IN THE MAGAZINE

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CONQUEST OF THE USELESS

An Entry from the Production Diary of Fitzcarraldo

(Page 3 of 3)

During rehearsal Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, and actor Miguel Ángel Fuentes look over a contract stating that Fitzcarraldo now owns the ship Molly Aida.

Mauch was operated on by Dr. Parraga, with our extraordinarily skillful cook putting in the sutures. Since all the anesthesia had been used up during the almost eight hours it took to operate on the two people wounded by arrows, Mauch was soon in agony, and even analgesic spray did not do much good. I held his head and pressed it against me, and a silent wall of faces surrounded us.

Mauch said he could not take any more, he was going to faint, and I told him to go ahead. Then he thought he was going to shit in his pants from the pain, but he could not decide between the two options, and in the end did neither. On a hunch I sent for Carmen, one of the two prostitutes we have here because of the woodcutters and the boatmen. She pushed me aside, buried Mauch’s head between her breasts, and comforted him with her lovely soft voice. She rose above her everyday existence, developing her inner Pietà, and Mauch soon fell silent. During the operation, which lasted almost two hours, she said over and over, “Thomas, mi amor,” to him, while the patient yielded to his fate. As I stood watching, I felt a deep affection for both of them.

At night ten Campas came along to our camp to stand guard. Some of them were armed with shotguns, others with bows and arrows. They glided into the darkness of the jungle, and I did not see them again till morning, when they gathered by my cabin, talking quietly. I asked to be given the arrow that had gone into the woman’s hip and also the tip of the arrow that had been shot through the man’s throat. Both patients are doing relatively well; they will both live. I was able to exchange a few words with the man, who was hooked up to an intravenous drip; he could already whisper a bit. He had been incredibly lucky, because the lancelike tip had grazed his carotid artery but not severed it. I was amazed at the thickness of the extra-long arrow shafts and the sturdiness of the large feathers fastened to them.

This morning thirty men set out in the mist, almost all Campa warriors, in peke-pekes, all armed, to sail to the place where the attack had happened, follow the tracks, and, they said, apprehend the criminals to turn them over to the authorities. May Heaven prevent that.

Almost nothing is known about the Amehuacas; they live semi-nomadically along the upper reaches of the Camisea, about ten days’ journey from here, and apparently they had followed the river downstream while the water level was so low, presumably looking for turtle eggs, now in season. All attempts in the past by the military or missionaries to establish contact with them failed, because the Amehuacas never let themselves be seen, and attacked only by night. Nor could they be located from the air, because unlike all the other tribes they do not make clearings, chakras, which are cultivated for a few years before the tribe moves on. Yet quite a bit of their language is known, because about ten years ago a very sick Amehuaca boy came floating down on a balsawood raft and survived in the Atalaya hospital.

I tried to prevent the sortie, but very quickly a common resolve was reached. It was the women, by the way, who picked the warriors. So-and-so cannot go; he does not shoot well enough, they announced, and no one protested. Half the men had shotguns. Ten of them hunkered down in each of the large canoes. The only provisions they took along were bunches of green bananas. Their departure was quiet, almost casual. They disappeared slowly upstream amid the mist, water, and trees, which fused into a gray, unknown world like a vague vision.

I had a violent, absurd quarrel with Kinski about his mineral water, with which he wants to wash himself now. Otherwise peace and quiet. Suddenly Kinski started yelling again, but it had no connection to anything here. He was beside himself, calling Sergio Leone and Corbucci rotten vermin, no-good so-and-sos and cyclopean ass-holes. It took a long time for him to wear himself out. Then his yelling flared up again briefly, as he called Fellini a bungling idiot, a fat bastard. Then in late morning I finally got some sleep.



From the forthcoming book CONQUEST OF THE USELESS: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo. Copyright © 2009 by Werner Herzog. Translated by Krishna Winston. To be published on June 30, 2009 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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