It was through him that I discovered the first reference anywhere to Lope de Aguirre for my film Aguirre, the Wrath of God. I visited him once, and he hardly greeted me, then dashed back to the phone. He was lovesick. I saw that he had no time for me, so I went along the endless rows of his books. Almost at random, I took one down because it seemed to stick out. It was a book for twelve-year-olds, say, about discoverers. Vasco da Gama appeared in it, and Columbus, but there was a single brief paragraph about ten lines long that aroused my curiosity. It was a passage about one of the
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