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All I Need Is Love
All I Need Is Love
95
R A N D O /n H O U SE N E W YORK
Copyright © 1988 by Klaus Kinski
Kinski, Klaus.
All I need is love.
comes from his mouth. "There you have it," I've said to
myself, "he can't sing." This opera singer business is a lie.
No one has ever heard my father sing. He is a pharmacist,
not an opera singer. Nobody knows where he came from or
what he did. I think he was an orphan. Maybe that's why
he bows to small children. I don't know anything else,
except that he trusts no one.
We street kids call him Baldy, Beethead, Bull, or simply
Bulb— his bald head shines just like an electric bulb. When
he shaves it, it sounds like someone scraping a beet. He
really shouldn't use his rusty razor anymore. My mother
herself, who is normally quite handy, has hacked out pieces
of skin from his head.
My father seldom goes to the barber across the street, but
when he does the midget applies his sharp razor carefreely
without ever injuring my father. Once my mother spied on
my father at the barber. She pressed her face to the barber
shop window and breathlessly watched as the midget
whirled nimbly about my father's head. When it was all
over, my father placed sixty cents onto a tray, even though
he had to pay only fifty.
My father always plays the dandy in order to hide his
poverty. That isn't easy because his so-called clothes— all
of which he is wearing at any given moment— could shred
and fall off like the decaying flesh of a leper. That must be
the reason why he moves around so cautiously . Never leans
against anything, never bends an elbow or knee, never
stoops, never sits down, always stands. He has to try to
avoid any strain to his clothing. The thin, shiny seat of his
pants and his worn-out knees and elbows are so threadbare
his flesh can be seen through the weave. His shoes, pol
ished to a shine, are so brittle they might crumble at any
moment. He always seems to be on the lookout for some
thing he might bump into. I get the feeling that he floats
ALL I NEED IS LOVE 5
Was if for this that you sacrificed your best youthful years
cramming Greek and Latin till all hours of the night? To
become a shoplifter one day, to steal a chocolate bar at the
age of sixty and run away like that and cry, because you're
ashamed? "Knowledge counts more than money," you
claim? You're kidding yourself! You are nothing but a
handyman! You will never measure up to a pharmacy
owner. How many years, shit, decades, did you have to
work to pay off your own pharmacy without breaking
even? No, no. You'll always be nothing but a handyman. A
highly educated one. You aren't important; otherwise
somebody would give you work.
He cries about his screwed-up life. I want to do some
thing for him, help him, protect him. I tug at his balled fists
pressing against his eyes.
"Stop crying, Daddy. Daddy!"
even be on the street with your injured foot. In fact, it's not
the proper place for my little darling at all."
She, too, is clearly shocked by the nonsense she is saying.
"Where is the proper place for me then, Mommy?"
She is terribly embarrassed, yanks on my hair lovingly,
purrs like a cat, and shifts around wanting to say something
meaningful.
"Is your foot very hot? Do you want me to redo the vin
egar pack?"
"No thanks."
"We'll all get something to eat today, you can count on
that."
She clings to this hope just like the rest of us; it keeps us
going from hour to hour.
"Yes, Mommy."
What I really want to say is: You can count on the fact
that I won't give up. Never. That nothing and no one will
ever force me to my knees. That one day I will repay your
brave love. That I will see to it that you don't have to labor
like a slave anymore. That one day I will make so much
money by my own wits that I'll even be able to buy you a
winter coat, mittens, and warm shoes. And that you will
drink as much real coffee and eat as many rolls with real
honey as you desire.
Yes, that's what I really want to tell her. But I save it,
because one day I know I will surprise her.
"Everything will turn out well," she utters, close to my
face.
I swallow the lump in my throat slowly so as not to burst
into tears. I can't be soft now. I need all my strength for
what I plan to do.
"Yes, Mommy."
Her mouth cracks a weak, careful smile; she doesn't want
to expose her ruined teeth.
ALL I NEED IS LOVE 9
been stepped on, and holds his elbows in front of his head
to protect himself. I myself have a hole in the head.
Arne has such bad asthma that his face turns blue as ink
when he climbs the stairs to our flat. My father steals the
expensive medicine he needs in the pharmacy where he
works. Arne eats spoonfuls of a yellow powder from a large
dish every day. We envy his powder, because it's some
thing to eat. My mother has to hide it so we won't scarf it
down.
My hands and feet are bleeding after the first few steps;
the thorns rip out pieces of skin and bore deep into my flesh
like dull knives. I'm not interested. I must have those
plums! But the more I work my way up toward the plums,
the stronger the grip the chaos of thick, contorted rose
branches has on me, and I can't imagine how I'll extricate
myself from this. I no longer feel the pain of the thorns, but
I can sense how they jab my body from all sides like a
shark's teeth. I try to give as little resistance as possible, to
lessen their hurt.
I've almost made it. Only one more branch up ahead. I
grab it and pull myself up. Only a few inches more . . . I'm
there . . . What I see takes my breath away: I see naked
women! I'm too excited to count them all, but I guess there
are ten to fifteen. They lie around in lounge chairs, sit on
stools, or lie on towels on the ground and sunbathe. Their
bodies are oiled. Some are deeply tanned, some are still
light, some white. One is beet red and sits in the shade.
They loll about voluptuously. Spread out their legs. Caress
their thighs. Lie on their sides, on their backs, on their
stomachs. Stick out their asses, their tits. The whole thing
is overwhelming me: I think I'm dreaming. The women say
very little. I hear very little. Everything is bright, overlit; it's
like staring into the blinding sun. I get an erection in the
tight-fitting pants I outgrew some time ago. One of the
women, directly under me, has broad shoulders like a
swimmer and flat tits with enormous, almost black coronas.
A meaty pelvis. The flourish of her pubic hair in my mind
is like the thorn bushes I'm hanging in. Another one with
completely white skin has a small, gaping ass. I try to spot
her asshole. A young girl with budding breasts and little
pubic hair walks toward the branches I'm hanging in and
disappears below me. I hear a door bolted. Then a rush of
piss.
My upper body breaks through the brambles, and unable
to move, I am suspended upside-down until night falls.
When all sounds have died, I know that all the women have
gone home. I struggle out of this wilderness of roses.
As I hide momentarily behind a shrub, a man approaches
it. He's two steps away. He appears to be stuffing a handful
of currants into his face. I can hear him smacking his lips. I
can hear his stomach growling. He's unzipping his fly, takes
out his sturdy cock . . . and pisses on me! He spits a pit at
my chest and walks away. He doesn't see me. He picks
some roses, snap . . . snap.
are torn from our sleep, three, four, five times to totter down
into the bomb shelter. Now when we hear the alarm we
don't even get up; we just roll over. "Fuck off!" The
bombs come pelting down and crush the houses around
us.
We eat with our hands from old, rusty cans. Every day,
sauerkraut with water and a can full of tea. I had no idea
there was so much sauerkraut in the world.
The things that go on in the prison camp are outrageous.
Besides bartering, theft, usury, whoring, murder, and man
slaughter, grown men recite poems, walk from barrack to
barrack, read aloud from the Bible (the devil knows where
they always get them!), read palms, prophesy, always
wanting to convert each other to one kind of shit or
another, and squabble over the last ladle of sauerkraut.
Tobacco is most important, more so than fucking. The
men are beside themselves digging through the garbage
cans for discarded, tasteless tea leaves overused in too
much brewing. The stuff is dried and rolled into cigarettes
with the old newspaper we use to wipe our asses with.
After a while we are given a hearing. They call it the
//interview.,/ The one who sounds me out is from Berlin. He
babbles about his school days, what high school he went
to, in what street, and so forth. Who gives a shit?
He is obese and sticks cigarettes into his mouth one after
the other without giving me a single one. He has probably
never suffered need and has always had plenty to eat. Even
now, even during the war, he has everything. I wish the
plague on the whole lot of them, with their loudspeakers,
yellow lines, and endless barbed wire.
with this perverse idea is beyond me. I've never even lis
tened to the news.
M O T H E R IS N O L O N G E R A L I V E . S T O P
I K N O W N O T H IN G O F T H E O T H ER S .
The director and his wife sleep in the inn where we've
been giving our disgusting performance for two weeks. We
rehearse Charley's Aunt by day in the barroom. I have at
least two hours before I'm on with my junk and go to piss.
The toilet is on the second floor. Whenever I go to piss I
have to pass the double room where the director crashes
with his young wife. And they're always screwing, in the
morning, after breakfast, during the day, at lunch break,
before and after shows, all night long, always.
It's ten in the morning. The bedroom door is open. I stop
to listen if anyone is around and enter the room. The bed is
messed up. The sheets are completely soiled. Some spots
are fresh, still moist and creamy. I get an erection. When I
turn around, she's standing behind me.
"What are you doing in our room?"
"You have no idea?" I close the door and turn the key.
"What do you want?"
"The same thing as you."
"And what do I want?"
"To fuck."
"You bastard."
Blood rushes to her face. Her raspberry lips turn deep red.
Her eyes are cold and brilliant. She breathes heavily.
Alfred Braun stages Romeo and Juliet with me. With the
salary I rent my own studio for the first time. It's actually a
laundry room on the top floor of a building. But the room
has a huge studio window with a lot of light flooding in. I
whitewash the studio and scrub the floor. I have a cot, a
table, a chair, and my own bathroom where I wash up
under the faucet with cold water. I don't need anything
else. I do what little laundry I have myself. I don't sleep on
my bed at night, but walk through the parks and lay down
when I can't walk anymore and look at the sky. When day
breaks like a long-awaited birth I go back and lay down
with my clothes on. I don't need much sleep— three, four
hours.
it, I ask all around who is selling cocaine. The danger of this
shit is that you don't know when to stop. It can be too late
at any moment, and you won't be able to get away from it
ever again. In the throes of paranoia you can die from an
overdose or commit suicide by gassing yourself or by other
means. Some people end up in mental institutions, where
they perish in agonizing madness. Some even become mur
derers just to get some more cocaine.
I buy one gram at the price of a week's salary and snort
the contents of the packet at one sitting. I realize that since
Otto gave me my first cocaine, I have had no appetite. I
haven't eaten anything in days. I lick the last few grains
from the paper instead.
I order something to eat in a restaurant. When the waiter
wants to give me the bill he looks at me aghast. The soup,
main course, and dessert are in front of me, untouched. I
have simply been sitting, chain-smoking cigarettes, unwit
tingly. In the toilet, I see my face in the mirror: I am certain
to be hopeless if I don't get a hold on myself.
I loathe Measure for Measure. I sniff all over the place like
a dog to find something better. Finally Bertolt Brecht wants
to meet me. I watch a rehearsal of Mother Courage and Her
Children. It's already the third month he's been rehearsing
this one scene. He repeats every word and every actor's
movements a thousand times. I get completely drunk on all
the stupidity. They must all be illiterates!
When he asks me if I want to join his Berliner Ensemble,
I can't think of a clever excuse not to. Brecht is clever
enough to interpret my silence his own way: "I myself
would have to discourage you. I have a fool's license; but
the sense of humor that one must have for you is definitely
not here."
I bust my head trying to think up a way to get out of this
shitty show. I visit Arne on Wartburgerstrasse. I lie in the
bathtub full of cold water with my clothes on and crawl
soaking wet amid the ruins of the bombed house out back,
where I lie in the rubble until evening. I want to get pneu-
A L L I N E E D IS L O V E 69
monia. But I don't even get a runny nose. God really must
have plans for me.
Pissed off that I have to go to the theater, I throw what
few pieces of furniture there are out the window. They
smash on the street.
JE S U IS H E U R E U X Q U E C 'E S T K IN S K I Q U I
IN C A R N E C E P E R S O N N A G E
JE L E C O N G R A T U L E P O U R S O N C O U R A G E
JE F E R A I D E M O N M IE U X P O U R E T R E P R E S E N T
A L A P R E M IE R E
speak. When you don't speak. When you sleep too much.
When you don't sleep. When you go near the barred win
dows. There isn't a thing they don't take down.
"Are you a welder?" the one-legged inmate asks. "You
have such strong biceps."
I cannot say that I am an actor. He would think I want to
mock him.
"Yes, I am a welder," I say, so as not to disappoint him.
His story is so heartrending that I forget my own plight.
He had come home after being in a Russian prison camp.
His wife, whom he loved more than anything in the world,
had learned of his imprisonment through the Red Cross,
but she had also learned that he was missing one leg.
Thereupon she took him for dead. So this one-legged fellow
limped all the way home on his crutches only to find her in
bed fucking another man. Naturally he cut loose on them
with his crutch. Then he fell into a crying rage.
They turned him in for mental derangement and danger
to public safety and delivered him to Wittenau on the
double.
"I only want to live long enough to get out of this joint
and kill both of them," he says at the end of his story.
The meat inspector comes every three days. When he
talks shit to me, I turn my back to keep from grabbing his
throat. The next few weeks he doesn't address me. Then
I'm led to him in the examination room. The reason
becomes obvious when I discover Milena, who is shuffling
around near the barred window and doesn't dare look at
me. I refuse to greet her and remain standing after the slimy
psychiatrist offers me a chair.
He demands that I sign a piece of paper in which I state
that Frau Dr. Milena Boesenberg is not guilty of my impris
onment in the mental institution and that I am obliged to
leave her in peace in the future, which means that I will
neither take revenge on her nor resume contact, let alone
fuck her. If I refuse to sign, I won't be released.
I wonder what this freak has done to become Milena's
pimp. Perhaps she's already sucked his cock? She must be
scared shitless that someone's going to let the cat out of the
bag about her fucking me. This creep has probably already
had his worm in her hole. I burst out laughing.
Maybe this toad thinks I've really gone crazy, because
he's whispering good-bye to Milena and accompanies her
to the door. Suddenly I remember the blackmail and sign
the piece of paper. Nothing can hold me back from doing
what I want to do, once I'm free.
The jellyfish grabs at the paper as if it were a love letter
from Milena, folds it up, and shoves it prissily into his
wallet.
"I would say the thing is settled," he says in a slimy way,
"but I would like to have a few words with you, you inter
est me."
"But 1 don't want to talk to you! I want out of this garbage
can of human brains!"
I think that only the guard at the door can prevent me
from beating him with the paperweight on the table. I can
already see how the torn steel of the exploded grenade shell
is going to crush against his fatty forehead and eat into it
like shark's teeth. And if I were to hit him another time
between his bulging, myopic eyes, and another time, and
another time, I would crush his skull, leaving only a rancid,
bloody, stinking clump. All I need to do is reach for the
paperweight. But I don't. Not yet.
"Now, there's no need to get all worked up. Everything
will proceed accordingly. I give you my word on that."
Word? What kind of word are you going to give me?
What kind of word could a pig like you have?
I would shit in his hand if he held it out to me.
92 K L A U S K I N S K I
"Tell your thugs from the garbage dump that they can
bring me my things!"
"Slow down, slow down. It won't go as quickly as you
think. First your brother must come to speak with me. The
frau doctor has already informed him, he will show up here
tomorrow."
"My brother? What does my brother have to say to you?"
"I would like him to tell me a little about you, I just told
you, you interest me. I am ultimately responsible once I set
you free. And you tell me nothing."
"What?"
"What you're doing with your hands right now, for
example, when you talk. Have you always done that?"
I'm sure the sadist is insane: how could he not be? What
do I do with my hands? My hands are my language, like
my eyes, my mouth, my whole body. I express myself with
them as I always did. I'm about to say: What I do with my
hands you will quickly recognize when I strangle you to
death. But I say nothing. I don't say a single word. I
leave the examination room without a word and am led
back to the torture hall. If it's true that Arne knows
where I am, he'll get me out of here, even if it costs him
his life.
It is spring, and I can see how the apples of the girls are
growing under their blouses and can smell their figs
ripening.
A L L I N E E D IS L O V E
9 3
year-old with baby fat. She knows nothing about men but
is impatient. Her mother, who owns a dog food factory,
leaves me alone with her daughter entire evenings, as if she
isn't in the know. Her bedroom is full of horrible little
knickknacks.
I don't know if she's afraid of being screwed for the first
time, or if she'd rather have it with the mouth. In any case
I lie with my face under her fat little pussy for hours while
she sucks on my cock. When I stop sucking for just a while
because I need to get some air from time to time, she shoves
her pubic bone against my mouth, making my lip bleed.
And every time I want to climb on top of her, she crosses
her little legs. So I must take another approach. I suck deep
into her cunt and begin to press through her hymen little
by little with my tongue. She allows that. When it rips, I
pull out little pieces of skin piece by piece, with my teeth. I
grapple her little breasts with my fingers. They aren't even
real little breasts, not even real tits, not even tiny ones.
They're just blisters, bumps with soft pink coronas. I circle
my fingertips very carefully around her nipples, pinching
them coarsely from time to time without warning, twisting
them or pulling on them. She convulses. The deeper I pen
etrate her cunt with my tongue, the stronger her scent of
sweet juice and bitter piss. I myself don't know what I am
discharging into her mouth. Once I get my tongue way into
the soft wetness and the tips of her nipples are hard as rock,
I shove my throbbing shaft into her, as she wriggles in the
throes of a massive orgasm.
way to her room, where she waits for me any time of day
or night in her bathrobe, as if she knew I had to come again.
She doesn't even look at me, she's that sure. It goes so
far that I hate her, never say a single word to her and yet I
come to her two, three, four times a day. She simply looks
at me triumphantly with her half-crazed eyes. Sometimes
we cook at her place, but we eat very little; she is nothing
but skin and bones. We both look like addicts. Our feverish,
glistening eyes are deep caves. The wide dark rings around
them stretch all the way to our cheekbones. A burning thirst
dries our throats. Our pulses are abnormally fast; our arter
ies swell. The weaker we feel, the more immense and
uncontrollable our desire is. My own orgasms are a piercing
pain in my brain.
You can fuck yourself to death in this manner, even
before having a heart attack. My salvation is the director,
who can't hold rehearsals because we haven't shown up for
several days. He threatens not to give me an advance if
things keep going on like this. I don't tell him I'm addicted
to the skinny girl. I tell him I can't stand her. He schedules
my rehearsals with her as seldom as possible, so that I have
little contact with her. She herself must rehearse continu
ously. He doesn't know that he's saved my life.
Then I jump into the ice-cold Isar where pieces of ice are
still floating around; I dry myself with Helga's long hair. I
must go back to Pola; she might be awake, crying.
It's icy. I could try to stay warm with the bums, who have
little coal stoves under the bridge, or on the grids above the
subway shafts. I wander around for two whole days until
I'm so tired that I collapse into a deep sleep somewhere.
When I wake up, I'm covered with snow and a subway train
is thundering past my head. I don't know how I got here.
Even my brain is frozen.
It's early in the morning and still dark. A man picks me
up on the street and takes me to his place. I tell him I just
want to sleep; he doesn't make a pass at me, even though
we're sleeping in his bed. Before he leaves his flat the next
afternoon, he makes me cafi au lait and picks up a baguette.
Then I shave and wash up and dry my clothes. When I want
to leave, he asks me if there's anything else he can help me
with. I tell him I need money for the fare to Marseille. I
want to work on a ship. If possible, one headed for Japan
or Australia, or the Fiji Islands. He gives me money for a
third-class ticket and says that I can repay him some day. It
all sounds unbelievable, but it's true. I don't think he did it
just because he likes men. There are people like that, not
many, but they're out there.
He wants me to stay another night, because it's Christ
mas Eve, but I can't stand this Christmas Eve shit and take
the night train to Marseille.
I'm all alone in the compartment and can finally stretch
out on the wooden benches. Paratroopers of the Foreign
Legion board in Marseille. They're coming straight from
Vietnam. The same train goes back to Paris. Before I can get
off, they're already in the compartment giving me some
thing to drink and smoke, saying I should stay until the
train is about to return. The compartments and walkways
are so full that we have to sit on each other's laps. I don't
understand everything they're talking about among them
selves, because it's a sort of slang. But I do understand
when they rip their ribbons from their uniforms, stamp on
them with their feet as if they were crushing beetles, and
pretend to be wiping their asses with commendation letters
from their commanding general. Then they slur out the
"Marseillaise" and fart along.
The train jerks into motion. I have to get off. The para
troopers send me out through the window.
My beloved friend,
I would share everything with you. Unfortunately, I own noth
ing. I live off the generosity of others. I'm sick with one foot
already in the grave. I'm sending you this drawing, which you
can surely sell.
Laszlo Benedek, who just did The Wild One with Marlon
Brando, gets hold of me while I'm still shooting Hanussen.
He wants me for Children, Mothers and a General, which
Erich Pommer is producing in Hamburg.
I don't live in the Hotel Bellvue, where the movie clan
always stays. I move into a small inn around the corner. At
six the next morning I'm arrested straight out of bed. The
police can't get it through their thick skulls that there
wouldn't be a warrant out for my arrest, had I filled out the
hotel roster correctly when I checked in. I wrote that I was
born in B.C., that I have neither a home nor any money,
that I have no passport, and that I'm a prostitute. The clerk
wasn't satisfied with my entries and brought me a new form
after I had already fallen asleep. I drew fantastic Chinese
characters all over that one, even on the back side. So she
called the police, and they found me in their files.
The reason there's a warrant out for my arrest is that I
failed to pay the penalty for the accident with the Cadillac.
I'm handcuffed and taken away. Then I'm transported to
the station with others who have been arrested. There I get
a kick in my back and land in a cell.
The next morning all they say is "shut up." They put the
handcuffs on again and take us to the investigation prison.
ι ι 8 K L A U S K I N S K I
story from the pulpit of St. Stephan's Cathedral. But I'm not
given St. Stephan's Cathedral.
Then, Villon, Rimbaud again, and Villon again and again.
Anushka's husband keeps offering her money if she'll come
back. But Anushka doesn't want to go back to him and
keeps going to the villa to steal food.
We change flats before the next month's rent is due.
Schoenbrunn. The Goethe Monument. Karntner Ring.
Naschmarkt. I can't take it any longer. When Anushka is
with her daughter, I wander around Vienna. It is indeed
true what people say about the "sweet Viennese girlies."
They are all sweet, the girls, the married women, and the
whores on Karntner Ring.
had only kissed Kainz's ass when he got cancer and didn't
have much time left.
The other actors show up for dress rehearsal in their little
cliques. Most are condescending, "celebrated actors" not
exerting themselves very much. I myself am utterly shocked
to have to do it with real people in the flesh; I miss my
chairs.
After the dress rehearsal Aslan slaps his hands to his
head. His dream of the world champion skier Toni Sailer is
finished.
Biggi is now in her ninth month with her baby and still
accompanies me. Although sleet has made the snowcov-
ered autobahn terribly slick, the speedometer in the Jag
never shows less than 125 miles per hour. I never take my
foot off the pedal; we have to make the evening show. We
speed past the Eastern Zone border police. Through the
lowering gate, they shoot at us.
Just before Kiel, A Volkswagen moves from right to left
in front of our nose without signaling, even though I have
1 34 K L A U S K I N S K I
Because I'm as horny for her now as I was on day one. Even
more so. I get hornier and hornier. And she's getting
hornier, the more often and shamelessly I fuck her.
Sonja and I have a couple days off. But her husband, the
conductor of the Berlin Radio Philharmonic, has come from
Berlin and she has to fuck him the following days. Biggi has
gone with Nastassja, Anushka, and Anushka's daughter to
the mountains near Moon Lake. Biggi had asked me to meet
them there.
The keys at Judengasse are with the porter. Because Sonja
can't possibly leave her husband, I. plan to meet Barbara
before taking the 3:10 p . m . train to Moon Lake.
I don't remember his face at all, and all taxi drivers have
gold teeth. I ask them about the giant, but no one knows a
woman as tall as the one I describe.
My blood is cooking. I go anywhere the taxi drivers will
take me: to sleazy houses where pockmarked girls are
brought to me from brothels; to labyrinthine farmhouses
behind high walls where I'm locked in so I don't split with
out paying and where I feel my way in the dark through
low mud huts over naked women's bodies lying on the
slimy ground. I ravish them without getting a look at their
faces. I can't forget the giant.
"I don't know what else to say. My head is one big gar
bage can where everything is jumbled around."
The telephone rings again. It's Dominique again! Again I
yell into the receiver that I love her. The whole night goes
like this. She calls up three more times wanting to know
exactly when I'm coming to Rome, which I can't tell her.
Biggi and I stay up the entire night. But we can't find the
words to understand each other. Something has been sev
ered. She doesn't cry but is frightened and defenseless. I
can imagine what will happen if I leave her.
The main thing is that she can't grasp what I've told her.
Biggi is an independent person by nature, capable of stand
ing on her own two feet. Yet for all these years she gave me
so much of herself without hesitation. I took it, and now
she's suddenly standing there with nothing to hold on to.
She cannot comprehend why I want to leave her for
another woman. She thinks I'm lying when I say I love her.
During those five weeks I fly and drive to Dominique in
Rome nine times— once to see her for only half an hour,
having driven ninety miles and taken two planes.
The production moves from Split to another location.
Biggi's nerves are frayed; she cries all the time. She wants
to get away, immediately. I drive her the 250 miles to Ven
ice. From Venice she doesn't have a connection until the
next morning; she stays in a hotel on the Lido. I jump into
a speedboat on the Grand Canale, which takes me across
the lagoons at high velocity to the airport. I am the last pas
senger to board the plane to Rome.
The contract for the Fellini film has been drafted, but the
pay is a rip-off. This Fellini wants to have his cake and eat
it, too. I don't sign the contract and send a telegram: Va fare
in culo. The telegraph office calls up to say they cannot
1 56 K L A U S K I N S K I
tea room. I let my pants down and get the penicillin right
in the ass. The director is already calling me back.
times to ask me to be patient until the dates are set and the
contract can be drawn up.
"Who is this Visconti, anyway?" I ask Gino.
"You'd be better off shooting the next western with
Corbucci."
"Esso," says Rinaldo, public relations specialist, pointing
over his shoulder with his thumb. He means the girl who
just disappeared into the bathroom. I met her a half an hour
ago. Rinaldo brought her along on location in Magliana,
which lies outside of Rome. She accompanied him to a busi
ness meeting I'm having with him.
"What do you mean by 'Esso'?" I ask.
"Moratti."
"Oh, the cigarette manufacturer."
"Shit. Not Muratti, Mooooooooratti. Petrol. Her name is
Bedi, Bedi Moratti. Her father is the richest man in Italy."
"Interesting," I say.
Bedi comes back from the little girls' room. She has put
on some lipstick and smiles more lovely than before she
went to piss. I scrutinize her more closely. Not because her
father is supposed to be the richest man in Italy, but
because I had observed her in a purely mechanical way.
She has long, silky hair, healthy teeth, a sensitive mouth,
and dreamy, longing eyes. Her body is thin and fragile like
a porcelain figure. But though her expression is so absent
and melancholy and her body seems so elflike, she must be
energetic and tough. She drives the fastest sportscar in the
world. She's wearing a light summer dress like a cloud of
flowers and a diamond of at least ten carats.
Rinaldo slaps me on the shoulder. I was so lost in observ
ing Bedi, who also seemed to have forgotten her surround
ings and even forgot to smile at me, that I didn't even notice
the shit-eating director who came up to our table ten min
utes ago to take me back on location.
i 7 6 K L A U S K I N S K I
cook the stuff he's prepared, and I've fired the rest of the
staff again.
"Marry Bedi Moratti," the turd of a producer says. "Then
you'll be a billionaire and we can be producers together."
"If I were to marry Bedi, then I wouldn't need you," I say.
The next two films I have been given money for are dead
before shooting starts. The producer's money dried up.
Nothing new, but I hadn't figured on this right now.
Bedi gives me money when she can. But she doesn't have
much cash in her account. Her father pays all her bills, no
1 8 2 K L A U S K I N S K I
matter how high they are. (Why not mine?) Bedi and I drive
to Milan to get her jewelry. She isn't allowed to sell it. Gino
takes it to a pawnbroker in Rome. He could've gotten much
more, but he only brings me $35,000, so that the interest
won't be intolerable. I will make do for a couple weeks,
until the next film starts.
The next two films are a war movie in northwest Italy and
a gangster movie in Genoa. Bedi comes racing in her Ferrari
through snow flurries and fog on the icy highway from
Milan to Montecatini, Livorno and Genoa. If Bedi can't get
away, I speed to Milan in my Ferrari after filming is done.
Bedi can't go on like this anymore. The nine and a half
months with me have done her in. She breaks down phys
ically and mentally and must go to a clinic in Switzerland.
I have to go to London.
the tiger that had picked up the piglet's scent and was slink
ing around the three-by-six-foot hole.
At daybreak the villagers continued their search for the
little girl and discovered the tiger's tracks. The tracks led to
the tiger pit. The villagers crept up to the pit with bamboo
spears, and the bravest of them carefully bent over the
edge to let the others know how big the tiger was. But
only a small child was smiling up at him, sticking
her fingers through the bamboo cage to pet the sleeping
piglet.
Minhoi, the girl from the tiger pit, is nineteen today and
is standing across from me. I embrace her; I want to kiss
her. The mysterious beauty of her unusual face is enhanced
by her aggressive look of a trapped animal dragged outside
her habitat. Irritated and incensed by my persistence, she
frees herself brusquely from my arms. Her long, full hair is
the color of dark-roasted chestnuts. Her eyebrows form two
crescents above the dark stars of her almond eyes. The
evenness of her oval face balances the catlike Asian cheek
bones. Her ocher-colored skin has no wrinkles, not even
under her eyes. The lips of her shimmering violet mouth
suggest such seriousness that the chatter of the guests pres
ent is silenced. Her build, like that of most Vietnamese, is
childlike. Her breasts are barely outlined by her minidress,
over which she is wearing a leopard coat that smells of ori
ental perfume. Her slender hands are hot and soft, and her
fingernails, polished black, are as long as a Chinese prin
cess's. None of the guests knows how or why she came
here. I invited all my friends, telling each of them to bring
as many people as they wanted. She didn't come with any
one, and no one saw her enter.
The tables are covered with champagne and caviar and
numberless delicacies. Rock music is blaring from the loud
speakers. The guests eat, drink, jabber, laugh, dance. Every-
A L L I N E E D IS L O V E 187
Toni has never forgiven me for the rebuff. She hates Min
hoi even more than Luna. She hasn't said a word to me or
anyone for a week. When I ask her to come eat, she turns
away from me and doesn't sit down until Minhoi and I have
finished eating and get up from the table. After a week she
realizes that her petulance is useless.
Toni is crying. I didn't want to hurt her.
"You want me to give you one?" I ask her not knowing
what to say.
"I'll never let you give me one again as long as I live,"
Toni answers sadly. Snot bubbles from her nose. She wipes
it away with the back of her hand like a street kid. I give
her a tissue. She blows her nose like a trumpeting elephant.
Enrico will take her to the airport whenever she wants.
Minhoi still has her things in Paris, where she has lived
and gone to school since she was fourteen. I plunder the
boutiques of Rome for her and buy everything she likes. If
she can't find her gloves because she forgot them in Paris,
I buy her ten pairs. If her tights have a run, I buy her two
dozen in all colors. If it's too cold for her leopard coat, I buy
her a white mink and sable fur down to her ankles. If a shoe
pinches, I buy her piles of shoes. And if she needs new lip
stick, nail polish, and all the other junk, I buy her makeup
worth a thousand dollars. I give the Rolls-Royce convertible
away and buy a Rolls-Royce Phantom.
I have a dark blue twenty-four-foot trailer built that looks
like a Cook's wagon-lit with curtains, bedsheets, table
cloths, pillows, and upholstery of pure silk. The floor is laid
with velour. Its doors and cabinets are made of teak, except
for those in the bathroom and kitchen. Gold doorknobs,
handles, and water faucets. Silk blinds on the windows.
The front room, salon, dressing room, and bedroom are
separated by sliding doors. An air conditioner, a heater, a
TV, a radio, a reel-to-reel tape player, a turntable, and a
telephone are built into the cabinets. There are two tall crys
tal mirrors. We eat by candlelight.
The trailer is for Minhoi, who accompanies me wherever
I go on location. Minhoi is happy about everything I do for
her. But mostly when she looks at me she is speechless and
ι 9ο K L A U S K I N S K I
I'm looking for her all through the house again. In the
garden. In the farthest corners of our estate. I yelled at her
in jealousy and told her to leave, to disappear from my life.
The greatest lie of all; Minhoi is my life.
I find her in the turret, where I hadn't looked before,
because she's afraid of bats. She didn't turn on the lights.
It's dark. I almost stumble over her. I run my fingers over
her tear-stained face. I kiss her and beg for her forgiveness.
Then I go to the kitchen to get something for us to eat. It is
Sunday and none of the servants are here.
When I come back to the turret, Minhoi is slumped over.
I find an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the carpet. I pull
Minhoi up to make her walk back and forth. I have heard
that it helps with an overdose of sleeping pills. Minhoi can't
walk; I have to support her. She can't speak properly,
either; she only stammers, embraces me tenderly, and
kisses me on the lips. As I shake her in a panic, her head
slumps onto mine.
I fear I have lost my senses. I must get her into fresh air!
I carry her down the spiral staircase to the third floor; the
elevator is not working. On the stairs to the salon, she col
lapses in my arms. I carry her to the blue room. Her pulse
is racing. She moans, grabs her throat, gasps for air. I throw
the window open, run down the stairs to the kitchen, and
get a bottle of cold milk to counteract the poison. On the
way back I kneel on the stairs. "My God! You have saved
me in the face of death so many times before. If my life has
had any purpose at all, then please don't let Minhoi die.
She's only just taught me to live!"
When I come into the blue room, Minhoi has fallen from
the bed and is crawling across the floor with cramps. What
if the milk fails to counteract the poison? After I've poured
most of the milk down her throat, her condition doesn't
improve; she doesn't vomit.
I call up all the doctors I know. No one answers. They're
all outside in such nice weather. Minhoi can't breathe any-
19 2 K L A U S K I N S K I
The past one and a half years Biggi has stolidly hoped we
would find our way back together. I must make it clear to
her that this will never happen. She doesn't know what
Minhoi means to me. I try to explain to her in countless
letters and telephone conversations. She finally allows a
divorce.
* * *
ι 94 K L A U S K I N S K I
his own crazy ideas, which simply take him by storm. Then
suddenly, out of the clear blue, he tries to make me believe
he has a sense of humor about himself. That is, he lets it
shine through "unintentionally"— he shows embarrass
ment halfway jokingly. Now he's tossing all rules of caution
to the wind and starts to lie: He says he is inclined to boyish
escapades, he really is one of the gang, and so on. And
when he's finished with his confession, he doesn't want to
keep it a secret from me that he could piss his pants right
now from laughing at his own roguishness. And while it's
perfectly clear to me that never in my entire life have I ever
encountered such a humorless, mendacious, stubborn, nar
row-minded, pretentious, unscrupulous, bumptious, spirit
less, depressing, boring, and sickening person— entirely
unconcerned, he drives home the most uninteresting high
points, finally falling to his knees like a sectarian, holding
forth fanatically, waiting for someone to pull him up. Hav
ing unburdened himself of his garbage, stinking all over the
place and making me want to vomit, he pretends to be a
naive child of innocence, talking about his dreamy poetic
existence, as if he weren't living in reality at all and doesn't
have the vaguest idea of the brutal material side of the
world. But I can clearly see that he thinks himself to be
exceedingly smart. That he is lying in wait for me at every
turn and is desperately trying to investigate my thoughts.
That he's racking his brain over how he can cheat me on all
points of the contract. In short, that he has a mind to take
me in.
I agree to do the film anyway, strictly because of Peru. I
don't know where it's located, exactly. Somewhere in South
America, near the Pacific, the desert, glaciers, and the most
gigantic jungle on earth. The screenplay is almost illiter
ately primitive. That's its chance. The jungle is smoldering
in it and contagious like a virus. It's as if I know this land
with magic names from another life. A caged animal can
never forget the freedom of the wilderness. A bird in a cage
sticks its head through the wires to watch the clouds roll by
above.
I tell Herzog that Aguirre must be crippled, because his
power cannot depend on his appearance. I will be a hump
back. My right arm will be longer than my left, long like a
monkey's arm. Because my left arm will be shorter, I will
have to attach a halter for my sword to my right breast—
since I am left-handed— and not to my hip, as is customary.
My left leg will be longer than my right, so that it drags
behind. I will move forward sideways, like a crab. I will
have long hair; it will grow past my shoulders before the
filming starts. I won't need an artificial hump. No costume
designer or makeup to mess with. I will be crippled,
because I want to be.
I will readjust my spine. I will be crippled today, now,
immediately, this very moment. Everything will adjust
itself to my condition from now on; costumes, armor vest,
weapon halter, the weapons themselves, helmet, boots, et
cetera.
I design the costume. To show what I have in mind, I rip
a couple pages of paintings by old masters out of art books.
Then I fly to Madrid with Herzog for the armor and weap
ons. After days of searching, I finally fish out a sword, dag
ger, helmet, and vest of armor from mountains of rusted
scraps. The armor vest has to be cut to fit because of my
crippled condition.
The trip into the jungle is hellish drudgery. Crammed
into ancient trains, wrecked trucks, and cagelike busses, we
eat and camp like pigs. Sometimes there are corrugated
metal barracks and other torture chambers. Sleeping is out
of the question. We can barely breathe. Neither toilets nor
the chance to wash for many days. I keep my clothes on
day and night, otherwise the mosquitos would eat me alive.
It's as though I am constantly standing under a shower of
boiling hot water. Outside it's just as fatally hot, but death
is inside. Piles of garbage overflowing with globs of grease,
saturated in a muck of human piss and shit. In this hellhole
the population throws out eyes and guts torn out from
slaughtered animals. Giant black vultures as big as dogs
shuffle and crouch around in this horror, guarding it as if it
were private property. Wherever I look: these infamous,
half-built barracks with corrugated metal roofs. If only I
didn't have to look at these half-built cement barracks with
corrugated metal roofs anymore! It's as if everything had
been abandoned in the middle of work. Iron blinds, bars
everywhere in mockery. Mounds of trash, sewage, larvae,
and— TV antennas. (New York, Paris, London, Tokyo,
Hong Kong are all the same, only more infamous.)
It is a long, agonizing road to the wilderness, but no
strain is too unbearable to escape the human hell. And as
we make our way out of it, Minhoi and I feel our hair get
ting silkier, our skin more supple, like the fur and skin of
wild animals set free, our bodies more elastic like the bodies
of big cats. We feel more sensitive and alert. Minhoi has
never been more breathtakingly beautiful.
An Inca girl is standing on a runway for military planes.
She has a little monkey on her arm and wants to sell him.
But the monkey clings to the little Inca girl, scared to death.
We board old, dented paratrooper transport planes; their
propellers rage in my temples like a jackhammer. Shim
mering heat; choking, stuffy air; gasoline stench; hunger,
thirst, headaches, and stomach cramps. We are crammed
together, squatting on the hot steel floor of the plane with
no windows. Hour passes after hour. During the flight, each
of us, one by one, is allowed to crawl out of the cabin into
the cockpit and look outside through a tiny window far
2 0 0 K L A U S K I N S K I
body from the sludge, sinking deeper all the time. I scream
out in blind rage, "I'm getting out of here! Even if I have to
paddle to the Atlantic Ocean!"
"You're a dead man," says limpdick Herzog, terrified of
the risk he's taking.
"And how do you plan to achieve that, you asshole?" I
ask, hoping to rid myself of him forever.
"I'll shoot you!" he sputters like a paralytic with brain
damage. "Eight bullets for you and the ninth bullet is for
me."
"Who has ever heard of a gun or a pistol with nine bul
lets, you bumbling idiot? No such thing exists. Besides, you
don't have a gun. I know it. You have no gun. You have
nothing, not even a can opener. I'm the only one who has
a gun. A Winchester. I have a special permit from the Peru
vian military. I had to bust my ass walking from one police
station to he next for signatures, stamps, and all kinds of
shit just to get bullets. I'm going back to my raft now and
I'll wait for you, you vermin."
I am ecstatic that it's finally gone this far.
On my raft, Minhoi has fallen asleep in her hammock. I
load my Winchester and wait. At four in the morning, Her
zog comes paddling over and apologizes.
Herzog is a miserable, spiteful, envious, stingy, stinking,
money-hungry, malicious, sadistic, insidious, backstabbing,
blackmailing, cowardly person, and a liar through and
through. His so-called talent is nothing more than torturing
helpless creatures and, if necessary, putting them to death
or simply murdering them. No one and nothing interests
him but his lousy career as a so-called filmmaker. Driven
by a pathological addiction to cause a sensation, he himself
provokes the most senseless difficulties and dangers and
puts the safety and even the lives of others on the line—
204 K L A U S K I N S K I
only so he can later say that he, Herzog, has mastered the
seemingly impossible.
He gets the mentally retarded and dilettantes for his
films, whom he can order around (and allegedly hypno
tize!), and whom he either pays a pittance or nothing at all.
The rest are cripples and freaks of all sorts. He wants to
appear interesting. He doesn't possess a spark of talent and
has no idea what filmmaking is. He doesn't dare to ask me
if I am willing to carry out his boring nonsense. He gave
that up a long time ago, because I forbade his claptrap. If
he wants to repeat a shot again, because he, like most direc
tors, is inconfident, I tell him he should fuck off. If I think
the first take is okay, I repeat nothing. Especially when a
faker like him wants me to. I determine every scene, every
adjustment, every shot, and refuse to do anything other
than what I see as right. This way I can at least save the film
from becoming complete trash.
Our heavy steel helmets get so hot from the sun that we
burn ourselves. We are at the mercy of the heat all day long,
without the least bit of shade, without eating and drinking.
People are dropping like flies: first the girls, then the men,
one after the other. Most of their legs are covered with pus
and swollen to disfigurement from mosquito bites. When
we finally reach an Indian village around evening, it's in
flames. Herzog had it set on fire and we— hungry and
dehydrated and exhausted to death, tottering from fifteen
hours of hellish heat— must attack the Indian village
straight off the rafts, as stated by his idiotic screenplay.
We spend the night in the Indian village and camp in the
remaining shacks, where huge rats romp about, moving in
closer and closer. They must sense how weak we are, and
are waiting for the right moment to pounce on us.
Someone tells Herzog that the people can't go on if they
aren't fed better, and most of all, if they don't get more to
drink. Herzog answers that they can drink from the river.
Besides, it's perfectly fine that they are collapsing from
exhaustion and hunger and thirst, because that's how the
story goes. Herzog and his gang have their own stash of
fresh fruit, vegetables, French Camembert, olive oil, and
drinks.
The American who is my lieutenant in the movie falls
sick with a dangerous case of hepatitis and is in convulsions
2 Ο6 K L A U S K I N S K I
After about ten weeks have passed, the last scene of the
film is shot: Aguirre, the only survivor, has gone insane and
floats downstream toward the Atlantic Ocean with
hundreds of monkeys. Most of the monkeys that are put
onto the raft jump into the water and swim back to the jun
gle. They were supposed to be sold by a band of animal
trappers to American laboratories for dissection. Herzog
borrowed them. When only about a hundred monkeys are
left, just waiting to jump into the water to regain their free
dom, I order Herzog to film immediately. I know this
opportunity won't repeat itself.
When the filming is over, the last monkeys jump into the
current and swim back to the jungle, which swallows them
up. There isn't a single person who isn't exhausted to death
or sick or both. But my daughter in the film, a sixteen-year-
old blond Peruvian, was fucked by almost everyone, I
think.
When the jet takes off into the air with a murderous blar
ing, leaving the jungle far below and behind me, I burst into
A L L I N E E D IS L O V E 207
All day and night, I don't dare walk from one room to the
next without leaving the doors wide open, even the toilet
door. I even tell Minhoi not to shut the door when she goes
to the toilet. I'm afraid she might climb out through the
bathroom window and from there up a fire escape to the
roof and flee across the other terraces. Sometimes I jump
out of the shower and rush out of the bathroom to see if
Minhoi is still there. Now I don't dare take a shower any
more or wash my hair, because I wouldn't hear the apart
ment door. At night I am startled from my sleep time and
again and grope to see if she's still in bed. One time I scream
out because I can't find her. The bed is empty. I turn on the
light and look for her everywhere. She's sitting sleepily on
the toilet. I don't let her go shopping alone. I don't leave
the house anymore, only with Minhoi. And even then, I am
afraid that she'll run away once she's on the street. I don't
make appointments with anyone anymore. Not without
Minhoi. We would starve like this, because we never have
money if I don't work. I've never saved any. So I have to
do film after film. Minhoi doesn't want to come to the
shootings anymore, because they're dull and taxing. I
wouldn't have a single moment of concentration while
standing before the camera anyway, unable to see her all
the time. During filming or when I just have to speak to
someone, I think of nothing but what Minhoi is doing. As
soon as I'm finished with work, I scream for my car and
every second that passes by is an ache in my heart and I
think I'm losing my senses. I can't wait for the elevator and
2 14 K L A U S K I N S K I
wants me to stop the car. She gets out and runs across a
field. When I get out of the car to run after her, I cry out,
rolling in convulsions on the ground. It's as if someone
were knifing me over and over again, in my heart.
Minhoi can't wait any longer. She wants our son! Now!
Today! Immediately! I long for our son as much as she does.
First I have to find a place.
I count the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds until
the birth of my son. My son will be my salvation. He will
free me with his love from the torturous chains of my
life.
Minhoi's belly is getting bigger and sweeter. We can lit
erally see it growing, hear the music of birth. Minhoi always
calls to me when Nanhoi moves in her. I caress him.
who can help with Nanhoi's birth? Miklos can't say exactly
yet where we'll be shooting, but he assures me I don't need
to worry. Maybe my son will be born in Budapest?
Our plans change from week to week because I'm offered
new films from week to week. Each week I am proposed a
different place on earth where Nanhoi might enter the
world. I am undecided about which film to take because
maybe the next will offer more money.
I decide on the Swiss film Jack the Ripper in Zurich. I
shoot the trash in eight days. The rest of the time I play
tennis, even in the pouring rain, until my hands and feet
ache and I can neither walk nor stand.
cum tasted strong and sweet like strange wild honey. Since
then I've been crazy about the scent of black women. I walk
so close to her that my hard-on almost brushes her cheeks.
A beautiful animal face is mirrored in the windowpane. She
turns to me. Standing face to face with this black woman, I
stutter unrepeatable nonsense, and she presses two of her
moist fingers to my lips, as if to say, "Save your breath for
fucking honey."
The first few days she comes to Avenue Foch regularly,
but she never stays longer than a couple of hours. She's liv
ing with a man who pays for her. Besides, she is also terri
bly busy, running around, making phone calls, meeting
with ambassadors and officials to help her free her father,
a cabinet minister in Ethiopia who has been in prison since
the coup.
fenced off, and where a cop blows his shrill whistle as soon
as a child kicks a ball. He drives the mothers and children
out of the park the moment the church clock strikes at clos
ing time and closes the iron park gate at this infamous
cathedral with a chain. In this park surrounded entirely by
bars, there is a little sandbox where Nanhoi likes to dig. But
first are the swings, not like the ones in Luna Park that turn
360 degrees and have a minimum age requirement. The
ones here are for little children, but the swings are rather
high and every child must be tied on. Nanhoi is beside him
self about this swinging, and it's the first thing he insists on
when we come here.
I often come here secretly, hoping I might see him, even
from afar. I hide behind parked cars or among passersby so
Minhoi won't discover me. Or I sneak through the bushes
that surround the cathedral as close to the sandbox as pos
sible. Sometimes I catch glimpses of my son.
I know it's foolish to look for Nanhoi in the park at this
hour. The barred gate is already locked shut with the heavy
chain.
saw me in. I scream at him and storm out of the room. Min-
hoi's attorney catches up with me in the hall and says the
judge will lock me up if I yell at him again. Minhoi is
ashamed of what's going on here. Finally the judge says we
should give it another try, especially for the sake of our little
son. The divorce is postponed for a probationary period of
six months.
I've read the letter time and again, I don't understand what
it's all about. . . what Minhoi means by "going away" and
"for a longer time" . . . why the flowers are here and not
with her . . . why she and Nanhoi are no longer here . . .
why she brings me flowers when she wounds me to death
. . . why the flowers are the same ones I gave her this morn
ing . . . reality works like slow poison. She doesn't tell me
where she has gone or how long she'll be gone. She only
writes "for a longer time" and that she can't bear it here
anymore.
Two more French films: Zoo Zero and The Death of a Rot
ten Man. Then Herzog calls me up at Avenue Foch at one
in the morning and asks me if I want to incarnate Nosferatu
and Woyzeck. I tell him to fuck off for calling me at one
o'clock in the morning and say "okay." I have completely
forgotten who Herzog is. I have also forgotten that I refused
to incarnate Woyzeck for the theater ten years ago; it's sui
cide, and I threw the script into the garbage can. I don't
know why I say yes this time. There must be a point to my
choosing to endure someone else's hell when I'm at my
nadir. Will I experience the pain myself after I've incarnated
it? Is it a warning or a repetition? Is it a chain reaction? Does
246 K L A U S K I N S K I
It's November and icy cold. The sea is raging all the way
to the Azores, and we head for Faial, the island where sail
boats on their way across the Atlantic have landed for
hundreds of years and where skippers have painted the
names of their ships on stones along the quay.
When I call Paris, I am told that I must return immedi
ately to dub Nosferatu in French. A rotten joke! I would
never have flown back save for Nanhoi.
white as chalk, with snake's fangs and long claws like spi
der's legs, Nanhoi calls out from the dark stillness in excite
ment, "Papa!"
I run back into the air-conditioned room and yell into the
microphone that they had better not mock me with their
shit.
H< He He
I try to call Nanhoi every day, but it gets more and more
difficult to make a connection because his mother never
stays in one place for very long and because I don't leave
the studio until late, often not until night, and then my baby
boy is already fast asleep. If I finish filming earlier, I make
a mad dash back to Tokyo and stare at the telephone, wait
ing for it to ring.
* * *
Minhoi and Nanhoi fly directly from Tokyo to California.
They now live in a tiny house, as small as a dollhouse, in
the middle of a forest in Marin County. It's fairy tale-ish.
The woods, hills, valleys, fields; seagulls and falcons fly
overhead; elk, bobcats, and pumas lurk about.
the whole troupe slop cooked with pig fat. Once again there
is a shortage of fresh fruits and drinking water. Whenever
possible I prepare a fish caught from the river or a hen or a
wild duck on an open fire. As soon as Herzog smells the
roast, he sticks to me like an outhouse fly, wanting to pig it
down, no matter how much I curse him, insult him,
threaten him. As soon as he wants something from me, he
hits me like the stench of a pile of shit. Day and night he
carries a notebook around with him in a leather case on his
belt. He enters his lies, reports on the film, on me, like an
attendant at a correctional institution. He's arranged for a
so-called documentary filmmaker to shoot a film about Her
zog's shooting a film. This man thinks of nothing but garlic
and gorging himself on anything he can get his hands on,
before sleeping through all the goings-on. I go deeper into
the jungle to build fires, because this man wants to stuff
himself with my nourishment.
I LOVE YO U .
N A N H O I.
5 1995
9 780394 549163
ISBN 0-3^4-54^113-3