together we had no idea of the complex and sometimes arduous destiny we were creating for each other. When the early fires of romance start to ebb, the serious work begins.

  If our life is described as a journey from self-centered ignorance and separation toward the wholeness and wisdom of love, then our primary love relationships are life’s most rigorous classroom. For those lucky couples who survive the transition from the lovely illusions of hormonal ecstasy into the harsh light of warts-and-all everyday living, life together becomes a workroom (sometimes a war room) of thrilling, scary discoveries; disappointed expectations; painful, glorious realizations; dangerous conflicts; joyous revelations; and ultimately the heady freedom of self-discovery.

  Over the years Martin and I have, in between the happy times, fought for control, fought to be right (gladly making the other wrong), pushed each other’s buttons, aggravated each other’s fears, competed for attention, and encountered humongous misunderstandings and misleading expectations. In the course of all this intermittent conflict we’ve learned voluminously from each other—we’ve served each other handsomely, if sometimes unintentionally. Our relationship has developed over time into a profoundly beautiful friendship, a kinship of spirit. In short, we’ve speeded up each other’s evolution toward love.

  With Martin I’ve finally learned that being right is irrelevant and not even fun anymore—only the truth matters. Conditional love (the emotion that depends on getting what we want) is still pleasant, but no-strings love is the real thing. And at Martin’s continual insistence, I’m at last taking responsibility for the practical aspects of my life and dealing with troublesome events without procrastination and avoidance. I’ve begun to trust myself and therefore to trust life, trust of any kind being a marvelous novelty in my experience. Something is happening to me that I never really expected—I’m becoming a grown-up, without losing spontaneity and fun.

  Ain’t love grand?!

  And it keeps getting deeper and better. In the years that followed, Martin and I traveled through Mexico, Central and South America, and Easter Island with a small group led by the same wonderful spiritual teachers, Carolyn Conger and Brugh Joy, with whom Martin had toured China.

  We spent most of our time exploring the ancient Mayan, Aztec, and Inca ruins. On our way to the legendary Inca stronghold of Machu Picchu we flew from Lima to Cusco in a chartered military transport plane, all of us sitting along the sides of the unadorned cabin shell like soldiers in an old war movie. No peanuts and no toilet. Several hours later, we landed with our ears ringing from the noisy, unpressurized flight.

  Our arrival at Cusco was mystical from the start. This was an enchanted, romantic city floating high in the Peruvian Andes. At our lovely hotel we were greeted with steaming cups of coca leaf tea, a brew of the same leaves from which cocaine is extracted. This exotic concoction was supposed to prevent altitude sickness. We drank buckets of it hoping for some sort of illicit high, which sadly never arrived.

  On our second day, we were taken just outside of the city to a vast grassy plain that was dotted with partially submerged ruins. We wandered around entranced by the mysterious beauty of the place.

  All at once, I was gripped with the urge to turn toward the center of this immense shrine of past Inca glory. There, right at the center, stood Martin as still as the carved stones. He was looking at me with a love that seemed to span centuries. He shone with a kind of love that knows no limits or boundaries. If I were to imagine an archangel or even Christ gazing upon me, their love could not be more complete. I knew at that moment that if there is such a thing as reincarnation, then Martin and I have been together in various guises for eons. I’m more grateful for Martin’s love than for anything else in my lifetime.

  Somehow we descended from these heights of spirit and returned to “normal.” A few days later we traveled by train to the most famous of Inca cities, Machu Picchu. Having spent a morning exploring the ruins, we decided to take an afternoon climb up the famed mountain obelisk called Wayna Picchu that overlooks the settlement of Machu Picchu. We took along a Walkman with two sets of earphones, and Mozart’s Requiem, with the idea of viewing a spectacular sunset from one of the holiest shrines of the antediluvian world.

  Wayna Picchu is a gigantic sword of granite soaring up toward the heavens like the finger of God pointing toward home. We climbed and climbed up narrow, almost vertical stairs that the ancients had carved into the steep mossy sides. Finally at the very top, we gasped at the splendor of a view that seemed to encompass the entire Inca world of long ago. We propped ourselves against the topmost stones, popped on our earphones, and lost ourselves in the mountains and the music and the clouds.

  And lost we must have been. As twilight passed and the sky darkened, we suddenly realized that we were going to have to climb down in the dark. We hadn’t thought to bring along flashlights. We each thought silently that we were done for. One slip and we’d be meeting our maker.

  In the sheer blackness of night it was a challenge to find each carved step. The Incas were a rather short race and they must have had tiny feet because the steps were very small. Nearest the top of the mountain, the most precarious part of the climb, each step was parallel to the cliff. It was difficult enough to sidestep up this final section of the mountain in the light of day, but in darkness it was madness. We moved down as slowly and as carefully as we could, barely daring to breathe. Then, gradually, a near miracle happened. A tiny light seemed to be moving around my feet. And then there were three of these odd lights. And then four. More and more of these little lights started flashing around us. We were nonplussed. Suddenly, we were surrounded by what seemed like hundreds and hundreds of them. Fireflies. Glorious heaven-sent fireflies. Their little dancing lights gave just enough illumination to guide our way down. We were giddy with delight and relief. Those sweet little bugs probably frequented Wayna Picchu every night during that time of year, but we felt that somehow the angels had a hand in it. Whoever sent them, we thanked every last one of those sparkling, lifesaving little creatures.

  In the late 1970s, hot on the heels of Iguana, I was asked to do one of director Peter Weir’s first films, called The Last Wave, in Australia, so we headed off from New York City to new adventure. At the time, Weir was a young filmmaker associated with Australia’s new wave of auteurs who were filming authentic Australian stories from a fresh perspective. The Australian film industry until then had mostly recycled American and British fare. The Last Wave is often paired with Weir’s stunning breakthrough film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also explored the uneasy cohabitation of Australia’s Aborigines and the colonialists who pitched their civilization on the remnants of ancient aboriginal lands. Both films are eerie and mysterious, calling into question our literal Western way of looking at the world.

  Martin was to be part of the production team, but Peter needed help writing his next project, Gallipoli, and enlisted Martin to do the necessary and fascinating research.r />
  Peter was quite young at the time and resembled a charming, pink-cheeked English choirboy rather than a great movie director. But I had seen Picnic at Hanging Rock, a study of the profound and frightening mysteries of the ancient Australian landscape, and I knew his bright exterior masked extraordinary hidden depths—much like my character in his film.

  I played David, a Waspy young lawyer who, unbeknownst to himself, had a deep connection to the history and mystical powers of the Aborigines. He became involved, through disturbing dreams and mystical visions, in their apocalyptical predictions of a monstrous tidal wave that would soon engulf and cleanse the corrupt world. These visions terrified David and challenged him to learn to accept and eventually embrace his unique connection to the spiritual, primordial wisdom of these ancient tribes.

  One of the most compelling scenes in the film is when Nanjiwarra, the tribal elder, confronts David. He tries to get the lawyer to recognize and claim his latent spiritual abilities—and to find out how much he knows of tribal secrets. The two men face each other, sitting on the floor in an empty slum building in Sydney: the dark-skinned tribal shaman, with long grizzled beard and piercing, bottomless eyes; the white lawyer anxious, with a smooth face and spectacles. As they stare at each other as if across centuries, the aboriginal seer asks the modern man a crucial question: “Who are you?” David is baffled and at first has no answer.

  “Who are you?” the shaman repeats. And then again, “Who are you?” And again, “Who are you?” hypnotizing David until he answers truly, from some deep recess in himself, that he is not a man but is in fact a “mulkurul” or magical spirit. David’s normal circuits of thinking have been circumvented by Nanjiwarra’s powerful inquiry, and the clueless lawyer suddenly stumbles into awareness. In that moment, David realizes who he really is—not just an ordinary man, but a multidimensional spiritual being.

  The Australian movie boom was just entering its first burst of creativity, and our young crew worked with an excited exuberance not often found in the highly professional, but sometimes slightly jaded, productions of Hollywood.

  Working with the film’s tribal Aborigines was a revelation. Like the early Hawaiians they are tuned into nature in ways modern city folks can’t even begin to understand. Young David Gulpilil, one of our main actors, was unusual in that he was hip to city ways and comfortable in our urban world but also could throw off his clothes and survive with skill in the Outback, chasing down animals with little more than his bare hands.

  Nanjiwarra Amagula, an older actor of great power in the film, was a genuine tribal elder of simple, astonishing integrity. After about half of his scenes were shot, a festering conflict developed between a bunch of “city” Aborigines and Nanjiwarra’s tribal group. The city Aborigines deliberately insulted Nanjiwarra’s wife, an act that to Nanjiwarra was intolerable. He met with the film’s hotshot young producers and said he and his wife would now have to leave the set and return home.

  The producers later told me that even though replacing Nanjiwarra and reshooting his scenes with another actor would bring the film disastrously over budget—perhaps even shutting down the whole production—the power of his personal stature and dignity overwhelmed their objections and they found themselves saying yes, of course you must go. Fortunately some intense diplomacy on the part of Peter and the producers eventually resolved the conflict, and Nanjiwarra was able to stay and finish the picture.

  As shooting on The Last Wave neared completion, one day at lunch break Martin and I chatted with Peter about where we should travel on our way home. Peter suggested some of his favorite places on the island of Bali, that fabled and as yet unspoiled Indonesian enchantress. We thought, okay, and why not Jakarta and India and Nepal, and while we’re at it Europe and Scandinavia? So after the picture was in the can we sent nearly all our luggage back home, packed one carry-on each and took off on a trip around the world.

  Bali was magnificent, with ancient stone temples, gray and blackened with age. These sprawling edifices, gorgeously silent and melancholy when empty, were brought to vibrant life by various religious ceremonies replete with colorful costumes, lavish offerings of tropical fruit in bright golden containers, incense, and the gay rhythmic clatter of gamelan music. The Balinese honor the powers of both creation and destruction. They often drape statues of deities with cloth checkered in black and white, representing the interdependence of the light and the dark forces.

  One afternoon, as Martin and I walked through endless hillside terraces of lush green rice paddies, a group of chattering children carrying long, flexible bamboo poles wandered by. These adorable kids would flip the sticky tops of their poles to catch dragonflies as they sailed through the air, feats of amazing marksmanship. They hung the captured dragons on belt-strings like fishermen collecting fish. When they’d caught enough they took them home, fried them up, and ate the crispy little critters for dinner.

  In India we saw the Taj Mahal by the bluish light of the full moon, as well as the less known “Baby Taj Mahal,” which was a miniature marble dwelling just as splendid as its more famous parent. As sometimes happens when traveling in India, we were conned by a fancy shop where we bought a lot of beautifully inlaid marble tabletops, dishes, and boxes that were never shipped. Even mighty American Express couldn’t pry our merchandise loose from the grasping hands of those nefarious shopkeepers. We spent several languid days on a houseboat in luscious Kashmir, languid, that is, until we both got sick and then discovered that our rather sinister-looking houseboy was using polluted lake water to fill our water bottle and cook our food.

  Nepal was a dream. Kathmandu, not yet overrun by tourists, was beyond exotic, with marvelous palaces and temples and strange, yak-flavored cuisine. Buddhism and Hinduism live here in easy harmony, a lesson for us all. On our first afternoon in the city a curious-looking young man befriended us as we left our hotel and offered to be our guide. He seemed intelligent and quite ingenuous, so we let him take us to his favorite shops and temples. At one point he sold us a chunk of hashish for pennies, but as we couldn’t figure out how to smoke or ingest it, we hid it in our room at the inn, a surprise for more adventurous future guests.

  After outfitting ourselves from various colorful shops, we trekked the Himalayas for a few arduous and mesmerizing weeks. I remember gazing high into the sky at clouds that would suddenly part and reveal—where only the moon and stars should be—the towering mountaintops of Anapurna and Manchepuchuri.

  The barefoot sherpas carrying all of our supplies led us through the dreaded leech forest. We Westerners were covered and protected by long-sleeved shirts and pants tied tight around our hiking boots. We were instructed to smear insect repellent on our hands and faces and all over the tops of our boots in case the dreaded leeches dropped on us from the towering rhododendron trees above us. By the time we emerged, the sherpas all had blood-sucking leeches between their toes. They pulled the fat, slippery creatures off with nonchalance and occasional encouragement from the lighted end of their hand-rolled cigarettes.

  One sizzling afternoon, after climbing steeply up and then precipitously down a mountainside, we found an inviting river where we stopped to swim in its chilly pools. Drying off in the sun we were suddenly surrounded by clouds of yellow and white butterflies that lit on us and drank the water drops on our skin with their long tongues. It was enchanting to be sipped by these fragile beauties.

  Near the end of our trek Martin fell seriously ill with some mysterious malady. On the last day we finally made it to the “end-of-the-trek lodge” where Martin was put to bed with terrible stomach pains and a high fever. A local “medicine man” was called in with only dim results. The next morning as he lay in a virtual coma (later he recalled seeing a circle of vaporous beings surrounding his bed), I went into the breakfast room of our austere mountain “lodge” and found it empty except for two stout middle-aged British women seated several tables away in a corner. They’d heard about my sick friend and asked if I knew the preventive medici
ne for all such ills. Eagerly I asked what it was. The two lifted their tinkling glasses and said with woozy enthusiasm, “GIN! Darling, lots of GIN!”

  With care, we returned to Kathmandu and proceeded to the only hospital in the village, hoping to find a cure for Martin’s illness. What we found was exceedingly grim. The female medical worker ushered us into a large rustic room full of patients on wooden tables who were being treated for various illnesses. The scene looked barbaric. She opened a drawer that had several pieces of syringes rolling around like marbles and proceeded to pick out what looked to be the cleanest of the loose needles and other syringe parts. As she started to assemble the contraption and prepared to take a blood sample she nonchalantly asked Martin to offer up a stool sample in an ordinary clay pot like the ones we use for plants. Not quite out of his delirium he looked at me with horror as another worker led him to a greasy cloth that separated the “clinic” room from the toilet. The toilet consisted of a slippery mud floor with a hole in the ground that was filled to the brim with amber-colored liquid. There were two paper cutouts of feet on the mud where one was to squat to do one’s business. The stench was enough to send any Westerner fleeing. Martin fled. Fortunately, we were able to catch a plane to Delhi that same day and were in the good hands of a Sikh doctor by nightfall. Copious antibiotics and then boiled foods for six months was the prescribed regimen.

  We may not have thought to venture into Africa if it weren’t for our friends Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville who lived part-time in Kenya and were intensely involved in animal preservation there. We had an open invitation to visit them and help with their current project: saving the Rothschild giraffes from extinction. We phoned them from Nepal and they said come on over.