Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo Read online

  Lima—Los Angeles, 16 July 1979

  The flight to Mexico lousy, hopelessly overcrowded. Sitting on the plane for an hour on the runway in Lima with our seat belts fastened. No announcements or explanations, and as always in such situations, the stewards here act as though they were not on board. Finally I got off the plane in my socks—it was already past five A.M.—and took a look for myself, because I had heard a racket from the luggage compartment. It turned out that there had been a leak from a toilet, and all the flushes had gushed into the luggage compartment and partially flooded it. A dozen or so airport employees and workmen were discussing whether something should be done, and if so, by whom. I saw one workman sleeping on a piece of luggage in the open luggage hatchway, and another who had slumped over in his vehicle, which consists mainly of a conveyor belt; slumped is putting it mildly. I saw that all this would take a long time, and, knowing the situation, accepted my fate somewhat less passively.

  Los Angeles, 17–18 July 1979

  Los Angeles, San Francisco. The management troika at Fox are going to leave Fox and start their own company. There are T-shirts with the motif from the Nosferatu poster, very nice. Tonight Syberberg is arriving from Munich, and I am masquerading as the chauffeur and I shall go with Tom Luddy to pick him up in Coppola’s biggest limousine.

  Two nights ago I had a kind of seizure such as I have had a few times before, once on the island of Kos, when I thought low-flying aircraft were attacking, and I roused all the others and made them get out of bed, and once in Taormina, when first the room and then the whole earth began to tilt, and I tried to brace myself, already awake but perhaps in a form of somnambulism even so. What happened to me two nights ago was so vivid and physical that I have not had the courage to describe it yet, because I am afraid it could have been something other than sleepwalking.

  Larisa Shepitko is dead. Two weeks ago she was on the way to a shoot and lost her life in an accident. Her minibus with six passengers collided with a truck carrying huge precast concrete units. The concrete piers broke loose and crushed her vehicle, and according to what we were able to find out, all the passengers were killed. When Tom Luddy said he had something to tell me and I should sit down, I suddenly knew, before he opened his mouth, that Larisa was no longer alive, and I had a vision of that night in Mannheim when we drank champagne into the wee hours and knew it was the last time we would see each other. She was so sure of that, and so convinced that she would die soon, that we said good-bye to each other very calmly. She had called me up close to midnight, saying she would be there for only a few more hours before heading home from the festival, and I had to come right away. I grabbed a bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and drove to Mannheim, getting there around four in the morning. I stood up and left Tom’s office, then paged aimlessly through the few books I have with me, Gregorovius’s History of Rome, Chatwin’s In Patagonia, the King James Bible, a Spanish grammar, Quirinius Kuhlmann’s Kühlpsalter, Joseph Roth’s Job, Livy’s Second Punic War, but found no comfort.

  San Francisco, 20 July 1979

  San Francisco. Emptiness.

  San Francisco, 21 July 1979

  In the morning a thunderstorm. The Golden Gate Bridge mythically shrouded in fog. I got a tattoo; Paul Getty was my coconspirator. We talked about Rome, where he and his wife, Gisela, and her twin sister broke into cars with a gang, mine among them. One time they were shot at, and the racket woke me in my hotel room nearby. We talked about his ear, which the kidnappers had cut off. He got a butterfly tattoo, and without having planned this in advance, I sketched a singing death’s skull for myself, using samples on hand. I almost fainted, as I invariably do when I have blood drawn, and that caused a series of episodes, since I am always having blood tests because of the malaria and the bilharzia; at any rate, everything went black before my eyes, and only then, because I was embarrassed, did I say anything, and the tattoo artist knew what to do right away, something I had never heard of: put your head between your knees, hold still for a moment, then have someone press a hand to the back of your neck, while you force your head back. That gets the blood flowing to your head; all you have is spots before your eyes, and then your sight clears. Drink lots of water. Death is wearing a tuxedo and singing into a 1950s microphone.

  Napa, 23 July 1979

  On the porch of Coppola’s house in the Napa Valley. A winery, with a huge oak tree in front of the mansion, a footpath up into the woods, leading to the little artificial pond, cattle, dry heat. Syberberg said: like Russia before the Revolution. Rassam’s little nephew boasted he was a pirate, and without further ado the other children threw him in the swimming pool.

  San Francisco, 24 July 1979

  A report by telex from Walter in Iquitos reporting on the situation on the Cenepa. The group of Aguarunas from far downstream, who want to call attention to themselves, informed Vivanco that our camp would be attacked, and journalists would be brought along. The people in Wawaim want nothing to do with the agitators’ attempts to establish a political foothold there. Nonetheless Vivanco decided it was best to go to the station in Chavez Valdivia. Now the only person left is the agronomist whom the people here wanted to show them better methods for growing their cacao. Our medical outpost is also still active, and much in demand. By now over a thousand patients from all over the region have been treated. But that will not change anything; a firm decision has to come from me. At first it was just a geographical decision: two rivers that almost touch each other but are separated by a steep ridge, but now there is a political dimension, and possibly, lurking in the shadows behind that, a military one. For now I push aside the thought, hard to shake off, that on the very location chosen for our film a war with Ecuador could break out.

  San Francisco, 26 July 1979

  Money troubles. My left eyelid has developed a twitch, and when it is not twitching, it droops quite badly. Self-disciplined work in spite of that. I went to San Quentin. The walls of the gas chamber are painted linden green. I had to sign a release saying I had been informed that in case of a hostage situation there would be no negotiations on freeing me. Inside the prison walls there has been an unusually high number of murders and acts of violence recently, so they are concerned about liability if anything should happen.

  Iquitos, 8 August 1979

  Decided on short notice to fly to Peru. Mexico City, Lima, Iquitos. The situation in Iquitos has become highly dramatic, because there is no money left, yet we have the ships under construction—we will need two identical twins—and we also have to create an entire infrastructure and continue to maintain the camp on the Marañón, even if the future there is looking very uncertain. According to a list of the most urgent priorities, we would really need $300,000 immediately, but I am still completely alone, without any partner to help with the financing. These people working here seem cut off from one another and lack all sense of direction. The most recent arrival is Uli Graf from the University of Bremen, with his girlfriend. Space is getting tight. I have been quartered from the beginning in the little shed in back, next to the kitchen. It used to be the chicken coop, and the ceiling is so low and sags somewhat in the middle, so that my head hits it when I stand up straight. At night the rats romp around above me, and when I am half asleep, it is as though they were running right over my head. Every time I return, it takes me a while to get used to the mosquitoes. We sailed up the Río Momón for about an hour, turned off the motor, and let ourselves drift back down in the almost imperceptible, languid current. Such a sense of peace came over me that I felt I was discovering something that had been missing from my life.

  Iquitos, 15 August 1979

  While riding the motorcycle from town out to our place, I injured my foot. I rode into a piece of steel strapping that was sticking out of the mud on the road to the Nanay, and now the cut refuses to heal, like everything here in the Amazon. I saw a dog, the saddest of all; he was swaying on his feet, moving in a sort of hunched-over, squirming reptilian fashion. On his back a
nd shoulders he had open ulcers, which he kept trying to bite, contorting his head and body.

  These days an image keeps coming to mind, without any real reason: the rural inn in Slovakia, right on the Polish border, where we were filming Nosferatu. The building was occupied on a seasonal basis by Polish lumbermen, put up four together in the fairly small rooms, and in a rather large lounge they played cards, huddled around a little woodstove, smoked, and cooked bacon directly on the stovetop, which was sizzling with fat. They drank vodka, and were drunk from nine in the morning on. The women among them, sturdy creatures in worn padded jackets from Siberia, joined in the drinking. On a couch in their midst, one of the women had sex with one of the men, shortly after they had returned from their day’s work—the others in the room did not let themselves be distracted from what they were doing. During this operation the wood-cutter kept his jacket on and his rucksack on his back.

  On the Río Cenepa the situation seems to be straightened out, at least in principle, because there is a detailed contract with the community and about a hundred men are at work building the temporary camp for us; they were the ones who were specially eager for us to stay. Walter, who takes a very legalistic approach, sees all this in a rosy light. He poured a round of whiskey, but I remain skeptical, because the contract cannot do away with the political dimension, which has nothing to do with us.

  The ocelot has grown, and its beast-of-prey nature is becoming more and more evident, even though it can also be affectionate and playful, like a kitten. Today it pulled a pair of Andreas’s underwear out of the laundry box, defending this booty with furious hissing, tossed it around, and then tore it to shreds. Then, when I wanted to get the rest of the laundry out of harm’s way, it lashed out at me with one paw, leaving me with a cut that ran along the whole back of my hand. Our big parrot, with a yellow stomach, a blue back, and a white face with black lines, saw this happen and became agitated. He can actually blush when he is agitated.

  On the way from the Río Nanay to town the rain has washed out the road by the gas station, leaving a small gorge that you can bypass by going inland. The road’s new course is accepted by everyone; the damage will never be repaired. Near the fermenting San Tomás garbage dump my motorcycle had a flat. Hundreds of vultures poke around in the filth, and some came hopping ponderously toward me, until a man with an overloaded pickup invited me to climb up on top of his crates of oranges. Later Paul came and hauled the motor-bike with his car to his bar. The mechanic who was summoned first fetched his assistant, then both of them got drunk and sat around on the ground singing; actually it was more a chanting without melody, which soon died away because both of them fell asleep. An hour later I woke the assistant, who seemed less drunk, but he just stared at me, as if from a great distance, sang the end of a verse they had not finished, and slumped over again.

  Wawaim, 17 August 1979

  Wawaim. Yesterday flying from Iquitos to Saramiriza. Upon landing on the river near Saramuro, the two young pilots, who take themselves tremendously seriously, almost destroyed the floating platform, and later they flew off course, and because they had forgotten to fuel the plane in Saramuro, the tank was almost empty, and they still had not found the Marañón. They turned to me and gave me an embarrassed grin. I was sitting in the aisle on several sacks of onions and politely pointed out to them that they were flying away from the mountains instead of toward them.

  Huerequeque’s boat was in Saramiriza, but the new gas drums were all gone. Huerequeque said that floodwaters had swept away the drums a few days ago. But we found the gas farther upstream, and Huerequeque had obviously sold it, though he still insisted that the river had taken it. He was impervious to the logic that floodwaters could have carried the drums only downstream. We drank beer together and got along better than ever. We were hungry, but found nothing to eat. No eggs, no yucca, no rice, nothing. Finally we located a rusty can of tuna fish, which I thought seemed question-able as we were eating it. During the night I developed diarrhea, the onset was so sudden that I soiled my pants as I was making my way into the forest. After that I swam naked for a while in the silent river, itself swimming in the silence of a pitch black night.

  From Saramiriza on, I was asleep on the roof of the boat again, and stayed there for most of the trip. The water level in the Pongo was only a few feet above normal; I had never seen it so low, and at the worst spot, which was now completely harmless, we even throttled the motor so we could stop and measure the current. The comandante in Pinglo told me, with a certain zest in his eyes, how much he liked to fuck with people and how much he liked to kill people. Then, without prompting, he brought out one of his beer bottles, filled to the top of the neck with gold dust, and wanted me to weigh it in my hand.

  Impressive progress on our camp. There are 130 people working on it now. On top of the hill a large round structure, the comedor, is almost finished. We call this building the Great Hall of the People. Huts, bridges made of lianas, a kitchen, which had to be staffed by four more men. On the riverbank a large wooden boat is being built by our carpenters, and according to the contract, the Aguarunas will be given the boat in addition to their pay. When it comes to transporting and selling their harvests, the Indians are exploited by other Indians, though recognizing that contradicts the prevailing ideology. The first-aid station is already functioning quite well as a medical outpost, and our doctor is training some of the local Indians as medics. A young lawyer from the Indian Affairs Bureau in Lima had come to have a look, because some newspapers were reporting that we were dealing in weapons, forcing Indians to work as slaves, and other such nonsense.

  In the evening there was a heavy downpour, and everyone rushed to take cover in the sleeping cabin with the best roof. Next to me on the mattresses spread on the floor slept the agronomist from Iquitos who is there establishing a model cacao farm in collaboration with the Aguarunas. He snored loudly and farted even more loudly, but there was not a single other spot available where I could have bedded down.

  The carpenters have suspended from a tree limb a wide-meshed basket containing a captured chuchupe, the most dangerous of all the poisonous snakes in these parts. Because of its coloration it is hard to distinguish from the lianas. It stared boldly at me with its pale yellowish reddish eyes; we took stock of one another for a long time. With a stick I cautiously poked its head from the outside, and it drew it back very slowly but did not strike. It must have seen that the splints of the basket were in the way.

  Wawaim, 18 August 1979

  With the three best macheteros I reconnoitered the passage where the ship is to be towed over the mountain. At a killer pace we went tearing steeply uphill through the densest jungle, and in no time at all I was so drenched in sweat that even the leather of my belt swelled from the moisture. In spite of my neckerchief, fire ants slithered down my neck and got inside my shirt. As we descended to the Río Cenepa, I was staggering, and slid down the muddy slope through brambles. Once arrived at the river, I plopped into the water on my stomach and drank. Then we were caught in a powerful thunderstorm. As darkness fell, back at our camp. The clouds dispersed, and fireflies and stars danced around my head. Frogs croaking from the river, but the frogs sounded like sheep. At night shots rang out in the forest, and one of the Aguarunas brought the animal he had shot, allegedly a night monkey, but it looked more like a marten. That will be my lunch tomorrow. Time is tugging at me like an elephant, and the dogs are tugging at my heart.

  On the beach by Wawaim, 19 August 1979

  This morning the camp is quiet, because only thirty or so of the Aguarunas have stayed here; the rest left yesterday to go back to their families in the villages for the weekend. The river has gone down even more. From the gravel bank an enormous tree trunk is protruding, scoured by the water—it was never visible before. On the opposite bank rise slanting, polished, rocky cliffs. A barkless tree trunk that was washed up by the floodwaters has become jammed in the rocks on an angle. The cooks fry eggs for us, the pan directly on
the fire. All day long and at night, too, large tree trunks that have been simply laid on the sand are glowing. The Aguarunas are roasting an alligator that they have cut in two. It was certainly no longer than three feet. They roast the animal as is—all they did was remove the innards. They leave the skin on and dig out the meat with their fingers. The apu is sitting with his tin plate, rubber boots on his feet, on two overturned containers of Ideal brand condensed milk. Down by the river, the two boats that were in the water yesterday are now high and dry on a gravel bed. Just now the hunter came by proudly, his shotgun over his shoulder. Slowly the fog is lifting in the Pongo de Huracayo.

  This morning I went looking for Walter in his bed in the little cabin next to mine, but all I found was his rumpled blanket. Later it turned out that he had been in the bed after all, but had made himself into such a tiny, inconspicuous ball that I failed to notice that he was there under the blanket. Yesterday he had talked for a long time about Aguirre, and a whole slew of horrible things came back to me that I had either forgotten or intentionally repressed. But there were also nice memories, for instance the time we both swam through a somewhat calmer spot below the raging rapids of the Urubamba, still rushing and swirling even there, as we tried to reach the gondola moored on the other side. With that gondola you could cross the river on a steel cable: the way we looked at each other when suddenly a huge funnel in the water came toward us on a semicircular course with a terrible sucking, slurping sound, then changed direction just before it reached us. The way I spent the night during the first week sleeping on the dirt floor of the hut belonging to the dwarfish, hunchbacked woman with her nine children, and at night whole herds of guinea pigs scrambled over me, which they kept as pets and roasted over the fire to eat. The way Kinski arrived in the jungle with tons of alpine equipment—down sleeping bags, ice picks, ropes, crampons—to take on the wild alpine slopes high in the icy Andes. He did not want to accept the fact that the opening sequence, with hundreds of pigs in the midst of an army of Spanish conquistadors who were staggering from altitude sickness high on a glacier, had been written out long ago, even though I had told him so in letters several times. During our first investigations in the vicinity of the Walla-Walla Pass, where a glacier came to within a few kilometers of the passable road, four of the six people with me developed altitude sickness, and the worst of all was Walter. The way Kinski at first growled that he, a child of nature, would not be caught dead sleeping in a hotel, but the very first night he got so wet in his tent from a tropical downpour that we had to erect a thatched palm-frond roof over it; and by the second night he was already in what was Machu Picchu’s only hotel in those days, where night after night he flew into a rage and chased his Vietnamese wife through the halls, beating her in his fits of raving madness and hurling her against walls, until all the guests woke up and rushed to see what was happening, and only our bribes prevented the hotelkeeper from throwing Kinski out. Walter described how every morning at four he went around discreetly scrubbing off the splatters of blood that the madman’s poor wife had left on the walls. Yet these were minor sacraments. To this day I have not dared to write down anything about those events.