Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

by Werner Herzog

Across from the wretched Pucallpa airport is a bar with a beautiful monkey, black, with limbs that go on forever. He looks very intelligent and would make the ideal companion for Fitz. A drunk spat at the monkey and almost hit him from behind. The monkey inspected and sniffed with great interest at this globule from the depths of an unhealthy lung, as it lay on the ground, greenish yellow and steaming. It looked as though the monkey wanted to eat the spit, or at least taste it. I said silently to him, Leave it, leave it alone, and he let it be. Now he is sitting with his tail wrapped around his buttocks like a rope, his knees under his chin, and his arms around his knees. That is how he sits when he is chained to a tree limb. I realized I was sitting the same way, with my feet propped in the rungs of a second chair and my knees under my chin. Does the monkey dream my dreams in the branches above me? I ordered a beer, and my voice sounded altered, like the voice of a parrot imitating operatic arias. The sun sank in an angry blaze. For a moment, and for the only time I think I can remember, the earth struck me as motherly, covered with a decaying forest that seemed positively humble. A large brown moth was boring into the smooth concrete floor as if it wanted to go down into the earth, and beating its wings so violently that the wooden sound it created blended with the electrical hissing and crackling of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead like a symphony from the depths of a ...